Fluffeh - Slashdot User

Submission + - Researchers Can Generate RSA SecurID Random Numbers Flawlessly (arstechnica.com)

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Fluffeh

on Monday May 21, 2012 @11:31PM

Fluffeh writes: "A researcher has found and published a way to tune into a RSA SecurID Token. Once a few easy steps are followed anyone can generate the exact numbers shown on the token. The method relies on finding the seed that is used to generate the numbers seemingly randomly, but once known can be used to generate the exact numbers displayed on the targetted Token. The technique, described on Thursday by a senior security analyst at a firm called SensePost, has important implications for the safekeeping of the tokens. An estimated 40 million people use these to access confidential data belonging to government agencies, military contractors, and corporations. Scrutiny of the widely used two-factor authentication system has grown since last year, when RSA revealed that intruders on its networks stole sensitive SecurID information that could be used to reduce its security. Defense contractor Lockheed Martin later confirmed that a separate attack on its systems was aided by the theft of the RSA data."

Submission + - EU offers Google Chance to Settle Prior to Anti-Trust Enquiry (arstechnica.com) 1

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Fluffeh

on Monday May 21, 2012 @07:33PM

Fluffeh writes: "The EU has accused Google of abusing its dominant position in advertising to benefit its own advertising services at the expense of competitors. In a twist however, rather than initiating formal proceedings, the EU has given Google a chance to settle the whole matter without much fuss. They outlined four changes that Google can make that will put it firmly back in the good graces of the EU. Google has been given "a matter of weeks" to propose remedies to the four issues — which all tie in with how search results are displayed, their format and their portability to other platforms. This matter has come before the EU based on complaints by a few small companies and Microsoft."

Submission + - Employee "Disciplined" for Installing BitCoin Software on Federal Webservers (delimiter.com.au) 1

Submitted by

Fluffeh

on Monday May 21, 2012 @02:03AM

Fluffeh writes: "Around a year ago, a person working for the ABC in Australia with the highest levels of access to systems got caught caught with his fingers on the CPU cycles. The staffer had installed BitCoin mining software on the systems used by the Australian broadcaster. While the story made a bit of a splash at the time, it was finally announced today that the staffer hadn't been sacked, but was merely being disciplined by his manager and having his access to systems restricted. All the stories seem a little vague as to what he actually installed however — on one side he installed the software on a public facing websever, and the ABC itself admits "As this software was for a short time embedded within pages on the ABC website, visitors to these pages may have been exposed to the Bitcoin software" and "the Coalition (current Opposition Parties) was planning on quizzing the ABC further about the issue, including filing a request for the code that would have been downloaded to users’ machines", but on the other side there is no mention of the staffer trying to seed a BitCoin mining botnet through the site, just that mining software had been installed."

Submission + - Facial Recognition Cameras Set to San Francisco Clubs and Bars (arstechnica.com)

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Fluffeh

on Sunday May 20, 2012 @07:21PM

Fluffeh writes: "On Friday a company called SceneTap, flipped the on switch enabling cameras installed in around 20 bars to monitor how full the venues are, the mix of men and women, their ages — and to make all this information available live via a iPhone or Android app. Privacy advocates are unimpressed though, as the only hint that people are being monitored is via tiny stickers on the windows. Beyond academics and policy experts, some San Francisco bar owners that originally partnered with SceneTap have said that they’re pulling out and will be taking down the company’s cameras. An increasing number of bars still listed on the SceneTap’s site are now saying that they’re not working with the Chicago startup, including Mr. Smith’s, Southpaw, John Colins, and Bar None."

Submission + - US Justice Dept Defends Right To Record Police (wired.com)

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Fluffeh

on Thursday May 17, 2012 @07:10PM

Fluffeh writes: "In recent times, it seems that many Police Departments believe that recording them doing their work is an act of war with police officers destroying the tapes, phones or cameras while arresting the folks doing it, but in a surprising twist, the US Justice Department has sent letter (PDF) to attorneys for the Baltimore Police Department — who have been quite heavy handed in enforcing their "Don't record me bro!" mantra. The letter contains an awful lot of lawyer babble and lists many court cases and the like, although some sections are surprisingly clear "Policies should prohibit officers from destroying recording devices or cameras and deleting recordings or photographs under any circumstances. In addition to violating the First Amendment, police officers violate the core requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment procedural due process clause when they irrevocably deprived individuals of their recordings without first providing notice and an opportunity to object." There is a lot more and it certainly seems like a firm foothold in the right direction."

