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Submission + - CNN Reports CurrentC Just Got Hacked (cnn.com)

Submitted by NeverVotedBush
NeverVotedBush writes: On Wednesday, those taking part in the CurrentC pilot program received a warning from the consortium of anti-credit-card retailers called MCX, or Merchant Consumer Exchange: The program was hacked in the last 36 hours, and criminals managed to grab the email addresses of anyone who signed up for the program. MCX confirmed the hack, adding what's become a go-to line for any company that loses your data: "We take the security of our users' information extremely seriously."

Submission + - If Ebola's a problem here, just imagine it in India (computerworld.com)

Submitted by dcblogs
dcblogs writes: As the U.S. has discovered, it just takes a few cases of Ebola to turn things upside down. Months into the outbreak in West Africa, federal and state officials are still fighting over quarantine policies and travel bans, and reacting in disruptive fashion to the threat. But an Ebola outbreak in India, for instance, could create problems in the U.S. because of its role as a major IT services provider. "Ebola cases showing up in urban India area would be a nightmare," said Andrew Schroeder, director of research and analysis for Direct Relief, a nonprofit that provides medical assistance to areas in need of help. Dense populations, living in slums with poor sanitation and inadequate medical help, would complicate an Ebola fight. Everest Group, an outsourcing research firm said, that in India, IT organizations often make bus transportation available to team members, and it’s easy to imagine an Ebola-related scenario in which bus transportation is shut down. Working from home may not be an option, since lack of connectivity and security concerns "often make working remotely from homes not possible," said Marvin Newell, a partner at Everest. Craig Wright, a partner at outsourcing consulting firm Pace Harmon, said that a valid response to any such Ebola outbreak would be similar to a tsunami, "where access to facilities and resources within a region may be denied for an extended period of time."

Submission + - NATO Tracks Large-Scale Russia Air Activity in Europe (wsj.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization said four groups of Russian military aircraft conducted significant aerial maneuvers this week around Europe, an unusually high level of activity that the alliance said could have endangered passing civilian flights.

Submission + - Security Companies Team Up, Take Down Chinese Hacking Group (darkreading.com)

Submitted by daten
daten writes: A coalition of security companies has hit a sophisticated hacking group in China with a heavy blow. The effort is detailed in a report released today by Novetta. The coalition, which calls itself Operation SMN, detected and cleaned up malicious code on 43,000 computers worldwide that were targeted by Axiom, an incredibly sophisticated organization that has been stealing intellectual property for more than six years. The group united as part of Microsoft's Coordinated Malware Eradication (CME) campaign against Hikit (a.k.a. Hikiti), the custom malware often used by Axiom to burrow into organizations, exfiltrate data, and evade detection, sometimes for years.

Submission + - Scientists grow tiny human stomachs in lab dishes (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Because the digestive systems of mice, flies, and other model organisms differ from those of humans, researchers have been hard-pressed to find a way to study the development of human gut maladies such as peptic ulcer disease. So several groups have turned to pluripotent stem cells—cells derived from human embryos or reprogrammed adult cells that can turn into any cell type in the body—to try to grow digestive organs in the lab. Last week, one group of researchers announced the creation of a lab-grown small intestine from stem cells. Today, a different team reports that they’ve perfected the recipe of molecules needed to coax both types of stem cells to grow into small spheres that, despite their size, have all the properties of a functional stomach. When the researchers exposed the ministomachs to the bacterium Helicobacter pylori, infections of which are blamed for many stomach ulcers and cancers, they saw the same molecular and cellular changes already known to occur in life-size stomachs.

Submission + - Security vendor coalition cleans 43K malware infections used for cyberespionage (computerworld.com)

Submitted by daten
daten writes: A coalition of security vendors has disrupted the activities of a sophisticated group of attackers tied to China that, over the past six years, infiltrated the computers of many Fortune 500 companies, journalists, environmental groups, software companies, academic institutions, pro-democracy groups and government agencies around the world. So far the vendors' disruptive action called Operation SMN resulted in the removal of 43,000 instances of malicious tools installed by the Axiom attackers on compromised computers, according to a full report published Monday by Novetta, the data analytics firm that led the coalition.

