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Government

FCC Mulling More Control For Electronic Media 176

Posted by Soulskill from the yeah-that-sounds-fantastic dept.
A recent Notice of Inquiry from the FCC is looking for opinions on how the "evolving electronic media landscape" affects kids, and whether the FCC itself should have more regulatory control over such media. The full NOI (PDF) is available online. "FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski included a statement with the NOI in which he noted that 'twenty years ago, parents worried about one or two TV sets in the house,' while today, media choices are far more widespread for children, including videogames, which 'have become a prevalent entertainment source in millions of homes and a daily reality for millions of kids.'"
Security

What Is the Best Way To Track Stolen Gadgets? 101

Posted by timothy from the glue-to-foot dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Now that gadgets can determine their location and phone home, many companies are creating tools for finding lost and stolen gadgets. It sounds like a simple process, but this NY Times article describes a number of wildly different approaches. Some report all of the information back to the owner while others deliberately keep the owner in the dark to avoid dangerous confrontations. Some start grabbing pictures from the web cameras and logging keystrokes. Others just record IP addresses. Some don't do anything but record serial numbers to make it easier for the police to do their job. Are sophisticated systems dangerous because the tracking mechanisms could be misused to violate the privacy of the owner? Are the stakes different when a company purchases the software and gives the IT manager the ability to track everyone in the company? What are the best practices that are emerging? What should I recommend if my boss reads this article and wants to track our laptops and Blackberries?"
Image

Verizon Sued After Tech Punches Customer In Face 493

Posted by samzenpus from the can-you-hit-me-now dept.
suraj.sun writes "A Verizon customer filed a lawsuit after the tech the company sent out got a little punchy. Instead of fixing the customer's problem, the tech allegedly hit him in the face. The New York Post says the tech attacked the customer after he asked to see some ID before allowing access to the apartment. From the article, '"You want to know my name? Here's my name," Benjamin snarled, slapping his ID card into Isakson's face, according to Isakson's account of the December 2008 confrontation. "The guy essentially snapped. He cold-cocked me, hit me two or three solid shots to the head while my hands were down," said Isakson, a limo driver. He said the pounding bloodied his face and broke his glasses. But things got uglier, Isakson said, when Benjamin squeezed him around the neck and pressed him up against the wall. "He's prepared to kill me," Isakson said. "That's all I could think of." The customer broke free and ran away. The Verizon tech then chased the customer until he was subdued by a neighbor who was an off-duty cop.'"
Biotech

Aussie Government Offers $40M To Build a Bionic Eye 89

Posted by timothy from the the-6-million-dollar-man-should-cash-in dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Australian Government is keen to replicate the success of the Cochlear Implant (bionic ear) by throwing AU$50M (US$40M) of funding at the development of a bionic eye. Bionic eyes have been trialed with some success in the UK — with recipients able to detect senses of shape and space, but very little detail."
Education

BYU Prof. Says University Classrooms Will Be "Irrelevant" By 2020 469

Posted by timothy from the not-into-job-security dept.
dragoncortez writes "According to this Deseret News article, University classrooms will be obsolete by 2020. BYU professor David Wiley envisions a world where students listen to lectures on iPods, and those lectures are also available online to everyone anywhere for free. Course materials are shared between universities, science labs are virtual, and digital textbooks are free. He says, 'Higher education doesn't reflect the life that students are living ... today's colleges are typically tethered, isolated, generic, and closed.' In the world according to Wiley, universities would still make money, because they have a marketable commodity: to get college credits and a diploma, you'd have to be a paying customer. Wiley helped start Flat World Knowledge, which creates peer-reviewed textbooks that can be downloaded for free, or bought as paperbacks for $30."
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - McAfee Tyranny - Pollution of Computers

Submitted by
statusquobuster
statusquobuster writes: "Read about the practice of McAfee to bury its files on computers so that installation of competing Internet security software products cannot easily happen. Even McAfee's own removal tool will not eliminate all of its files. This is a sleazy, unacceptable business practice. Read the first-hand account of battling and winning the war with McAfee at: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/122530/mc afee_tyranny_consumers_are_being.html"
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Renting clothing

Submitted by
mdsolar
mdsolar writes: "The NYT is reporting on a study conducted at Cabridge on the environmental impact of the clothing industry: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/25/fashion/25pollut e.html. From the article:
But clothes — and fast clothes in particular — are a large and worsening source of the carbon emissions that contribute to global warming, because of how they are both produced and cared for, concludes a new report from researchers at Cambridge University titled "Well Dressed?"
The report suggests "that people lease clothes and return them at the end of a month or a season, so the garments can be lent again to someone else — like library books."

