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Government

Submission + - 100 Page GAO Report Blasts Federal Government on Cyber (securityledger.com)

Submitted by
chicksdaddy
chicksdaddy writes: "There’s been a lot of light and heat in the last week when it comes to the U.S. government and cyber security. But a just-released report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) makes clear that, in the big scheme of things, the Executive Order is just window dressing on the mess that is the Federal Government’s handling of cyber security.The report, GAO-13-187 (PDF), is a round-up and updating of previous reports that studied aspects of federal cyber security as they affect a wide range of federal agencies. The GAO’s conclusion? Uncle Sam has made negligible progress towards improving the security of its information systems, and has little to show in key areas such as responding to cyber incidents, promoting R&D on cyber security tools and technology and educating its workforce about cybersecurity. Nor is the federal government better prepared to respond to cyber attacks, despite a 782% increase in them in the last six years. In short Uncle Sam needs a plan, GAO found."
Ubuntu

Submission + - Ubuntu for phones to arrive next week on Nexus 4 (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by
nk497
nk497 writes: "Canonical has revealed that a developer preview of Ubuntu for phones will arrive next week, on the 21st of February. The touch preview will initially only be available for the Galaxy Nexus and Nexus 4 smartphones, but Canonical plans to support more devices. The release is designed to let developers create apps — and to give "enthusiasts" a sneak peek — ahead of the smartphone side of Ubuntu arriving in version 13.10 in October. Canonical suggested that the OS will initially only support low-end smartphones, the group plans to also support higher-end models, too, and the OS will work across mobile devices, PCs and TVs."
Encryption

Submission + - Cryptographers Aim to Find New Password Hashing Algorithm (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: Passwords are the keys to our online identities, and as a result, they're also near the top of the target list for attackers. There have been countless breaches in the last few years in which unencrypted passwords have been stolen from a database and leaked online, and security experts often shake their heads at the lack of use of encryption or even hashing for passwords. Now, a group of cryptographers is sponsoring a competition to come up with a new password hash algorithm to help improve the state of the art.

Hashing algorithms are used to secure passwords by taking the plaintext password, passing it through the cryptographic hash algorithm, and then storing the resulting digest, rather than the plaintext password itself. That way, if attackers are able to compromise the database of passwords, what they get are the hashes and not the actual passwords.

However, the algorithms used to hash passwords in most cases are functions such as SHA-1 and MD5, which have known weaknesses that open them up to brute-force attacks. So if an attacker is able to access a database of hashed passwords, he may be able to crack them, given enough time and compute power. When these algorithms were designed years ago, the hardware needed to crack a hash produced by one of them was not commonly available. But now, powerful GPUs and FPGAs are widely available and can be used by an attacker to crack hashes relatively quickly.

"Password hashing is important because it's where we have a problem. NIST has given us some great standard hashing algorithms. The problem is that these hashes aren't necessarily designed for the specific problem of password hashing — where you need something that's fast enough to hash on a server at login time, but slow enough that a GPU can't crack ten million of them," Green said.
Power

Submission + - New Fabrication Process May Realize Potential Of Solar Nanoantenna Arrays? (rdmag.com)

Submitted by CCarrot
CCarrot writes: From the article:

A novel fabrication technique developed by UConn engineering professor Brian Willis could provide the breakthrough technology scientists have been looking for to vastly improve today’s solar energy systems.

For years, scientists have studied the potential benefits of a new branch of solar energy technology that relies on incredibly small nanosized antenna arrays that are theoretically capable of harvesting more than 70% of the sun’s electromagnetic radiation and simultaneously converting it into usable electric power.

The technology would be a vast improvement over the silicon solar panels in widespread use today. Even the best silicon panels collect only about 20% of available solar radiation, and separate mechanisms are needed to convert the stored energy to usable electricity for the commercial power grid. The panels’ limited efficiency and expensive development costs have been two of the biggest barriers to the widespread adoption of solar power as a practical replacement for traditional fossil fuels.

Unfortunately, the stumbling block for nanoantenna solar arrays has always been the inability to produce a rectifier small or fast enough to convert electron flows to usable energy at the speeds of visible (and infrared) light. Researchers at the University of Connecticut have now developed a way to use atomic deposition technology (widely used in the production of microelectronics) to create small, fast rectifiers (or 'rectennas') that should, in theory, convert the high frequency electron flows generated by the nanoantennae into usable electricity.

Could this really be the breakthrough moment that at last allows an alternative-energy source to truly compete with non-renewable sources on all fronts: convenience, availability, efficiency and cost?

Submission + - Slate Mini-Biography of Aaron Swartz (slate.com)

Submitted by ElDuque
ElDuque writes: Slate's top story today is a long, heavily-researched article about the life of, and case against, Aaron Swartz. It covers the formative years of both Mr. Swartz and the free information / open knowledge movement he felt so strongly about.

