04/11/2012 -
The Department of Homeland Security is funding a research project
to figure out ways to hack into gaming consoles to extract information, according to Foreign Policy magazine.
San Francisco-based company Obscure Technologies has been awarded a $177,237 research contract to develop "'hardware and software tools that can be used for extracting data from video game systems,' and 'a collection of data (disk images; flash memory dumps; configuration settings) extracted from new video game systems and used game systems purchased on the secondary market,' according to the contract award from the U.S. Navy," reports FP.
The project this funding comes under is "Gaming Systems Monitoring and Analysis Project." Some of the crimes that law enforcement are concerned might be divulged by the consoles are pedophilia and terrorism.
According to the article:
http://www.securitymanagement.com/
San Francisco-based company Obscure Technologies has been awarded a $177,237 research contract to develop "'hardware and software tools that can be used for extracting data from video game systems,' and 'a collection of data (disk images; flash memory dumps; configuration settings) extracted from new video game systems and used game systems purchased on the secondary market,' according to the contract award from the U.S. Navy," reports FP.
The project this funding comes under is "Gaming Systems Monitoring and Analysis Project." Some of the crimes that law enforcement are concerned might be divulged by the consoles are pedophilia and terrorism.
According to the article:
Monitoring gaming consoles is harder than you
might think. Consoles such as the Microsoft Xbox 360, Sony Playstation
3, and Nintendo Wii encrypt their devices to prevent piracy and
tampering. Indeed, the contract states that "analysis of the game
systems requires specific knowledge of working with the hardware of
embedded systems that have significant anti-tampering technology." But
this is more than hacking; the government wants tools that can apply
computer forensics, which look for legally admissible evidence, to
consoles.
While there have been some attempts
to use computer forensics on consoles, researchers say this is
relatively new ground. The DHS project is "exploratory research and
development," said Obscure Technologies president Greg May. "It will be
interesting to see, because it's new to us as well. A lot of this stuff
hasn't been done. We're not sure how complicated it is."
Privacy advocate organization Electronic Frontier Foundation has
voiced concern that users do not even know certain data is being stored
in the consoles. But the contract is actually focusing on consoles sold
abroad. According to FP's interview with Naval Postgraduate School (NPS)
professor Simson Garfinkel, the US is going abroad because "We do not
wish to work with data regarding U.S. persons due to Privacy Act
considerations," says Garfinkel. "If we find data on U.S. citizens in
consoles purchased overseas, we remove the data from our corpus."http://www.securitymanagement.com/
