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Australia

Over 9,000 PCs In Australia Infected By TorrentLocker Ransomware 83

Posted by samzenpus from the cash-for-corrupted-computers dept.
First time accepted submitter River Tam writes Cybercriminals behind the TorrenLocker malware may have earned as much as $585,000 over several months from 39,000 PC infections worldwide, of which over 9,000 were from Australia. If you're a Windows user in Australia who's had their files encrypted by hackers after visiting a bogus Australia Post website, chances are you were infected by TorrentLocker and may have contributed to the tens of thousands of dollars likely to have come from Australia due to this digital shakedown racket.

Comment Embrace. Extend. Extinguish. (Score 1) 217

by mrflash818 (#48621753) Attached to: What Will Microsoft's "Embrace" of Open Source Actually Achieve?

"Embrace, extend, and extinguish",[1] also known as "Embrace, extend, and exterminate",[2] is a phrase that the U.S. Department of Justice found[3] and was used internally by Microsoft[4] to describe its strategy for entering product categories involving widely used standards, extending those standards with proprietary capabilities, and then using those differences to disadvantage its competitors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Android

Manufacturer's Backdoor Found On Popular Chinese Android Smartphone 82

Posted by samzenpus from the sneaking-in dept.
Trailrunner7 writes that researchers at Palo Alto Networks have found a backdoor in Android devices sold by Coolpad. "A popular Android smartphone sold primarily in China and Taiwan but also available worldwide, contains a backdoor from the manufacturer that is being used to push pop-up advertisements and install apps without users' consent. The Coolpad devices, however, are ripe for much more malicious abuse, researchers at Palo Alto Networks said today, especially after the discovery of a vulnerability in the backend management interface that exposed the backdoor's control system. Ryan Olson, intelligence director at Palo Alto, said the CoolReaper backdoor not only connects to a number of command and control servers, but is also capable of downloading, installing and activating any Android application without the user's permission. It also sends phony over-the-air updates to devices that instead install applications without notifying the user. The backdoor can also be used to dial phone numbers, send SMS and MMS messages, and upload device and usage information to Coolpad."

Submission + - Marissa Mayer's reinvention of Yahoo! stumbles

Submitted by schnell
schnell writes: The New York Times Magazine has an in-depth profile of Marissa Mayer's time at the helm of Yahoo!, detailing her bold plans to reinvent the company and spark a Jobs-ian turnaround through building great new products. But some investors are saying that her product focus (to the point of micromanaging) hasn't generated results, and that the company should give up on trying to create the next iPod, merge with AOL to cut costs and focus on the unglamorous core business that it has. Is it time for Yahoo! to "grow up" and set its sights lower?

Submission + - Magic Leap Hires Sci-Fi Writer Neal Stephenson as Chief Futurist (hacked.com)

Submitted by giulioprisco
giulioprisco writes: Magic Leap, a secretive Florida augmented reality startup that raised $542 million in October, hired renowned science fiction writer Neal Stephenson as its “Chief Futurist.” Stephenson offers hints at the company’s technology and philosophy: "Magic Leap is bringing physics, biology, code, and design together to build a system that is going to blow doors open for people who create things." According to the Magic Leap website, their Dynamic Digitized Lightfield Signal technology permits generating images indistinguishable from real objects.
The Military

Army To Launch Spy Blimp Over Maryland 177

Posted by Soulskill from the i-can-see-my-house-from-here dept.
FarnsworthG writes: A multi-billion-dollar Army project will soon be able to track nearly everything within 340 miles when an 80-yard-long blimp is hoisted into the air over Maryland. Way to be subtle, guys. From the article: "Technically considered aerostats, since they are tethered to mooring stations, these lighter-than-air vehicles will hover at a height of 10,000 feet just off Interstate 95, about 45 miles northeast of Washington, D.C., and about 20 miles from Baltimore. That means they can watch what’s happening from North Carolina to Boston, or an area the size of Texas."

Submission + - In Breakthrough, US and Cuba to Resume Diplomatic Relations

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Peter Baker reports at the NYT that in a deal negotiated during 18 months of secret talks hosted largely by Canada and encouraged by Pope Francis, the United States will restore full diplomatic relations with Cuba and open an embassy in Havana for the first time in more than a half-century. In addition, the United States will ease restrictions on remittances, travel and banking relations, and Cuba will release 53 Cuban prisoners identified as political prisoners by the United States government. Although the decades-old American embargo on Cuba will remain in place for now, the administration signaled that it would welcome a move by Congress to ease or lift it should lawmakers choose to. “We cannot keep doing the same thing and expect a different result. It does not serve America’s interests, or the Cuban people, to try to push Cuba toward collapse. We know from hard-learned experience that it is better to encourage and support reform than to impose policies that will render a country a failed state,” said the White House in a written statement. "The United States is taking historic steps to chart a new course in our relations with Cuba and to further engage and empower the Cuban people."