Submission + - Federal agents impersonated computer technicians to collect evidence (foxnews.com) 1

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Federal agents turned off Internet access to three luxury villas at a Las Vegas hotel then impersonated repair technicians to surreptitiously get inside and collect evidence in an investigation of online sports betting, according to defense lawyers challenging the practice.

The FBI employed the ruse against the recommendation of an assistant U.S. attorney.

Submission + - Systemd, but no journald, in new SUSE release (itwire.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: SUSE Linux has released version 12 of its enterprise operating system. Despite choosing to switch to systemd as the default init system, the company has opted to stick with rsyslog over journald.

Submission + - Colorado company takes down "next-gen" 911 service in seven states for six hours

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Apparently, the entire 911 infrastructure in the state of Washington (and a few other regions) has been centralized by Intrado (a corporation in Longmont, CO) in such a way that all of the emergency calls made in the state route, as VoIP traffic, through just two call routing hubs called "ECMC" — one in Englewood, CO and the other in Miami, FL. On April 10th, 2014, the Intrado system suffered a software issue that apparently caused a 6-hour long outage in those areas. The 30-page report just issued by the FCC starts out with this paragraph:

Just before midnight on Wednesday, April 9, 2014, Pacific Daylight Time (PDT) a 911 call-routing facility in Englewood, Colorado, stopped directing emergency calls to eighty-one 911 call centers (Public Safety Answering Points or PSAPs) in seven states – California, Florida, Minnesota, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Washington. The outage was caused by a software coding error in the Colorado facility, and resulted in a loss of 911 service for more than 11 million people for up to six hours. Over 6,600 calls to 911 never reached a PSAP. Although, fortunately, it appears that no one died as a result, the incident – and the flaws it revealed – is simply unacceptable. Americans rely on 911 as a reliable way to communicate in an emergency, and lapses like this cannot be permitted.

According to the FCC report, this software issue was nothing more than a counter variable that reached a maximum value, and wasn't noticed for several hours due to various operational challenges.

Submission + - Ubuntu 14.10 Released (ubuntu.com)

Submitted by linuxscreenshot
linuxscreenshot writes: Ubuntu 14.10, the latest desktop release is today available for download from Canonical. This release focuses on the developer experience, overall quality, and brings a number of important features and security enhancements. The Ubuntu desktop continues to be intuitive, easy to use and reliable for users all over the world.

Screenshots: http://www.linuxscreenshots.or...

Feed Google News Sci Tech: Amazon opens possibly NSA-proof German Cloud - Register (google.com)

From feed by feedfeeder

New York Times
Amazon opens possibly NSA-proof German Cloud
Register
Amazon's European customers wary of US data snoops can now build scalable clouds on AWS and stay entirely on their home continent. The giant today announced the opening of its brand-new data centre in Frankfurt, Germany. The data centre – or "region"...
Amazon Web Services Cloud Computing Platform Now Available to Customers ... MarketWatch
Amazon Cloud Service Courts Germany With New Data CenterBloomberg
Amazon Web Services to Open German CenterNew York Times (blog)
TechCrunch (blog)-WallStreet.org-PR Newswire (press release)
all 49 news articles

Submission + - Radical 4-in-1 Piston Engine Promises Hybrid-Like Efficiency (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: One of the many challenges facing engine designers is the need to increase power output while simultaneously retaining or improving efficiency. Although a four-cylinder engine is still an engineering marvel, there remain many friction points that reduce energy output. Namikoshi Electronics of Japan believes its unorthodox 4-in-1 concept engine could provide an alternative powerplant to the automobile industry.

Submission + - How the Big Bang's alternatives died

Submitted by StartsWithABang
StartsWithABang writes: It’s such a part of our cosmic and scientific history, that it’s difficult to remember that it’s only been for the past 50 years that the Big Bang has been the leading theory-and-model that describes our Universe. Ever since the 1920s, when Edwin Hubble discovered the apparent expansion of our Universe, we’ve recognized that it’s a much bigger place than simply what’s in the Milky Way. But the Big Bang was hardly the only game in town. Yet the discovery of not only the Cosmic Microwave Background, but the detailed measurement of its temperature and spectrum, was able to rule out every single alternative as a non-viable model.

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