Question: How many slashdot users already buy their clothes at thrift stores?"
Books

Submission + - Book Review: "Enemy At The Water Cooler"

Submitted by
Trent Lucier
Trent Lucier writes: "[NOTE TO EDITOR: Hello, this is a review of a book you sent me. I've had several reviews posted on your site in the past, including "Designing with Web Standards" and "Google Advertising Tools"]

On most networks diagrams I've seen, the internet looks like a cloud. Sometimes it's a fluffy white cloud. Other times it's a dark ominous cloud. Regardless of the artistic style, the depiction usually conveys the mystery and danger of putting your company's network on a global information grid next to a billion users, kind of like those old maps with dragons drawn at strategic places in the ocean. Not surprisingly, corporations spend much time and energy protecting themselves from The Outside World. In Enemy at the Water Cooler, Brian Contos argues that just as many resources should be spent on defending against insider threats. Will this book help you detect the enemies at your water cooler?

Contos, a Chief Security Officer himself, has written a primer on insider threats and the counter-measures that can be deployed against them. The book is written for a wide audience, so don't expect low-level details about encryption algorithms and security protocols. However, if you have to deal with a large company's IT infrastructure, you may benefit from Contos' descriptions of enterprise security concepts and anecdotes.

According to the book's terminology, an insider is someone who has more privileges than the common person and uses those privileges to abuse the system. It's important to understand the full scope of the term "privileges". In addition to computer privileges, Contos is also talking about physical access to hardware, paperwork, and even other employees that can be exploited in social engineering attacks. Even if a piece of information is useless to the insider, it may be something that a competitor would be willing to buy for the right price.

The early chapters provide background on all the standard attacks that are in the news these days: phishing, denial of service, keylogging, etc... What makes these sections interesting are the statistics that are sprinkled throughout the text. In a survey conducted by CERT examining known attacks, 49% were committed by insiders that were married. This goes against the profile of the insider being someone who has less personal risk (such as a family) at stake. In fact, the prevailing image of the last 30 years depicting a computer criminal as a socially awkward young male has started to become less accurate as organized crime has turned into the biggest threat.

Enemy At The Water Cooler does a great job of putting statistics in context. The book is always careful to mention that the crime statistics represent only the known incidents. Contos often explains why certain numbers matter. Near a chart showing that 59% of discovered crimes were committed by former employees, the author explains that recently fired employees can be highly motivated to commit revenge and still have access to accounts and passwords, which is a dangerous combination.

How does the book propose that businesses deal with threats? At the end of Part I, Contos introduces a technology called Enterprise Security Management (ESM). This is a blanket term used to describe a collection of enterprise-level tools that can perform information analysis, display event feeds, manage policies, and do everything else in the world besides make toast. The remainder of the book constantly mentions this technology, so if you are not interested in learning about ESM, this book may not be for you.

At this point, it should be noted that Brian Contos is the Chief Security Officer of a company that sells ESM products. The book is neutral on which product you should use, although some screenshots show Contos' program for illustrative purposes. I did not feel that the book was biased or trying to sell me something. Regardless of who the author works for, he makes a compelling argument that ESM systems are necessary for big companies that need to manage their IT security.

Case studies comprise Part II of the book. This is the entertaining stuff, and probably the type of thing most people want to read when they pick up a book called Enemy At The Water Cooler. There are 8 main case studies, each running about 5 pages in length. Contos puts the "study" in "case study" as he illustrates how tools (ESM) and training could prevent many of the scenarios he describes. Those expecting light reading in the form of amusing anecdotes about IT security will be disappointed. However, if you're looking for a detailed analysis of insider crime, these chapters provide it.

