49832781
submission
rastos1 writes:
The solar eruption, called a coronal mass ejection, occurred yesterday at 1:24 a.m. EDT (0524 GMT) and sent charged particles streaking outward at 380 miles per second. That's just over 1.3 million mph (2.2 million km/h). The solar fallout from the sun storm is expected to reach Earth within the next three days. Interestingly an unnamed icy comet from the outer solar system dove into the sun and disintegrated nearly a the same time.
49450635
submission
rastos1 writes:
On the same day that President Barack Obama spoke to the press about possible surveillance reforms—and released a related white paper on the subject—the National Security Agency came out with its own rare, publicly-released, seven-page document (PDF): "In its foreign intelligence mission, NSA touches about 1.6% of 1826 PB of information that the Internet carries per day".
48215665
submission
rastos1 writes:
Bolivia president Evo Morales' plane was forced to land in Austria on Tuesday after France and Portugal refused air permits, apparently because they suspected it was carrying Edward Snowden, the former U.S. spy agency contractor wanted by Washington on espionage charges. Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca told reporters that Portugal and France had abruptly canceled the air permits, forcing the unscheduled Vienna stopover as Morales was returning on a Bolivian government plane from Russia.
44625039
submission
rastos1 writes:
Egypt's naval forces captured three scuba divers who were trying to cut an undersea Internet cable in the Mediterranean on Wednesday, a military spokesman said. Telecommunications executives meanwhile blamed a weeklong Internet slowdown on damage caused to another cable by a ship.
33095491
submission
rastos1 writes:
A US federal judge has temporarily blocked a section of the controversial National Defense Authorization Act that allows for the indefinite military detention of US citizens. In a 68-page ruling, US District Judge Katherine Forrest agreed on Wednesday that the statute failed to “pass constitutional muster” because its language could be interpreted quite broadly and eventually be used to suppress political dissent.
24295640
submission
rastos1 writes:
In a demonstration last Friday, it took less than two minutes for researchers Thai Duong and Juliano Rizzo to wield the exploit to recover an encrypted authentication cookie used to access a PayPal user account. The researchers settled on a Java applet as their means to bypass SOP, leading Firefox developers to discuss blocking the framework in a future version of the browser.
“I recommend that we blocklist all versions of the Java Plugin,” Firefox developer Brian Smith wrote on Tuesday in a discussion on Mozilla's online bug forum. “My understanding is that Oracle may or may not be aware of the details of the same-origin exploit. As of now, we have no ETA for a fix for the Java plugin.”
23717360
submission
rastos1 writes:
If you're the owner of a decent pair of binoculars train them on the handle of The Plough or Big Dipper a little after twilight tonight. The result of a massive explosion some 21 million light years away in the Pinwheel Galaxy M101, the nearest supernova of its type to be discovered for 40 years should be at its brightest tonight.
22808132
submission
rastos1 writes:
Inspired by http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/07/31/211251/Volunteer-Towns-Sought-For-Nuclear-Waste
What is the acceptable distance (in miles) of nearest nuclear waste storage site from your house?
0 — it could be in my mom's basement if I wasn't living there
1-20 — I have no problem with nuclear waste
20-100 — just keep it out of sight
101- 1000 didn't you hear this stuff DANGEROUS?
20914330
submission
rastos1 writes:
Holed up in his walled compound in northeast Pakistan with no phone or Internet capabilities, bin Laden would type a message on his computer without an Internet connection, then save it using a thumb-sized flash drive. He then passed the flash drive to a trusted courier, who would head for a distant Internet cafe.
At that location, the courier would plug the memory drive into a computer, copy bin Laden's message into an email and send it. Reversing the process, the courier would copy any incoming email to the flash drive and return to the compound, where bin Laden would read his messages offline.
19571340
submission
rastos1 writes:
For most of the past eight months, Manning has been required to sleep wearing only boxer shorts, because of his status as a detainee under "prevention of injury watch," said 1st Lt. Brian Villiard, a spokesman for the military detention facility, or "brig," in Quantico. Beginning Wednesday night, the facility commander ordered that Manning turn over his boxers, too.
17893632
submission
rastos1 writes:
BBC reports that Britain has received a European arrest warrant from Sweden for the Wikileaks' founder Julian Assange. The warrant is being processed by the Serious Organised Crime Agency and will be sent to the Metropolitan Police as he is thought to be in the London area.
16904954
submission
rastos1 writes:
The Deutsche Telekom will provide dual stack IPv4/IPv6 connectivity for all DSL users (google translation) as of end of 2011. The users will be in addition to their IPv4 address assigned IPv6 /56 prefix. Interesting is that this prefix will be dynamic. For permanently connected users, the prefix will change rarely. Customers that have purchased fixed IPv4 address, will get an offer for stable IPv6 prefix.
11632104
submission
rastos1 writes:
I run today across a forum message mentioning that one needs to register in order to download Java Development Kit. Indeed. Looking at the list of benefits I don't think they apply to me and the requirement makes me compelled to use the "Feedback" for the first time ever. All I ever wanted was the JDK archive and API docs in a zip. Now it looks like I will have to come up with one more fake identity when I will want to update my development environment because I got lost in the forest of privacy policy documents within a few minutes. All I could find is that cookies have expiration time less than a year. What is the slashdot crowd position on this?
8836336
submission
rastos1 writes:
Part of Munich airport in southern Germany was shut down for several hours after a traveler's laptop set off an explosives detector. ... Officials had wanted to check the computer again but the man had left. ... A police spokesman quoted by AFP news agency cautioned that the scanner could have been set off by chemicals such as perfumes, and that the man might simply have been in a hurry to catch his plane.
I'm so glad the security of air traffic is taken care of.
7051710
submission
rastos1 writes:
A Turkish grad student has devised a serious, real-world attack on Twitter that targeted a recently discovered vulnerability in the SSL protocol. The exploit by Anil Kurmus is significant because it successfully targeted the so-called SSL renegotiation bug to steal Twitter login credentials that passed through encrypted data streams. All in all, a man in the middle is able to steal the credentials of a user authenticating himself through HTTPS to a trusted website.
The attack description is available on securegoose.org