Category Archives: Cloning

Phone cloning is the transfer of identity from one cellular device to another.

Analogue mobile telephones were notorious for their lack of security. Casual listeners easily heard conversations as plain narrowband FM; eavesdroppers with specialized equipment readily intercepted handset Electronic Serial Numbers (ESN) and Mobile Directory Numbers (MDN or CTN, the Cellular Telephone Number) over the air. The intercepted ESN/MDN pairs would be cloned onto another handset and used in other regions for making calls. Due to widespread fraud, some carriers required a PIN before making calls or used a system of radio fingerprinting to detect the clones.

Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) mobile telephone cloning involves gaining access to the device's embedded file system /nvm/num directory via specialized software or placing a modified EEPROM into the target mobile telephone, allowing the Electronic serial number (ESN) and/or Mobile Equipment Identifier (MEID) of the mobile phone to be changed. The ESN or MEID is typically transmitted to the cellular company's Mobile Telephone Switching Office (MTSO) in order to authenticate a device onto the mobile network. Modifying these, as well as the phone's Preferred Roaming List (PRL) and the mobile identification number, or MIN, can pave the way for fraudulent calls, as the target telephone is now a clone of the telephone from which the original ESN and MIN data were obtained.

Cloning has been shown to be successful on CDMA, but rare on GSM. However, cloning of a GSM phone is achieved by cloning the SIM card contained within, but not necessarily any of the phone's internal data. GSM phones do not have ESN or MIN, only an International Mobile Station Equipment Identity (IMEI) number. There are various methods used to obtain the IMEI. The most common methods are to hack into the cellular company, or to eavesdrop on the cellular network.

A GSM SIM card is copied by removing the SIM card and placing a device between the handset and the SIM card and allowing it to operate for a few days and extracting the KI, or secret code.[citation needed] This is normally done with handsets that have the option of an "extended battery" by placing the normal size battery in the handset and the KI[clarification needed] in the now vacant extra space. This is done by allowing the device to log the interaction between the mobile telephone switching office and the handset.

Phone cloning is outlawed in the United States by the Wireless Telephone Protection Act of 1998, which prohibits "knowingly using, producing, trafficking in, having control or custody of, or possessing hardware or software knowing that it has been configured to insert or modify telecommunication identifying information associated with or contained in a telecommunications instrument so that such instrument may be used to obtain telecommunications service without authorization."[1]

The effectiveness of phone cloning is limited. Every mobile phone contains a radio fingerprint in its transmission signal which remains unique to that mobile despite changes to the phone's ESN, IMEI, or MIN. Thus, cellular companies are often able to catch cloned phones when there are discrepancies between the fingerprint and the ESN, IMEI, or MIN.[citation needed]

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Phone cloning - Wikipedia

The East division police have busted a gang of African nationals who used a magnetic card reader to clone debit and credit cards and swipe them to withdraw huge amounts of money illegally. The police have also recovered Rs. 21 lakh from them.

Police said the HDFC debit card of a woman, Payal Mandal, was used for withdrawal of Rs. 94,318. She made a police complaint. Within a span of one week, 11 cases of fraudulent transactions of debit cards of different banks were reported in Banaswadi Police Station. On analysing the statement of accounts of all the complainants, some similarities were found pertaining to the last transaction prior to fraudulent transactions. These lead the investigation team to an ATM in Kammanahalli where the data of all these complainants was suspected to have been compromised (skimming). Further scrutiny showed that the accounts were used by some unknown person through an agent and fake cards were generated and swiped in a travel agency by name VIA.COM

The investigative officer approached VIA.COM located in Bengaluru and collected incriminating evidence which lead to the arrest of Eremhen Smart, a Nigerian national, on January 16 in Bengaluru. The officer recovered Rs. 2.64 lakh and freezed Rs. 2.40 lakh which was in the account of the agent of Smart.

The others arrested are Martin Nsamba of Uganda; Nambooze Jollly; Tinah of Uganda; Kenny of Nigeria; Oloadeji Olayem of Nigeria; and Vikram Rao Nikkam of Bengaluru.

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Gang arrested for cloning debit cards, stealing money - The Hindu

Feb 9, 2017 12:33 PM

Steve Bannon, the melting bacon fat candle that serves as President Donald Trumps most trusted advisor, had quite the Hollywood career before getting into politics. A few days ago, we wrote about the unproduced Shakespearean hip-hop musical he wrote about the 1992 Los Angeles riots; today, The Daily Beast is reporting on an 11-page outline it obtained for an unmade documentary-style film from 2005 about the dangers of futuristic technology. Bannon wrote it alongside his writing partner, Julie Jones.