Submission + - RFID-blocking blazer and jeans could stop wireless identity theft (thestack.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A pair of trousers and blazer have been developed by San Francisco-based clothing company Betabrand and anti-virus group Norton that are able to prevent identity theft by blocking wireless signals. The READY Active Jeans and the Work-It Blazer contain RFID-blocking fabric within the pockets’ lining designed to prevent hacking through radio frequency identification (RFID) signals emitted from e-passports and contactless payment card chips. According to the clothing brand, this form of hacking is an increasing threat, with “more than 10 million identities digitally pick pocketed every year [and] 70% of all credit cards vulnerable to such attacks” by 2015.
Australia

New Cargo Ship Is 488 Meters Long 116

Posted by Soulskill from the go-big-or-go-home dept.
An anonymous reader writes: The BBC reports on the construction of Prelude, a new ship that will be the world's longest vessel. It is 488 meters long and 74 meters wide, built with 260,000 tons of steel and displacing five times as much water as an aircraft carrier. Its purpose is to carry an entire natural gas processing plant as it sits over a series of wells 100 miles off the coast of Australia. Until now, it hasn't been practical to move gas that comes out of the wells with ships. The gas occupies too much volume, so it is generally piped to a facility on shore where it is processed and then shipped off to energy-hungry markets. But the Prelude can purify and chill the gas, turning it into a liquid and reducing its volume by a factor of 600. It will offload this liquid to smaller (but still enormous) carrier ships for transport.

Submission + - Tech Hiring Will Rise in 2015, Say Recruiters (dice.com)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: Demand for tech professionals isn’t slowing down anytime soon, according to a survey of nearly 800 tech-focused hiring managers by Dice (yes, yes, we know). Heading into the new year, 75 percent of recruiters anticipate hiring more tech professionals in the first six months of 2015 than the last six months of 2014, an all-time high for this semi-annual survey; that’s five points greater than mid-year and two points greater than December 2013. Like the last six months of 2014, hiring managers are particularly interested in the experienced candidate. The majority (76 percent) are hiring for positions requiring six to 10 years of experience, while four in 10 (40 percent) are hiring for positions requiring more than 10 years of experience. Nearly three quarters (72 percent) of companies are planning to expand by more than 10 percent in early 2015, another record breaker. Sixty-eight percent of recruiters anticipated hiring over 10 percent more professionals six months ago, and 65 percent projected such a large-scale hiring push a year ago. So, for tech professionals looking for a job or considering leaving their current one, now might be a good time.
Medicine

Researchers Accidentally Discover How To Turn Off Skin Aging Gene 175

Posted by Soulskill from the vain-mice-everywhere-rejoice dept.
BarbaraHudson sends this excerpt from The Province: While exploring the effects of the protein-degrading enzyme Granzyme B on blood vessels during heart attacks, professor David Granville and other researchers at the University of British Columbia couldn't help noticing that mice engineered to lack the enzyme had beautiful skin at the end of the experiment, while normal mice showed signs of age. The discovery pushed Granville's research in an unexpected new direction.

The researchers built a mechanized rodent tanning salon and exposed mice engineered to lack the enzyme and normal mice to UV light three times a week for 20 weeks, enough to cause redness, but not to burn. At the end of the experiment, the engineered mice still had smooth, unblemished skin, while the normal mice were deeply wrinkled.

Granzyme B breaks down proteins and interferes with the organization and the integrity of collagen, dismantling the scaffolding — or extra-cellular matrix — that cells bind to. This causes structural weakness, leading to wrinkles. Sunlight appears to increase levels of the enzyme and accelerate its damaging effects.

Submission + - An early gift: ODF support in Google Drive (infoworld.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Google's Chris DiBona told a London conference last week that ODF support was coming next year, but today the Google Drive team unexpectedly launched support for all three of the main variants — including long-absent Presentation files. You can now simply open ODT, ODS and ODP files in Drive with no fuss. It lacks support for comments and changes but at least it shows progress towards full support of the international document standard, something conspicuously missing for many years.
Programming

Dr. Dobb's 38-Year Run Comes To an End 156

Posted by Soulskill from the farewell-and-thanks dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Dr. Dobb's — long time icon of programming magazines — "sunsets" at the end of the year. Editor Andrew Binstock says despite growing traffic numbers, the decline in revenue from ads means there will be no new content posted after 2014 ends. (The site will stay up for at least a year, hopefully longer.) Younger people may not care, but for the hard core old guys, it marks the end of a world where broad knowledge of computers and being willing to create solutions instead of reuse them was valuable. Binstock might disagree; he said, "As our page views show, the need for an independent site with in-depth articles, code, algorithms, and reliable product reviews is still very much present. And I will dearly miss that content. I wish I could point you to another site that does similar work, but alas, I know of none."

Submission + - How Microsoft's battle with the Justice Department could reshape privacy laws (csmonitor.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: For Microsoft and other US tech companies, a lawsuit over e-mails stored in Dublin is an important test case to demonstrate their willingness and ability to guard customer data from government prying in a post Edward Snowden-era. If Microsoft were to lose the dispute, it would confirm for many, their fears about the government’s ability to gain access to customer data from technology vendors using flimsy legal pretexts.

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