NSA's Encrypted Tweet: We're Hiring Code Breakers

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hide captionA sign stands outside the National Security Administration (NSA) campus in Fort Meade, Md., in 2013. The agency on Monday tweeted an encoded job ad.

A sign stands outside the National Security Administration (NSA) campus in Fort Meade, Md., in 2013. The agency on Monday tweeted an encoded job ad.

What better way to recruit potential code-breakers than to advertise in cipher? That's what the NSA did Monday morning with this mysterious tweet:

According to The Washington Post, if you're good at breaking substitution ciphers, this is what you'd come up with:

want to know what it takes to work at nsa? check back each monday as we explore careers essential to protecting your nation.

At first, some people who saw the tweet thought the NSA might just be drunk or perhaps someone had inadvertently sent a butt tweet. But, it turns out that the coded tweet was the first of several in a month-long campaign to "explore careers essential to protecting our nation," NSA spokeswoman Marci Green Miller told The Daily Dot.

"NSA is known as the code makers and code breakers," Miller told the website in an email. "As part of our recruitment efforts to attract the best and the brightest, we will post mission related coded Tweets on Mondays in the month of May."

The Daily Dot says:

"While posting coded messages on Twitter is a new recruitment strategy for the agency, NSA officials have been known to attend hacker conferences in attempt to cajole new talent."

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NSA's Encrypted Tweet: We're Hiring Code Breakers

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REVEALED: Here's The Solution To That Encoded NSA Puzzle Tweet

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This morning, the NSA Careers Twitter account posted what looked like a series of nonsense letters:

We looked at this tweetand thought it looked suspciously like a coded message.

It turns out that it was. A couple of our commenters on our earlier post came up with the deciphered message: "Want to know what it takes to work at NSA? Check back each Monday in May as we explore careers essential to protecting our nation."

While some of us were hoping that it would be instructions to secret agents, it's simply a notification of future tweets.

The message was encoded with a simple substitution cipher, one of the most basic ways to encrypt something. In a cipher of this type, the alphabet is scrambled, with each letter in the alphabet assigned to another letter.

For example, T in the encrypted message corresponds to W in the uncoded text, P corresponds to A, F corresponds to N, and C corresponds to T. That makes the first four letters of the encrypted message, "TPFC," turn into the first word of the decrypted message, "Want." Notice that spaces and punctuation don't matter in this code.

This is a very very basic type of encryption, and can be broken fairly easily. The big problem with substitution ciphers is that English letters have a distinct frequency distribution, as explained at Practical Cryptography:

So, to crack the code, the first step is to count up the letter frequencies in the encoded text, and put them into alignment with English-letter frequencies. The most common letters in the coded message will probably be the letters assigned to common letters in normal English, like e, t, or a. Letters that are missing or rare in the coded text will probably be assigned to rare English letters like q, x, and z.

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REVEALED: Here's The Solution To That Encoded NSA Puzzle Tweet

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Michael Hayden's Unwitting Case Against Secret Surveillance

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The former head of the NSA asserted that one can't know whether spying is legitimate or not unless one knows all the details about it.

Reuters

Is state surveillance a legitimate defense of our freedoms? The question was put to Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA and the CIA, during a debate Friday evening in Toronto. Alan Dershowitz joined him to argue the affirmative. Glenn Greenwald and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian argued against the resolution.

No One Opposes All Surveillance: False Equivalence on the NSA

Going in, I expected to disagree with Hayden, who presided over the NSA's illegal program of warrantless wiretapping in the years after the September 11 attacks. But I want to emphatically agree with the very first remarks he made in the debate.

"State surveillance is a legitimate defense of our freedoms," he said, restating the resolution. "Well, we all know the answer to that. It depends. And it depends on facts."

He quickly clarified:

It depends on the totality of circumstances in which we find ourselves. What kind of surveillance? For what kind of purposes? In what kind of state of danger?

And that's why facts matter.

In having this debate, in trying to decide whether this surveillance is a legitimate defense of our freedoms, we really need to know exactly what this surveillance is.

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Michael Hayden's Unwitting Case Against Secret Surveillance

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Supreme Court Wasnt Serious about the Second Amendment

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While the media attention will focus on the Supreme Courts ruling inTown of Greece v. Galloway the legislative-prayer case the more interesting (and consequential) decision issued today was the Courts denial of review inDrake v. Jerejian, the Second Amendment case I previously discussed here. InDrake, the lower federal courts upheld an outrageous New Jersey law that denies the right to bear arms outside the home for self-defense just like the D.C. law at issue inDistrict of Columbia v. Heller denied the right to keep arms inside the home and today the Supreme Court let them get away with it.

