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Networking

Submission + - Active Defense Drives Attack Costs Up (threatpost.com)

Submitted by msm1267
msm1267 writes: Active defense and hacking back is turning up in a lot of conversations between vendors and customers, CIOs and executives and executives and general counsel. There's plenty of debate from security experts on the viability of active defense, and plenty of caution against hacking back. Experts explain some of the popular tactics and techniques being used on networks to frustrate attackers and hopefully move them on to their next targets.
Piracy

Submission + - Antigua Government Set to Launch "Pirate" Website To Punish United States (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Government of Antigua is planning to launch a website selling movies, music and software, without paying U.S. copyright holders. The Caribbean island is taking the unprecedented step because the United States refuses to lift a trade “blockade” preventing the island from offering Internet gambling services, despite several WTO decisions in Antigua’s favor. The country now hopes to recoup some of the lost income through a WTO approved “warez” site.
Encryption

Submission + - GitHub Search Exposes Encryption Keys, Passwords In Code (securityweek.com)

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: GitHub's new internal search has made it easy to uncover passwords, encryption keys, and other security missteps in software development projects that are hosted on the site. GitHub announced its internal search on Jan.23, which lets users search for any string through public and private repositories they have access to.

Some users discovered yet another way to use the search tool: finding files containing private encryption keys and source code with login credentials. Scarily enough, there were thousands of them.

Searching on id_rsa, a file which contains the private key for SSH logins, returned over 600 results. Other developers had hardcoded passwords for privileged user accounts, such as root, sa, and admin.

"With a simple script or tool, external hackers or malicious insiders can quickly discover these lost keys and use them to gain access to critical information assets," Jason Thompson, director of global marketing, SSH Communications Security said. "If the key grants a high level of administrative access, such as root, the potential threat to the business grows exponentially.

To be clear, GitHub is not at fault, since the company is just a hosting service. It just stores whatever files the developer wants to save. The search engine is not accidentally leaking confidential information. The data was already saved on GitHub, it is just making it easier for someone to find these mistakes.

Developers should note that GitHub has a Help page on how to make sure sensitive data is not saved to the repository.
Graphics

Submission + - Can A New GPU Rejuvenate A 5 Year Old Gaming PC? (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "New video card launches from AMD and NVIDIA are almost always reviewed on hardware less than 12 months old. That's not an arbitrary decision — it helps reviewers make certain that GPU performance isn't held back by older CPUs and can be particularly important when evaluating the impact of new interfaces or bus designs. That said, an equally interesting perspective might be to compare the performance impact of upgrading a graphics card in an older system that doesn't have access to the substantial performance gains of integrated memory controllers, high speed DDR3 memory, deep multithreading or internal serial links. As it turns out, even using a midrange graphics card like a GeForce GTX 660, substantial gains up to 150 percent can be achieved without the need for a complete system overhaul."
Electronic Frontier Foundation

Submission + - DMCA exemption ends on Jan 26th. Unlocking a cellphone becomes illegal (mashable.com)

Submitted by Acapulco
Acapulco writes: Apparently an exemption to the DMCA, determined by the Librarian of Congress will expire this Saturday, January 26th, which will make unlocking phones illegal (although not jailbreaking).

From the article:

"The new rule against unlocking phones won't be a problem for everybody, though. For example, Verizon's iPhone 5 comes out of the box already unlocked, and AT&T will unlock a phone once it is out of contract."

And:

"Advocacy group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) questions whether the DMCA has the right to determine who can unlock a phone. In an email to TechNewsDaily, EFF attorney Mitch Stoltz said, "Arguably, locking phone users into one carrier is not at all what the DMCA was meant to do. It's up to the courts to decide." "

Also:

"Christopher S. Reed from the U.S. Copyright Office noted in an email to TechNewsDaily that "only a consumer, who is also the owner of the copy of software on the handset under the law, may unlock the handset." "
Networking

Submission + - Internet connection crucial to everyday life, German federal court rules (computerworlduk.com)

Submitted by Qedward
Qedward writes: Internet access is as crucial to everyday life as having a phone connection and the loss of connectivity is deserving of financial compensation, the German Federal Court of Justice has ruled.

Because having an internet connection is so significant for a large part of the German population, a customer whose service provider failed to provide connectivity between December 2008 and February 2009 is entitled to compensation, the court ruled today.

"It is the first time the court ruled that an internet connection is as important a commodity as having a phone," said court spokeswoman Dietlind Weinland.

