FSTDT Forums
Community => Politics and Government => Topic started by: CaseAgainstFaith on March 28, 2012, 09:53:39 am
-
The Department of the Navy is looking very closely at used video game consoles. Only, they don't want to play them. They want to crack them open and steal all the information on overseas users they can get their hands on.
To that end, the Department has contracted a company called Obscure Technologies to go overseas, buy a mountain of pre-owned video game consoles and obtain as much "significant and sensitive information from previous users" as it's possible to get.
Why overseas? Because of the nature of the work, they're not allowed to target any "US persons"
To recap, in case you haven't really caught the gist of this yet, if you live outside the USA and have ever traded in a current-gen video game console, you're now at risk - a remote risk, but a risk nonetheless - of having your "significant and sensitive information" obtained by the US military
http://kotaku.com/5896948/the-us-military-wants-to-hack-foreign-game-consoles-to-steal-user-data (http://kotaku.com/5896948/the-us-military-wants-to-hack-foreign-game-consoles-to-steal-user-data)
I feel sorry for you guys that trade in consoles over seas now. Also a bit scarey that they would probably be doing it in the US too if they were legally able to.
-
WHY!? Why would you want data from game consoles? I don't think they have any interest in some guys Halo scores, so they only thing they might want that is useful is credit card numbers and such. Which is horrible on many levels. Whoever's idea this was needs to be punched in the face, hard.
-
ಠ.=.ಠ
US MILITARY
STOP IT
WITH THE INTERFERING
OF OTHER COUNTRIES
GODS DAMMIT!
-
Oh no! They'll learn everyone's high scores!
-
They might get credit card information but that's pretty doubtful. I think their best bet is going to be getting peoples XBox Live accounts and Playstation network accounts. I guess with that account information they can access those accounts and perhaps get credit card information, but really that's about it.
Of course this is on the really optimistic notion that they get anything useful at all. I would be outraged if I didn't think this was the stupidest thing in the world, and possibly the biggest waste of time for the US military.
-
Anyone stupid enough to not wipe any personal information off their console's hard drive before selling it deserves to be spied on by the US military.
That said, what exactly are they after? The only feasible idea I can think of is they want people's credit card info so they can track their online purchases and hopefully catch a few of the more stupid terrorists or smugglers of some form, but it seems excessively expensive and inefficient for very little gain.
-
Lots of people are using consoles for media stations these days. I doubt many for messaging boards, but maybe they're trying to track down the world population of bronies or something?
Also, why the fuck is the NAVY doing this?
-
Gotta give them something to do because if they so much as think of committing a crime, Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs will be all over them like stink on shit.
Ironbite-seriously nothing gets by that guy.
-
Gotta give them something to do because if they so much as think of committing a crime, Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs will be all over them like stink on shit.
Ironbite-seriously nothing gets by that guy.
I would totally get a tat on my ass for Abby.
But seriously, what on earth would you get out of hacking used Xboxs and Playstations? And why would you announce that you are doing so?
-
Gotta give them something to do because if they so much as think of committing a crime, Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs will be all over them like stink on shit.
Ironbite-seriously nothing gets by that guy.
I would totally get a tat on my ass for Abby.
But seriously, what on earth would you get out of hacking used Xboxs and Playstations? And why would you announce that you are doing so?
I dunno, hell to be honest you don't even need to really "hack". I've bought 2 used Xbox 360s so far from GameStop (1 new but beside the point here) and both of them still had user accounts assigned to the HDDs with autologins and all types of goodies if you were really nosy or a asshole trying to screw some person over, message histories etc. No need to hack anything when the last user just leaves all that shit out in the open for whoever buys the used xbox 360 to see. But maybe they are wanting more? Maybe a backdoor snooping?
also for the record - while yes the last owners of the xboxs did leave their profiles and shit all wide open I did delete them without snooping