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Submission + - Naked self-destructing sexts could be what finally kills Google. No, Seriously. (bgr.com) 1

Submitted by zacharye
zacharye writes: As Google’s share price soars beyond $1,100, it seems like nothing can stop the Internet juggernaut as its land grab strategies continue to win over the eyes of its users and the wallets of its advertising clients. But an analysis published over this past weekend raises an interesting question surrounding a new business model that could someday lead to Google’s downfall. Do we want an erasable Internet?...

Submission + - Polynesians May Have Invented Binary Math (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: How old is the binary number system? Perhaps far older than the invention of computers or even the invention of binary math in the West. The residents of a tiny Polynesian island may have been doing calculations in binary—a number system with only two digits—centuries before it was described by Gottfried Leibniz, the co-inventor of calculus, in 1703.

Submission + - CBS 60 MInutes: NSA speaks out on Snowden, spying (cbsnews.com) 7

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: This week CBS New's 60 Minutes program had a broadcast segment devoted to the NSA, and additional online features. It revealed that the first secret Snowden stole was the test and answers for a technical examination to get a job at NSA. When working at home, Snowden covered his head and screen with a hood so that his girlfriend couldn't see what he was doing. NSA considered the possibility that Snowden left malicious software behind and removed every computer and cable that Snowden had access to from its classified network, costing tens of millions of dollars. Snowden took approximately 1.7 million classified documents. Snowden never approached any of multiple Inspectors General, supervisors, or Congressional oversight committee members about his concerns. Snowden's activity caught the notice of other System Administrators. There were also other interesting details, such as the NSA has a highly competitive intern program for High School students that are given a Top Secret clearance and a chance to break codes that have resisted the efforts of NSA's analysts — some succeed. The NSA is only targeting the communications, as opposed to metadata, of less than 60 Americans. Targeting the actual communications of Americans, rather than metadata, requires a probable cause finding and a specific court order. NSA analysts working with metadata don't have access to the name, and can't listen to the call. The NSA's work is driven by requests for information by other parts of the government, and there are about 31,000 requests. Snowden apparently managed to steal a copy of that document, the "crown jewels" of the intelligence world. With that information, foreign nations would know what the US does and doesn't know, and how to exploit it.

Submission + - Amazon drones are 'fantasy,' says eBay CEO (computerworld.com.au)

Submitted by angry tapir
angry tapir writes: In the race to deliver online shopping purchases faster, drones don't impress eBay's CEO. "We're not focusing on long-term fantasies, we're focusing on things we can do today," John Donahue said in an interview. He was reacting to an interview Jeff Bezos, CEO of e-commerce rival Amazon, gave last weekend in which he said Amazon is investigating the use of drones for package delivery.

Submission + - Murdoch's online sockpuppets .. (mediamatters.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In his forthcoming book on News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch, veteran NPR media reporter David Folkenflik reports several fascinating stories about the mogul's expansive media empire.

Among the stories highlighted in Murdoch's World: that Fox News' public relations shop used an elaborate series of fake accounts to post pro-Fox comments on websites critical of the network; that the same PR department has resorted to ruthless tactics to take revenge on critical reporters; that News Corp's CEO tried to suppress damaging reporting about the phone hacking scandal from running in the Wall Street Journal; and that a New York Post columnist was merely "chastised" for directing a racial slur at a colleague.

Submission + - Japan Promises An Ultra-High-Tech 2020 Olympics (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: When Japan first hosted the Olympics in 1964, it was a platform for the country to showcase that it was a first-rate technical nation, with brand new bullet trains for visitors and the games broadcast in color via satellite for the first time. Japan's tech industry is already preparing for the 2020 Tokyo Games, with Japanese companies promising ultra-high-def TV, super-fast cell phone networks, and autonomous self-driving cars on the roads.

Submission + - Obvious? Not so much: TSA reminds you not to travel with hand grenades (networkworld.com)

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: Some of the travel recommendations posted on the Transportation Security Administration's blog seem stupefying obvious. This week's entitled: "Leave Your Grenades at Home" seemed like a no brainer, but alas. The TSA wrote about grenades in particular: Year to date, the agency's officers have discovered: 43 grenades in carry-on baggage and 40 grenades in checked baggage

Submission + - Brazil Sues Samsung Over Work Conditions (ft.com)

Submitted by konohitowa
konohitowa writes: The Financial Times is reporting that the Brazilian government has filed a lawsuit against Samsung for working conditions that put workers' health at risk (both through repetitive motion injuries as well as excessive consecutive work days). While Samsung has "promised to conduct a thorough review and fully co-operate with the Brazilian authorities once it receives details of the complaint", the article also points out the following:

The prosecutors’ office in the Amazon said that it started legal action against Samsung on August 9 following three government inspections at the plant, the first of which started in May 2011.

Perhaps Latin America won't be quite the easy alternate to China that manufacturing corporations had envisioned.

