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Submission + - Air Force firewall designated a weapons system (gazette.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Quoting the article,

The biggest reason for the weaponization push is financial: When it comes to budget battles, weapons, even those with a keyboard and a mouse, get cash from Congress.

"Designating something as a weapons system really does help us justify our funding," Col. Pamela Wooley, who commands the Alabama-based 26th Cyberspace Operations Group, which includes the new weapon. "It also helps us with our training because it helps us define better training systems. It is really pretty exciting for our airmen."

Submission + - US military finds F-35 software is a buggy mess (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) remains the problem child of the US military, with some operational tests abandoned in 2014, and buggy software proving a headache.

The US military's Office of the Director, Operational Test & Evaluation (DOT&E) has released its latest annual report, and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter chapter describes the Department of Defense's efforts in trying to get the project back somewhere close to schedule.

To avoid a cascading series of delays that would have stretched into 2016, the project abandoned an Operational Utility Evaluation (OUE) planned in April 2014 for the Marines' Block 2B configuration of the aircraft.

How bad does a government procurement program have to get for it to get cancelled?

Submission + - Parse.com shutting down -- Thanks, Facebook. (parse.com)

Submitted by waimate
waimate writes: Parse.com, a popular BAAS (back-end as a service), has fallen prey to Facebook. Declared by Fast Company as one of the top 50 most innovative companies of 2013, committed users shuddered when it was purchased by Facebook soon after. Today the other shoe finally dropped, when Facebook announced they are shutting the service down, leaving thousands of users scrambling for a viable replacement. It calls into question to what extent developers can trust *AAS providers, while at the same time creating an opportunity for a vendor to deploy a Parse.com compatible service. Many other service provision offerings exist, but none quite the same as Parse. Thanks for nothing, Facebook.

Submission + - OpenSSL to Release Emergency Security Patch on Thursday (openssl.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The OpenSSL project has announced that it will release a security update for all supported branches on Thursday. Noteworthy is that among the patches will be one for the OpenSSL 1.0.2 branch that is marked as HIGH risk, such as a Heartbleed style vulnerability that has affected OpenSSL before.

Submission + - MiniUPnP Vulnerability Clears Way to Stack Smashing Attack (threatpost.com)

Submitted by msm1267
msm1267 writes: Cisco’s Talos security intelligence and research group found and privately disclosed a serious and trivially exploitable client-side bug in Mini UPnP that was patched in September of last year.

Now four months later, it’s unclear how many vendor products that make use of the library were patched, nor is it known how many devices on private networks—things such as Xboxes, home and business routers and peer-to-peer applications such as the Bitcoin-qt wallet—have been patched.

Cisco today published technical details of the vulnerability and to demonstrate the widespread nature of the bug and its potential impact, released a proof-of-concept attack against the default Bitcoin wallet which opens the door to remote code execution.
Cisco’s exploit bypasses the Stack Smashing Protection (SSP) mitigation, which protects vulnerable buffers in a stack with a stack cookie, or canary. The Cisco attack bypasses the stack cookie on Linux systems.

Submission + - The Widely Reported ISIS Encrypted Messaging App Is Not Real

Submitted by blottsie
blottsie writes: Despite widespread reports to the contrary, an app created for Islamic State militants to send private encrypted messages does not exist, a week-long Daily Dot investigation found.

All of the media articles on the Alrawi app showed screenshots of a different app entirely, one that is a glorified RSS reader with a totally different name. The Defense One journalist who first reported on GSG's claims about the app told the Daily Dot that he hadn't seen any version of Alrawi at all, and the subsequent reports on the app largely relied on Defense One's reporting. The Daily Dot was the first media outlet to receive, on Jan. 18, what GSG claimed was the Alrawi encryption app.

The app, called “Alrawi.apk,” contained no ability to send or encrypt messages. It was created using MIT's App Inventor, a plug-and-play tool meant primarily for children.

Submission + - Google DeepMind algorithm has learnt to play Go better than most human beings

Submitted by Artem Tashkinov
Artem Tashkinov writes: The Go game has been considered the toughest to crack game for AI to this date, and various researchers estimated it would take at least ten more years for AI algorithms to master it and beat the best human players on the planet. However according to a recent Nature publication (PDF) by the team behind Google DeepMind, their AI algorithm manages to beat 99% of all other Go playing applications and also it beat Fan Hui, the best European Go player.

Submission + - Top Telcos Join Facebook Open Source Hardware Project (thestack.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A new wave of communications companies has joined Facebook’s non-profit Open Compute Project (OCP), including AT&T, Verizon, Deutsche Telekom and South Korea’s SK Telecom, as the movement seeks to share innovative hardware designs and drive down costs in the telecom arena. An OCP sub-section focused entirely on telecom requirements has been set up to look into servers and networking efficiency in the field. As one of the largest hardware buyers, telcos will provide a significant new market for the project, alongside its successful data centre efforts.

