Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Cloud

Department of Defense May Give Private Cloud Vendors Access To Top Secret Data 60

Posted by Soulskill from the what-could-possibly-go-wrong dept.
An anonymous reader sends news that the U.S. Department of Defense is pondering methods to store its most sensitive data in the cloud. The DoD issued an information request (PDF) to see whether the commercial marketplace can provide remote computing services for Level 5 and Level 6 workloads, which include restricted military data. "The DoD anticipates that the infrastructure will range from configurations featuring between 10,000 and 200,000 virtual machines. Any vendors selected to the scheme would be subject to an accreditation process and to security screening, and the DoD is employing the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program to establish screening procedures for authorized cloud vendors, and to generate procedures for continuous monitoring and auditing."
Security

Tinba Trojan Targets Major US Banks 61

Posted by samzenpus from the protect-ya-neck dept.
An anonymous reader writes Tinba, the tiny (20 KB) banking malware with man-in-the-browser and network traffic sniffing capabilities, is back. After initially being made to target users of a small number of banks, that list has been amplified and now includes 26 financial institutions mostly in the US and Canada, but some in Australia and Europe as well. Tinba has been modified over the years, in an attempt to bypass new security protections set up by banks, and its source code has been leaked on underground forums a few months ago. In this new campaign, the Trojan gets delivered to users via the Rig exploit kit, which uses Flash and Silverlight exploits. The victims get saddled with the malware when they unknowingly visit a website hosting the exploit kit."
Sci-Fi

Sci-Fi Authors and Scientists Predict an Optimistic Future 191

Posted by Soulskill from the roddenberry-approved dept.
An anonymous reader writes: A few years ago, author Neal Stephenson argued that sci-fi had forgotten how to inspire people to do great things. Indeed, much of recent science fiction has been pessimistic and skeptical, focusing on all the ways our inventions could go wrong, and how hostile the universe is to humankind. Now, a group of scientists, engineers, and authors (including Stephenson himself) is trying to change that. Arizona State University recently launched Project Hieroglyph, a hub for ideas that will influence science fiction to be more optimistic and accurate, and to focus on the great things humanity is capable of doing.

For example, in the development of a short story, Stephenson wanted to know if it's possible to build a tower that's 20 kilometers tall. Keith Hjelmsad, an expert in structural stability and computational mechanics, wrote a detailed response about the challenge involved in building such a tower. Other authors are contributing questions as well, and researchers are chiming in with fascinating, science-based replies. Roboticist Srikanth Saripalli makes this interesting point: "If the government has to decide what to fund and what not to fund, they are going to get their ideas and decisions mostly from science fiction rather than what's being published in technical papers."
Government

Court: Car Dealers Can't Stop Tesla From Selling In Massachusetts 155

Posted by Soulskill from the court-order-to-play-well-with-others dept.
curtwoodward writes: Many states have laws that prevent car manufacturers from operating their own dealerships, a throwback to the days when Detroit tried to undercut its franchise dealers by opening company-owned shops. But dealers have taken those laws to the extreme as they battle new competition from Tesla, which is selling its cars direct to the public. In some states, dealers have succeeded in limiting Tesla's direct-sales model. But not in Massachusetts (PDF): the state's Supreme Court says the dealers don't have any right to sue Tesla for unfair competition, since they're not Tesla dealers. No harm, no foul.

Comment the only thing net neutrality will ruin is profit (Score 1) 85

by NynexNinja (#47265499) Attached to: Wireless Industry Lobbying Hard to Keep Net Neutrality Out
AT&T and others stand to profit billions of dollars by creating slow lanes and fast lanes on the internet. The real issue here is that customer already paid for an internet connection at a certain speed, so its some level of fraud or deception (false advertising, bait-and-switch) to be selling a service at a certain speed and then not delivering the service that the customer is paying for.

Comment Preventing Stingray from working (Score 5, Interesting) 272

So, I've been thinking of how could we prevent such a rogue device from operating on the cellular network? The way it is done is pretty easy actually:
* First you have to create a database of longitude / latitude coordinates of where we find cell tower sites at 100% signal strength.
* Next we allow Android's baseband processor to issue handoffs to cell towers that are within range of the GeoIP coordinate database
* So when a Stingray device pretends to be a cell tower, and it is not within range of the geoIP coordinates database, it will be rejected

This could be easily implemented in Android... and you could also add notifications when a cell tower was rejected due to being too far away from the known cell tower real location.
GNU is Not Unix

Interview: Ask Richard Stallman What You Will 480

Posted by samzenpus from the go-ahead-and-ask dept.
Richard Stallman (RMS) founded the GNU Project in 1984, the Free Software Foundation in 1985, and remains one of the most important and outspoken advocates for software freedom. He now spends much of his time fighting excessive extension of copyright laws, digital restrictions management, and software patents. RMS has agreed to answer your questions about GNU/Linux, how GNU relates to Linux the kernel, free software, why he disagrees with the idea of open source, and other issues of public concern. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one question per post.
Government

Online, You're Being Watched At All Times; Act Accordingly. 299

Posted by timothy from the so-act-suspicious dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Kaspersky Lab's Internet security expert Costin Raiu discusses internet surveillance claims that you should assume that you're being watched at all times. The article reports that Raiu conducts his online activities under the assumption that his movements are being monitored by government hackers. Raiu: 'I operate under the principle that my computer is owned by at least three governments' ... 'this is not meant as a scare tactic, but a rather as a statement of fact that should now be the default setting for everyone.'"

Comment sounds like they have a case (Score 4, Insightful) 149

by NynexNinja (#46198655) Attached to: Florida Arrests High-Dollar Bitcoin Exchangers For Money Laundering
If someone comes up to your business and says "hey i'm going to use this for illegal purposes", and then you agree to accept the money, you're in violation of several laws. RICO is one, and so is money laundering in some cases. His biggest mistake was at the point when they said what they were going to use the money for, in this case to buy stolen credit cards online, he accepted the deal and continued working with them. He should have said that he doesn't do anything illegal and not dealt with the potential customer at that point. That would have shielded him from liability.

Comment If JQuery is a hack, everything is a hack (Score 1) 573

by NynexNinja (#46169935) Attached to: HTML5 App For Panasonic TVs Rejected - JQuery Is a "Hack"
If you're talking about web technology, and you're claiming that JQuery is a hack, you might as well admit that using Ajax is also a hack, so is javascript. The only thing really is *not* a hack would be native object code running on the chip. You'd be left with the web browser and no interpretation of any of of the web pages.

Comment Google has problems (Score 1) 692

by NynexNinja (#46042831) Attached to: Protesters Show Up At the Doorstep of Google Self-driving Car Engineer
If Google didn't build their own private air terminal at San Jose Airport to get around flying with the riff raff, or build their own private bus system to get around employees riding BART with the riff raff, they probably wouldnt have so much back lash. They are not doing things that is for the community. They are trying to shield themselves from the community. To outsiders, I'm sure it appears they are building their own utopian society that is somehow greater than the one they live in. If they want to be seen as helpful, they should be doing helpful things. The whole creepy factor about everything they do is also more than most people can handle as well. Whether it be using Google Glass to try to lookup criminal histories of random strangers on the street, or using the Google Bus to avoid interacting with regular humans, or using the Google Airport to avoid interacting with regular humans. Apple is in similar circumstances, but they are less creepy and so people are not up in arms about them, yet.

Slashdot Top Deals

FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed -- it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer. -- A.J. Perlis

Close