Submission + - BREACH Compression Attack Steals SSL Secrets (threatpost.com)

Submitted by msm1267
msm1267 writes: A serious attack against ciphertext secrets buried inside HTTPS responses has prompted an advisory from Homeland Security. The BREACH attack is an offshoot of CRIME, which was thought dead and buried after it was disclosed in September. Released at last week’s Black Hat USA 2013, BREACH enables an attacker to read encrypted messages over the Web by injecting plaintext into an HTTPS request and measuring compression changes.
Researchers Angelo Prado, Neal Harris and Yoel Gluck demonstrated the attack against Outlook Web Access (OWA) at Black Hat. Once the Web application was opened and the Breach attack was launched, within 30 seconds the attackers had extracted the secret.
“We are currently unaware of a practical solution to this problem,” said the CERT advisory, released one day after the Black Hat presentation.

Submission + - The Reviews for the First Lab Grown Burger Aren't Bad (vice.com)

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey
Daniel_Stuckey writes: According to the immediate reactions of the guinea pigs, the six-figure burger wasn't bad, but could have used some ketchup.

The tasting was presented as a livestreamed special by Maastricht University, which is home to Dr. Mark Post, the researcher who's led the lab-grown meat effort. Joining him to taste the small patty, which was prepared by chef Richard McGeown on a set resembling an infomercial, were food scientist Hanni Rützler and author Josh Schonwald.

Submission + - The Internet is Finished as a Global Network

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: John Naughton writes in the Guardian that the insight them seems to have escaped most of the world's mainstream media regarding the revelations from Edward Snowden is how the US has been able to bend nine US internet companies to its demands for access to their users' data proving that no US-based internet company can be trusted to protect our privacy or data. "The fact is that Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft are all integral components of the US cyber-surveillance system," writes Naughton. "Nothing, but nothing, that is stored in their "cloud" services can be guaranteed to be safe from surveillance or from illicit downloading by employees of the consultancies employed by the NSA." This spells the end of the internet as a truly global network. "It was always a possibility that the system would eventually be Balkanised, ie divided into a number of geographical or jurisdiction-determined subnets as societies such as China, Russia, Iran and other Islamic states decided that they needed to control how their citizens communicated. Now, Balkanisation is a certainty." Naughton adds that given what we now know about how the US has been abusing its privileged position in the global infrastructure, the idea that the western powers can be allowed to continue to control it has become untenable. "Why would you pay someone else to hold your commercial or other secrets, if you suspect or know they are being shared against your wishes?" writes Neelie Kroes, vice-president of the European Commission. "Front or back door – it doesn’t matter – any smart person doesn’t want the information shared at all. Customers will act rationally, and providers will miss out on a great opportunity."

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Favorite Thing Out of This Year's Black Hat? (slashdot.org)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: This year's Black Hat conference wasn't just about the NSA director defending his agency's surveillance practices (and getting a bit heckled in the process). Other topics included hacking iOS devices via a modified charging station, eavesdropping on smartphones via compromised femtocells, demonstrating a password-security testing tools that leverage AWS (and 9TB of rainbow tables) to crush weak passwords, and compromising RFID tags with impunity. What was your favorite news out of Black Hat?

Submission + - Breakthrough in detecting DNA mutations could help treat cancer, TB (washington.edu)

Submitted by vinces99
vinces99 writes: Researchers have developed a new method that can look at a specific segment of DNA and pinpoint a single mutation, which could help diagnose and treat diseases such as cancer and tuberculosis. These small changes can be the root of a disease or the reason some infectious diseases resist certain antibiotics. The findings were published online July 28 in the journal Nature Chemistry.

âoeWeâ(TM)ve really improved on previous approaches because our solution doesnâ(TM)t require any complicated reactions or added enzymes, it just uses DNA,â said lead author Georg Seelig, a University of Washington assistant professor of electrical engineering and of computer science and engineering. âoeThis means that the method is robust to changes in temperature and other environmental variables, making it well-suited for diagnostic applications in low-resource settings.â

The researchers designed probes that can pick out mutations in a single base pair in a target stretch of DNA. The probes allow researchers to look in much more detail for variations in long sequences â" up to 200 base pairs â" while current methods can detect mutations in stretches of up to only 20.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Preventing Snowden-Style Security Breaches (slashdot.org)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: The topic of dealing with insider threats has entered the spotlight in a big way recently thanks to Edward Snowden. A former contractor who worked as an IT administrator for the National Security Agency via Booz Allen Hamilton, Snowden rocked the public with his controversial (and unauthorized) disclosure of top secret documents describing the NSA’s telecommunications and Internet surveillance programs to The Guardian. Achieving a layer of solid protection from insiders is a complex issue; when it comes to protecting a business’s data, organizations more often focus on threats from the outside. But when a trusted employee or contractor uses privileged access to take company data, the aftermath can be as catastrophic to the business or organization as an outside attack. An administrator can block removal of sensitive data via removable media (Snowden apparently lifted sensitive NSA data using a USB device) by disabling USB slots or controlling them via access or profile, or relying on DLP (which has its own issues). They can install software that monitors systems and does its best to detect unusual employee behavior, but many offerings in this category don't go quite far enough. They can track data as it moves through the network. But all of these security practices come with vulnerabilities. What do you think the best way is to lock down a system against malicious insiders?

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