An anonymous reader writes: The North Korean regime lost contact with one of its submarines earlier this week, three U.S. officials familiar with the latest information told CNN. According to CNN, the U.S. military had been observing the submarine operate off North Korea's east coast when the vessel stopped, and U.S. spy satellites, aircraft and ships have been secretly watching for days as the North Korean navy searched for the missing sub. The U.S. is unsure if the missing vessel is adrift under the sea or whether it has sunk, the officials said, but believes it suffered some type of failure during an exercise. This comes after North Korea has threatened to use nuclear weapons at any time and turn its military posture to "pre-emptive attack" mode.

jones_supa writes: The hotel in which Matthew Garrett was staying at, had decided that light switches are unfashionable and replaced them with a series of Android tablets. In his tour to the system, one was quickly met with a glitch message "UK_bathroom isn't responding." Anyway, two of the tablets had convenient-looking ethernet cables plugged into the wall, so MacGyver began hacking. He managed to borrow a couple of USB ethernet adapters, set up a transparent bridge and then stick his laptop between the tablet and the wall. Tcpdump showed traffic, and Wireshark revealed that it was Modbus over TCP. Modbus is a pretty trivial protocol, and does not implement authentication. The Pymodbus tool could be used to control lights, turn the TV on/off, and even close and open the curtains. Then he noticed something. His room number was 714. The IP address he was communicating with was 172.16.207.14. They wouldn't, would they? Indeed, he could access the control systems on every floor and query other rooms to figure out whether the lights were on or not, which strongly implies that he could control them as well.

SonicSpike writes: Marco Rubio wants Congress to permanently extend the authorities governing several of the National Security Agency's controversial spying programs, including its mass surveillance of domestic phone records. The Florida Republican and 2016 presidential hopeful penned an op-ed on Tuesday condemning President Obama's counterterrorism policies and warning that the U.S. has not learned the "fundamental lessons of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001." Rubio called on Congress to permanently reauthorize core provisions of the post-9/11 USA Patriot Act, which are due to sunset on June 1 of this year and provide the intelligence community with much of its surveillance power. "This year, a new Republican majority in both houses of Congress will have to extend current authorities under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and I urge my colleagues to consider a permanent extension of the counterterrorism tools our intelligence community relies on to keep the American people safe," Rubio wrote in a Fox News op-ed.

An anonymous reader writes: Malwarebytes has caught one of Symantec's resellers running a tech support scam that was scaring users into thinking they were infected with malware and then graciously offering to sell Symantec's security software at inflated rates. Malwarebytes played along with their scam and found out the company behind it was Silurian Tech Support, located somewhere in North India. Symantec told El Reg that it terminated the reseller's contract and will work with law enforcement to defend its brand and intellectual property.

An anonymous reader writes: R3CEV, a startup dedicated to bringing blockchain technology to traditional finance, yesterday ran a successful test of transactions between 11 of the world's largest financial institutions. This represents a big step forward in bringing blockchain, the foundation for Bitcoin, to traditional banking. The test, which connected the banks on a private 'distributed ledger' using Microsoft's cloud-based Azure service, allowed participants to execute sample financial transactions instantly, globally, and without a centralized third-party clearing house. Participants included Barclays, BMO Financial, Credit Suisse, HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland, TD Bank, UBS, and UniCredit among other leading financial groups.

Koreantoast writes: It's no secret that governments across the globe have been taking advantage of new technologies to create stronger surveillance systems on citizens. While many have focused on the actions of intelligence agencies, local police departments continue to create more sophisticated systems as well. A recent article highlights one new system deployed by the Fresno, California police department, Intrado's Beware. The system scours police data, public records, social media, and public Internet data to provide a "threat level" of a potential suspect or residency. The software is part of a broader trend of military counterinsurgency tools and algorithms being repurposed for civil use. While these tools can help police manage actively dangerous situations, providing valuable intel when responding to calls, the analysis also raises serious civil liberties questions both in privacy (where the data comes from) and accuracy (is the data valid, was the analysis done correctly). Also worrying are the long term ramifications to such technologies: there has already been some speculation about "citizen scores," could a criminal threat score be something similar? At very least, as Matt Cagle of the ACLU noted, "there needs to be a meaningful debate... there needs to be safeguards and oversight."

