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The Internet

Security Experts Believe the Internet of Things Will Be Used To Kill Someone 165

Posted by Soulskill from the time-for-a-ban-on-assault-internets dept.
dcblogs writes: Imagine a fleet of quad copters or drones equipped with explosives and controlled by terrorists. Or someone who hacks into a connected insulin pump and changes the settings in a lethal way. Or maybe the hacker who accesses a building's furnace and thermostat controls and runs the furnace full bore until a fire is started. Those may all sound like plot material for a James Bond movie, but there are security experts who now believe, as does Jeff Williams, CTO of Contrast Security, that "the Internet of Things will kill someone". Today, there is a new "rush to connect things" and "it is leading to very sloppy engineering from a security perspective," said Williams. Similarly, Rashmi Knowles, chief security architect at RSA, imagines criminals hacking into medical devices, recently blogged about hackers using pacemakers to blackmail users, and asked: "Question is, when is the first murder?"

Comment Re:Yes... (Score 1) 145

by cellocgw (#48477121) Attached to: Scientists Develop "Paint" To Help Cool the Planet

I don't mind when people state clearly that they don't really understand the absorption & radiation equations, but it does kinda piss me off when these same people pontificate as though they did.

Here's how this new microlayer thing works:

First, it's highly reflective in the visible. That keeps a lot of energy from every entering (and being absorbed in) the building.
Second, it's highly absorptive in the IR. Due to the reciprocity laws, this means it's also highly emissive in the IR (and btw it's also NOT emissive in the visible since it's reflective there), but that doesn't matter. Why? Because the Black Body radiation laws show that the radiative emissions for objects in the 250 K to 350 K range, which pretty much covers buildings, people, etc., are very high in the IR and almost nonexistent in the visible range.

What this means is that most solar input energy is reflected away and simultaneously lots of local thermal energy is emitted away. win-win (at least if you like it cool).
Medicine

Canada's Ebola Vaccine Nets Millions For Tiny US Biotech Firm 70

Posted by Soulskill from the all-fun-and-games-until-somebody-loses-several-internal-organs dept.
Anita Hunt (lissnup) writes: Iowa-based NewLink Genetics has secured a US$50million deal with pharmaceutical giant Merck for the experimental Ebola vaccine developed by Canadian government scientists. NewLink bought the exclusive commercial licensing rights to Canada's VSV-EBOV in 2010 with a milestone payment of just US$205,000. This is an interesting new twist in a story we've discussed previously, and which continues to draw media attention.

Comment Re:ssh / scp / https maybe? (Score 1) 148

by cellocgw (#48385837) Attached to: Internet Voting Hack Alters PDF Ballots In Transmission

Out of the hundreds of millions of votes cast over that past 14 years they've found less than 30 cases if in-person voting fraud which is a fraud rate of less than 0.00001%. Voter ID is just a solution looking for a problem.

If only that last sentence were true. VoterID is a solution to a major problem: getting rid of people who don't vote Republican. If you think the whole megillah was set up with actual fraud-protection in mind, you're seriously naive.

Comment warning: nanny-state comment (Score 2) 134

Seems to me that kids who want to learn to hack around with a computer can quite well do so on their own, thank you. No need for some set of lessons, be they gov't-approved or not.

I mean, really: at the very worst, 10 minutes with a search engine, the term " introduction and tutorial for $LANGUAGE" or Stackoverflow should get anyone capable of comprehending what programming is in the first place off and running.
Education

US School Installs 'Shooter Detection' System 698

Posted by Soulskill from the but-new-textbooks-are-too-expensive dept.
An anonymous reader writes: A school in Methuen, Massachusetts has demonstrated the first installation of an automated detection system for active gunmen. Sensors placed throughout the building are activated by the sounds of gunfire. The sensors relay data on the shooter's real-time location directly to police, who can then track and subdue their target. The system was developed for the military to detect the location of enemy fire. It will cost school districts between $20,000 and $100,000 to equip each school with the gunfire-detecting sensors. Methuen's police chief said, "It's amazing, the short, split-second amount of time from identification of the shot to transmission of the message. It changes the whole game. Without that shot detection system, we wouldn't know what was going on in the school ... Valuable, valuable time can be lost. Unfortunately, with school crisis situations, it's about mitigating loss."

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