Submission + - US is Happy To Pay More for Clean Energy. Well, a Little More (arstechnica.com)

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Fluffeh

on Wednesday May 16, 2012 @06:24PM

Fluffeh writes: "A recent study of over 1,000 folks for a paper published in Nature Climate Change has found that the average US citizen is inclined to pay a premium to ensure that by 2035, 80% of US power comes from clean energy. At random, respondents received one of three "technological treatments" or definitions of clean energy that included renewable energy sources alone, renewable sources plus natural gas, and renewable sources plus nuclear power. Delving into the socioeconomics, researchers found that Republicans, Independents, and respondents with no party allegiance were less likely by 25, 13 and 25 percentage points respectively to support a NCES than respondents that identified themselves as Democrats."

Submission + - Big Media and Big Telcos getting nasty in landmark Australian law Case (delimiter.com.au)

Submitted by

Fluffeh

on Tuesday May 15, 2012 @08:48PM

Fluffeh writes: "In Australia, we have the right to record TV and play it back at a later date, we also have the right to transcode from one format to another, so anyone with a media server can legally back up their entire DVD collection and watch it without all those annoying warning and unskippable content — as long as we don't break encryption (please stop laughing!). Optus, Australia's second largest Telco has been raising ire though with the new TV Now service they are offering and Big Media is having a hissy fit. They recently offered the service that does the recording on behalf of the customer. Seems a no brainer right? Let the customer do what they are allowed to legally do at home, but charge them for it. Everybody wins! Not according to Sports Broadcasters who made this statement when Optus said they would appeal their recent loss in an Australian Court to the highest court in the land: "They are a disgusting organisation who is acting reprehensibly again and now putting more uncertainty into sports and broadcast rights going forward I’m really disappointed and disgusted in the comments of their CEO overnight." Is this yet another case of Big Media clutching at an outdated business model, or should consumers be content with just doing their own work?"

Submission + - Reddit catches intricate hoax in minutes where others fail (theatlantic.com)

Submitted by

Fluffeh

on Tuesday May 15, 2012 @07:38PM

Fluffeh writes: "Professor T. Mills Kelly teaches an interesting class over at George Mason University. It's called Lying About The Past and in his class he encourages students to basically pull a prank by concocting a tale about historical events — that aren't real in any way. Last year, his students fabricated the tale of Edward Owens which was guzzled by the media, press and pretty much everyone — until they found it was all a joke. Even Jimmy Wales chimed in "Things like that really, really, really annoy me.". This time round, a student posed a question to Reddit, having made fake Wikipedia articles, created "found" newspaper articles and much more. Months in preparation, it took 26 minutes for Redditors to see it for what it was."

Submission + - General Motors: "Facebook Ads aren't Worth it" (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by

Fluffeh

on Tuesday May 15, 2012 @07:20PM

Fluffeh writes: "General Motors spends around $40 million per year on maintaining a Facebook profile and around a quarter of that goes into paid advertising. However, in a statement, they just announced that "it's simply not working". That's a bit of bad news just prior to the Facebook IPO — and while Daniel Knapp tries to sweeten the news, he probably makes it even more bitter by commenting "Advertising on Facebook has long been funded by marketing budgets reserved for trying new things. But as online advertising investments in general are surging and starting to cannibalize spend on legacy media, advertisers are rightfully asking whether the money spend is justified because it has reached significant sums now.""

Submission + - GAME Australia now also in Administration (kotaku.com.au)

Submitted by

Fluffeh

on Monday May 14, 2012 @01:31AM

Fluffeh writes: "This morning the Australian Division of GAME saw an email from their Marketing Manager confirming that the 95 store chain has gone into voluntary administration. PriceWaterhouseCoopers partner Kate Warwick said "Initially we will continue to trade all stores, operating these on as close to a ‘business as usual’ mode as possible whilst we get a clearer understanding of the current state of the business and actively pursue options to secure its future." in a statement today. It also seems that GAME is having a bit of a fire sale, with many titles including quite a few new releases now in a $5-$74 bargain bin. Ms. Warwick also noted that the company’s customers hold various claims against the company under loyalty cards, gift cards and vouchers. Ms. Warwick said “We are working on schemes aimed at giving customers some return on these claims if they are used to make additional purchases.”"