Submission + - The paradox of Julian Assange and Wikileaks

Submitted by
schnell
schnell writes: "The New Statesman is publishing a new in-depth article that examines in detail the seemingly paradoxical nature of Wikileaks' brave mission of public transparency with the private opaqueness of Julian Assange's leadership. On one hand, Wikileaks created "a transparency mechanism to hold governments and corporations to account" when nobody else could or would. On the other hand, Wikileaks itself was "guilty of the same obfuscation and misinformation as those it sought to expose, while its supporters are expected to follow, unquestioningly, in blinkered, cultish devotion." If Wikileaks performs a public service exposing the secrets of others but censors its own secrets, does it really matter? Or are the ethics of the organization and its leader inseparable?"
Microsoft

Submission + - Operation b58 takes down Bamital botnet (symantec.com)

Submitted by
EliSowash
EliSowash writes: "This week the Botnet known as Bamital has been reported dead by the two warriors that claim to have killed it: Symantec and Microsoft. A six-week monitoring period of Balmital revealed 1.8 million unique IP addresses communicating with its command and control server, Symantic says. That resulted in an average of three million clicks hi-jacked per day. Owners of infected computers trying to complete a search query will now be directed to an official Microsoft and Symantec webpage that explains the problem and provides information and resources to remove the Bamital infection and other malware from their computers."
Moon

Submission + - Astronomers Want to Hunt Down Earth's Mini-Moons (discovery.com)

Submitted by
astroengine
astroengine writes: "The Earth has one permanent moon — you know, "The Moon" — but at any given time there are thought to be two temporary interlopers that were once asteroids, but get captured by our planet's gravity to become mini-moons for a few months or even years. They eventually get flung back out into interplanetary space. This ultimate "catch and release" provides an interesting opportunity for any future asteroid mission. So now astronomers want to find them, possibly using the newly-minted Hubble-class spy telescopes donated to NASA by the National Reconnaissance Office."
First Person Shooters (Games)

Submission + - Reading Minds to Predict Game Addictiveness (ieee.org)

Submitted by kgeiger
kgeiger writes: Researchers at Taiwan's Institute of Information Science, Academia Sinica are measuring emotional reactions caught in facial expressions to determine whether a game will be addictive. From TFA:

It’s difficult to evaluate an online game’s addictiveness prior to the release, says [Researcher Seng-Wei] Chen. The gaming industry’s approach is simply based on designers’ intuition and experience and the feedback from focus groups, the latter of which could be limited and biased.

Chen’s team, composed of researchers at the institute and at the electrical engineering department of National Taiwan University, aims to help game publishers avoid risky or blind investments. Using archival game data and dozens of electromyography (EMG) experiments, they constructed a forecasting model that predicts a game’s ability to retain active players for a long time.

The team reported their findings at the November 2012 IEEE/ACM Netgames conference.

Submission + - Federal Reserve Website Hacked, Data Compromised (reuters.com)

Submitted by Dave_Minsky
Dave_Minsky writes: The Federal Reserve acknowledged that their servers were breached by hackers and a limited amount of data was accessed, Reuters reported Wednesday.

No critical functions have been affected, according to the Federal Reserve.

ZDNet separately reported that Anonymous appeared to have published the information containing login information, credentials, internet protocol addresses and contact information of more than 4,000 U.S. bankers on Sunday night.

The claim was made via Twitter over an account registered to OpLastResort.
Government

Submission + - UK to install Probes to Spy on Netizens (googlegroups.com)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: A new report published by Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee, UK shows how the country is planning to spy on its netizens as they use services such as Facebook, Twitter, Skype and the likes. According to the government, in a bid to fight against terrorism and other crimes, swift access to communications data is required through the use of latest technological innovations. The UK plans to install 'probes' along the communications network in a bid to log everything from web surfing data to Skype calls.
Data Storage

Submission + - Bitcasa's infinite online hard drive: Interesting idea, rough around the edges (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "Online storage service Bitcasa opened its doors this week, promising an end to external storage or pesky online capacity limits. The company’s pitch is simple: You give them $99 per year, they give you infinite storage space online. The deal is currently being offered for $69, which comes out to $5.75 a month. That’s it. No capacity limits. No additional charge for certain file types or for web/smartphones. File version history? Infinite. Want backup and mirroring of existing data? You can get that, too. Bitcasa promises an online drive that seamlessly integrated with Windows Explorer, giving you all the benefits of local storage for substantially less money. That was enough to pique ExtremeTech's curiosity, and to take the service for a spin. What it found was a genuinely interesting and valuable service, but there are a lot of bugs that need to be ironed out before you should recommend it to your friends and family."

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