Blessed with the very Coheed And Cambrian title of The Singularity: Resistance Is Futile, the sprawling, ambitious story concerns cloning, immortality, Walt Disney, eugenics, and, naturally, Nazis. Heres the broad scope (gird yourselves):

A heady, incomplete mix of science, history, religion, and politics, it sketches out a story in which mankinds unquenchable thirst for knowledge and scientific advancement has led to horrific, fascist atrocities and forced sterilization, drawing a direct line between those atrocities and modern bio-technology.

The draft is unfinished, so it is unclear precisely what Bannons full message and story arc were intended to be. But the theme that genetic and reproductive sciences has led to Nazi horrors and war crimes is a theme seen in a lot of conservative agitprop.

Essentially, Bannons is a Christian right-friendly story of arrogant scientists trying to perfect the human race at the expense of the natural order and Gods vision of humanity.

One ticket, please!

The Daily Beast goes into much, much more detail on the outlines gobbledygook, but whats equally interesting is that several sources claim rage-filled conservative Mel Gibson was once attached to the project (for the record, Gibsons publicist called this claim fake news). Bannon apparently loved name-dropping Gibson, and was also routinely entertained by Passion Of The Christ star Jim Caviezel at exclusive parties at a mansion in Santa Barbara.

Gizmodo provides some interesting context as well, elaborating on Bannons debt to Leni Riefenstahl, the German film director whose most famous film is a piece of Nazi propaganda.

People have said Im like Leni Riefenstahl, Bannon told the Wall Street Journal in 2011. At the time he was debuting his own piece of propaganda: The Undefeated, a documentary celebrating Sarah Palin.

The Singularity: Resistance Is Futile isnt Bannons only project to never take off. Along with his racist hip-hop musical, his shelf is also stacked a piece about Rwandan genocide (oh, brother), an anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim proposal called The Islamic States Of America, and, hey, an adaptation of Shakespeares Titus Andronicus that would be set on the moon with creatures from outer space and probably still somehow be racist.

[Note: Gizmodo, like The A.V. Club, is owned by Univision Communications.]

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Steve Bannon wanted to make a movie about cloning, abortion, and ... - A.V. Club (blog)

People with credit and debit cards are urged to keep a watchful eye on their account activity as a recent wave of card fraud has left law enforcement investigating multiple reports in Aiken County.

Capt. Eric Abdullah, with the Aiken County Sheriffs Office, said reports of credit card cloning, or skimming, is a common problem. Over the past week, he said there have been several reports of card cloning in the area, some from the same exact location.

John Brooks, of North Augusta, said his debit card was cloned and used on Feb. 3 at the Wal-Mart on Wrightsboro Road in Augusta.

I woke up on (Feb. 4), checked my account and it was $205 short, Brooks said. I looked at my transactions and saw my card had been swiped at Wal-Mart the night before.

Brooks said he went to get a transaction statement from Wal-Mart, where he learned someone had used his information to put money on a gift card.

The Aiken County Sheriffs Office has reports filed on Feb. 2 and Feb. 3, in which three separate residents claimed to have had their card information stolen and used at the same Wal-Mart in Augusta.

I think this problem is getting worse, and it seems like theres not much being done to stop it, Brooks said.

Credit card cloning is a technique where someone obtains credit card information and copies it onto a fake card in order to illegally use it, according to the FBI.

A small, pocketsize device with a scanning slot is typically what is used to steal the information, the FBI's website states.

Brooks said police informed him that when a suspect clones information from someones card they usually use the card within a day or two. He said he believes his information was taken at a fast-food restaurant drive-thru in Aiken County.

I wont be purchasing anything at a drive-thru anymore, he said.

Abdullah said the Aiken County Sheriffs Office will continue to address the situation, but residents can still protect themselves by not providing any credit card or financial information to any person or company they are not familiar with.

He also suggested residents continually keep up with their accounts to make sure nothing is happening that isnt supposed to.

Credit card cloning has become one of the most popular form of credit card fraud over the past few years, growing 87 percent since 2010 and recently resulting in $6 billion in losses nationwide, according to Integrated Family Community Services.

Tripp Girardeau is the crime and courts reporter with the Aiken Standard. Follow him on Twitter at @trippgirardeau.

