Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Government

Submission + - Massive security breech at US Federal Government contractors site (gsa.gov)

Submitted by dstates
dstates writes: SAM (Systems for Awards Management) is a financial management system that the US government requires all contractors and grantees to use. This system has recently been rolled out to replace the older CCR system. Last night, thousands of SAM users received the following message:

"Dear SAM user

The General Services Administration (GSA) recently has identified a security vulnerability in the System for Award Management (SAM), which is part of the cross-government Integrated Award Environment (IAE) managed by GSA. Registered SAM users with entity administrator rights and delegated entity registration rights had the ability to view any entity’s registration information, including both public and non-public data at all sensitivity levels."

From March 8 to 10, any registered user who searched the system could view confidential information including account and social security numbers for any other user of the system. Oops! The Government Services administration says that they have fixed the problem, but this is a serious black eye for the Fed.
Privacy

Submission + - Should We Be Afraid of Google Glass? (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: An article at TechCrunch bemoans the naysayers of ubiquitous video camera headsets, which seems like a near-term certainty whether it comes in the form of Google Glass or a similar product. The author points out, rightly, that surveillance cameras are already everywhere, and increasingly sophisticated government drones and satellites mean you're probably on camera more than you think already. 'But there’s something about being caught on video, not by some impersonal machine but by another human being, that sticks in people’s craws and makes them go irrationally berserk.' However, he also seems happy to trade privacy security, which may not be palatable to others. He references a time he was mugged in Mexico and a desire to keep an eye on abuses of authority from police and others. 'If pervasive, ubiquitous networked cameras ultimately make public privacy impossible, which seems likely, then at least we can balance the scales by ensuring that we have two-way transparency between the powerful and the powerless.'
NASA

Submission + - NASA satellite snaps rare cloud-free and not so rare snow covered Ireland (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "A couple years ago NASA's Aqua satellite took an out-of-this-world shot of a cloud-free shot of Ireland. NASA noted at the time that the cloud-free view is rare as the country is almost entirely cloud covered 50% of the time according to the Irish Meteorological Service, Met Éireann. There are more clouds during the day than at night, and fog is common."

Submission + - Panicked porn troll Prenda Law now dismissing pending lawsuits (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by JayRott
JayRott writes: "The embattled copyright trolling firm Prenda Law is seeking to contain the fallout from a looming identity theft scandal by voluntarily dismissing lawsuits filed by the shell company AF Holdings. A Minnesota man named Alan Cooper has charged that Prenda fraudulantly used his name as the CEO of AF Holdings, allegations that have attracted the attention of a California judge.

Ken at the legal blog Popehat broke the news that Prenda attorney Paul Duffy has sought dismissal of at least four pending infringement cases involving the Prenda-linked shell company AF Holdings. All four dismissals occurred in the Northern District of Illinois."

I don't see how Prenda thinks this is going to make one lick of difference to an already angry Judge.
The Internet

Submission + - This Story Stinks: Researchers Explain Why Trolls Win With Toxic Comments 2

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The Web is a place for unlimited exchange of ideas but NPR reports that researchers have found that rude comments on articles can change the way we interpret the news. "It's a little bit like the Wild West. The trolls are winning," says Dominique Brossard, co-author of the study on the so-called "Nasty Effect." Researchers worked with a science writer to construct a balanced news story on the pros and cons of nanotechnology, a topic chosen so that readers would have to make sense of a complicated issue with low familiarity then asked 1,183 subjects to review the blog post from a Canadian newspaper that discussed the water contamination risks of nanosilver particles and the antibacterial benefits. Half saw the story with polite comments, and the other half saw rude comments like, "If you don't see the benefits of using nanotechnology in these products, you're an idiot." People that were exposed to the polite comments didn't change their views really about the issue covering the story, while the people that did see the rude comments became polarized — they became more against the technology that was covered in the story. We need to have an anchor to make sense of complicated issues says Brossard. "And it seems that rudeness and incivility is used as a mental shortcut to make sense of those complicated issues." Brossard says there's no quick fix for this issue (PDF) and while she thinks it's important to foster conversation through comments sections, every media organization has to figure out where to draw the line when comments get out of control. "It’s possible that the social norms in this brave new domain will change once more — with users shunning meanspirited attacks from posters hiding behind pseudonyms and cultivating civil debate instead," writes Broussard. "Until then, beware the nasty effect.""
Java

Submission + - Apple Fixes OS X Flaw That Allowed Java Apps to Run With Plugin Disabled (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: Apple on Thursday released a large batch of security fixes for its OS X operating system, one of which patches a flaw that allowed Java Web Start applications to run even when users had Java disabled in the browser. There have been a slew of serious vulnerabilities in Java disclosed in the last few months, and security experts have been recommending that users disable Java in their various browsers as a protection mechanism. However, it appears that measure wasn't quite enough to protect users of some versions of OS X.

