Techmeme: NSA Tailored Access Operations unit specializes in “getting the ungettable”, intercepts hardware shipments to plant malware (Spiegel Online)

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December 30, 2013, 11:25 AM

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Spiegel Online:

NSA Tailored Access Operations unit specializes in “getting the ungettable”, intercepts hardware shipments to plant malware — The NSA Uses Powerful Toolbox in Effort to Spy on Global Networks — The NSA's TAO hacking unit is considered to be the intelligence agency's top secret weapon.

Spiegel Online:

NSA has 50-page catalog of exploits and backdoors in devices from Cisco, Huawei, Dell, Juniper, Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor, Samsung, and more — Catalog Reveals NSA Has Back Doors for Numerous Devices — After years of speculation that electronics can be accessed by intelligence agencies through …

More: Cisco Blog, The Switch, The Verge, Computerworld, Gigaom, Daily Dot, Softpedia News, Threatpost, SiliconANGLE, TechSpot, Forbes, Ubergizmo, SlashGear, Digital Trends, SecurityWeek and Boing Boing

Tweets: @glynmoody, @justincormack and @declanm

Russell Brandom / The Verge:

The NSA's elite hackers can hijack your Wi-Fi from eight miles away — Attendees at the Chaos Communications Congress in Berlin this weekend got a surprising rundown of the NSA's surveillance capabilities, courtesy of security researcher Jacob Appelbaum. Appelbaum, who co-wrote …

More: Spiegel Online

Wall Street Journal:

Google to partner with Audi for Android-based dashboards, will compete with iOS in the Car — Google, Apple Forge Auto Ties — Consumer Electronics Show to Spotlight In-Car Digital Race … Technology giants Google Inc. and Apple Inc. are about to expand their battle for digital supremacy to a new front: the automobile.

Min-Jeong Lee / Digits:

LG to Soon Unveil webOS-Powered TV — South Korea's LG Electronics Inc. will soon take the veils off a television model that will run on the “webOS” operating system, highlighting its ambition of creating a prominent operating system for so-called smart TVs.

More: VentureBeat, The Verge, BGR, TechnoBuffalo and SlashGear. Tweets: @zseward. See also Mediagazer

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Facebook's Cutesy Annual Report To Partners Reveals First Country-By-Country Mobile Stats — TechCrunch has obtained never before published metrics showing Facebook's international growth. Facebook sent some partners a playfully illustrated eMagazine called The Annual …

More: Quartz, CNET, Softpedia News, Business Insider and Forbes. Tweets: @zseward

Gopal Sathe / Livemint:

Google exec Steve Grove says Google+ could become the YouTube of live video — Steve Grove: Google+ could do for live video, what YouTube did for recorded video — With over three years in the Google+ team, and heading its community partner scheme, Steve Grove's role is to make sure …

More: Ars Technica, SocialTimes, Quartz, TechnoBuffalo, 9to5Google, Softpedia News and BGR

John Markoff / New York Times:

Qualcomm says its first commercial neuromorphic (brainlike) processor is coming in 2014 — Brainlike Computers, Learning From Experience — PALO ALTO, Calif. — Computers have entered the age when they are able to learn from their own mistakes, a development that is about to turn the digital world on its head.

More: Business Insider, Forbes and VentureBeat

Tweets: @muratny, @stephenmarche, @freakonometrics and @andrewyng

Jim Finkle / Reuters:

Exclusive: Hacker took over BBC server, tried to ‘sell’ access on Christmas Day — (Reuters) - A hacker secretly took over a computer server at the BBC, Britain's public broadcaster, and then launched a Christmas Day campaign to convince other cyber criminals to pay him for access to the system.

More: Gizmodo, BBC, TechSpot, TechEye, Mashable and SlashGear. See also Mediagazer

Fred Wilson / A VC:

A core issue: young women are not embracing tech in key development years as often as men — Girls Who Code — I feel badly for Paul Graham because he's being made out to be something I am sure he is not. But the brouhaha that he unleashed about women founders, women coders …

More: Skillcrush, Medium, TechCrunch, Licence to Roam and Valleywag

Tweets: @rachelsklar, @fakegrimlock, @hblodget, @semil, @shaig and @alexia

Romain Dillet / TechCrunch:

Uber, LeCab And Others Now Have To Wait 15 Minutes Before Picking You Up In France — At first, it was just an idea, but this bill is now very real — urban transportation services like Uber and LeCab will now have to wait 15 minutes in France before letting a customer in the car.

More: Forbes and SlashGear. Tweets: @loic, @brianp and @digiphile

RT:

China jails World of Warcraft cybercrime group — A real prison term for selling gold and guns in the online game World of Warcraft? Easy answer: ten men have been sentenced to up to two years behind bars in China for taking over 11,500 World of Warcraft accounts.

More: SlashGear, Boing Boing, IGN, Daily Dot, VentureBeat and SC Magazine. Tweets: @terohanninen

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