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Police investigating recent reports of credit card cloning in Aiken ... - Aiken Standard

Steve Bannon, a man who once favorably compared himself to Darth Vader, Dick Cheney, and Satan, speaks with Kellyanne Conway on January 31, 2017 (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Steve Bannon, the white nationalist currently helping President Trump dismantle the United States, has produced a number of low budget conservative films. But the movies that Bannon couldnt get made over the years are even more interesting than the ones that were releasedlike an unmade documentary-style film from 2005 about the dangers of futuristic technology.

The Daily Beast obtained a copy of the proposal for the movie, which was being shopped around Hollywood in the mid-2000s. The working titles were The Singularity: Resistance Is Futile and The Harvest of the Damned. The unproduced film focused on a number of scifi elements, including human cloning, immortality, and eugenics. But based on the proposal, this wasnt just about the dangers of technology gone mad.

The entire film was to have a very ham-fisted political bent, drawing lines between the eugenics programs of the Nazis to the abortion and contraception advocates that were to come. Bannon is staunchly anti-abortion. The proposal even includes a frozen Walt Disney, presumably related to the urban legend that Disney was cryogenically frozen.

The acceleration of technological progress is the central feature of the 20th /21st century, one part of the proposal explains, according to the Daily Beast. We are on the edge of change brought about by Mans ability to create Man, the toolmaker, is on the verge of creating greater-than-human intelligence.

The film appears to have nods to various Illuminati conspiracies about an anti-religious elite that would take over the world and survive a post-humanity landscape. Much of this fear would likely be informed by his staunchly Catholic beliefs. Or at least a conspiratorial version of them.

China, a country that President Trump continues to needle over trade relations and military security, also seems to play a large part in instigating whatever the last futuristic element of the documentary was supposed to entail.

Bannon allegedly secured funding from conservative filmmaker Mel Gibson at one point. But when the Daily Beast asked about that, Gibsons publicist called it fake news.

This is far from the first unmade movie by Bannon (hes listed as a writer, director and producer) thats been making the rounds recently. The Washington Post recently found a 2007 proposal for a futuristic film titled The Islamic States of America. The proposal blamed the media and the Jewish community for allowing radical Islam to overtake the United States due to a culture of tolerance.

One scholar told the Washington Post that Bannons proposal for The Islamic States of America was designed to generate hate against not just Islamists, not just extremists, but Muslims writ large.

Bannon has previously cited Leni Riefenstahl as an influence on his filmmaking career, much to the concern of people knowledgable about the history of Nazi propaganda. Riefenstahls most famous film is 1935's Triumph of the Will, a Nazi propaganda movie that remains one of the most infamous examples to date of mass media that glorifies murderous dictators.

People have said Im like Leni Riefenstahl, Bannon told the Wall Street Journal in 2011 during the debut of his documentary The Undefeated, which celebrates Sarah Palin.

Ive studied documentarians extensively to come up with my own in-house style, Bannon continued. Im a student of Michael Moores films, of Eisenstein, Riefenstahl. Leave the politics aside, you have to learn from those past masters on how they were trying to communicate their ideas.

You can read more about the proposal for The Singularity: Resistance Is Futile at The Daily Beast. Say what you will about the proposal, at least it looks like the Nazis were supposed to be the bad guys in this one.

[The Daily Beast]

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Steve Bannon's Unproduced Movie About Cloning, Nazis, and Walt ... - Gizmodo

Photonics.com

Quantum Cloning Machine Reveals Clues That Could Protect Against Hacking Photonics.com Feb 2017 OTTAWA, Ontario, Feb. 7, 2017 Universal optimal quantum cloning of high-dimensional photonic states has been achieved using the symmetrization method. The work has led to the discovery of information that could help system administrators ... Boffins create quantum cloning machine to intercept 'secure ...The INQUIRER Quantum Computing: Researchers Build The 1st ever High ...Latin Post How to make quantum computers hackproof decodedDaily News & Analysis ScienceBlog.com (blog) -India TV -International Business Times UK all 39 news articles »

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Quantum Cloning Machine Reveals Clues That Could Protect Against Hacking - Photonics.com

CBS Local

Call Kurtis Investigates: Triple Tag Team Scam Started With Cloned Facebook Profile CBS Local The Better Business Bureau's Danielle Spang says most of us know by now scammers are cloning Facebook pages, stealing people's photos to target that person's Facebook family and friends list. And they're just getting desperate, said Spang. It's ...

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Call Kurtis Investigates: Triple Tag Team Scam Started With Cloned Facebook Profile - CBS Local

BOFFINS AT THE University of Ottawa claim that quantum computing may not provide the virtually 'unbreakable' security that it has been claimed the technology could offer.

