49388595
submission
sl4shd0rk writes:
Director of the NSA, Keith Alexander, has decided that the best way to
prevent illegal activity, or rather be witness to it, is to reduce the number of ears and eyes involved. During a monolog at a cybersecurity conference in New York this week, Alexander revealed his plans to cut 90% of the System Administration workforce at the NSA. "What we're in the process of doing — not fast enough — is reducing our system administrators by about 90 percent," he said. Alluding to an issue of mistrust, Alexander further clarified: "At the end of the day it's about people and trust...if they misuse that trust they can cause huge damage.". Apparently, breaking the law and lying about it leaves one without a sense of irony when speaking in public.
49330567
submission
sl4shd0rk writes:
The American journalist Glenn Greewald, who published much of the initial info on illegal NSA programs, plans to release more damning revelations on the NSA spying machine in 10 days. "The articles we have published so far are a very small part of the revelations that ought to be published," Greenwald said on Tuesday. Greenwald further elaborated on public posturing which many nations are currently taking: "The Brazilian government is showing much more anger in public than it is showing in private discussions with the U.S. government..All governments are doing this, even in Europe."
49302089
submission
sl4shd0rk writes:
The Japanese Fukishama crisis took a turn for the worse this week as it was found a barrier built to contain contaminated water has been breached; a leak defined by 20 trillion to 40 trillion becquerels of radioactive tritium. This is yet another problem on top of a spate of errors plauging the 2011 nuclear disaster site. Nuclear regulatory official Shinji Kinjo has cited Tokyo Electric Power Company as having a "Weak sense of crisis" as well as hinted at previous bunglings by TEPCO as the reason one cannot "just leave it up to Tepco alone". If Nuclear energy is ever to move forward, these types of disasters need to be eliminated. Is the ongoing saga of Fukishama a problem which can be cured with appropriate technology, or are disasters like this simply the element of cost vs. risk in the business of nuclear energy?
49086345
submission
sl4shd0rk writes:
Samsung-is-not-as-cool-as-Apple Judge Colin Birss, rules in favor of Volkswagon to ban Flavio Garcia, a computer scientist, from revealing details about "Wirelessly Lockpicking a Vehicle Immobiliser" at USENIX in August. Volkswagen says the flaw could allow someone to "break the security and steal a car" so it is justifiable grounds for blocking Flavio's paper. No word yet on how soon Volkswagen will have a patch for their bungled technology which is responsible for the exploit.
49004335
submission
sl4shd0rk writes:
Federal Judge William Pauley has dismissed an Obama Administration request to delay a hearing on Verizon/NSA data sifting. The ACLU has argued that the sifting is not authorized by statute and even if it were it would still be unconstitutional. The Obama Administration requested the delay on the grounds it needed more time to search through it's classified material to determine what was suitable for disclosure.
48936939
submission
sl4shd0rk writes:
Edward Snowden, the enlightening NSA Whistleblower, has been granted refuge in Russia as reported by Interfax News. He has apparently been given papers (and a change of clothes) by the Russian government to allow him to soon leave the Sheremetyevo airport. The delay in exodus, cited by a Russian official, is apparently due to the "uniqueness" of the situation being cause for thorough review of Snowden's Asylum request.
48877129
submission
sl4shd0rk writes:
The cryptography on at least 500 million Subscriber Identity Modules (out of the 7 billion in circulation) has been found readily open to attack: "We can remotely infect the card, send SMS from it, redirect calls, exfiltrate call encryption keys, and even hack deeper into the card to steal payment credentials or completely clone the card. All remotely, just based on a phone number." as told by Karsten Nohl, chief scientist at Security Research Labs in Berlin. The flaws allow an attacker to send an invalid OTA update command which will trigger the targeted phone to respond with an error message that's signed with the 1970s-era DES cipher. The attacker can then use the response message to retrieve the phone's 56-bit DES key.
48590095
submission
sl4shd0rk writes:
Yep. That collective groan can mean only one thing. More NSA tinfoil turmoil coming. It may not surprise you that Microsft handed over it's encryption to the NSA for Email and chat, but it now appears that Skype video is also collected. When pressed on the issue, Microsoft at first stated "Skype produced no content in response to these requests” regarding requests from law enforcement. Microsoft doesn't quite mention however the non-content data which was turned over contained such things as SkypeID, name, e-mail account, billing information, and call detail records. Also, before you begin griping with "So, what? Stop with all the NSA stuff already!" at least educate yourself on why all of this exposure matters
47936979
submission
sl4shd0rk writes:
Presuming Aliens won't have terrible Ebay experiences, PayPal means to position themselves to take on payments in the cosmos: "With our fifteen years of experience in global online payments, PayPal has a unique perspective to speak to the possibilities of an interplanetary economy." Apparently, Paypal is taking up bedmates with Virgin Galatic along with Buzz Aldrin and the SETI Institute to allow you to "explore the possibilities of travel" as well as tourism and commerce. Let's hope Black Holes don't end up being a common excuse for lost Troll Doll shipments.
