Nameisyoung007 - Slashdot User

Submission + - Browsers Improve Security, Web Apps - Not So Much (securityweek.com)

Submitted by wiredmikey on Thursday March 31, 2011 @11:04AM

wiredmikey writes: Aggressive initiatives by the makers of popular Web browsers including Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla to improve the security of their Web browsers appear to be paying off.

According to a report today, the big Web browser companies seem paying very close attention to security, with many proactively seeking vulnerabilities by offering rewards or “bounties,” and seem to be efficient at fixing vulnerabilities in a timely manner.

Google's Chrome browser had the most vulnerabilities detected — 89 – likely due to the aggressive campaign to offer cash rewards for any discovered. In the end, Google fixed 88 of these vulnerabilities quickly and efficiently. Similarly, Mozilla Firefox had 65 vulnerabilities detected and fixed 61 in a timely manner. Apple's Safari fixed 39 of 41. Microsoft fixed 26 of 32 for Internet Explorer, and Opera fixed 27 of 29 vulnerabilities discovered.

But despite the progress being made with security on the Web browser front. 2,155 Web application vulnerabilities were discovered discovered — a third of which have both no known solution and an exploit code publicly available.

Submission + - IAEA: Radiation Above Limits Near Nuclear Plant (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by RedEaredSlider on Thursday March 31, 2011 @10:49AM

RedEaredSlider writes: Not only has the IAEA said radiation levels some 50 km from the Fukushima Daiichi plant higher than they would like (enough that people should not be there), but the radiation levels in the seawater are staying high as well, at 1,000 times the statutory limits.

Submission + - FBI: Public Help Needed to Crack Encrypted Notes (foxnews.com)

Submitted by hoeferbe on Wednesday March 30, 2011 @01:00PM

hoeferbe writes: Investigators from the FBI's Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit (CRRU) and the American Cryptogram Association are seeking the public's help in breaking the encrypted code found in the notes on the body of a 1999 murdered Missouri man.

Submission + - Google Fiber comes to Kansas City (tekgoblin.com)

Submitted by

tekgoblin

on Wednesday March 30, 2011 @12:57PM

tekgoblin writes: "Remember that campaign that Google had announced a long while back to bring fiber to your front door? Well, it looks like they are making some actual progress now and launching part of the network in Kansas City, Kansas.

The city of Topeka had actually temporarily renamed the city to Google, Kansas the capital city of fiber optics in a move to get Google to lay fiber there. Well it seems to have worked because a deal has just been signed to roll out the fiber in the city which should be available to everyone in the area by 2012."

Submission + - Russinovich analyzes Stuxnet (technet.com)

Submitted by EXMSFT on Wednesday March 30, 2011 @12:56PM

EXMSFT writes: Mark Russinovich, who broke the Sony rootkit news in 2005 analyzes a system infected with Stuxnet using his Sysinternals debugging tools. Fitting, given Russinovich recently publishing his first fiction novel Zero Day, with a plot that centers around cyberterrorism.

Submission + - Creepy App Warns of an End to Privacy (thinq.co.uk)

Submitted by Stoobalou on Wednesday March 30, 2011 @12:56PM

Stoobalou writes: The creator of stalker's aide Creepy talks through his reasons for creating the aptly-named tool, and the future of privacy.

Comment Re:Two-Factor (Score 1) 144

by Nameisyoung007 on Wednesday March 30, 2011 @11:53AM (#35667466) Attached to: Comodo Says Two More RAs Compromised

I wouldn't trust them to quickly roll out a RSA product. With the speed, they are going to leave some holes open, and with the back-end source code probably out in the wild, it may just make the problem worse. (The source code is only going to hurt shoddy implementations of the RSA Server. People do shoddy work under time pressure).

Submission + - Change in AT&T Terms of Service (att.net)

Submitted by

Covalent

on Wednesday March 30, 2011 @07:40AM

Covalent writes: "The new AT&T TOS was released today and it includes new language regarding "network management". In short, AT&T now reserves the right to cap your bandwidth and throttle your connection for whatever reason it sees fit, so long as it is "reasonable". It also includes new language regarding copyright infringement: "AT&T and Yahoo! assume no responsibility, and you assume all risks, regarding the determination of whether material is in the public domain, or may otherwise be used by you for such purposes."

Wanna guess if AT&T will turn over your information if subpoenaed?"

Submission + - BP Loses Laptop With Personal Data (net-security.org)

Submitted by Orome1 on Wednesday March 30, 2011 @07:38AM

Orome1 writes: A laptop containing personal information of some 13,000 people who filed claims for compensation after last year's big oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has been lost, announced the spokesman of oil giant BP. The laptop contains the individuals' names, phone numbers, addresses, dates of birth and Social Security numbers.

