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HP

HP R&D Starts Enforcing a Business Casual Dress Code 480

Posted by timothy from the here's-your-pointy-headed-boss-disguise dept.
An anonymous reader writes: HP was once known as a research and technology giant, a company founded in a garage by a pair of engineers and dominated by researchers. Whilst a part of that lives on in Agilent any hope for the rest of the company has now died with the announcement that HP R&D will have to dress in business "smart casual" with T-shirts, baseball caps, short skirts, low cut dresses and sportswear all being banned.

Submission + - AMD Starts Rolling Out New Linux Driver Model, But Many Issues Remain (phoronix.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: With the upcoming Linux 4.2 kernel will be the premiere of the new "AMDGPU" kernel driver to succeed the "Radeon" DRM kernel driver, which is part of AMD's long talked about new Linux driver architecture for supporting the very latest GPUs and all future GPUs. Unfortunately for AMD customers, there's still much waiting. The new open-source AMDGPU Linux code works for Tonga/Carrizo GPUs but it doesn't yet support the latest R9 Fury "Fiji" GPUs, lacks re-clocking/DPM for Tonga GPUs leading to low performance, and there are stability issues under high-load OpenGL apps/games. There's also the matter that current Linux users need to jump through hoops for now in getting the code into a working state with the latest kernel and forked versions of Mesa, libdrm, new proprietary microcode files, and the new xf86-video-amdgpu user-space driver.

Submission + - HardenedBSD Completes Strong ASLR Implementation (hardenedbsd.org)

Submitted by HardenedBSD
HardenedBSD writes: A relatively new fork of FreeBSD, HardenedBSD, completed their Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) feature. Without ASLR, applications are loaded into memory in a deterministic manner. An attacker who knows where a vulnerability lies in memory can reliably exploit that vulnerability to manipulate the application to doing the attacker's bidding. ASLR removes the determinism, making it so that an attacker knows that a vulnerability exists, but doesn't know where that vulnerability lies in memory. HardenedBSD's particular implementation of ASLR is the strongest form ever implemented in any of the BSDs.

With HardenedBSD having completed their ASLR implementation, the next step is to update documentation and submit update the patches they have already submitted upstream to FreeBSD. ASLR is the first step in a long list of exploit mitigation technologies HardenedBSD plans to implement. HardenedBSD has also implemented other exploit mitigation, security, and general hardening features, providing great security for FreeBSD.
ch

Swiss Researchers Describe a Faster, More Secure Tor 61

Posted by timothy from the still-has-that-delicious-oniony-taste dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and University College London published a paper this week describing a faster and more secure version of Tor called HORNET. On one hand, the new onion routing network can purportedly achieve speeds of up to 93 gigabits per second and "be scaled to support large numbers of users with minimal overhead". On the other hand, researchers cannot claim to be immune to "confirmation attacks" known to be implemented on Tor, but they point out that, given how HORNET works, perpetrators of such attacks would have to control significantly more ISPs across multiple geopolitical boundaries and probably sacrifice the secrecy of their operations in order to successfully deploy such attacks on HORNET.
The Internet

Gigabit Internet Access Now Supported By 84 US ISPs 120

Posted by timothy from the one-day-real-soon-now dept.
An anonymous reader writes: According to Michael Render, principal analyst at market researcher RVA LLC, 83 Internet access providers have joined Google to offer gigabit Internet access service (all priced in the $50-$150 per month range).Render's data shows that new subscribers are signing up at an annualized growth rate of 480 percent each year. That "annualized" is an important thing to note, though; this is early days, and adding a few households, relatively speaking, means an impressive percentage change.
Bug

The OpenSSH Bug That Wasn't 55

Posted by timothy from the or-only-kind-of-is dept.
badger.foo writes: Get your facts straight before reporting, is the main takeaway from Peter Hansteen's latest piece, The OpenSSH Bug That Wasn't. OpenSSH servers that are set up to use PAM for authentication and with a very specific (non-default on OpenBSD and most other places) setup are in fact vulnerable, and fixing the configuration is trivial.

Submission + - Researchers Claim to Have Developed Faster, More Secure Tor

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and University College London published a paper this week describing a faster and more secure version of Tor called HORNET. On one hand, the new onion routing network can purportedly achieve speeds of up to 93 gigabits per second and "be scaled to support large numbers of users with minimal overhead". On the other hand, researchers cannot claim to be immune to "confirmation attacks" known to be implemented on Tor, but they point out that, given how HORNET works, perpetrators of such attacks would have to control significantly more ISPs across multiple geopolitical boundaries and probably sacrifice the secrecy of their operations in order to successfully deploy such attacks on HORNET.

