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China

Submission + - GAO Sting Finds More Fake Military Parts From China (defensetech.org) 1

Nidi62 writes: The GAO, through a fictitious company, recently requisitioned parts from China in order to determine if the Chinese government was living up to its promises of battling counterfiet parts. The report from the GAO found that "
334 of 396 vendors who offered to sell parts to the fictitious company were from China" and that "
all 16 parts eventually purchased by the fake company came from 13 China-based vendors and all were determined by an independent testing laboratory to be counterfeit." The parts requested were supposedly for use in F-15s, MV-22 Ospreys, and nuclear submarines, and were asked to be new parts. It also says that over the past 3 years, over 1 million counterfeit parts have been found to have come from Chinese companies. This stands in sharp contrast to the Chinese government's promise to clamp down on the production of counterfeit parts in China

Network

Submission + - Fibre To The Cabinet Is A Big Mistake? (techweekeurope.co.uk)

judgecorp writes: "After tales of copper theft and with the demand for faster broadband, you might think that replacing copper cables with fibre is a good idea. Instead, running fibre to roadside cabinets is "one of the worst mistakes humanity has made" according to futurologist and former BT CTO Peter Cochrane. You would have thought it was some way behind wars and reality TV, but apparently the idea of stopping the fibre at the kerb is just wrong. And it doesn't stop theft, as criminals will break into the cabinet to get the battery it contains, said Cochrane."
Robotics

Submission + - Warehouse robots come of age as Amazon buys Kiva (extremetech.com) 1

MrSeb writes: "In Kurt Vonnegut’s 'Player Piano,' workers displaced by robots find themselves with an abundance of material goods but a lack of jobs. Watching robots like those from Kiva — recently acquired by Amazon for nearly a billion dollars — zip around warehouses fetching products, it’s easy to wonder whether his dark vision of the future is becoming part of ours. The last 50 years have seen dramatic advances in robotic technology and machines have been made suitable for a dramatically increased number of tasks. The path hasn’t been smooth, though, and it hasn’t proceeded in a way anyone expected, but robots are coming of age in one area after another — most recently warehouse automation. Warehouse robots are a logical evolution of the conveyor belt. They are highly mobile and capable of navigating themselves around the complex environment of a distribution facility. Often they have no arms at all, and simply act as glorified, motorized hydraulic jacks, ferrying loads from one place to another. If you've ever wondered how Amazon keeps its prices low, here's your answer: It's the robots."
Australia

Submission + - Apple To Refund iPad In More Countries? (ibtimes.com)

redletterdave writes: "After the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) won a battle with Apple after alleging the Cupertino-based company was misleading customers about its third-generation iPad, authorities in other countries are now assessing the compatibility of the new iPad with local 4G LTE networks to see if their customers should deserve refunds too. The UK's Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) confirmed on Tuesday that it is investigating complaints of Apple's misleading "4G" claim, while Sweden and Denmark are also reportedly considering investigations, after agencies within both countries received "several complaints" from customers about 4G connectivity. Even though these countries carry broad LTE coverage, the new iPad isn't supported on any of those networks."
GNOME

Submission + - GNOME 3.4 Released (gnome.org)

supersloshy writes: The popular GNOME desktop environment has just announced the release of version 3.4. User-facing updates include, among others, a new look for many GNOME applications, smooth scrolling support in GTK, integrated document search in GNOME Shell, a new dynamic background, improved accessibility configuration options, new high-contrast icons, and more documentation. Developer-facing improvements include the release of GTK+ 3.4 and updates to standard GNOME libraries as part of the latest GNOME Developer Platform. For more information, you can read the full release notes at this webpage.
Botnet

Submission + - Researchers Take Down 110k Strong Khelios P2P Botnet (krebsonsecurity.com)

tsu doh nimh writes: Experts from across the security industry collaborated this week to quarantine more than 110,000 Microsoft Windows PCs that were infected with the Khelios worm, a contagion that forces infected PCs to blast out junk email advertising rogue Internet pharmacies. But within hours of the takedown, miscreants launched Khelios.C, a new version that appears to be spreading via Facebook links.
Botnet

Submission + - A First Person Account of DNSChanger Takedown Operation and Clean-Up Task (circleid.com)

penciling_in writes: Paul Vixie shares his personal account of the DNSChanger takedown operation working with FBI and a worldwide team. He also explains the delay issues in identifying and notifying victims which resulted in FBI asking the judge for an extension and were given four more months. 'On July 9 2012 the replacement DNS servers operated by ISC will be shut down and any victims who still depend on these servers will face new risks,' he warns. A half dozen national Internet security teams around the world have created special web sites that will display a warning message to potential victims of the DNS Changer infection. The full list of these "DNS Checking" web sites is published on the DCWG's web site.
Open Source

Submission + - Are Open Source Libraries Any More Vulnerable Than Closed Source? (networkworld.com)

colinneagle writes: My friend and Network World editor, Ellen Messmer posted an article yesterday about the results of an analysis by Aspect Security of the Central Repository maintained by Sonatype. The study was announced by Aspect and Sonatype yesterday. Both the study and Ellen's article have set off a bit of a firestorm in both the open source and security communities about the security or lack thereof of open source libraries and components.

As noted in Ellen's article some of the biggest libraries that are used and have known vulnerabilities are Google Web Toolkit (GWT); Apache Xerces; Spring MVC; and Struts 1.x.

The buzz with the release of the study and Ellen's article is calling into question whether open source is any more or less secure than closed source code. Another issue is whether or not open source companies and authors are vigilant in closing holes and insecurities in their code. I spoke with Wayne Jackson, CEO of Sonatype, the company that maintains the Central Repository which was the subject of this study. I know Jackson from his days as CEO of Sourcefire. Wayne is a long time supporter and believer in open source.

Wayne told me that people looking at this study and using it to say that open source is less secure than closed source are mistaken. There are vulnerabilities in just about all code and libraries. The fact that this study saw so much use of vulnerable libraries is more about the popularity and wide spread usage of open source than whether it is more or less secure. To Jackson, that is the real finding of this study. Look how many applications and enterprises use open source libraries and components. It is pretty ubiquitous.

DRM

Submission + - What book publishers should learn from Harry Potter (gigaom.com)

Volanin writes: The e-book versions of Harry Potter are being released through Pottermore, and Rowling has chosen to do a number of interesting things with them, including releasing them without DRM restrictions.

One of the encouraging things about the Pottermore launch is that the books will be available on virtually every platform simultaneously, including the Sony Reader, the Nook, the Kindle and Google’s e-book service.

Even Amazon has bowed to the power of the series and done what would previously have seemed unthinkable: it sends users who come to the titles on Amazon to Pottermore to finish the transaction.

Comment Re:You know... (Score 1) 426

Since people are so envious of what others have...

The word you are looking for is "covet."

Gosh, if only there was a rule against it....

Well, I mean, it's a bad thing and all, but I'm sure there are worse things. In fact, if you made a list of bad things, say 10 of them, this would probably only be number 10.

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