An anonymous reader writes: Cloud-based file hosting giant Dropbox has patented a new synchronization technology which could allow users to use a peer-to-peer network to securely share and collaborate on documents without the need to store them in the company's centralized servers. The patent application details how the system could allow back up to a range of media to multiple devices simultaneously, cutting the need for users to constantly upload and download from remote hardware. Dropbox argues that the development of peer-to-peer distributed sharing could boost content download speeds, eliminating bottlenecks, therefore increasing the speed at which content can be shared among individuals.

HughPickens.com writes: CBS reports that hot on the heels of its campaign against ISIS, the shadowy hackers' collective known as Anonymous is going after a new target: Donald Trump. The latest Anonymous operation — #OpTrump — was announced in a YouTube video featuring a masked activist claiming to speak for the group. In a computer-generated voice, he takes aim at Trump's proposed ban on Muslims entering the United States, claiming "This is what ISIS wants." He goes on to say that "the more the United States appears to be targeting Muslims, not just radical Muslims," the more ISIS will be able to recruit sympathizers. The video concludes with Anonymous' now-familiar threat: "You have been warned, Mr. Donald Trump. We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. Expect us."

After a video message was posted, the website of Trump Tower in New York City went down for at least an hour. However the campaign has yet to have much success. Despite the group's apparent distributed-denial-of-service attack, which aimed to take down a web server by flooding it with fake traffic, the Trump Tower website was up and running by 11 a.m. and the alleged damage might not have been apparent, to visitors to the page, because a cached version of Trump's site was programmed to hold the fort in the event of an attack or maintenance issues.

merbs writes: In Papua New Guinea, one well-financed, first-mover company is about to pioneer deep sea mining. And that will mean dispatching a fleet of giant remote-operated robotic miners 5,000 feet below the surface to harvest the riches scattered across ocean floor. These mammoth underwater vehicles look like they've been hauled off the set of a sci-fi film—think Avatar meets The Abyss. And they'll be dredging up copper, gold, and other valuable minerals, far beneath the gaze of human eyes.

An anonymous reader writes: Telsa Motors has published a blog post saying that a pair of journalists from the Reno Gazette Journal trespassed on the grounds of the company's new Gigafactory and attacked security workers with their vehicle when confronted. "As the Tesla employee attempted to record the license plate number on the rear bumper, the driver put it in reverse and accelerated into the Tesla employee, knocking him over, causing him to sustain a blow to the left hip, an approximate 2" bleeding laceration to his right forearm, a 3" bleeding laceration to his upper arm, and scrapes on both palms." Officials from the Sheriff's Department arrived shortly after this happened and arrested one of the trespassers for felony assault. The RGJ has a story about the altercation as well, confirming there was an altercation, but also noting, "The newspaper's vehicle was damaged in the altercation. A rock had been used to shatter the driver's-side window and the driver's-side seat belt had been cut in half."

An anonymous reader writes: Over the past few years, Motorola has emerged as one of the best manufacturers for low-to-mid-range Android phones. Unlike many other major manufacturers, they keep their version of Android close to stock in order to keep OS updates flowing more easily. When they began marketing the Moto E 2015, updates were one of the features they trumpeted the loudest. But after the company published a list of devices that will continue to get updates, Android Police found the Moto E to be conspicuously absent. The phone launched on February 25, a mere 219 days ago. According to an official Motorola marketing video from launch day, "...we won't forget about you, and we'll make sure your Moto E stays up to date after you buy it."

alphadogg writes: In this day of smartphones, cell towers and wearables, the American Museum of Telephony in the Mountain Ranch community of northern California preserved artifacts of a much different world of communications. But the museum, along with surrounding residences, burnt to the ground late last week during the raging Butte Fire and it's assumed that the collection is largely lost. The operator is vowing to rebuild.