Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - Compromised Electronic Health Records May Haunt You Forever (helpnetsecurity.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Healthcare systems are relentlessly and incessantly attacked by different types of attackers. If our electronic health records (EHRs) get compromised just once, and sold repeatedly all over the Dark Web, we’ll likely have problems for the rest of our lives. Information that is contained in those records can be used for many different types of fraud and attacks, such as medical identity theft, submission of false claims, acquisition of controlled and prescription substances, and obtainment of medical devices. For example, a thief may use a stolen medical identity so that the doesn’t have to pay for care at a hospital, but this information can be added to the record, and may turn out to interfere severely with future medical care of the person whose medical identity has been stolen.

Submission + - University of California's outsourcing is wrong, says U.S. lawmaker (computerworld.com)

Submitted by dcblogs
dcblogs writes: A decision by the University of California to lay off IT employees and send their jobs overseas is under fire from U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif) and the IEEE-USA. "How are they [the university] going to tell students to go into STEM fields when they are doing as much as they can to do a number on the engineers in their employment?" said U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif). Peter Eckstein, the president of the IEEE-USA, said what the university is doing "is just one more sad example of corporations, a major university system in this case, importing non-Americans to eliminate American IT jobs." The university recently informed about 80 IT workers at its San Francisco campus, including contract employees and vendor contractors, that it hired India-based HCL, under a $50 million contract, to manage infrastructure and networking-related services. The affected employees will leave their jobs in February, after they train their contractor replacements.

Submission + - iPhones Are Now Faster than Macs (macobserver.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It’s official—well at least according to reported Geekbench scores spotted in the wild! iPhones are now faster than Macs! The latest, and most recently updated, 2016 12” MacBook is slower than the iPhone 7 Plus.

Submission + - Slashdot ads compromised (imgur.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Slashdot ad network is potentially spreading malware through malicious redirects as part of what's at the very least a phishing campaign and at worst a drive-by malware delivery network.

This was reproduced on a fresh, fully patched device.

Submission + - New OS X Backdoor Emerges With Tor C&C

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: Researchers have discovered a new backdoor for Mac OS X that gives attackers essentially complete control over an infected machine. The malware is disguised as a common file converter utility and uses Tor for some communication functions.

Known as Eleanor, the backdoor has a wide range of functionality, including the ability for the attacker to remotely control the infected machine, steal data, take pictures from the machine’s camera, and take many other actions. The infection routine starts when the user downloads and runs the malicious app, called EasyDoc Converter, which looks like a drag-and-drop conversion utility. Once on a new machine, the app executes a script that serves as an installer for the rest of the malware’s functionality, including a Tor component, a Web service agent, and a Pastebin agent.

Submission + - Hacked Smart Watch Can Reveal the Wearer's ATM Pin (ieee.org)

Submitted by the_newsbeagle
the_newsbeagle writes: By gaining access to the sensors in someone's smart watch, hackers could track the person's hand movements at an ATM and figure out his/her pin. The hacker needn't be anywhere near the ATM; data can be lifted from the smart watch by either a discreet wireless sniffer or by malware on the watch that sends info to a server. This is hardly the first demonstration of the security flaws in smart watches. Last year, a research group showed that a watch's sensors can reveal keystrokes on a computer keyboard.

Submission + - Architecture/engineering 5th highest suicide rate, computers/tech 8th highest (cdc.gov)

Submitted by afeeney
afeeney writes: The CDC reported on the suicide rates from 2012, across 17 of the United States. The highest rates are in farming, fishing, and forestry, the lowest in education, training, and library. Architects and engineers had the 5th highest rate, and computers and technology had the 8th highest. Male engineers were far more likely to kill themselves (32.8 suicides per 100,000) than females (12.5).

Do you perceive this as based on the characteristics of the population (including the fact that jobs focused on precision might make suicide attempts more successful, higher proportion of males) or the characteristics of the jobs (stress, complexity)?

If you've ever been there or know somebody who has, what helped?

Help is available at the National Suicide Prevention Hotline if you or somebody you care about is considering suicide.

Submission + - New Device Sold on the Dark Web Can Clone Up to 15 Contactless Cards per Second (softpedia.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A criminal group going under the name of The CC Buddies is selling a hi-tech device on the Dark Web that's capable of copying details from contactless debit cards if held as close as eight centimeters away from a victim's card. The device, named Contactless Infusion X5, is extremely dangerous because it can copy up to 15 bank cards per second, something that may come in hand if a crook is going through a crowd at a concert or through a crowded subway cart. The device can collect data such as the card's number and expiration date. If the debit card's RFID chip stores information such as the card holder’s name, home address, and a mini statement, X5 can steal that data as well. The X5 is sold on the Dark Web for only 1.2 Bitcoin (~$825), and its creators say that each buyer will receive the X5 device, a USB cable for charging and data transfers, and 20 blank cards.