Drake is but the latest in a series of cases that challenge the most restrictive state laws regarding the right to armed self-defense. Although the Supreme Court in Hellerdeclared that the Second Amendment protects an individual constitutional right, lower federal courts with jurisdiction over states like Maryland and New York have been willfully confused about the scope of that right, declining to protect it outsideHellers particular facts (a complete ban on functional firearms in the home).Its as if the Supreme Court announced that the First Amendment protects an individual right to blog about politics from your home computer, but then some lower courts allowed states to ban political blogging from your local Starbucks.

Yet each time, the Supreme Court has denied review.

New Jerseys is perhaps the most egregious restriction. In the Garden State, local law enforcement officials have full discretion to grant or deny a license to carry a firearm, which they may issue only if the applicant can prove a justifiable need (which in practice means aspecific, immediate threat to ones safety that cant be avoided in any way other than through possession of a handgun). Then, even if a local police chiefapproves a carry permit, the application goes to a judge for a hearing, during which the local prosecutor can oppose the permit. And even if the would-be gun-owner can successfully run that gauntlet, she gets a permit for two years, at which point she must repeat the entire process.

The dual review by two different branches of government is unusually burdensome, to say the least, and distinguishes New Jerseys approach in addition to the extreme definition of justifiable need from every other permitting regime in the country.Can you imagine the exercise of any other constitutional right being handled this way?

The effect of this regulatory scheme is that virtually nobody in New Jersey can use a handgun to defend themselves outside their home. The state law inverts how fundamental rights are supposed to work that the government must justify restrictions, not the right-holder the exercise and apparently the Supreme Court has no problem with that.

The lower court in Drakeapplied a deferential review far from the heightened scrutiny normally due an individual right enshrined in the Bill of Rights. It also assumed the legislatures good faith without requiring the state to show any evidence that a prohibitive-carry regime lowers the rate of gun crime, and excused what constitutional infringements the law causes because legislators acted beforeHellerclarified that the Second Amendment protected an individual right. To continue my previous analogy, its like a state law banning political blogging survived judicial review because the definitive Supreme Court ruling finding an individual right to political blogging didnt come down till after the state law was enacted.

What kind of a bizarro world are we living in where this is ok?

In Catos amicus brief inDrake, we posed an alternate question presented (legalese for the issue that a brief asks a court to resolve):

Was this Court serious in District of Columbia v. Heller when it ruled that the Second Amendment protects the individual right to keep and bear arms?

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Supreme Court Wasnt Serious about the Second Amendment

New Jersey Gun-Carrying Limit Left Intact by High Court

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The U.S. Supreme Court left intact a New Jersey law that requires a justifiable need to carry a handgun in public, sidestepping a dispute over the scope of the Constitutions gun-rights protections.

The justices today turned away an appeal by four New Jersey residents and two organizations, which said the Second Amendment guarantees the right to carry a weapon for self-defense. A federal appeals court upheld the New Jersey measure.

The high court hasnt taken up a gun-rights case since 2010, repeatedly rejecting appeals centering on the Second Amendments reach outside the home.

The Supreme Court has shown no interest in returning to the Second Amendment over the past few years, said Adam Winkler, a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law and the author of a book on the history of the gun-rights battle. The justices may be indicating a reluctance to expand Second Amendment rights in the wake of recent mass shootings, he said.

New Jersey is one of seven states that require an applicant to show a special need to get a permit to carry a handgun. That group includes California, whose rules are now before a federal appeals court, and New York, whose law the justices left intact a year ago.

The Second Amendment guarantees the right to carry weapons for the purpose of self-defense -- not just for self-defense within the home but for self-defense, period, the National Rifle Association argued in a brief backing the appeal.

Many states have relaxed their public-possession restrictions in recent years. In 1981, just three -- Maine, Washington and Vermont -- let ordinary residents carry firearms in public without giving a reason.

In upholding the New Jersey law on a 2-1 vote, the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the measure was valid even if the Second Amendment applies outside the home. The appeals court pointed to a passage in a 2008 Supreme Court decision that said some longstanding gun restrictions were presumptively lawful.

The panel said New Jersey has had the justifiable need standard in some form since 1924.

