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Government

Submission + - Feds offer $20M for critical open source energy network cybersecurity tools (networkworld.com) 1

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "The US Department of Energy today said it would spend $20 million on the development of advanced cybersecurity tools to help protect the nation's vulnerable energy supply. The DOE technologies developed under this program should be interoperable, scalable, cost-effective advanced tools that do not impede critical energy delivery functions, that are innovative and can easily be commercialized or made available through open source for no cost."
Education

Submission + - Estonian Schools to Teach Computer-Based Math (wsj.com)

Submitted by Ben Rooney
Ben Rooney writes: Children in the Baltic state will learn statistics based less on computation and doing math by hand and more on framing and interpreting problems, and thinking about validation and strategy.
Crime

Submission + - Spy Drones Used to Hunt Down Christopher Dorner

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The Express reports that as a task force of 125 officers continue their search for Christopher Dorner in the rugged terrain around Big Bear, it was revealed that Dorner has become the first human target for remotely-controlled airborne drones on US soil. “The thermal imaging cameras the drones use may be our only hope of finding him," says a senior police source. "On the ground, it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.” The use of drones was confirmed by Customs and Border Patrol spokesman Ralph DeSio, who revealed agents have been prepared for Dorner to make a dash for the Mexican border since his rampage began. “This agency has been at the forefront of domestic use of drones by law enforcement.” Dorner, who was fired from the LAPD in 2008 for lying about a fellow officer he accused of misconduct, has vowed to wreak revenge by “killing officers and their families”. According to San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon: "To be honest, he could be anywhere right now. Torching his own vehicle could have been a diversion to throw us off track. Anything is possible with this man.”"
Space

Submission + - You Can Name Pluto's Moons of the Underworld (discovery.com)

Submitted by
astroengine
astroengine writes: "The SETI Institute has launched a new website called "Pluto Rocks!" intended to gather a public vote on the names of Pluto's smallest, and most recently discovered, moons P4 and P5. Discovered in 2011 and 2012 by Hubble, the two dinky satellites have concerned scientists managing the NASA New Horizons probe that will flyby the Plutonian system in 2015 — the presence of small rocky bodies in Pluto orbit might mean there is a significant collision risk to the high velocity spacecraft. This sinister back story will surely influence the naming outcome of the two new moons, where all the suggestions on Pluto Rocks! are related to Greek and Roman mythological characters from the underworld (but you can also make your own suggestions). If you want to get involved, there's also a special SETI Institute G+ Hangout planned for 11 a.m. PT Monday where two of the P4/P5 discovery scientists will hold a Q&A session."
Privacy

Submission + - Flickr privacy bug changes some private photos to public (networkworld.com)

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes: Flickr has discovered a software bug that made some users' private photos public for as long as 20 days. As a precaution, Flickr set all public photos to private. The result is "bad" links across the web that cause the "currently unavailable" error message.

Ironically, Flickr less than a week ago released some tips for safer photo and privacy sharing settings, as part of Microsoft's Safer Internet Day. At the same time, the company was quietly restoring users' private photos that had been made public.

However, posts to Flickr user forums show that many continue to struggle get their public photos restored or even find out if anyone had seen their private photos.
Botnet

Submission + - New Version of Kelihos Botnet Appears (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: Researchers are tracking a new version of the Kelihos botnet, one that comes complete with better resistance to sinkholing techniques and a feature that enables it to remain dormant on infected machines for long periods to help avoid detection. The botnet also is using an advanced fast-flux capability to hide the domains it uses for command-and-control and malware distribution.

This is the third time the Kelihos botnet has reared its head. The first two instances, security researchers were able to sinkhole the domains that Kelihos was using, effectively crippling the attackers' ability to communicate with infected machines. The first Kelihos botnet takedown in 2011 was a joint effort between Kaspersky Lab and Microsoft and the teams were able to reverse-engineer the communications protocol that the bots use. Kelihos, also known as Hlux, is a peer-to-peer botnet, meaning that there is no central server or servers that spit out new commands for the bots.
Medicine

Submission + - Scientists Use Gene Therapy to Cure Dogs of Type 1 Diabetes (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: Researchers from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) have claimed a first by successfully using a single session of gene therapy to cure dogs of type 1 diabetes. The work has shown that it is possible to cure the disease in large animals with a minimally-invasive procedure – potentially leading the way to further developments in studies for human treatment of the disease.
Security

Submission + - Researcher Proves Repurposed Flame, Duqu Attacks Possible (darkreading.com)

Submitted by ancientribe
ancientribe writes: The burning question dogging security experts since the discovery of Stuxnet, Flame and Duqu was whether those sophisticated cyberespionage weapons could be retooled and turned on other targets. A researcher has now tested that theory and found that they are recyclable--with some limitations--and that the Flame authors may have purposely limited the scope of their malware to avoid its being abused by other attackers. Boldizsar Bencsath, a member of the CrySys Lab that was instrumental in studying Duqu, shared his findings at the invitation-only Kaspersky Security Analyst Summit last week.
Media

Submission + - Ballot-stuffing bot skews online polls, news reports (scmagazine.com.au)

Submitted by mask.of.sanity
mask.of.sanity writes: An Australian software dev has built a bot to automatically cast tens of thousands of votes through online polls run by the country's biggest news outlets.

