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Submission + - SELinux vs OpenBSD

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: OSNews is runnings this story, a commentary on why OpenBSD should not be considered a secure operating system. It is mainly talking about the lack of MAC, and how this holds back OpenBSD from being able to adequately protect a system in the event of an attack; simply doing everything possible to ensure an attack will never take place is not good enough. It also hits on some security practices, such as choosing sendmail and bind when secure alternatives exist. Certainly an interesting argument, but does it have merrit?
United States

Supreme Court Rolls Back Corporate Campaign Spending Limits 1070

Posted by timothy from the hearken-to-the-nelson-laugh dept.
lorenlal writes "The Supreme Court of the United States must have figured that restrictions on corporate support of candidates was a violation of free speech, or something like that." From the AP story linked above: "By a 5-4 vote, the court on Thursday overturned a 20-year-old ruling that said corporations can be prohibited from using money from their general treasuries to pay for campaign ads. The decision, which almost certainly will also allow labor unions to participate more freely in campaigns, threatens similar limits imposed by 24 states."
Programming

What Tools Do FLOSS Developers Need? 310

Posted by Soulskill from the does-soda-count-as-a-tool dept.
An anonymous reader writes "I am a free software developer; I maintain one relatively simple project written in C, targeted at end users, but I feel that I could contribute something more to the FLOSS community than my project. Instead of focusing on another project targeted at end users, I thought that I could spend my time working on something FLOSS developers need ('Developers, developers, developers, developers!'). The question is: what more do FLOSS developers need from existing development tools? What would attract new developers to existing FLOSS development tools? Which existing development tools need more attention? I can contribute code in C, Python and bash, but I can also write documentation, do testing and translate to my native language. Any hints?"

Comment Re:How do we know it's not already in use? (Score 1) 393

by bdrewery (#30834456) Attached to: Newly-Found Windows Bug Affects All Versions Since NT
It's a pretty common vulnerability. Bugs like this occurred in Linux recently, as well as FreeBSD (completely different kernel code bases obviously). Some things like DOS emulation require mapping at 0, but in most cases this is unnecessary. Both Linux and FreeBSD disallow mapping at address 0 now. OpenBSD has disallowed this by default of course for quite some time.
Linux

Kernel Contributor Corbet Says Linux Community Is 'Intimidating' 177

Posted by Soulskill from the what-are-you-looking-at dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Key Linux kernel contributor Jonathan Corbet has admitted the developer community can be intimidating and hard to break into. He highlighted the issue during his Linux.conf.au presentation on the Linux kernel. Corbet expressed concern about the exclusivity of the kernel community, but says it's doing well regardless. He said in a period of just over a year, 55,000 individual changes from 2,700 developers (representing 370 employers) were made to the kernel, equaling 2.8 million lines of code. Corbet called the process 'alive and active.'"
Privacy

Blizzard Adds Timestamps To WoW Armory 318

Posted by Soulskill from the hope-your-boss-doesn't-know-your-character-name dept.
Kharny writes "In a move that could cause serious privacy problems for players of World of Warcraft, Blizzard has added timestamps and an RSS feed to the game's online armory site. This new feature will mean that anyone can follow 'real-time' developments in a World of Warcraft character, which display the exact time and date, so that others can see that person's playing habits. Many players have already complained about the fact that there is no opt-out setting, and this opens very big possibilities for online stalking."
Microsoft

Microsoft Bots Effectively DDoSing Perl CPAN Testers 332

Posted by timothy from the stuck-in-a-rut dept.
at_slashdot writes "The Perl CPAN Testers have been suffering issues accessing their sites, databases and mirrors. According to a posting on the CPAN Testers' blog, the CPAN Testers' server has been being aggressively scanned by '20-30 bots every few seconds' in what they call 'a dedicated denial of service attack'; these bots 'completely ignore the rules specified in robots.txt.'" From the Heise story linked above: "The bots were identified by their IP addresses, including 65.55.207.x, 65.55.107.x and 65.55.106.x, as coming from Microsoft."
Communications