New Jerseys legislature, long ago, made the predictive judgment that widespread carrying of handguns in public would not be consistent with public safety because of the inherent danger it poses, New Jersey officials, led by Acting Attorney General John Hoffman, argued in court papers that urged the court to reject the appeal.

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New Jersey Gun-Carrying Limit Left Intact by High Court

MIT undergrads will each receive $100 in bitcoin

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In hopes of creating a bitcoin 'ecosystem,' two MIT students are spearheading a project to give all 4,500 MIT undergraduate students $100 in bitcoin and study how the cryptocurrency plays out on campus.

Some colleges give students planners or bookmarks when they enter a new school year.

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Massachusetts Institute of Technology, on the other hand, will give $100 in bitcoin to all incoming undergraduate students next fall.

The initiative, which was announcedTuesday in MIT's student newspaper The Tech, was the idea of a sophomore and graduate student with backgrounds in bitcoin. So far, they have raised more than $500,000 from alumni and other donors to fund what they are calling the MIT Bitcoin Project, and have the blessing of the school. Their hope is to create a bitcoin ecosystem on campus, in order to create a campus-wide case study of the nascent cryptocurrency.

Giving students access to cryptocurrencies is analogous to providing them with Internet access at the dawn of the internet era, says Jeremy Rubin, the sophomore electrical engineering and computer science major who is one of the founders of the Bitcoin Project,in a release. The other founder is Dan Elitzer, founder and president of the MIT Bitcoin Club and a first-year graduate business student at MIT's Sloan School of Business.

Their aim is both specific and purposefully ambiguous. After the bitcoins are distributed to the students, a variety of professors and researchers will be running studies watching how the MIT community uses the currency. One faculty supporter says this offers a way to peek into our likely data-filled future.

I am supporting them because it is generally an awesome hack, and more specifically I am working to understand how our society can thrive in an age where everything is datafied and can be controlled by computer, says Alex Sandy Pentland, director of the human dynamics laboratory at the MIT Media Lab, to The Tech. While the specific properties of bitcoin have some real problems, getting everyone at MIT to start playing with bitcoin will prompt the MIT community to begin thinking seriously about how we can live in an all-digital future.

Other than those studying how the currency operates around campus, students are also free to use the currency however they please. To prepare, Mr. Rubin and Mr. Elitzer are hosting a bitcoin expo this weekend to begin further discussions on the project, and have gained the support of many other student organizations and faculty members. Over the summer, they will also be readying local merchants for bitcoin payments.

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MIT undergrads will each receive $100 in bitcoin

5 Bitcoin Projects That Could Make Payments Far More Anonymous

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Some believe that bitcoins anonymous properties are a bug, not a feature. This past January, New York financial regulator Benjamin Lawsky called for a crackdown on software that anonymizes transactions in the online digital currency, saying it will merely help criminals evade law enforcement. And one of the currencys biggest supporters, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, believes bitcoin will truly thrive only after it shrugs off anonymity protections.

But some parts of the bitcoin community have other plans in mind.

Even as regulators work to tie new identity restrictions to bitcoin businesses, a collection of projects is moving in the opposite direction, trying to preserve or even upgrade bitcoins properties as an ultra-private, untraceable payment system as anonymous as handing off a briefcase of unmarked bills. Last week saw the launch of Dark Wallet, a piece of bitcoin software that represents perhaps the most radical move yet to evade tracking of who spends and receives bitcoin. When it comes to describing the projects intentions, Dark Wallets 26-year-old organizer Cody Wilson doesnt mince words. Its just money laundering software, he says.

But despite the controversy that surrounds the idea of untraceable digital cash, efforts to make bitcoin anonymous serve a real need. Bitcoin transactions are public by default, visible to anyone who searches the blockchain, the distributed public ledger of all bitcoin payments that keeps it safe from forgery and fraud. Deny bitcoiners the ability to hide their identity, and theyre left with a serious privacy problem. The problem is not just about how to buy drugs online, says Ian Miers, a graduate researcher at Johns Hopkins focused on cryptocurrency privacy. As bitcoin becomes more mainstream, it becomes an issue of how to fix consumer privacy. The problem may be even bigger for companies. Legitimate businesses, for instance, may want to hide their transactions so that competitors cant track their sales growth.