Submission + - Hot Spring Death at Yellowstone Highlights Tourists Breaking the Rules

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: AP reports that the grisly death of Colin Nathaniel Scott who left a boardwalk and fell into a high-temperature, acidic spring in Yellowstone National Park offers a sobering reminder that visitors need to follow park rules. Scott and his sister had traveled about 225 yards off the boardwalk when he slipped and fell into the hot spring in the Norris Geyser Basin. Officials said the two had left the boardwalk to get closer to some of the basin's thermal features. After Scott's sister reported the fall, rangers navigated over the highly fragile crust of the geyser basin to try to recover his body but halted the effort "due to the extreme nature and futility of it all," says Charissa Reid. The death occurred in one of the hottest and most volatile areas of Yellowstone, where boiling water flows just beneath a thin rock crust and water temperatures there can reach 199 degrees, the boiling point for water at the park's high elevation. "It's sort of dumb, if I could be so blunt, to walk off the boardwalks not knowing what you're doing," says geologist Kenneth Sims. "They're scofflaws, essentially, who look around and then head off the boardwalk." At least 22 people are known to have died from hot spring-related injuries in and around Yellowstone since 1890, park officials say. "This tragic event must remind all of us to follow the regulations and stay on boardwalks," says Yellowstone Supt. Dan Wenk. Scott's body will not be recovered. “Recovery efforts have been terminated in part because we have not been able to locate any remains, unfortunately,” says Morgan Warthin.

Submission + - Saudi Arabia Has Funded 20% Of Hillary's Campaign, Saudi Crown Prince claims (middleeasteye.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In what may be the pinnacle of hypocrisy, moments ago Hillary Clinton, while speaking live on national security and addressing the Orlando shooting took some time from her constant bashing of the Second Amendment and calling for a ban on assault rifles, to say some less than kind words about Saudi Arabia whom it accused of supporting radical organizations. This is what she said:

The third area that demands attention is preventing radicalization and countering efforts by ISIS and other international terrorist networks to recruit in the United States and Europe. For starters, it is long past time for the Saudis, the Qataris and the Kuwaitis and others to stop their citizens from funding extremist organizations. And they should stop supporting radical schools and mosques around the world that have set too many young people on a path towards extremism. We also have to use all our capabilities to counter jihadist propaganda online. This is something that I spend a lot of time on at the State Department.

There is nothing wrong with that statement, as it is the whole truth — Saudi Arabia's involvement in supporting terrorism stretches from Sept 11 all the way through to ISIS — however, where there is a big, and potentially law-breaking, problem is what Jordan's official news agency, Petra News Agency, reported on Sunday citing the Saudi crown price, namely that Saudi Arabia is a major funder of Hillary Clinton’s campaign to become the next president of the United States.

As MEE notes, the Petra News Agency published on Sunday what it described as exclusive comments from Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman which included a claim that Riyadh has provided 20 percent of the total funding to the prospective Democratic candidate's campaign.

As a reminder, It is illegal in the United States for foreign countries to try to influence the outcome of elections by funding candidates. That appears not to have stopped the Saudis, however.

“Saudi Arabia always has sponsored both Republican and Democratic Party of America and in America current election also provide with full enthusiasm 20 percent of the cost of Hillary Clinton’s election even though some events in the country don’t have a positive look to support the king of a woman (sic) for presidency,” the report quoted Prince Mohammed as having said.

According to the US Federal Election commission, over the past two years Clinton has raised a little more than $211.8 million. 20% of this sum is $42.4 million.

Submission + - Biggest US coal company funded groups questioning climate change

Submitted by XXongo
XXongo writes: Court documents filed by Peabody Energy, the largest coal mining company in the U.S., reveal that it has been funding at least two dozen groups casting doubt on manmade climate change, according to a story in the Guardian. The documents were revealed during a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by Peabody. The story comes as no surprise to groups involved in studying climate change, who have long asserted that the climate denial movement is primarily funded by the fossil fuel industry. The groups funded “are the heart and soul of climate denial,” Kert Davies of the Climate Investigation Center told the Guardian. “It’s the broadest list I have seen of one company funding so many nodes in the denial machine.”

Slashdot Top Deals

The trouble with computers is that they do what you tell them, not what you want. -- D. Cohen

Close