The court, however, denied the plaintiff's request of €50 a day for his fax machine not working.
EU

Submission + - Billion-euro brain simulation and graphene projects win European funds (nature.com)

Submitted by
ananyo
ananyo writes: "The European Commission has selected the two research proposals it will fund to the tune of half-a-billion euros each after a two-year, high-profile contest.
The Human Brain Project, led by neuroscientist Henry Markram at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne, plans to simulate everything known about the human brain in a supercomputer — a breathtaking ambition that has been met with some skepticism.
The other project, called Graphene, is led by theoretical physicist Jari Kinaret at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden. It will develop the potential of graphene — an ultrathin, flexible and conducting form of carbon — along with related materials for applications in computing, batteries and sensors.
The projects expect to receive €1 billion over ten years, half to be provided by the European Commission and half by participants. The commission will make its formal announcement on 28 January."

Submission + - Sri Lankan Meteroite claimed to contain fossilized extraterrestrial diatoms (journalofcosmology.com) 1

Submitted by tbg58
tbg58 writes: An article in the January 10 issue of the Journal of Cosmology reports the discovery of diatom frustules in a carbonaceous meteorite which fell in Sri Lanka in December of last year. The article includes micrographs of structures in the meteorite which resemble fossilized diatoms. If verified, the significance of this find is historic.

Submission + - Computer-designed enzymes may help alleviate celiac disease (acs.org)

Submitted by tbg58
tbg58 writes: Computational protein design tools have allowed researchers to create enzymes that perform functions unknown in nature. Researchers have applied the technique to develop an enzyme specifically aimed at neutralizing the peptide alpha-gliadin contained in gluten, which triggers the autoimmune attack that causes celiac disease. The design of -Gliadin Endopeptidase began with the search for a naturally occurring endopeptidase with stability in an acidic-pH environment, the reproducing and modifying the naturally occurring enzyme to have the specific structure of the designer enzyme using recombinant-DNA modified strain of e. coli.

This development is only made possible by computational cataloguing and modeling of enzymes. The resulting enzyme, given the name KumaMax, shows eventual promise as an oral enzyme therapy for celiac disease taken prior to the ingestion of gluten-containing foods. It is attractive as a non-invasive oral therapeutic which can break down over 95% of the immunogenic peptide under physiologically relevant conditions.

Comment All of the tech tools plus these practical items (Score 1) 416

by tbg58 (#42132097) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Server Room Toolbox?

All of the usual tech tools plus:

  • Several cheap LED flashlight
  • Several cheap LED head lights
  • Spare batteries
  • Small shop vac with a blower.
  • Plumb bob with string.
  • Hacksaw
  • P-Touch labeler.
  • Label servers on the front and back, using a naming convention.
  • Also alternate front and back on racks so you have hot rows and cold rows. Perf tiles in cold rows, air handler intakes near hot rows.
  • Two power strips per rack, connected to different PDU boxes, so if you lose a whole PDU your dual-power supply servers stay up.

Hang up placards (the size of a sheet of paper) at the end of each column and row of tiles along two adjacent walls so you have the grids labeled. In your CMDB you should have the server location (Grid H15C would mean the front side of rack H15, third up from the bottom.) I mentioned a CMDB. You do have an ITIL-compliant (or at least ITIL-resembling) CMDB, don't you?

Comment The world is not enough. (Score 1) 319

by tbg58 (#42097989) Attached to: Ask Mark Shuttleworth Anything
Another South African entrepreneur, Elon Musk, is like yourself, a space enthusiast. Unlike yourself, Elon didn't buy a ticket to experience spaceflight himself. Instead he built a business model which will help lower the cost of spaceflight for everyone who wants to put a payload into orbit or, eventually, to explore other heavenly bodies like the Moon and Mars. Ubuntu has been a tremendous contribution to democratizing computing by putting a free OS in the hands of people everywhere on Earth. Do you see yourself participating in any effort to make humanity establish footholds on other planets, and if so, how?

Comment The regulations WERE the problem (Score 0) 422

by tbg58 (#42068947) Attached to: Could Testing Block Psychopaths From Senior Management?

The Community Reinvestment Act and other regulations pressured lenders to make mortgage loans available even to high risk lenders. The taxpayers would guarantee the loans. Next, opportunistic bankers began to push loans on people who were no creditworthy, and people who wanted to profit off of real estate appreciation used "creative financing" (interest only loans, variable interest loans with balloon payments, etc.) to buy much larger homes than they could afford, betting on continuing rise in values. This over-leveraging at both ends of the market - the bottom end and the top end, fed the crisis.

Next, investment bankers bundled together bunches of these junk loans, slapped a triple A rating on them, divided them into tranches, and sold them to investors who wanted to make a killing on mortgage-backed securities.

The Financial Crisis was a perfect storm: misguided good intentions and unintended consequences got the ball rolling, then greedy mortgage bankers, home buyers, and investment bankers, pretty much greed and malfeasance at every level, not just restricted to a single economic stratum, all set the Financial Crisis in motion. It became the whirlwind we are all reaping today.

Even this grossly over-simplified summary is probably too long-winded for today's attention spans. Sorry, but this sort of stuff can't be expressed in 140 characters or less.

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