It skewed subsequent media reports on the results which continued for months despite the engineer's efforts to warn reporters of the hoax.

He coupled his simple bash script with Tor that was made to change exit relays every 10 minutes, defeating measures to prevent repeat voting from one IP address.
Facebook

Submission + - Facebook sued over 'like' button (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by arisvega
arisvega writes: Facebook is facing legal action over its use of the "like" button and other features of the social network.

It is being sued by a patent-holding company acting on behalf of a dead Dutch programmer called Joannes Jozef Everardus van Der Meer.

Rembrandt Social Media said Facebook's success was based, in part, on using two of Mr Van Der Meer's patents without permission.

"We believe Rembrandt's patents represent an important foundation of social media as we know it, and we expect a judge and jury to reach the same conclusion based on the evidence," said lawyer Tom Melsheimer from legal firm Fish and Richardson, which represents the patent holder.

Facebook said it had no comment to make on the lawsuit or its claims.
Privacy

Submission + - EU Data Protection proposal taken word for word from US lobbyists (computerworlduk.com)

Submitted by Qedward
Qedward writes: Computerworld UK open enterprise blogger Glyn Moody looks at the proposed EU directive on Data Protection — and how some of the proposed amendments seem to be cut and pasted directly from the American Chamber of Commerce — that well-known European organisation...

You might ask, Glyn writes, who are these MEPs representing — some 500 million EU citizens that pay their salary or a bunch of extremely rich US companies intent on taking away our privacy?

Submission + - Australian Trading Company Fastest To Market Stolen Goods

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Register reports that Zeptonics, who slashdotters remember from this story, has been caught selling hardware designs stolen from an Australian competitor, according to an Australian Federal Court ruling. Bad news for Zeptonics clients worldwide: if you've bought hardware from them, you'll have to hand the merchandise back to its rightful owner.
The Internet

Submission + - Open Spectrum Does Not Mean Free Internet (networkcomputing.com)

Submitted by
CowboyRobot
CowboyRobot writes: "FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski recently proposed making RF spectrum publicly available, and many in the media (including the Washington Post) have been mistakenly conflating open access to wifi signal with free Internet access; anyone can put up a wireless access point but that doesn't give them access to the Internet. The proposal will probably mean more attempts at providing free Internet access to specific neighborhoods or municipalities, but as Larry Seltzer at NetworkComputing points out, these programs also usually forget that access to signal is not the same as access to the Internet. After getting the funding to wire a city, these isn't money left to pay for the actual bandwidth usage."
Microsoft

Submission + - Australian Govt forces Apple, Adobe, Microsoft to explain price hikes (delimiter.com.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Live outside the US? Tired of paying huge local price markups on technology products from vendors such as Apple, Microsoft and Adobe? Well, rest easy, the Australian Government is on the case. After months of stonewalling from the vendors, today the Australian Parliament issued subpoenas compelling the three vendors to appear in public and take questions regarding their price hikes on technology products sold in Australia. Finally, we may have some answers for why Adobe, for example, charges up to $1,400 more for the full version of Creative Suite 6 when sold outside the US.
Privacy

Submission + - Raytheon's Riot program mines social network data for intelligence agencies (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by Shipud
Shipud writes: Raytheon has secretly developed software capable of tracking people's movements and predicting future behaviour by mining data from social networking websites according to this story from The Guardian.

An "extreme-scale analytics" system created by Raytheon, the world's fifth largest defence contractor, can gather vast amounts of information about people from websites including Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare.

Raytheon says it has not sold the software – named Riot, or Rapid Information Overlay Technology – to any clients. But the company has acknowledged the technology was shared with US government and industry as part of a joint research and development effort, in 2010, to help build a national security system capable of analysing "trillions of entities" from cyberspace.

The power of Riot to harness popular websites for surveillance offers a rare insight into controversial techniques that have attracted interest from intelligence and national security agencies, at the same time prompting civil liberties and online privacy concerns.

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