Physicists at the University claim that they were able to build a "quantum cloning machine" that was able to intercept a "secure quantum message".

Their research suggests that initiatives such as China's dedicated quantum encryption network, which will supposedly provide secure communications between Beijing, Shanghai and a number of cities in between when it is finished at the end of the year, might not provide the security that its designers had planned.

"Our team has built the first high-dimensional quantum cloning machine capable of performing quantum hacking to intercept a secure quantum message," said University of Ottawa Department of Physics professor Ebrahim Karimi.

"Once we were able to analyse the results, we discovered some very important clues to help protect quantum computing networks against potential hacking threats."

Quantum systems were believed to provide secure data transmission because, until now, attempts to copy the transmitted information resulted in an altered or deteriorated version of the original information, thereby defeating the purpose of the initial hack.

In conventional computing, anyone can simply copy-and-paste information and replicate it exactly. But this doesn't hold true in the quantum computing world, where attempts to copy quantum information - or qudits* - result in what Karimi refers to as "bad" copies.

Professor Karimi's team was able to clone the photons that transmit information, namely the single carriers of light known as qubits, as well as quantum theory allows, meaning that the clones were almost exact replicas of the original information.

At the same time, though, the researchers' analyses also revealed some clues as to how to protect against such hacking.

"What we found was that when larger amounts of quantum information are encoded on a single photon, the copies will get worse and hacking even simpler to detect," said Frdric Bouchard, a University of Ottawa doctoral student.

"We were also able to show that cloning attacks introduce specific, observable noises in a secure quantum communication channel. Ensuring photons contain the largest amount of information possible and monitoring these noises in a secure channel should help strengthen quantum computing networks against potential hacking threats."

Interest in quantum computing has been escalating for years as advances in conventional computing power slows down. Last week, a University of Surrey scientist published a blueprint for a large-scale quantum computer, while commercial developer D-Wave Systems has started to sell its 2000 qubit device to organisations that need to perform particular calculations at speed.

* The term "qudit" is used to denote a unit of quantum information in a d-level quantum system.

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Boffins create quantum cloning machine to intercept 'secure ... - The INQUIRER

We all know what cloning is. Scientists have been experimenting with physical cloning, and there are even experiments with "mind cloning" that some believe could be the key to immortality.

But, it goes without saying, the concept of cloning can be pretty scary. While science may still be decades away from accomplishing the impossible with physical cloning, scammers are using a form of digital cloning to trick people online.

This particular form of cloning is appearing primarily on Facebook, but can also show up on other social media platforms such as Instagram and Twitter. For the purposes of this article, we'll refer to it as "Facebook cloning," but keep this in mind so you can watch for it on other sites across the internet.

What is Facebook cloning, exactly? It's the act of copying someone's Facebook profileand using it to conduct scams across the web. The scary thing is, anyone could be targeted and have their profile photos and details stolen. In most cases, without even knowing about it.

Note: Facebook cloning isn't the only Facebook scam you need to watch out for. Click here and read this article before you take another Facebook quiz.

By stealing your photos and details from your profile, such as where you work, where you went to school, when you were born and your relationship status, cybercrooks are often able to convince your real contacts to accept your "Friend request." Any that do accept have just given hackers the permission they need to snoop through their photos and clone their profiles too. And the cycle continues from there.

The cloning itself is only part of the scam, which could take months or even years to pull off. Hiding behind their fake profiles, the scammers study and mimic the communication styles of your true contacts, until eventually, they've learned enough to put on an even more convincing act.

Imagine receiving a private message from an old roommate from college. She's in trouble. She's trying to get home, but her purse was just stolen. She couldn't think of anyone else to reach out to but you.

For many, this request would stand out as odd, but under the right circumstances, there are plenty of people who fall for it. This old "friend," of course, isn't truly a friend at all. It's a wolf hiding in sheep's clothing.

The first way to avoid this scam, and the most obvious, is to confirm that all profiles are real before you accept anyone's friend request. Use the search feature on Facebook to pull up their page and see how many friends the person has, and when the account was created. Fake accounts will likely have just been created within a few weeks or months, and chances are, the scammers won't take the time to build up a massive Friends list.

If you see anything that looks suspicious, don't accept the friend request. If you have the contact information (either a phone number or an email address) of the real person, reach out to confirm outside of Facebook.