Police In Britain Arrest Man For Bomb-Threat Joke On Twitter 577

Posted by timothy from the credibility-gap-looms dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A British man was arrested under anti-terrorism legislation for making a bomb joke on Twitter. Paul Chambers, 26, was arrested under the provisions of the Terrorism Act (2006). His crime? Frustrated at grounded flights over inclement weather, he made a joke bomb threat on the social networking site Twitter."
Movies

James Cameron On How Avatar Technology Could Keep Actors Young 404

Posted by Soulskill from the hollywood-can't-wait-to-abuse-this dept.
Suki I writes "An article at EW discusses another use for Avatar's sophisticated motion-capture technology: 'Sure, it's terrific for turning human actors into big blue alien Na'vis. But the photorealistic CGI technology James Cameron perfected for Avatar could easily be used for other, even more mind-blowing purposes — like, say, bringing Humphrey Bogart back to life, or making Clint Eastwood look 35 again. "How about another Dirty Harry movie where Clint looks the way he looked in 1975?" Cameron suggests. "Or a James Bond movie where Sean Connery looks the way he did in Doctor No? How cool would that be?"' The article goes on to quote Cameron as saying you would still need actors to play the roles, and that an ethical line needs to be drawn somewhere."
Government

Another Attack, On Law Firm Suing China 131

Posted by timothy from the in-for-a-penny-in-for-a-pounding dept.
An anonymous reader writes "In the wake of the attack on Google, another company claims to be the victim of a similar attack. Gipson Hoffman & Pancione is a Los Angeles law firm whose client, CYBERsitter, is suing the government of China and several Chinese companies for using their intellectual property in the infamous Green Dam censorship filter. According to the firm, they have been targeted by a spear phishing attack from China." Relatedly, smartaleckkill writes with news that the US state department is to formally protest to China over the alleged cyber-attacks on Google, "likely early next week."
Government

RIAA Wants Limits On Net Neutrality So ISPs Can Police File Sharing 173

Posted by Soulskill from the at-least-they're-consistent dept.
Presto Vivace writes "Reporting for Computer World, Grant Gross writes that the RIAA is asking the FCC not to make the net neutrality rules so strict that they 'would limit broadband providers' [flexibility] to "address" illegal online file sharing.' It seems the RIAA is unclear on the concept of the Fourth Amendment. 'The FCC should not only avoid rules prohibiting ISPs from blocking illegal file trading, but it should actively encourage ISPs to do so, the RIAA said. ... Other groups called on the FCC to stay out of the copyright enforcement business. If ISPs are required to check for copyright infringement, they could interfere with legal online activities, said six digital rights and business groups, including Public Knowledge, the Consumer Electronics Association and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.'"
Earth

Protecting At-Risk Cities From Rising Seas 243

Posted by Soulskill from the steal-moses'-superpowers dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "BBC reports that with about 10 million people in England and Wales living in flood risk areas, rising sea levels and more storms could mean that parts of at-risk cities will need to be surrendered to protect homes and businesses, and that 'radical thinking' is needed to develop sea defenses that can cope with the future threats. 'If we act now, we can adapt in such a way that will prevent mass disruption and allow coastal communities to continue to prosper,' says Ruth Reed, President of the Royal Institute of British Architects. 'But the key word is "now."' Changing sea levels is not a new phenomenon. In the Netherlands, for example, with 40% of its surface under sea level, water management and water defense have been practiced since time immemorial; creating mounds and dykes, windmills, canals with locks and sluices, the Delta Works and the Afsluitdijk, all to keep the water out. Similar solutions to protect British cities are based on three themes (PDF): moving 'critical infrastructure' and housing to safer ground, allowing the water into parts of the city; building city-wide sea defenses to ensure water does not enter the existing urban area; and extending the existing coastline and building out onto the water (using stilts, floating structures and/or land reclamation)."

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