Here are a few of the projects seeking a more private way to bitcoin:

Cody Wilsons project with Amir Taaki and the anarchist group unSystem launched last Thursday with two particular methods for protecting its users identities. One is what it calls CoinJoin. Every time a user makes a payment with Dark Wallet, the program is set by default to combine the transaction with that of another Dark Wallet user attempting to make a payment around the same time. The communications to set up that multiparty transaction are encrypted, so that detecting who paid whom becomes far more difficult. Eventually, Dark Wallet plans to expand CoinJoin to combine payments of three or more users, creating an even more tangled web of money flows.

On top of protections for senders, Dark Wallet adds another one for receivers that it calls stealth addresses. When a user publishes a stealth address instead of a normal bitcoin address as his or her public P.O. box for receiving funds, any money sent by another Dark Wallet user to that address goes through an extra obfuscating process. Instead of appearing in the blockchain as being sent to that stealth address, Dark Wallet encrypts the address in such a way that only the recipient can recognize it and sends the money to that encrypted address. The receivers Dark Wallet app scans the blockchain for payments encrypted to his or her stealth address and decrypts them to claim the funds. Crucially, no evidence remains in the blockchain that ties the sender and recipient.

Dark Wallet isnt the only wallet that offers to mix up its users coins to foil surveillance. So does one of the most popular bitcoin wallets already in use: Blockchain.info. An initiative from the company called Shared Coin implements CoinJoin to protect transactions as large as 50 bitcoins. But users have to choose to turn Shared Coin on. Unlike with Dark Wallet, its not enabled by default. And Blockchain gives users a warning that, although it doesnt log their transactions, its subject to laws that might compel it to track their transactions in some situations. The server does not need to keep any logs and transactions are only kept in memory for a short time, reads a disclaimer on Blockchains site. However, if the server was compromised or under subpoena it could be forced to keep logs.

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5 Bitcoin Projects That Could Make Payments Far More Anonymous

The Eta Aquarids Meteor Shower To Peak Overnight

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May 5, 2014

John P. Millis, Ph.D. for redOrbit.com Your Universe Online

As comets hurtle into the inner part of the solar system, the Suns radiation causes two tails to emerge. The first is primarily gas, vaporized by the heat of our stars intense, warming rays. But while this glowing streak is what provides the visual imagery we normally associate with comets, it quickly fades as the comets moves across the solar system.

In contrast, the second tail is formed by the pressure of the solar wind as it literally tears the tiny dust particles from the comets surface. And once created, it does not fade. Rather, the remnants of the tail leave a streak across the comets path a trail of breadcrumbs telling the story of where the comet has been.

For comets that cross the orbital path of Earth, the dust left behind provides the source of one of natures most amazing sites the meteor shower. When Earth reaches the remnants of the long departed comet, the tiny particles of dust are superheated in our atmosphere, causing streaks of light across our skies. They disappear nearly instantly as most of these microscopic chunks of rock are usually no more than the size of a grain of sand. It is rare that one would reach the ground. (Some objects called meteorites do reach the ground, but these objects are almost always associated with other events, and are rarely due to comets.)

And because the dust crosses our orbit at a fixed point, the resulting meteor shower is usually an annual event. Consequently, each major meteor shower is associated with a different comet, having passed through Earths orbit at some point in its history. Eventually, over the course of centuries, the dust will be consumed as the Earth takes its annual voyage around the Sun. But new events will arise, as new comets plummet towards the Sun, taking them across Earths path.

Viewing The Eta Aquarid Meteor Shower

Because of the annual nature of meteor showers, astronomers can predict, with great accuracy, when the events will reach their peak, and where on Earth will be ripe for the best viewing. The next major event is called the Eta Aquarid Meteor Shower arising from material left behind by the infamous Halleys Comet hundreds of years ago and will reach its peak in the early morning hours of May 6, though events can generally be seen from late April to late May to a much lesser extent.

In general, major meteor showers are named for their radiant the location in the sky where the meteors appear to emerge usually associated with the closest constellation. In this case, the meteors will seem to materialize out of the constellation Aquarius, specifically near one of its closest stars: Eta Aquarii.

Generally, there are a couple of things to consider when evaluating how good the meteor shower will be. The first is the dust trail itself: how depleted has it become, and how many interactions are we likely to see? For the Eta Aquarid event, we can expect to see about one event every minute under optimal viewing conditions. This is pretty good, though other events later in the year will be better.