Many times, greed and hubris are the ultimate undoing of the insider. In one example, a company discovered that their servers were hosting pirated software. Little did the company know that the employee that was asked to clean up the server was actually the one who put the software there to begin with. The insider would have gotten away with it if only he hadn't bragged to a co-worker about how dim-witted his company was.

In other situations, employees can be blackmailed into committing crimes. In the case of a Spanish company, an employee was forced into planting a wireless access point in one of the development labs. The employee had lied about his educational background on his resume, and criminals threatened to expose him if he didn't cooperate by planting the device.

The final portion of the book discusses further capabilities of ESM. The main point is that ESMs should be able to monitor everything. Contos explains a scenario where an employee pulls financial information from a proprietary system and then uploads it to a P2P network. Most companies do not have the technology to detect such an action. Not that Contos claims technology is the only answer. It is just a tool, and it is useless when not supported by trained employees and policies. At the end of the book, the reader gets information about "soft skill" topics like incident management, hiring processes, and some legal case history regarding insiders.

The book's viewpoint is very top-down with regards to the corporate hierarchy. Executives will no doubt love all the capabilities that Contos claims can be at their fingertips, but individual employees might feel it is slightly Orwellian. Can all this information that the ESM vacuums up be used for evil? The book's implicit answer seems to be "yes", since it is repeatedly made clear that no one can be trusted. But there is never any explicit information given on how the ESM itself can be protected from abuse.

Enemy at the Water Cooler provides a thorough introduction to insider threats and the countermeasures that can be used against them. If you are just interested in stories about insider security crimes, then you may want to pass. (The section on case studies is only about a third of the book's content). However, if you are interested in learning about technology that can help defend against these threats, then this book provides a comprehensive overview.

Trent Lucier is a software engineer. His latest experiment is localhost80.com"
Communications

Submission + - Scientists store whole image on a single photon

Submitted by
WebWeasel2006
WebWeasel2006 writes: "Taken from The Register Scientists from New Yorks University of Rochester have stored an entire image on a single photon. The image is stored by passing a single photon through a tiny stencil, quantum physics forces the photon to pass through all of the the holes in the stencil picking up a shadow of the image. The photon is then slowed in a caesium gas cube. The potential for information buffering is staggering. Thousands of photons could be stored in a single cell...."
The Internet

Submission + - Google expert debunks 'undetectable' link spam

Submitted by
netbuzz
netbuzz writes: "Google's Webspam expert Matt Cutts sort of channels Chris Rock's famous "No matter what a stripper tells you" bit in debunking new SEO claims of the "undetectable" link scheme. To illustrate his point, Cutts digs out a 2002 e-mail from another SEO "expert" who inadvertently and amusingly makes the point for him — a point he contends is as valid today as it was then.

http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/1073 3"
Spam

Submission + - Is Linux.org hurting Linux?

Submitted by xivulon
xivulon writes: Linux.org is not the official Linux website, but millions of people believe it is. Is it a nice, modern, exciting page fostering Linux adoption? Hardly so. Even worse, far too many energies seem to be dedicated to raising money in a way that may even hurt the Linux image... I guess you have to turn adblock off for this one.
Privacy

Submission + - University E-Mails Not Private?

Submitted by Anonymous University Student
Anonymous University Student writes: Hello Slashdot. I go to a large Canadian university where all students are given an e-mail account when they enroll. I've recently been receiving a lot of targeted spam (for study programs, student surveys, et cetera,) sent to my University e-mail account. The problem is that nobody has ever been given this address — the only people who should know are Professors who are given access to a class list. When I first got the account, I set it to forward to my GMail account, simply because I wasn't interested in using multiple e-mail addresses. When I e-mailed my school's network services to explain the problem and see if it was a known issue, I was actually told that all e-mail addresses are on a public list that anyone can view. This, in my opinion, is an enormous breach of privacy, and I've been basically told that there's nothing I can do to stop this. So, Slashdot, I ask you — is this common practice for most universities, or is my school just not concerned about the privacy of its students? Many people would not care, however I get enough spam in my inbox that any more is just ridiculous.

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