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Submission + - Good technology conference to attend?

Submitted by SSG Booraem
SSG Booraem writes: I've recently been hired to a IT supervisor position at a local college. My boss wants me to find some technology conferences that I'd like to attend and submit them to her. Since I've worked in IT for 18 years but usually done scut work, I don't have any ideas. I'd appreciate suggestions with personal experiences.

Submission + - Multipath TCP Introduces Security Blind Spot (threatpost.com)

Submitted by msm1267
msm1267 writes: If multipath TCP is the next big thing to bring resilience and efficiency to networking, then there are some serious security issues to address before it goes mainstream. An expert at next week's Black Hat conference is expected to explain how the TCP extension exposes leaves network security gear blind to traffic moving over multiple network streams. Today's IDS and IPS, for example, cannot correlate and re-assemble traffic as it's split over multiple paths. While such attacks are not entirely practical today, as multipath TCP becomes a fixture on popular networking gear and mobile devices, the risks will escalate.

“[Multipath TCP] solves big problems we have today in an elegant fashion,” said Catherine Pearce, security consultant and one of the presenters, along with Patrick Thomas. “You don’t have to replace hardware or software; it handles all that stuff behind the scenes. But security tools are naïve [to MPTCP], and make assumptions that are no longer valid that were valid in the past.”

Submission + - Minnesota Man 3D Prints Life Size Concrete Castle (3dprint.com)

Submitted by Bob768
Bob768 writes: A man named Andrey Rudenko has begun 3D printing a life size castle in his back yard in Minnesota out of concrete. He developed the 3D printer himself and has ultimate plans of constructing a normal house to live in.

“While other teams are also working on respectable projects in 3D printing construction technology, I have developed a product that is ready for actual-size construction rather than miniature prototypes,” Rudenko told 3DPrint.com.

Images of the castle can be found here.

Comment Re:video quality (Score 1) 24

The source video is better quality, but the embedded video widget defaults to a lower quality transcoding for streaming (if you click the "webm 360p" box, you can switch to the original video).

Encoding with libvpx also seems to be kind of tricky and at least I've had trouble with getting block-free VP8 files even at a high bitrate (hey Monthy, hurry up and finish Daala ;) ).

Comment Re:MyTouch 4G Slidw (Score 2) 544

I have one of those too, but, blech, the keyboard went on the fritz pretty quickly and T-Mo refused warranty service >:O. The keyboard was also not nearly as nice as the G1's, and the hinge is kind of loose... whereas my G1's weird hinge was crisp until the bitter end. At least it has a great camera (kind of amazed at the video quality) and isn't too slow I guess.

As a result, I'm kind of back to not really using my phone. I guess I'm weird, using ssh and doing a bit of remote system administration on a phone (pretty liberating -- no need to carry around a laptop bag Just in Case (tm) some minor issue that could be resolved with a few quick commands crops up).

Submission + - A Fictional Compression Metric Moves Into the Real World (ieee.org)

Submitted by Tekla Perry
Tekla Perry writes: The "Weissman Score"—created for HBO's Silicon Valley to add dramatic flair to the show's race to build the best compression algorithm—creates a single score by considering both the amount of compression and the compression speed. While it was created for a TV show, it does really work, and it's quickly migrating into academia. Computer science and engineering students will begin to encounter the Weissman Score in the classroom this fall.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Where can I obtain resources to program for Palm OS 5?

Submitted by baka_toroi
baka_toroi writes: I got a Tungsten E2 from a friend and I wanted to give it some life by programming for it a little bit. The main problem I'm bumping with is that HP thought it would be awesome to just shut down every single thing related to Palm OS development. After googling a lot I found out CodeWarrior was the de facto IDE for Palm OS development... but I was soon disappointed as I learned that Palm moved from the 68K architecture to ARM, and of course, CodeWarrior was just focused on Palm OS 4 development.

Now, I realize Palm OS 4 software can be run on Palm OS 5, but I'm looking to use some of the "newer" APIs. Also, I have the Wi-fi add-on card so I wanted to create something that uses it. I thought what I needed was PODS (Palm OS Development Suite) but not only I can't find it anywhere but also it seems it was deprecated during Palm OS's lifetime. It really doesn't help the fact that I'm a beginner, but I really want to give this platform some life.
Any general tip, book, working link or even anecdotes related to all this will be greatly appreciated.

Submission + - Book review: Introduction to Cyber-Warfare: A Multidisciplinary Approach

Submitted by benrothke
benrothke writes: Introduction to Cyber-Warfare: A Multidisciplinary Approach

Author: Paulo Shakarian, Jana Shakarian and Andrew Ruef

Pages: 336

Publisher: Syngress

Rating: 9/10

Reviewer: Ben Rothke

ISBN: 978-0124078147

Summary: Outstanding overview and guide to cyberwarfare





Cyberwarfare is a controversial topic. At the 2014 Infosec World Conference, Marcus Ranum gave a talk on Cyberwar: Putting Civilian Infrastructure on the Front Lines, Again.



