Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Comment Solar Power Satellites (Score 1) 481

by catherder_finleyd (#37268932) Attached to: Chinese Want To Capture an Asteroid

The idea of building Solar Power Satellites, where solar energy is produced in orbit and beamed back to earth as microwaves, has around since the 1970's. Using spaced-based resources, like an asteroid, is likely to reduce the costs substantially. For more, check-out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power.

Comment EURISKO (Score 1) 200

This is not necessarily original. Douglas Lenat used EURISKO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurisko) to win the Traveler RPG (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveller_(role-playing_game) "Trillion Credit Squadron" championship in the early 1980's. Lenat got the attention of DARPA and later formed the company CyCorp (http://www.cyc.com/).
Security

Hiding Backdoors In Hardware 206

Posted by Soulskill from the hamster-escape-route dept.
quartertime writes "Remember Reflections on Trusting Trust, the classic paper describing how to hide a nearly undetectable backdoor inside the C compiler? Here's an interesting piece about how to hide a nearly undetectable backdoor inside hardware. The post describes how to install a backdoor in the expansion ROM of a PCI card, which during the boot process patches the BIOS to patch grub to patch the kernel to give the controller remote root access. Because the backdoor is actually housed in the hardware, even if the victim reinstalls the operating system from a CD, they won't clear out the backdoor. I wonder whether China, with its dominant position in the computer hardware assembly business, has already used this technique for espionage. This perhaps explains why the NSA has its own chip fabrication plant."
Encryption

Separating Cyber-Warfare Fact From Fantasy 111

Posted by timothy from the joshua-called-me dept.
smellsofbikes writes "This week's New Yorker magazine has an investigative essay by Seymour Hersh about the US and its part in cyber-warfare that makes for interesting reading. Hersh talks about the financial incentives behind many of the people currently pushing for increased US spending on supposed solutions to network vulnerabilities and the fine and largely ignored distinction between espionage and warfare. Two quotes in particular stood out: one interviewee said, 'Current Chinese officials have told me that [they're] not going to attack Wall street, because [they] basically own it,' and Whitfield Diffie, on encryption, 'I'm not convinced that lack of encryption is the primary problem [of vulnerability to network attack]. The problem with the Internet is that it's meant for communication among non-friends.' The article also has some interesting details on the Chinese disassembly and reverse-engineering of a Lockheed P-3 Orion filled with espionage and eavesdropping hardware that was forced to land in China after a midair collision."

Slashdot Top Deals

This restaurant was advertising breakfast any time. So I ordered french toast in the renaissance. - Steven Wright, comedian

Close