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Submission + - Comcast-TWC Merger Review On Hold (pcmag.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: When the U.S. Federal Communications Commission began reviewing the merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable, it impose a 180-day deadline on the review process. The agency has now pushed that deadline back a few weeks after learning that TWC withheld over 7,000 documents they shouldn't have. TWC originally claimed the documents fall under attorney-client privilege, but that appears not to be the case. Perhaps more disturbing, the article says another 31,000 "went missing" because of a vendor error. (Perhaps even more disturbing is that this is a drop in the bucket compared to the sum total of information TWC dumped on the FCC — apparently over 5 million pages. How they can be expected to properly review that much material is beyond me.)

The FCC is also ready to close the public comment period for the merger, during which over 600,000 comments were filed. Critics are making their final arguments and Comcast is tallying up all the nice things people (and companies, and paid public relations agencies) had to say.

Submission + - Docker Image Insecurity (titanous.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Developer Jonathan Rudenberg has discovered and pointed out a glaring security hole in Docker's system. He says, "Recently while downloading an 'official' container image with Docker I saw this line:ubuntu:14.04: The image you are pulling has been verified

I assumed this referenced Docker’s heavily promoted image signing system and didn’t investigate further at the time. Later, while researching the cryptographic digest system that Docker tries to secure images with, I had the opportunity to explore further. What I found was a total systemic failure of all logic related to image security.

Docker’s report that a downloaded image is “verified” is based solely on the presence of a signed manifest, and Docker never verifies the image checksum from the manifest. An attacker could provide any image alongside a signed manifest. This opens the door to a number of serious vulnerabilities.

Submission + - Ars: Final Hobbit Movie is 'Soulless End' to 'Flawed' Trilogy (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The final chapter to Peter Jackson's series of films based on The Hobbit debuted last week, and the reviews haven't been kind. Ars Technica just posted theirs, and it highlights all the problems with Battle of the Five Armies, a two hour and twenty-four minute film based on only 72 pages of the book. Quoting: "The battles in Battle of the Five Armies are deadly boring, bereft of suspense, excessively padded, and predictable to the point of being contemptuous of the audience. Suspense is attempted mostly by a series of last-minute saves and switches. ... There are other problems. Everyone in this movie takes themselves way too seriously, which makes them even harder to sympathize with. Peter Jackson leans way too hard on voice modulation to make characters seem menacing or powerful. The movie's tone is still way out of step with the book's tone. ... There's one big thing that doomed these movies from the outset—the fiscally smart but artistically bankrupt decision to make a single, shortish children's novel into three feature-length prequel films." Other review titles: "Peter Jackson Must Be Stopped," "The Phantom Menace of Middle Earth," and "Lots of fighting, not much hobbit."

Submission + - BT, Sky, and Virgin "hijacking" browsers to push porn blocks (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: BT, Sky, and Virgin Media are hijacking people's web connections to force customers to make a decision about family-friendly web filters. The move comes as the December deadline imposed by prime minister David Cameron looms, with ISPs struggling to get customers to say yes or no to the controversial adult content blocks.

The messages, which vary by ISP, appear during browser sessions when a user tries to access any website. BT, Sky,TalkTalk and Virgin Media are required to ask all their customers if they want web filters turned on or off, with the government saying it wants to create a "family friendly" Internet free from pornography, gambling, extreme violence and other content inappropriate for children. But the measures being taken by ISPs have been described as "completely unnecessary" and "heavy handed" by Internet rights groups.

The hijacking works by intercepting requests for unencrypted websites and rerouting a user to a different page. ISPs are using the technique to communicate with all undecided customers. Attempting to visit WIRED.co.uk, for example, could result in a user being redirected to a page asking them about web filtering. ISPs cannot intercept requests for encrypted websites in the same way.

Submission + - 'Citizenfour' Producers Sued Over Edward Snowden Leaks (hollywoodreporter.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Hollywood Reporter reports, "Horace Edwards, who identifies himself as a retired naval officer and the former secretary of the Kansas Department of Transportation, has filed a lawsuit in Kansas federal court that seeks a constructive trust over monies derived from the distribution of Citizenfour. Edwards ... seeks to hold Snowden, director Laura Poitras, The Weinstein Co., Participant Media and others responsible for "obligations owed to the American people" and "misuse purloined information disclosed to foreign enemies." It's an unusual lawsuit, one that the plaintiff likens to "a derivative action on behalf of the American Public," and is primarily based upon Snowden's agreement with the United States to keep confidentiality. ... Edwards appears to be making the argument that Snowden's security clearance creates a fiduciary duty of loyalty — one that was allegedly breached by Snowden's participation in the production of Citizenfour without allowing prepublication clearance review. As for the producers and distributors, they are said to be "aiding and abetting the theft and misuse of stolen government documents." The lawsuit seeks a constructive trust to redress the alleged unjust enrichment by the film. A 1980 case that involved a former CIA officer's book went up to the Supreme Court and might have opened the path to such a remedy ... "

Comment Re:Who will get (Score 2, Informative) 360

by cold fjord (#48656665) Attached to: North Korean Internet Is Down

Maybe your clues are wrong.

North Korea faces famine: 'Tell the world we are starving'

More than a decade after North Korea was struck by a famine that killed up to a million people, the country's poorest are once again facing starvation, reports Peter Foster in Yanji

Pyongyang’s Hunger Games

... during the great famine of the 1990s, between 600,000 and 2.5 million people died of hunger. According to the commission’s report, the North Korean regime, then headed by Kim Jong-il, obstructed the delivery of aid to the hungriest regions until 1997, and punished those who tried to earn, buy, steal or smuggle in enough food to survive. The regime was “well aware of the country’s deteriorating food situation” as it stocked airfields, reactors and palaces, rather than food stores.

According to one expert witness testimonial before the commission, the North Korean regime, at the height of the famine, could have closed its food gap by importing between $100 and $200 million worth of food each year, which is just 1 to 2 percent of its national income. Yet rather than using foreign food aid to supplement its own commercial food imports, the commission found that Kim Jong-il used aid “as a substitute for” them, cutting back on commercial food imports when more aid arrived. By contrast, the State Department estimates that in 1997, at the peak of the famine, North Korea’s annual military budget was $6 billion.

Comment Re:Who will get (Score 1, Insightful) 360

by cold fjord (#48655565) Attached to: North Korean Internet Is Down

You act as if the common North Korean citizen has internet access.

Indeed. The typical North Korean subject likely doesn't have enough calories per day to thrive, and lets skip the question of nutrition. Even the North Korean armed forces have been on lean rations the last several years.

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