Whether it was the topic or just Marcus being Marcus, about a third of the participants left within the first 15 minutes. They should have stayed, as Ranum, agree with him or not, provided some riveting insights on the topic.



While a somewhat broad term, in Wikipedia, cyberwarfare (often called information warfare)is definedas politically motivated hacking to conduct sabotage and espionage. It is a form of information warfare sometimes seen as analogous to conventional warfare.



The authors define cyber war as an extension of policy by actions taken in cyber space by state or nonstate actors that either constitute a serious threat to a nation's security or are conducted in response to a perceived threat against a nation's security.



As to a book on the topic, for most readers, cyberwarfare is something that they may be victims of, but will rarely be an actively part of.



In Introduction to Cyber-Warfare: A Multidisciplinary Approach, authors Paulo Shakarian, Jana Shakarian and Andrew Ruef provide an excellent overview of the topic. The book takes a holistic, or as they call it multidisciplinary, approach to the topic. It looks at the information security aspect of cyberwarfare, as well the military, sociological and other aspects of the topic.



The book is divided into 3 parts and 13 densely packed and extremely well-researched and footnoted chapters, namely:



Part I: Cyber Attack

Chapter 2: Political Cyber Attack Comes of Age in 2007

Chapter 3: How Cyber Attacks Augmented Russian Military Operations

Chapter 4: When Who Tells the Best Story Wins: Cyber and Information Operations in the Middle East

Chapter 5: Limiting Free Speech on the Internet: Cyber Attack Against Internal Dissidents in Iran and Russia

Chapter 6: Cyber Attacks by Nonstate Hacking Groups: The Case of Anonymous and Its Affiliates



Part II: Cyber Espionage and Exploitation

Chapter 7: Enter the Dragon: Why Cyber Espionage Against Militaries, Dissidents, and Nondefense Corporations Is a Key

Component of Chinese Cyber Strategy

Chapter 8: Duqu, Flame, Gauss, the Next Generation of Cyber Exploitation

Chapter 9: Losing Trust in Your Friends: Social Network Exploitation

Chapter 10: How Iraqi Insurgents Watched U.S. Predator Video—Information Theft on the Tactical Battlefield



Part III: Cyber Operations for Infrastructure Attack

Chapter 11: Cyber Warfare Against Industry

Chapter 12: Can Cyber Warfare Leave a Nation in the Dark? Cyber Attacks Against Electrical Infrastructure

Chapter 13: Attacking Iranian Nuclear Facilities: Stuxnet





The book provides numerous case studies of the largest cyberwarfare events to date. Issues around China and their use of cyberwarfare constitute a part of the book. Chapter 7 details the Chinese cyber strategy and shows how the Chinese cyber doctrine and mindset is radically different from that of those in the west.



The book compares the board games of chess (a Western game) and Go (a Chinese game) and how the outcomes and strategies of the games are manifest in each doctrine.



The chapter also shows how the Chinese government outlawed hacking, while at the same time the military identified the best and most talented hackers in China, and integrated them into Chinese security firms, consulting organizations, academia and the military.



One of the more fascinating case studies details the cyber war against the corporate world from China. The book provides a number of examples and details the methodologies they used, in addition to providing evidence of how the Chinese were involved.



For an adversary, one of the means of getting information is via social networks. This is often used in parallel by those launching some sort of cyberwarfare attack. LinkedIn is one of the favorite tools for such an effort. The authors write of the dangers of transitive trust; where user A trusts user B, and user B trusts user C. Via a transitive trust, user A will then trust user C based simply on the fact that user B does. This was most manifest in the Robin Sageexercise.



This was where Thomas Ryan created a fictitious information security professional names Robin Sage. He used her fake identity and profile to make friends with others in the information security world, both commercial, federal and military and he was able to fool even seasoned security professionals. Joan Goodchild wrote a good overview of the experiment here.



In chapter 10, the book details how Iraqi insurgents viewed Predator drones video feeds. Woody Allen said that eighty percent of success is just showing up. In this case, all the insurgents had to do was download the feed, as it was being transmitted unencrypted. Very little cyberwarfare required.



When the drone was being designed, the designers used security by obscurity in their decision not to encrypt the video feed. They felt that since the Predator video feeds were being transmitted on frequencies that were not publically known, no access control, encryption or other security mechanisms would be needed.



The downside is that once the precise frequency was determined by the insurgency, in the case of the Predator drone, the Ku-band, the use of the SkyGrabber satellite internet downloader made it possible for them to effortless view the video feeds.