Comment Lot Less Useful, These Days (Score 3, Informative) 40

by ios and web coder (#43175257) Attached to: Adobe Shuts Down Browser Testing Service BrowserLab

The Web standards are being followed a lot more closely by browsers. Of course, Microsoft doesn't believe in rounded corners (Anyway, I think that may be patented).

IE7 sucks just about as bad as IE6, but I keep a VM with IE7 (Vista) around for extreme testing.

Most of the issues I encounter these days come from JavaScript/DOM differences, and this service was worthless for that. I need to have VMs on my Mac with multiple versions of browsers. For this kind of testing, Macs are extremely useful, as I can run a full LAMP server on my Air, and run multiple VMs that connect to it as external sites. I can tweak in realtime.

VirtualHostX is also pretty useful, as I can develop sites on my laptop, then directly transition them to the server with no fiddling with mod_rewrite or DB settings.

Submission + - Porn troll smackdown in federal court (popehat.com)

Submitted by WhiteSlash
WhiteSlash writes: On Monday, Prenda, a porn copywrite trolling firm had its house of cards slowly begin to topple.

"Today United States District Court Judge Otis D. Wright II made it explicitly, abundantly, frighteningly clear that he believes the principals of Prenda Law have engaged in misconduct — and that he means to get to the bottom of it."

In a bizarre hearing, where even the lawyers had lawyers, Prenda's lawyers, named by former partner Brett Gibbs, were chastised for their messy (generous in this case) practicies of serving lawsuits to hundreds of Does expected of illegally downloading porn.

FAP carefully.
The Military

Submission + - Ukrainian Attack Dolphins Are on the Loose

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The Ukrainian Navy has a small problem on their hands as the Atlantic reports that after rebooting the Soviet Union's marine mammal program last year with the goal of teaching dolphins to find underwater mines and kill enemy divers, three of the Ukrainian military's new recruits have gone AWOL. Apparently they swam away from their trainers ostensibly in search of a "mate" out in open waters. It might not be such a big deal except that these dolphins have been trained to "attack enemy combat swimmers using special knives or pistols fixed to their heads." Dolphins were trained at Sevastopol for the Soviet Navy as far back as 1973 to find military equipment such as sea mines on the seabed as well as attacking divers and even carrying explosives on their heads to plant on enemy ships. The US has its own dolphin program in San Diego with 40 trained dolphins and sea lions and another 50 in training. US Navy dolphins were deployed in Bahrain in 1987 during a period when Iran was laying down mines in the Persian Gulf to disrupt oil shipments. No word yet on whether "sharks with frickin’ laser beams attached” have been added to the US arsenal."

Comment Re:Navigation (Score 1) 192

by ios and web coder (#43139989) Attached to: Drupal's Creator Aims For World Domination

R. U. NUTTS?

Have you actually written any Joomla plugins that incorporate AJAX? Ever?

Would you like to see the open-source repository with mine?

Would you like to PROVE that you can do better? I'm EXTREMELY interested in your answer. If you are able to do so, then I would be happy to forgo my way of doing it in favor of yours.

Comment Re:Navigation (Score 3, Insightful) 192

by ios and web coder (#43137153) Attached to: Drupal's Creator Aims For World Domination

Thanks for the tip. I have heard very good things about TextPattern and EZ Publish. However, the issue is that the folks who use my code are primarily "big 3" users; with a distressing number of Joomla users.

It has to do with "market penetration" and "community support," as much as good code, ease of extensibility, etc.

Comment Re:A fractal of bad design (Score 1) 192

by ios and web coder (#43137083) Attached to: Drupal's Creator Aims For World Domination

Try to play with the Atlassian product line databases. Makes Drupal look like a cakewalk.

However, the whole idea is to avoid direct database access. That's a good security best practice anyway.

In Joomla, I am forced to directly interact with the DB (in the installer). Maybe 3.0 is different, but I have finally been able to farm off the Joomla plugin to someone who is a lot more familiar with (and likes) Joomla.

Slashdot Top Deals

What good is a ticket to the good life, if you can't find the entrance?

Close