Submission + - Netherlands cements Net Neutrality in Law (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by

Fluffeh

on Thursday May 10, 2012 @06:23PM

Fluffeh writes: "A while back, Dutch Telcos started to sing the "We are losing money due to internet services!" song and floated new plans that would make consumers pay extra for data used by apps that comflicted with their own services — apps like Skype for example. The politicians stepped in however, and wrote laws forbidding this. Now, the legislation has finally passed through the senate and the Netherlands is an officially Net Neutral country, the second in the world — Chile did this a while back. That's not to say that Telcos aren't smarting from the new laws, they have been busy severly reducing data on plans and charging extra for their services while using the very same apps in their marketing campaigns — sorry, I should rephrase that to "adapting to the new marketplace"."

Submission + - Mozilla Claims 'IE only' on Windows 8 ARM (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by

Fluffeh

on Thursday May 10, 2012 @06:12PM

Fluffeh writes: "Here we go again, it seems that sometimes Microsoft just can't learn old lessons. Mozilla has claimed that due to "technical restrictions" that Microsoft is putting on the Windows 8 ARM port, IE will be the only browser able to work. Unlike the x86 flavor, WOA (Windows on ARM) will not broadly support legacy applications. WOA will only run applications that are distributed through Microsoft’s application store. Third-party developers who bring their software to WOA will be confined to using the Windows Runtime stack and standard platform APIs. As Microsoft explained in a February blog post, the point of these restrictions are to maximize security, performance, and battery life for WOA users. The downside of this approach is that it makes it difficult to support certain kinds of highly complex third-party software, such as Web browsers, that require more capabilities than those provided by the standard API set."

Submission + - North Korea Jamming GPS Signals In South Korea (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by

Fluffeh

on Wednesday May 09, 2012 @08:29PM

Fluffeh writes: "North Korea has been looking for new and inventive ways to mess with South Korea. It seems that their missile launch fizzled a bit though, so those wacky folks from the North have bought a few GPS jamming trucks from Russia and are now blocking GPS signals around their city of Kaeson. While Kaeson is around 60 Km inside their borders, the jamming circle is around 100 Km, so it actually covers good parts of South Korea including the airports at Inchon and Gimpo. While no accidents have been caused as yet, it has caused quite some disruption and has made ocean going craft suffer as well due to their heavy reliance on GPS signals."

Submission + - Homeland Security: "New Scanners Have Issues." (wired.com)

Submitted by

Fluffeh

on Tuesday May 08, 2012 @07:33PM

Fluffeh writes: "Although the DHS has spent around $90 million upgrading magnetometers with the new nudie scanners, federal investigators “identified vulnerabilities in the screening process” at domestic airports using so-called “full body scanners,” according to a classified internal Department of Homeland Security report. Exactly how bad the body scanners are is not being divulged publicly, but the Inspector General report made eight separate recommendations on how to improve screening. To quiet privacy concerns, the authorities are also spending $7 million to “remove the human factor from the image review process” and replace the passenger’s image with an avatar."

Submission + - Australian Greens Party Demanding Australia Gets Out of ACTA (delimiter.com.au)

Submitted by

Fluffeh

on Tuesday May 08, 2012 @02:27AM

Fluffeh writes: "The Greens have demanded that Australia’s Government cancel its participation in the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement international treaty in the wake of an expected imminent rejection of the proposal by the European Union and significant and ongoing global protests against a number of its terms expected to harm Internet freedom. Late last week, European Commissioner for the Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes said that ACTA was unlikely to come into effect in Europe, despite the fact that most of the 27 EU states have signed the treaty. Greens Communications Spokesperson Scott Ludlam, who has been a strident critic of ACTA said the “ACTA bandwagon has crashed” and it was “time for Australia to get off”. “I am hoping [DFAT] will take a second look, and conduct a proper analysis on the threats to privacy, cheaper medicine and our economic interests posed by this Agreement.”."

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