The only negative about the book is a minor one. It has over 100 pictures and illustrations. Each one states: for the color version of this figure, the reader is referred to the online version of the book. Having that after every picture is a bit annoying. Also, the book never says where you can find the online version of the book.



How good is this book? In his review of it, Krypt3ia said it best when he wrote: I would love to start a kickstarter and get this book into the hands of each and every moron in Congress and the House. The reality is that this book should indeed be read by everyone in Washington, as they are making decisions on the topic, without truly understanding it.



For most readers, this will be the book that tells them everyone they need to know that their congressman should know. Most people will never be involved with any sort of warfare, and most corporate information security professional will not get involved with cyberwarfare. Nonetheless, Introduction to Cyber-Warfare: A Multidisciplinary Approachis a fascinating read about a most important subject.







Reviewed by Ben Rothke

Submission + - Dear museums: uploading your content to Wikimedia Commons just got easier (wikipedia.org)

Submitted by The ed17
The ed17 writes: Galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAMs) are now facing fewer barriers to uploading their content to Wikimedia Commons—the website that stores most of Wikipedia's images and videos. Previously, these institutions had to build customized scripts or be lucky enough to find a Wikimedia volunteer to do the work for them. According to the toolset's coordinator Liam Wyatt, "this is a giant leap forward in giving GLAMs the agency to share with Commons on their own terms."

Submission + - ScummVM 1.7.0 Released

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: It's been a while since a new ScummVM release, but version 1.7.0 is now here with many exciting features. New games supported are The Neverhood, Mortville Manor, Voyeur, Return to Ringworld and Chivalry is Not Dead. The Roland MT-32 emulator has been updated, there is an OpenGL backend, the GUI has seen improvements, AGOS engine is enhanced, tons of SCI bug fixes have been applied, and various other improvements can be found. This version also introduces support for the OUYA gaming console and brings improvements to some other more exotic platforms. Please read the release notes for an accurate description of the new version.

Feed Google News Sci Tech: Google under fire from regulators over response to EU privacy ruling - Reuters U (google.com)

From feed by feedfeeder

Reuters UK
Google under fire from regulators over response to EU privacy ruling
Reuters UK
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Google's handling of "right to be forgotten" requests from European citizens will come under fire from the continent's privacy watchdogs on Thursday, after the search engine restricted the removal of Internet links to European sites only.
Google's 'right to be forgotten policy' backfiring, says HawkesIrish Times
Google hauled in by Europe over 'right to be forgotten' reactionHITC
Google and Microsoft to meet EU data watchdogs over Right to be ForgottenV3.co.uk
International Business Times UK
all 19 news articles

Submission + - Overwhelming majority of UK broadband users opting out of porn filters

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: By all accounts, the UK's national porn filters have been a disaster. The network-level filters were introduced at the insistence of the government, which said that companies could either implement them voluntarily, or face legislation to force them to do so. After their introduction, more tech savvy users were able to avoid the filters entirely by simply using a browser extension. But 'ordinary' users found that many entirely innocent and non-pornographic sites being blocked due to the over-zealous nature of the filtering. Internet service providers (ISPs) didn't want them, many government ministers didn't want them, and now it is clear that the overwhelming majority of users don't want them either, according to the findings of an official study by the UK's telecommunications regulator, Ofcom. On three of the UK's top four ISPs, over 92% of users opted out of the porn filters. Just 5% of users on BT chose to keep the filters in place.

Submission + - Arizona execution takes two hours

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: US death row inmate Joseph Wood has died after an execution in Arizona took nearly two hours to kill him. Wood, a double murderer, was executed by lethal injection. His lawyers filed an appeal for an emergency stay of execution, after he had been "gasping and snorting for more than an hour" in the death chamber. Arizona Governor Jan Brewer says she has ordered a full review of the execution, although she said that Wood "died in a lawful manner". Wood's lawyers argued the extended execution process violated his right to be executed in the absence of cruel and unusual punishment.

Submission + - Laser Eye Surgery, Revisited 10 years Later (slashdot.org)

Submitted by gunner_von_diamond
gunner_von_diamond writes: I was just reading a story on ./ from 10 years ago today, about Lasik Eye Surgery. Personally, I've had Lasik done and loved every single part of the surgery. I went from wearing contacts/glasses every day to having 20/15 vision! In the older post, everyone seemed to be cautious about it, waiting for technical advances to get the surgery done. In present day, the surgery is fairly inexpensive [even for a programmer :) ], takes about 10-15 minutes for the actual surgery, and I recovered from the surgery that same day. So my question is, what is holding everyone else back from being reliant on contacts and/or glasses?

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