Submission + - FCC Approves AT&T-DirecTV Purchase (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has granted approval to AT&T to purchase DirecTV for $48.5 billion. AT&T will become the largest provider of cable or satellite TV in the U.S., with 26.4 million subscribers. "Adding TV customers gives AT&T more power to negotiate with big media companies over prices for those channels. The deal also combines a nationwide satellite TV service, the country’s largest, with the No. 2 nationwide wireless network as time spent on mobile devices increases." The FCC did put conditions on the deal: AT&T must make fiber internet service available to 12.5 million people, offer cheaper internet plans to low-income customers, and not mess with the internet traffic of online video competitors.

Submission + - Gigabit internet access growing at 480% per year, served by 84 ISPs (cio.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: According to Michael Render, principal analyst at market researcher RVA LLC, 83 Internet access providers have joined Google to offer gigabit Internet access service (all priced in the $50-$150 per month range).Render’s data shows that new subscribers are signing up at an annualized growth rate of 480 percent each year.
The Courts

Uber Faces $410 Million Canadian Class Action Suit 247

Posted by samzenpus from the don't-take-the-law-into-your-own-hands dept.
farrellj writes: A class action suit has been filed by the Taxi and Limo drivers and owners in the Province of Ontario in Canada against Uber, demanding CAN$400 million in compensatory damages, $10 million in punitive damages. They claim Uber is violating the Ontario Highway Traffic Act that covers taxis and limos, and has caused them to lose money. They also seek an injunction against Uber operating in Ontario. "This protectionist suit is without merit," Uber said in a statement. "As we saw from a recent court ruling in Ontario, Uber is operating legally and is a business model distinct from traditional taxi services."

Submission + - Remote control of a car, with no phone or network connection required

Submitted by Albanach
Albanach writes: Following on from this week's Wired report showing the remote control of a Jeep using a cell phone, security researchers claim to have achieved a similar result using just the car radio. Using off the shelf components to create a fake radio station, the researchers sent signals using the DAB digital radio standard used in Europe and the Asia Pacific region. After taking control of the car's entertainment system it was possible to gain control of vital car systems such as the brakes. In the wild, such an exploit could allow widespread simultaneous deployment of a hack affecting huge numbers of vehicles.
Google

Google Staffers Share Salary Info With Each Other; Management Freaks 430

Posted by samzenpus from the how-much-you-got? dept.
Nerval's Lobster writes: Imagine a couple of employees at your company create a spreadsheet that lists their salaries. They place the spreadsheet on an internal network, where other employees soon add their own financial information. Within a day, the project has caught on like wildfire, with people not only listing their salaries but also their bonuses and other compensation-related info. While that might sound a little far-fetched, that's exactly the scenario that recently played out at Google, according to an employee, Erica Baker, who detailed the whole incident on Twitter. While management frowned upon employees sharing salary data, she wrote, "the world didn't end everything didn't go up in flames because salaries got shared." For years, employees and employers have debated the merits (and drawbacks) of revealing salaries. While most workplaces keep employee pay a tightly guarded secret, others have begun fiddling with varying degrees of transparency, taking inspiration from studies that have shown a higher degree of salary-related openness translates into happier workers. (Other studies (PDF) haven't suggested the same effect.) Baker claims the spreadsheet compelled more Google employees to ask and receive "equitable pay based on data in the sheet."
OS X

A Tweet-Sized Exploit Can Get Root On OS X 10.10 130

Posted by timothy from the special-circumstances dept.
vivaoporto writes: The Register reports a root-level privilege-escalation exploit that allows one to gain administrator-level privileges on an OS X Yosemite Mac using code so small that fits in a tweet. The security bug, documented by iOS and OS X guru Stefan Esserwhich, can be exploited by malware and attackers to gain total control of the computer. This flaw is present in the latest version of Yosemite, OS X 10.10.4, and the beta, version 10.10.5 but is already fixed in the preview beta of El Capitan (OS X 10.11) Speaking of exploits: Reader trailrunner 7 notes that "HP’s Zero Day Initiative has released four new zero days in Internet Explorer that can lead to remote code execution."
AI

A Programming Language For Self-Organizing Swarms of Drones 56

Posted by timothy from the just-don't-teach-them-to-shoot dept.
New submitter jumpjoe writes: Drones are becoming a staple of everyday news. Drone swarms are the natural extension of the drone concept for applications such as search and rescue, mapping, and agricultural and industrial monitoring. A new programming language, compiler, and virtual machine were recently introduced to specify the behaviour of an entire swarm with a single program. This programming language, called Buzz, allows for self-organizing behaviour to accomplish complex tasks with simple program. Details on the language and examples are available here. Full disclosure: I am one of the authors of the paper.

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