Next, you need to edit your Facebook profile to ensure that it's private. (Click here for 3 essential Facebook privacy checks you need to do right now.) You also need to remove any unnecessary information about your private life. Delete your phone number, home address, and these three additional details that put your privacy at risk.

Lastly, if you have a Facebook account that you no longer use, you need to delete it. Old, unused accounts leave you at risk of having your private information stolen by hackers, and even through massive data breaches. If you're not sure how to delete your old Facebook account, click here and we'll walk you through the steps.

How to sell your stuff on Facebook Marketplace instead of Craigslist

How to see (and erase) your Facebook search history

5 ways to lock down your Facebook account for maximum security

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Watch out for this crazy Facebook cloning scam! - Komando

The American novelist S. E. Hinton once said, If you have two friends in your lifetime, youre lucky. If you have one good friend, youre more than lucky. By that logic, boxer crabs are the luckiest creatures alive because they can turn one good friend into two by tearing it in half.

These tiny, inch-long crabs carry sea anemones, holding them in place with special hooks on the inner edges of their claws. With their crowns of wavy tentacles, the anemones look like pom-poms, and the crabs like cheerleaders. But those tentacles also pack powerful stings, and a quick jab from them is often enough to ward off an attacking fish. Hence the name: boxer crabs.

Most crabs gather food with their powerful claws, but boxer crabs have adapted so thoroughly to holding anemones that their claws are now feeble, delicate tweezers rather than powerful, crushing pincers. Instead, they rely on their anemones. Some species use the anemones like cutlery, dabbing them onto morsels of food and then bringing them over to their mouths. Others wait for the anemones to passively ensnare food, which they then scrape into their mouths with their front legs. If you remove the anemones, as Yisrael Schnytzer and his colleagues from Bar Ilan University have repeatedly done, the crabs struggle to gather enough to eat.

The anemones, however, flourish apart from the crabs. When Schnytzer freed them from the crabs grasp, their colors got brighter, their tentacles became longer, and they more than doubled in size. Left to their own devices, they can grow far bigger than the crabs that once held them. In the words of Schnytzers colleague Ilan Karplus, the crabs cultivate Bonsai anemones, deliberately stunting their growth to keep them at a manageable size.

But how do the crabs get their anemones in the first place? In 1905, zoologist James Edwin Duerden, in what remains the most thorough account of boxer crab habits, noticed a clue. He wrote that there appeared to be evidence that these crabs will tear a single anemone in two to provide one for each claw. Karplus saw similar signs a few decades ago. He noticed that if he took away one of a crabs two anemones, and came back a few days later, it would once again have two anemonesalbeit smaller ones.

He and Schnytzer have now caught several crabs in the act of dividing their partners. It takes around 20 minutes, and the technique is simple: The crab grabs the anemone in both claws, stretches it outwards, and uses its legs to slice through the middle. And since anemones can regenerate their bodies, each half eventually became a complete animal in its own right. The crab, by bisecting its partner, also clones it.

This explains why wild boxer crabs, even very young ones, almost always have two anemones. As long as a crab can get is claws on one, it can easily make a second. And if it has none at all, as Schnytzer found, it can steal a fragment from another crab. Its remarkable that these anemones are such a crucial commodity that small, juvenile crabs will actually initiate fights with larger crabs to steal their anemonesand will often win, says Kristin Hultgren from Seattle University.

These kinds of fights must happen a lot in the wild. The particular species of boxer crab that Schnytzer studied carries a species of sea anemone that has never been seen on its own in the wild. And yet the crabs always have them, so maybe they all steal them from one another.

Is this how the anemones reproduce? Perhaps partly. But they seem to fall into at least three distinct genetic lineages, and if they only reproduced by crab-cloning, the entire population would be genetically identical. That suggests the anemones do reproduce on their own, Schnytzer says. You can imagine that they could release sperm and eggs into the water, and still breed [while] being held by the crabs.

It seems that the anemonestheir food stolen, their growth stunted, and their bodies regularly torn in twoget very little out of their co-existence with the crabs. Then again, weve never found them free-living, says Schnytzer. If they cant manage on their own, presumably they need the crabs for something.

Randy Brooks from Florida Atlantic University, who has studied the relationships between sea anemones and other animals, says that some species are only found on the shells of hermit crabs. Those anemones, Brooks found, are capable of reproducing by splitting themselves in half, so perhaps the boxers are only accelerating a process that their anemone partners would naturally undergo. I've always wished I could work with the boxer crabs, Brooks says.

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This Crab Clones Its Allies by Ripping Them in Half - The Atlantic