47219013
submission
sl4shd0rk writes:
Hot on the heels of the Verizon and NSA snooping, which Sen. Diane Feinstein (D) claims has "foiled multiple terror plots", comes a new leak showing US Feds can access user accounts for Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, Youtube and others. PRISM, as the program is called collects data directly from the servers of U.S. tech companies. Dropbox, Apple, Google and Facebook have all gone on record denying any participation in the spying program. Apple has also denied any involvement saying it had never heard of PRISM and has granted no such access, however the leaked report states that Apple has indeed been the latest collaborator beginning in October of 2012.
46163821
submission
sl4shd0rk writes:
Mozilla and Epic (of Epic Megagames fame) have engineered an impressive First Person OpenGL demo which runs on HTML5 and a subset of JavaScript. Emscripten the tool used, converts C and C++ code into "low level" JavaScript. According to Epic, The Citadel demo runs "within 2x of native speeds" and supports features commonly found in native OpenGL games such as dynamic specular lighting and global illumination. This concept was previously covered on Slashdot however the Citadel demo has just been released this week.
45980359
submission
sl4shd0rk writes:
Remember SOPA? If not, perhaps the name Lamar Smith (R-TX) will ring a bell. The US House Committee on Science, Space and Technology chose Smith to Chair as an overseer for the National Science Foundation's funding process. Smith is [PDF] preparing a bill which will require that every grant must benefit "national defense", be of "utmost importance to society" and not be "duplicative of other research". Duplicating research seems reasonable until you consider that this could also mean the NSF will not provide funding for research once somone has already providing results — manufactured or otherwise. A strange target since there is a process in place which makes an effort to limit duplicate funding already. The first and second requirements, even when read in context, still miss the point of basic research. If we were absolutely without-a-doubt-certain of the results, there would be little point in doing the research in the first place.
44542521
submission
sl4shd0rk writes:
Hispalinux, which represents Spanish Open Source developers and Users, has filed a complaint against Microsoft with the European Commision. 14 pages of grief cited Windows 8 as an "obstruction mechanism" calling EUFI Secure Boot a "de facto technological jail for computer booting systems ... making Microsoft's Windows platform less neutral than ever". on March 6 of 2012 the Commission fined Microsoft 561 million euros for failing to offer users a choice of web browser as well as a 2004 ruling which found M$ has abusted it's market position by tying Windows Media Player to Windows itself. Relations appear to remain more tense towards Windows in Europe so ther may be some hope of making EUFI more Linux friendly. EUFI has been implicated in the death of Samsung Laptops running Linux
44132391
submission
sl4shd0rk writes:
On the eve of the Samsung Galaxy SIV Release, Apple's marketing magnate Phil Schiller gave a rare interview and played down the release and seemingly attempted to discredit the competitor, as well as the phones and operating system it runs on. Calling it "plain and simple" and adding that "Android is often given as a free replacement for a feature phone" Schiller's comments suggested a bit of tension in the Apple camp which only lays claim to ~20% of the global market. In regards to the IDC report on Market share, Schiller disputed the importance saying he wasn't sure the "estimates and the modeling accurately gives an accurate picture of it all". Schiller went on to talk about the iphone 5, which went on sale last September, being "thin and light" with the "best display of any smartphone". Apple's shares have fallen from a high-close of $702.10 in September to $428.35 Wednesday suggesting that slumping sales are putting more pressure on the Apple marketing group to bring those sales figures up soon.
44026653
submission
sl4shd0rk writes:
Hot on the heels of last year's Apple win over Samsung, Apple is geared up for it's second attempt at knocking Samsung's alleged copy-cat products off the store shelves. District Judge Lucy Koh asked both parties if they could stay the new case while the first one goes up on Appeal. Apple denied citing a delay would "seriously and irreparably prejudice Apple." The company "will likely suffer a long-term loss of market share and of downstream sales". Samsung replied with a statement saying "Apple will be unable to meet its burden of proving infringement without resorting to the same improper 'representative product' strategy," [that shouldn't have been allowed in the first case.] Although some may think this is a good move for business on Apple's part, some claim the litigation is responsible for Apple's dipping sales and stock prices as well as Increased visibility of Samsung. In the end however, all this litigation is most likely going to be shouldered on the pocketbook of the consumer'
