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Submission + - Iranian Hackers Compromised Airlines, Critical Infrastructure Companies (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: For the past two years, a team of Iranian hackers has compromised computers and networks belonging to over 50 organizations in 16 countries, including airlines, defense contractors, universities, military installations, hospitals, airports, telecommunications firms, government agencies, and energy and gas companies, researchers from IT security firm Cylance said in an extensive report released Tuesday. According to the report, 'ten of these victims are headquartered in the US and include a major airline, a medical university, an energy company specializing in natural gas production, an automobile manufacturer, a large defense contractor, and a major military installation.'

Submission + - You're Doing it All Wrong - Solar Panels Should Face West Not South

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: In the US, a new solar project is installed every 3.2 minutes and the number of cumulative installations now stands at more than 500,000. For years, homeowners who bought solar panels were advised to mount them on the roof facing south to capture the most solar energy over the course of the day. Now Matthew L. Wald writes in the NYT that panels should be pointed south so that peak power comes in the afternoon when the electricity is more valuable. In late afternoon, homeowners are more likely to watch TV, turn on the lights or run the dishwasher. Electricity prices are also higher at that period of peak demand. “The predominance of south-facing panels may reflect a severe misalignment in energy supply and demand,” say the authors of the study, Barry Fischer and Ben Harack. Pointing panels to the west means that in the hour beginning at 5 p.m., they produce 55 percent of their peak output. But point them to the south to maximize total output, and when the electric grid needs it most, they are producing only 15 percent of peak.

While some solar panel owners are paid time-of-use rates and are compensated by the utility in proportion to prices on the wholesale electric grid, many panel owners cannot take advantage of the higher value of electricity at peak hours because they are paid a flat rate, so the payment system creates an incentive for the homeowner to do the wrong thing. The California Energy Commission recently announced a bonus of up to $500 for new installations that point west. "We are hoping to squeeze more energy out of the afternoon daylight hours when electricity demand is highest," says David Hochschild, lead commissioner for the agency’s renewable energy division, which will be administering the program. "By encouraging west-facing solar systems, we can better match our renewable supply with energy demand."

Submission + - News of Google breakup by EU is false, created by lobbyists (linuxveda.com)

Submitted by sfcrazy
sfcrazy writes: Past few weeks were abuzz with stories that the EU parliament is planning to break-up Google to severe its search from products. The story sent a wave of chill across the pond and worried us of Europe’s decision, which appear to make no sense at all. It turns out that the story was a spin created by the anti-Google lobby to spread FUD against the company and the EU. We are not certain who are the lead actors but there are some companies who invest quite a lot in creating FUD against competitors.

Submission + - Aviation Week Opinion Piece Skeptical of Skunk Work's Fusion Project (aviationweek.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The venerable aerospace magazine Aviation Week & Space Technology (AW&ST Dec. 1) published an opinion piece expressing serious skepticism about the Skunk Works Fusion Project and fusion power in general. Tagline to article was "Unfortunately, fusion as and energy source in the next 50 years is about as likely Star Trek transporters in the same time frame". Early comments to the piece from the AW&ST community are particularly interesting given that the AW&ST readership skews very technical. Will be interesting to see if a serious dialog about fusion results or merely collapse into flamewar.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Non-coders, why aren't you contributing to open source? 4

Submitted by Jason Baker
Jason Baker writes: Most everyone is using an open source tool somewhere in their workflow, but relatively few are contributing back their time to sustaining the projects they use. But these days, there are plenty of ways to contribute to an open source project without submitting code. Projects like OpenHatch will even help you match your skill set to a project in need. So what's holding you back? Time? Lack of interest? Difficulty getting started?

Submission + - South Korea Bans Selfie-stick Sales

Submitted by Rambo Tribble
Rambo Tribble writes: South Korea has instituted large fines for selling unregistered "selfie-sticks". The problem arises because many of the devices are using Bluetooth radio spectrum, and must be certified to do so legally. Expressing doubts that the regulations and stiff fines will influence sales, one official said of them, "It's not going to affect anything in any meaningful way, but it is nonetheless a telecommunication device subject to regulation, and that means we are obligated to crack down on uncertified ones,"

Submission + - Cybersecurity Concept For Unmanned Systems

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science Department of Systems and Information Engineering announced the success of an early-stage demonstration to improve defenses for unmanned aerial vehicles against cyber attacks. U.Va.’s System-Aware Cybersecurity concept and Secure Sentinel technology were tested in collaboration with Georgia Tech Research Institute through a series of live flight cyber-attack scenarios. Research focuses on providing additional security by employing an on-board secure monitoring subsystem to detect illogical behaviors relative to the expected profile of a system’s performance. Detections can serve to initiate automated recovery actions and to alert operators of the attack.

Submission + - How Intel and Micron May Finally Kill the Hard Disk Drive (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: For too long, it looked like SSD capacity would always lag well behind hard disk drives, which were pushing into the 6TB and 8TB territory while SSDs were primarily 256GB to 512GB. That seems to be ending. In September, Samsung announced a 3.2TB SSD drive. And during an investor webcast last week, Intel announced it will begin offering 3D NAND drives in the second half of next year as part of its joint flash venture with Micron. Meanwhile, hard drive technology has hit the wall in many ways. They can't really spin the drives faster than 7,200 RPM without increasing heat and the rate of failure. All hard drives have now is the capacity argument; speed is all gone. Oh, and price. We'll have to wait and see on that.

