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Submission + - Russia Dumps US Treasury Holdings To Little Effect (reuters.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In response to recent US sanctions, Russia has dumped its holding of US treasury bonds worth around $300 billion. Many slashdot commenters have speculated on the effects of a major world power dumping US bonds on the market. However, as reuters reports, this act had little effect on US bonds.

Submission + - Oppo's New Phone Is the Most Technology-Packed Smartphone Ever (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Oppo Electronics has taken off the wraps on its first LTE phone, and it packs more technology than most if not all laptops. The Find 7 is a 5.5" phone and is the first to support 2560 x 1440 resolution (by comparison, the Samsung Galaxy S5 has 441 PPI). 'Another striking and unique feature of the phone is its 2.5GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor,' writes blogger Andy Patrizio. 'This is Qualcomm's first chip to feature its Gobi True 4G LTE World Mode, supporting LTE FDD, LTE TDD, WCDMA, CDMA1x, EV-DO, TD-SCDMA and GSM4. Translation: this phone will work on LTE all over the world.'

Submission + - WPA2 wireless security cracked

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Achilleas Tsitroulis of Brunel University, UK, Dimitris Lampoudis of the University of Macedonia, Greece and Emmanuel Tsekleves of Lancaster University, UK, have investigated the vulnerabilities in WPA2 and present its weakness. They say that this wireless security system might now be breached with relative ease by a malicious attack on a network. They suggest that it is now a matter of urgency that security experts and programmers work together to remove the vulnerabilities in WPA2 in order to bolster its security or to develop alternative protocols to keep our wireless networks safe from hackers and malware.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-03-w...

Submission + - Study Confirms Internet Trolls Are Narcissistic, Psychopathic, and Sadistic

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Chris Mooney reports at Slate that research conducted by Erin Buckels of the University of Manitoba confirmed that people who engage in internet trolling are characterized by personality traits that fall in the so-called Dark Tetrad: Machiavellianism (willingness to manipulate and deceive others), narcissism (egotism and self-obsession), psychopathy (the lack of remorse and empathy), and sadism (pleasure in the suffering of others). In the study, trolls were identified in a variety of ways. One was by simply asking survey participants what they “enjoyed doing most” when on online comment sites, offering five options: “debating issues that are important to you,” “chatting with others,” “making new friends,” “trolling others,” and “other.” The study recruited participants from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk website and two measures of sadistic personality were administered (PDF): the Short Sadistic Impulse Scale and the Varieties of Sadistic Tendencies Scale. Only 5.6 percent of survey respondents actually specified that they enjoyed “trolling.” By contrast, 41.3 percent of Internet users were “non-commenters,” meaning they didn’t like engaging online at all. So trolls are, as has often been suspected, a minority of online commenters, and an even smaller minority of overall Internet users. Overall, the authors found that the relationship between sadism and trolling was the strongest, and that indeed, sadists appear to troll because they find it pleasurable. “Both trolls and sadists feel sadistic glee at the distress of others. Sadists just want to have fun ... and the Internet is their playground!” The study comes as websites are increasingly weighing steps to rein in trollish behavior but the study authors aren't sure that fix is a realistic one. “Because the behaviors are intrinsically motivating for sadists, comment moderators will likely have a difficult time curbing trolling with punishments (e.g., banning users),” says Buckels. “Ultimately, the allure of trolling may be too strong for sadists, who presumably have limited opportunities to express their sadistic interests in a socially-desirable manner.” Perhaps posting rights should only be unlocked if you pass a test.

Submission + - 200-400 Gbps DDoS Attacks Are Now Normal (krebsonsecurity.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Brian Krebs has a followup to last week's 400 Gbps DDoS attack using NTP amplification. Krebs, as a computer security writer, has often been the target of DDoS attacks, was also hit by a 200Gbps attack recently (apparently, from a 15-year-old in Illinois). That kind of volume would have been record-breaking only a couple years ago, but now it's just normal. Arbor Networks says we're entering the 'hockey stick' era of DDoS attacks, as a graph of attack volume spikes sharply over the past year. CloudFlare's CEO wrote, 'Monday’s DDoS proved these attacks aren’t just theoretical. To generate approximately 400Gbps of traffic, the attacker used 4,529 NTP servers running on 1,298 different networks. On average, each of these servers sent 87Mbps of traffic to the intended victim on CloudFlare’s network. Remarkably, it is possible that the attacker used only a single server running on a network that allowed source IP address spoofing to initiate the requests. An attacker with a 1 Gbps connection can theoretically generate more than 200Gbps of DDoS traffic.' In a statement to Krebs, he added, 'We have an attack of over 100 Gbps almost every hour of every day.'