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The Eta Aquarids Meteor Shower To Peak Overnight

Workington Comets see off Newcastle Diamonds and Somerset Rebels

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Last updated at 12:54, Monday, 05 May 2014

Newcastle Diamonds 44 Workington Comets 49: Confidence is sky high in the Workington Comets camp after a fourth successive victory last night away at Newcastle in the Premier League.

Kyle Howarth ahead of Ludvig Lindgren, Lewis Rose and team-mate Ricky Wells at Newcastle

Comets followed up Saturdays 52-38 win against Somerset Rebels at Derwent Park in the Knockout Cup with a solid 49-44 victory over the Diamonds at Brough Park.

Workington were without captain Rene Bach for both meetings after he picked up minor injuries following a collision during Fridays Danish Championship semi-final.

But star man Josh Grajczonek rode flawlessly in both matches.

Number one rider Grajczonek continued his scintillating start to the season with two successive paid maximums.

Comets began yesterdays meeting full of confidence.

The Aussie duo of Grajczonek and Mason Campton continued their fine form together with a 4-2 win in the first heat.

The pair sprang out in front, with Newcastles Stuart Robson hot on their heels. Robson overtook Campton, but Grajczonek held on to the lead.

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Workington Comets see off Newcastle Diamonds and Somerset Rebels

Tampa dermatologist emerges as regional expert for psoriasis, hidradenitis

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With word spreading about Carrollwood based Forman Dermatologys expertise in skin care needs, especially psoriasis and hidradenitis suppurativa, the Tampa area clinic is beginning to see an increase in patients from around the region.

It truly is a thrill when talking to patients who say they have traveled as long as two or three hours for treatment, says Tampa Dermatologist Dr. Seth Forman. It is a testament to the staff that people are passing other dermatologists to instill their trust in us.

Coming as far as Orlando, Ocala and Naples, patients have sought out Forman Dermatology due to the clinics expertise in the treatment of chronic conditions like psoriasis and hidradenitis suppurativa.

Dr. Formans treatment includes the state-of-the-art Psoria-Light, as well as the SRT-100, a groundbreaking nonsurgical radiotherapy treating basal cell carcinoma.

As one of the select few given the ability to host drug trials at his office, the Tampa dermatologist offers other innovative treatments for skin cancer, psoriasis and vitiligo.

Rounding out the full-service dermatology practices toolkit is the high-quality cosmetic as well as medical spa services offered, helping the Forman Dermatology and Skin Cancer Institute become a top dermatology office in not just Tampa, but the entire Tampa Bay and Central Florida communities.

Thanks to the advance technology in our office, weve been able to help so many more people, says the Tampa dermatologist.

For more on Dr. Seth Forman, Tampa dermatology or Forman Dermatology and Skin Cancer Institute, please visit http://www.FormanDerm.com.

About Dr. Seth Forman:Dr. Forman is a board-certified dermatologist practicing in Tampa, Florida. He was voted the Best Dermatologist in Carrollwood in 2011, 2012 and 2013 by the Carrollwood News and Tribune as well as the 2013 Best Dermatologist in North Tampa by the Tampa Tribune. In December 2011, he opened his new Tampa dermatologyoffice, Forman Dermatology and Skin Cancer Institute, where he gives psoriasis sufferers access to the latest treatment options, including topical and oral medications, as well as biological and phototherapy. Dr. Forman is one of the few Tampa dermatologists to offer narrowband light therapy, which uses pharmaceutical grade light to suppress psoriasis. Hes also one of the few board-certified dermatologists in the U.S. to use the SRT-100 radiotherapy to treat basal cell carcinoma, the most common form of skin cancer.

MEDIA CONTACT Nathan Legg PR Firm: The Publicity Agency Email: Nathan@Seligmultimedia.com Phone: (813) 708-1220 x 7781 Website: http://www.thepublicityagency.com

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Tampa dermatologist emerges as regional expert for psoriasis, hidradenitis

Crysis 3 Campaign Walkthrough Part 1 Post Human (Xbox 360/PS3/PC) – Video

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Crysis 3 Campaign Walkthrough Part 1 Post Human (Xbox 360/PS3/PC)
Hey guys, this is part 1 of my Crysis 3 walkthrough. This level is called Post Human which sees Prophet and Psycho infiltrate a CELL ship heading to New York. I am playing on the PC but it #39;s...

By: SilentOblivion903

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Crysis 3 Campaign Walkthrough Part 1 Post Human (Xbox 360/PS3/PC) - Video