69676041
submission
itwbennett writes:
As the first step in investigating Silk Road, IRS agent Gary Alford, who was part of an agency task force investigating organized crime, simply entered 'Silk Road' into Google and looked for the oldest mention on the site. The details he found would ultimately lead to the arrest of Ross Ulbricht in October 2013, as well as to the forfeiture of all the assets of Silk Road itself.
69663247
submission
itwbennett writes:
IBM is expected to go through a massive reorg next month that will see 26% of its 430,000-strong work force let go, or 111,800 people, according to a report by long-time Silicon Valley journalist Robert X. Cringely. If that figure holds true, that would make it far and away the largest corporate layoff event in history, breaking the record previously held by IBM, when it cut 60,000 in 1993.
69576921
submission
jfruh writes:
A new factory producing smart cards opened in Lagos this week, promising to open up access to financial services to many poor Africans and other inhabitants of the Global South. The cards can be used by people without traditional bank accounts to access the worldwide credit card and smart phone infrastructure.
69567733
submission
itwbennett writes:
They of the square jaws and famous dispute with Mark Zuckerberg over the origins of Facebook, are also believed to be among the largest holders of Bitcoin in the world. Now they want to launch a regulated Bitcoin exchange—named Gemini, of course. To bolster confidence, they said they have formed a relationship with a chartered bank in the state of New York. 'This means that your money will never leave the country,' the twins wrote in a blog post. 'It also means that U.S. dollars on Gemini will be eligible for FDIC insurance and held by a U.S.-regulated bank.'
69567365
submission
itwbennett writes:
Automated tank gauges (ATGs), which are used by gas stations in the U.S. to monitor their fuel tank levels can be manipulated over the Internet by malicious attackers, according to security firm Rapid7. 'An attacker with access to the serial port interface of an ATG may be able to shut down the station by spoofing the reported fuel level, generating false alarms, and locking the monitoring service out of the system,' said HD Moore, the chief research officer at Rapid7.
69535777
submission
itwbennett writes:
According to a story in the Beijing News, Apple CEO Tim Cook has agreed to let China’s State Internet Information Office to run security audits on products the company sells in China in an effort to counter concerns that other governments are using its devices for surveillance.
69523273
submission
itwbennett writes:
Fujitsu Laboratories is developing an enterprise tool that can identify and advise people who are more vulnerable to cyberattacks, based on certain traits. For example, the researchers found that users who are more comfortable taking risks are also more susceptible to virus infections, while those who are confident of their computer knowledge were at greater risk for data leaks. Rather than being like an antivirus program, the software is more like 'an action log analysis than looks into the potential risks of a user,' said a spokesman for the lab. 'It judges risk based on human behavior and then assigns a security countermeasure for a given user.'
69482807
submission
jfruh writes:
Last week, justice ministers from EU countries called for ISPs to censor or block certain content in the "public interest." But a legal analysis shows that such moves could actually violate EU privacy laws, since it would inevitably involve snooping on the content of Internet traffic to see what should be blocked.
69482545
submission
jfruh writes:
Fox, armed with the recent Supreme Court ruling that effectively banned Aero, went to court to stop the Dish Network from allowing its subscribers to stream live and DVR'd content over the Internet to their devices. But a federal court ruled that the situations are different: Dish has already purchased retransmission rights from content creators, and the streaming service falls within the rights of individual subscriber to place- and time-shift content.
69477007
submission
itwbennett writes:
Internet connections in the South East Asian nation have been affected by problems with the Asia America Gateway (AAG) submarine cable system for the fourth time in a year, according to local news outlets. The cause of the outages is as yet unknown, but that's not stopping online reports for pinning the blame on sharks. The more likely, but less dramatic cause of the damage was ship anchors or fishing, says Michael Costin, Chairman of the AAG Cable Consortium.
69449811
submission
jfruh writes:
If you're tired of seeing fake or misleading news articles posted by your friends to Facebook and then spreading like wildfire, you might be in luck. In a system that's something like Slashdot comment moderation on a grand scale, you'll now be able to flag a story as false. Links that have been flagged this way by many users will appear less frequently in people's newsfeeds, or with a disclaimer attached.
69445025
submission
IsoQuantic writes:
A new report from the tech career site Gooroo sheds light on which programming skills are most in demand for which tech positions. Its recently released International Tech Careers and Salary Index is based on an analysis of 3 million tech job listings from the United States, Great Britain and Australia from January through September, 2014. For a number of common tech job titles, Gooroo analyzed which skills are mentioned the most in listings for that position.
The bottom line is that different kinds of programming skills are better suited for different kinds of software development jobs. For example, if you want to be an iOS developer, being able to code in Objective-C will help you a lot more than other skills. Also, some programming skills will make you a more attractive candidate for non-developer positions. Being able to write SQL, for instance, comes in handy for system administrators, data scientists and Web designers.
By analyzing the numbers about available programming jobs, it's possible to see which skills are most in demand in the tech world. For example, the five skills most often mentioned in tech job listings were: SQL (24.3%), Java (14.5%), JavaScript (13.1%), C# (10.4%), and CSS (9.9%). In terms of salary, the five most popular tech job listings were: Python ($95,948), Java ($93,668), JavaScript ($89,101), SQL ($87,502) and C# ($87,446).
See slide show and comments below the same at the link below.
69437581
submission
itwbennett writes:
It's a basic truth that when people use a medium owned or operated by a third party, such as the Internet, an elevator with a camera or a mobile app that requires connectivity, there is no privacy. So the best thing you can do, is to place some value on your personal information and then lie, lie, lie your way into obscurity, says Frank Ahearn, a privacy expert and author of the book 'How to Disappear.'
69405221
submission
jfruh writes:
When Randy Westergren, acting out of curiosity, investigated Verizon's Android MyFiOS app for security vulnerabilities, he spotted some big ones, and let the telecom giant know about them. Somewhat amazingly, Verizon didn't react by punishing the messenger, but rather fixed the problems right away and gave him a free year of FiOS for his trouble.
69405151
submission
jfruh writes:
According to a new report derived from the treasure trove of documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the NSA uses hijacks existing criminal botnets for its own purposes. Computers already infected by run-of-the-mill crooks might find themselves repurposed by the NSA, and then launching attacks that would be difficult to trace back to the shadowy security agency.