Submission + - That Israeli Grid Hack? Just more Ransomware. (securityledger.com)

Submitted by chicksdaddy
chicksdaddy writes: Reports of a crippling cyber attack on the power grid in Israel (http://www.timesofisrael.com/steinitz-israels-electric-authority-hit-by-severe-cyber-attack/) appear to have been greatly exaggerated, as subsequent reports point to a simple ransomware outbreak on the office network of an industry regulator.

The reports of an attack on the Israeli follow a story in the Times of Israel (http://www.timesofisrael.com/steinitz-israels-electric-authority-hit-by-severe-cyber-attack/) quoting Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz at a Tel Aviv cyber security conference. It comes amidst a cold snap in the country that is causing power demands to spike, and just weeks after an apparent cyber attack on power substations in The Ukraine darkened some 80,000 households.

“This is a fresh example of the sensitivity of infrastructure to cyberattacks, and the importance of preparing ourselves in order to defend ourselves against such attacks,” Steinitz is quoted saying in the Times of Israel report.

But the events in Israel may be far more quotidian than Steinitz comments or the sensational headlines that follow would suggest. Rather than a crippling cyber attack on the country’s grid, the incident Steinitz referred to appears to be a ransomware outbreak on PCs and notebook computers used by staff at a government agency.

A report on Wednesday by the Israeli web site YNet News (http://www.yediot.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-4758366,00.html) describes what appears to be a typical ransomware malware infection within the offices of the Electricity Authority.

In a post on the web site of The SANS Institute (https://ics.sans.org/blog/2016/01/27/context-for-the-claim-of-a-cyber-attack-on-the-israeli-electric-grid), Robert M. Lee said the incident underscores the inherent danger in reporting on cyber attacks, which take many different forms and have many different motivations.

“This once again stresses the importance around individuals and media carefully evaluating statements regarding cyber attacks and infrastructure as they can carry significant weight.”

Submission + - Is DNA processing is an example of a Turing machine in action? (sclog.org)

Submitted by Anne Thwacks
Anne Thwacks writes: In a reply to a comment on his own post about a biological research project, blog poster "General Direction" makes the amazing suggestion that the interpretation of DNA is an example of a Turing machine in action, and the telomeres are data that is modified by this execution.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Economical lego compatible 3d printer. 1

Submitted by Wycliffe
Wycliffe writes: There are plenty of high end 3d printers which allow high precision and large prints. There are also plenty of economical 3d printers but most of them don't have high enough precision for printing good lego pieces. What is a good economical printer for printing small lego pieces? Build size is not important as most lego pieces are tiny but precision and quality prints are very important. What is a good, cheap 3D printer that can reliably print tiny lego pieces? What is the best bang for the buck when you want a small printer and don't care about large prints?

Submission + - Consciousness may be the product of carefully balanced chaos (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Is my yellow the same as your yellow? Does your pain feel like my pain? The question of whether the human consciousness is subjective or objective is largely philosophical. But the line between consciousness and unconsciousness is a bit easier to measure. In a new study of how anesthetic drugs affect the brain, researchers suggest that our experience of reality is the product of a delicate balance of connectivity between neurons—too much or too little and consciousness slips away.

Submission + - Six HDDs With Health Information Of Nearly A Million Patients Missing (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: Health insurer Centene Corp. revealed that it is looking for six HDDs with information on 950,000 customers that went missing during a data project that was using laboratory results to improve the health outcomes of patients. The drives not only contain sensitive personal identification information, such as addresses, dates of birth and social security numbers, but they also contain health information. "While we don't believe this information has been used inappropriately," said Michael Neidorff, CEO of Centene.

Submission + - Paypal settles class action suit out of court (accountholdsettlement.com)

Submitted by Okian Warrior
Okian Warrior writes: I just got E-mailed this link, which documents PayPal's out-of-court settlement for putting a "hold" on peoples' accounts all those years and not giving back the money. Anyone with a Paypal account since 2006 who had a hold put on their account is eligible for up to $440 in compensatory damages (section 8). As part of the settlement, Paypal additionally agrees to a raft of transparency changes to their hold and account suspension notification procedure (section 7).

Submission + - New Clues to How the Brain Maps Time (quantamagazine.org) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Our brains have an extraordinary ability to monitor time. A driver can judge just how much time is left to run a yellow light; a dancer can keep a beat down to the millisecond. But exactly how the brain tracks time is still a mystery. Researchers have defined the brain areas involved in movement, memory, color vision and other functions, but not the ones that monitor time. Indeed, our neural timekeeper has proved so elusive that most scientists assume this mechanism is distributed throughout the brain, with different regions using different monitors to keep track of time according to their needs.

Over the last few years, a handful of researchers have compiled growing evidence that the same cells that monitor an individual’s location in space also mark the passage of time. This suggests that two brain regions — the hippocampus and the entorhinal cortex, both famous for their role in memory and navigation — can also act as a sort of timer.

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