Submission + - Federal Judge: U.S. Workers Can Sue Over Optional Practical Training (OPT) (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by Jim_Austin
Jim_Austin writes: A U.S. Federal judge has allowed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security by an organization representing three U.S. tech workers who maintain they could not find jobs because of the Bush-era extension of the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program (for foreign students studying in the United States) from 12 to 29 months. Some jobs are advertised as OPT positions, leading to charges that they discriminate against American workers. President Obama's recent executive action includes an unspecified extension and expansion of the OPT program, so it, too, could be affected by the judges ruling and the lawsuit.

Submission + - The EU has a plan to break up Google (theverge.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Google has been the target of repeated anti-trust scrutiny in Europe over the last decade. Today Financial Times is reporting that the European parliament is on the verge of taking even more drastic steps, preparing a plan that would call for the break up of the search giant, specifically the "unbundling [of] search engines from other commercial services."

Submission + - Google Break-up Plan Emerges From Brussels

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: The European parliament is poised to call for a break-up of Google, in one of the most brazen assaults so far on the technology group's power. The gambit increases the political pressure on the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, to take a tougher line on Google, either in its antitrust investigation into the company or through the introduction of laws to curb its reach. A draft motion seen by the Financial Times says that "unbundling [of] search engines from other commercial services" should be considered as a potential solution to Google's dominance. It has the backing of the parliament's two main political blocs, the European People's Party and the Socialists.

Submission + - VW Bus Powered By Attached Solar Panels--Proof of Concept for Solar Vehicles (xconomy.com)

Submitted by mlamonica
mlamonica writes: When I heard the CTO of healthcare startup Vecna built a 1966 Volkswagen bus with solar panels on the roof, I thought it would make for a fun story about his side project. But I found that his work is much more: it's a proof of concept that solar-powered cars--that don't require plugging in to charge--can work in certain applications. One key to engineering such a vehicle is having it run directly from the panels, bypassing battery charging and the associated losses as much as possible. Story has photos of the bus.

Submission + - The Russian Army's Secret Weapon: Enter the Armata Program (nationalinterest.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: America's tanks and armored vehicles were designed almost 40 years ago. There is very little upgrade capability. Russia, on the other hand, seems to be readying a whole new generation of tanks and armored vehicles that could over some revolutionary design changes:

"The main battle-tank variant will be armed with a 125-mm cannon—which has been the standard on Soviet-built hardware in the 1960s—but the weapon will be mounted on an unmanned turret. The crew will be housed in a separate armored compartment—which is a unique configuration for any modern main battle tank.

Some Russian media reports have suggested that the Armata’s armor is specifically being tailored to operate well in the Arctic Circle, an area of the world that is becoming increasingly important for that country’s embattled economy.

Further, in a marked departure from the usual Soviet practice, the Armata program appears to place a far higher priority on crew survivability than any previous Soviet or Russian tank. That could be because Russia is trying to transition from a Soviet-era, conscription-based force to a professional army where individual soldiers are not considered expendable."

Submission + - Thousands of Compromised Joomla, WordPress Plugins and Themes Used in Attack

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: Researchers have discovered a group of attackers who have published a variety of compromised WordPress themes and plug-ins on legitimate-looking sites, tricking developers into downloading and installing them on their own sites. The components then give the attackers remote control of the compromised sites and researchers say the attack may have been ongoing since September 2013.

CryptoPHP is the name the researchers have given to the malware that’s delivered with the compromised components, and the backdoor has a number of capabilities. It carries with it several hardcoded domains for command-and-control communications and uses RSA encryption to protect its communications with the C2 servers. Some versions also have a backup ability to communicate over email if the C2 domains are taken down. The PHPCrypto malware can update itself, inject content into the compromised sites it sits on and perform several other functions.

But the main purpose of the malware is to conduct blackhat SEO operations. The goal of these campaigns is to jack up the rank of sites controlled by the attackers, or their customers, which helps them look legitimate. This is done sometimes for gambling sites or similar sites and can also be tied to other scams.

The researchers have traced the attack to an IP address in Moldova, and the C2 servers are located in the Netherlands, Germany, Poland and the United States. Fox-IT said that they have identified thousands of plug-ins that have been backdoored, including both WordPress and Joomla plug-ins and themes and Drupal themes.

Submission + - In major shift, Firefox to use Yahoo search by default in US (cnet.com)

Submitted by mpicpp
mpicpp writes: Google's 10-year run as Firefox's default search engine is over. Yahoo wants more search traffic, and a deal with Mozilla will bring it.

In a major departure for both Mozilla and Yahoo, Firefox's default search engine is switching from Google to Yahoo in the United States.

"I'm thrilled to announce that we've entered into a five-year partnership with Mozilla to make Yahoo the default search experience on Firefox across mobile and desktop," Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer said in a blog post Wednesday. "This is the most significant partnership for Yahoo in five years."

The change will come to Firefox users in the US in December, and later Yahoo will bring that new "clean, modern and immersive search experience" to all Yahoo search users. In another part of the deal, Yahoo will support the Do Not Track technology for Firefox users, meaning that it will respect users' preferences not to be tracked for advertising purposes.

With millions of users who perform about 100 billion searches a year, Firefox is a major source of the search traffic that's Google's bread and butter. Some of those searches produce search ads, and Mozilla has been funded primarily from a portion of that revenue that Google shares. In 2012, the most recent year for which figures are available, that search revenue brought in the lion's share of Mozilla's $311 million in revenue.

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