Comment Re:spearphishing emails (Score 1) 98

by RandomFactor (#46215283) Attached to: Sophisticated Spy Tool 'The Mask' Rages Undetected For 7 Years
Even the mass malware distributions take basic precautions these days like excluding VMs, all known AV Vendor IP ranges, and not being malicious while the email is in transit (a link may not begin serving malicious content until hours later, when targets are arriving at the office, and may stop again afterwards.). You can analyze those links all year long if you aren't the target.

Submission + - Europe to Ditch Climate Protection Goals, Fracking To Follow (spiegel.de) 4

Submitted by cold fjord
cold fjord writes: Spiegel Online reports, "The European Commission wants to forgo ambitious climate protection goals and pave the way for fracking ... Commission sources have long been hinting that the body intends to move away from ambitious climate protection goals. ... At the request of Commission President José Manuel Barroso, EU member states are no longer to receive specific guidelines for the development ofrenewable energy. The stated aim of increasing the share of green energy across the EU to up to 27 percent will hold. But how seriously countries tackle this project will no longer be regulated within the plan. As of 2020 at the latest — when the current commitment to further increase the share of green energy expires — climate protection in the EU will apparently be pursued on a voluntary basis. ... With such a policy, the European Union is seriously jeopardizing its global climate leadership role. ... In addition, the authority wants to pave the way in the EU for the controversial practice of fracking ... The report says the Commission does not intend to establish strict rules for the extraction of shale gas, but only minimum health and environmental standards."

Submission + - Is a mini ice age on the way ? (dailymail.co.uk)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: Since September of last year people already ponder what has happened to the Sun.

The Sun is in the middle of a hyperactive phase of its 11-year cycle, and suddenly it got quiet, extraordinary quiet.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/09/sun-all-quiet/

http://www.sott.net/article/266382-The-sun-goes-strangely-quiet

With almost completely devoid of sun spots, solar flare activity has come to a halt.

The recent super cold snap that hit North America and the wet weather that hit part of Europe might be linked to the eerily quietness of the Sun.

BBC is reporting that the nearest episode of the Sun's quietness compared to the one which is happening was 100 years ago. This solar lull is baffling scientists, because right now the Sun should be awashed with activity. This giant ball of plasma should be peppered with sunspots, exploding with flares and spewing out huge clouds of charged particles into space in the form of coronal mass ejections.

"It's completely taken me and many other solar scientists by surprise," says Dr Lucie Green, from University College London's Mullard Space Science Laboratory.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25743806

https://www2.ucar.edu/climate/faq/isnt-sun-in-quiet-period-wouldnt-grand-minimum-cool-earth-down

Submission + - Microsoft Quietly Fixes Windows XP Resource Hog Problem (redmondmag.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft indicated this week that it has fixed a Windows XP resource-hog problem associated with the system's SVCHOST.EXE processes.

Windows XP users affected by this problem typically found that the operating system was using up system resources for 15 minutes to an hour after startup, making it difficult to use the machine during that period. The Microsoft Update team had vowed last month to spend the holiday break tackling the issue, which has plagued some users for years.

The fix involved stopping the system from perpetually checking Internet Explorer updates. Microsoft indicated that the fix was rolled out on Tuesday.

Submission + - Adblock's days are numbered (computerworld.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: PageFair offers a free JavaScript program that, when inserted into a Web page, monitors ad blocking activity. CEO Sean Blanchfield says he developed the monitoring tool after he noticed a problem on his own multiplayer gaming site. PageFair collects statistics on ad blocking activity, identifies which users are blocking ads and can display an appeal to users to add the publisher's website to their ad-blocking tool's personal whitelist. But Blanchfield acknowledges that the user appeal approach hasn't been very effective.

ClarityRay takes a more active role. Like PageFair, it provides a tool that lets publishers monitor blocking activity to show them that they have a problem — and then sells them a remedy. ClarityRay offers a service that CEO Ido Yablonka says fools ad blockers into allowing ads through. "Ad blockers try to make a distinction between content elements and advertorial elements. We make that distinction impossible," he says.

From ComputerWorld http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9245190/Ad_blockers_A_solution_or_a_problem_?taxonomyId=71&pageNumber=4

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