Submission + - Microsoft begins distributing Windows 8 to OEMs (winrumors.com)

Submitted by siliconbits on Wednesday March 30, 2011 @07:25AM

siliconbits writes: Microsoft has begun to distribute early copies of Windows 8 to key OEM partners, WinRumors has learned. The software giant is distributing build 7971.0.110324-1900 via the company’s Connect external testing system. Key OEMs, including HP, are now able to access the Milestone 3 build from Connect. The program is advertised as Windows 8 and Server vNext Pre-Release Program, on Microsoft’s connect site and requires a special invite code, according to one poster at the My Digital Life forums.

Submission + - Gamification - how much of this stuff is new?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 30, 2011 @07:20AM

An anonymous reader writes: It's nigh on impossible to avoid all the chatter and buzz around the concept of gamification — using game mechanics to create engagement outside the world of videogames. silicon.com has an interview with US author Aaron Dignan whose book Game Frame delves into the topic to try and pull out a few rules of engagement for businesses seeking to tap into the power of gaming to better motivate their staff. Dignan is fairly convincing and yet I can't help feeling there's a lot of hype and not necessarily a great deal of substance to all this gamification chat. Perhaps the term itself is the problem — maybe 'playfulness' would be a better concept to think of. What do Slashdot readers make of the gamification movement and its evangelists?

Submission + - Are there good solutions for managing game lab?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 30, 2011 @07:11AM

An anonymous reader writes: I'm currently at a university where we have a strong computer/video games culture. Due to the fact that we have degrees taught in games development, game studies and other games related activities, there are a number of distinct usages we have for the machines around the buildings. My question is related to how to manage installation of games versus rights of users on the various machines.

Specifically, we have a key, large, main "computer lab" where the machines have several conflicting requirements: 1. Professors want to have stable (read: non-admin, non-changeable) machines that have the specific games needed for classes (analysing game levels, playing through them, etc). 2. General game students want to use the computers recreationally outside of classes, and want in rare cases to have the ability to install their own games. 3. Game developer students want full admin control of the machines to be able to install SDKs, install updates and other full development requirements as they write and develop game code. 4. The university IT department wants to be able to lock down the computers as much as possible to avoid legal, PR and other problems, as well as avoiding having to reinstall and reimage things if people should trash the machines.

In any case, perhaps the ideal conceptual idea we have arrived at is to have some kind of bootup procedure on each machine which asks the user which "user type" they are (student, developer, recreational, etc) and to allow the user to pick from a list of available virtual machine images, if the student has the authorization to do so. The machine would then boot that virtual machine image and run some kind of post-boot configuration (I'm thinking of game authorization keys, etc) and the user would be good to go. Perhaps in the background at night, these machines would check with a master server to see if they had the latest version of the images and would retrieve updated images if necessary. This would appear to solve the various requirements at first glance.

There would seem to be some possible problems with this: 1. These virtual machine images need to be able to be loaded up quickly on each boot so they are good to go. 2. The vm images cannot be completely identical because each game installation will need different game authorization/registration keys (barring some kind of game key server). 3. The performance of some games may suffer when run under a virtual machine.

We aren't really tied to this solution exactly, it's just a proposal, so I would be very interested if others have thoughts on this. With the introduction of more virtual and cloud-like technologies it would seem that there would be something useful out there by now. And, of course, there is always the suggestion that we obtain more machines and physically separate all of these machines into separate labs for each usage, but if possible I would like to see if there is something we can do with the current space and hardware.

Is there anyone who has run into this general situation, and if so, are there viable solutions for this kind of situation? Are there good ways to manage game installations across multiple computers?

Submission + - Cisco Engineers find iPad actually useful (eweek.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 30, 2011 @06:14AM

An anonymous reader writes: eweek is reporting on a little known app for Cisco engineers that lets them hook up their iPads and iPhones to cisco console ports, and then pipe the console connection to a website — kinda like gotomypc but for cisco console ports. Why? I'm not sure, but apparently its quite useful. www.get-console.com

Submission + - What happens when you are fined millions? 6

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 30, 2011 @05:17AM

An anonymous reader writes: We keep hearing about file-sharing lawsuits which result in individual downloaders being slapped with fines of millions of dollars. In almost every case I've seen mentioned, the dollar-values involved are higher than any of those being ordered to pay could ever hope to make within their lifetimes.
So the question is: What happens to these people? Clearly they won't ever actually be able to pay the fines, and by extension it's clear that those doing the suing never intend to collect these ridiculous amounts. How much money ever actually changes hands in these situations?

Submission + - MIT drone finds its way using Kinect vision (suasnews.com)

Submitted by

garymortimer

on Wednesday March 30, 2011 @04:32AM

garymortimer writes: "This MIT multicopter is able to fly in GPS denied environments by creating a 3D map of its surroundings on the fly (no pun intended) based on point clouds generated by a Kinect. Also pretty handy for avoiding trees and other obstacles outside at low level.

Moores law is making this happen in small drones quick! This processing is onboard, unlike other systems that depend on motion capture rigs."

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