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Comment Limited user privilege escalation? Tell me how. (Score 1) 137

"You have to consider local, internal attacks..."

If you know of an attack that works against a Windows XP limited user, please mention it. It is likely it could be fixed without Microsoft's support.

"XP is dead. It's lifespan is over."

Software doesn't die. Are you saying that, after literally thousands of bug fixes, Microsoft had still not fixed all the vulnerabilities in Windows XP? That's certainly possible; Microsoft makes more money if there are vulnerabilities, since people pay full price for the next version of the operating sytstem.

"we had major difficulty getting drivers for things as simple as SATA controllers for it"

SATA add-on cards.

"If you have ANY significant number of XP machines, it's time to pay the pittance that an entirely new machine would cost"

That's not the problem. The real cost is in all the configuration and teaching people to use new computers. There are programs, lots of them, that don't run on Windows 7.

"And Windows 10 is expected to be free..."

I'm guessing that Windows 10 will be "free" because it will force a lock-in to Microsoft's methods.

"If you have a "network", especially a business one, of any description, you are negligent in sticking on XP now."

What is particularly vulnerable about XP on a network? We use a software firewall on each computer, Windows 7 or XP, and everyone operates as a limited user.

"You can't secure XP. ... there's no real thing as a limited user in XP because it's basically a cinch to demonstrate privilege escalation using any number of pieces of bog-standard software on XP..."

Look at this video of a "privilege escalation": Windows XP local privilege escalation. It's total nonsense. One of the comments: "When you try this without administrator rights you get an error: Access is denied."

Submission + - NSA Reform Bill Backed by Both Parties Set to Pass House of Representatives

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: The NYT reports that after more than a decade of wrenching national debate over the intrusiveness of government intelligence agencies, a bipartisan wave of support has gathered to sharply limit the federal government’s sweeps of phone and Internet records. A bill that would overhaul the Patriot Act and curtail the metadata surveillance exposed by Edward J. Snowden overwhelmingly passed the House Judiciary Committee by a vote of a 25-2 vote and is heading to almost certain passage in the House of Representatives while an identical bill in the Senate — introduced with the support of five Republicans — is gaining support over the objection of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who is facing the prospect of his first policy defeat since ascending this year to majority leader. "The bill ends bulk collection, it ends secret law,” says Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, the original author of the Patriot Act who has now helped author the Freedom Act. “It increases the transparency of our intelligence community and it does all this without compromising national security.”

The Patriot Act is up for its first reauthorization since the revelations about bulk data collection. The impending June 1 deadline for reauthorization, coupled with an increase of support among members of both parties, pressure from technology companies and a push from the White House have combined to make changes to the provisions more likely. The Snowden disclosures, along with data breaches at Sony Pictures, Target and the insurance giant Anthem, have unsettled voters and empowered those in Congress arguing for greater civil liberties protection — who a few years ago “could have met in a couple of phone booths,” says Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon. The Freedom Act very nearly passed both chambers of Congress last year, but it failed to garner the 60 votes to break a filibuster in the Senate. It fell short by two votes.

However some say the bill doesn't go far enough. The bill leaves intact surveillance programs conducted by the Drug Enforcement Agency and levies high penalties against those offering “material support” to terrorists. It also renews the expiring parts of the Patriot Act through 2019. "This bill would make only incremental improvements, and at least one provision – the material-support provision – would represent a significant step backwards,” says American Civil Liberties Union Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer. “The disclosures of the last two years make clear that we need wholesale reform.”

Submission + - American Psychological Association hit with new torture allegations (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Did the American Psychological Association (APA) collude with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to enable the torture of detainees in the War on Terror? The answer won't be known until June, when an independent investigation is due to conclude. But at least one thing was made clear today in a report from an independent group of psychologists based on e-mail exchanges between APA and CIA officials from 2003 to 2006: The world's largest professional organization for psychologists has maintained a surprisingly cozy relationship with the defense and intelligence community.

Submission + - Nuclear waste: Bury nuclear waste down a very deep hole, say scientists (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Scientists at the University of Sheffield calculate that all of the UK's high level nuclear waste from spent fuel reprocessing could be disposed of in just six boreholes 5km deep, fitting within a site no larger than a football pitch.

The concept — called deep borehole disposal — has been developed primarily in the UK but is likely to see its first field trials in the USA next year. If the trials are successful, the USA hopes to dispose of its 'hottest' and most radioactive waste — left over from plutonium production and currently stored at Hanford in Washington State — in a deep borehole.

Comment In many situations, Windows XP is secure. (Score -1) 137

There is a conflict of interest. Microsoft makes more money if its software is considered insecure. Microsoft effectively has a monopoly, but it was somehow decided by the U.S. government that Microsoft's monopoly was not covered by U.S. laws against monopoly.

There are many situations in which Windows XP is secure. For example, XP is secure when run on a network that is solely internal, and every computer on that network is run as a limited user. Businesses doing the same work every day don't need new hardware or software if the equipment they have now is serving them well.

Software doesn't have a "lifespan". It works the same as it always did, with the same hardware.

See my article, Microsoft Windows XP "end of life": Conflict of interest.

Submission + - Internet Explorer's Successor, Project Spartan, Is Called Microsoft Edge

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: At its Build 2015 developer conference today, Microsoft announced Project Spartan will be called Microsoft Edge. Joe Belfiore, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of the operating systems group, announced the news on stage, adding that Edge will have support for extensions. Edge is Microsoft’s new browser shipping on all Windows 10 devices (PCs, tablets, smartphones, and so on). Belfiore explained the name as referring to “being on the edge of consuming and creating.”

Submission + - How one tweet wiped $8bn off Twitter's value

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Someone mistakenly published earnings information on a Nasdaq-run investor relations page for Twitter before the company officially released the news and it sent the stock into a tailspin. Initially the earnings statement went unnoticed, but soon a Tweet with the results got a lot of attention. The stock lost more than $8 billion at one point as news spread. "We asked the New York Stock Exchange to halt trading once we discovered our Q1 numbers were out, and we published our results as soon as possible thereafter," said Twitter's senior director for investor relations, Krista Bessinger. "Selerity, who provided the initial tweets with our results, informed us that earnings release was available on our Investor Relations site before the close of market. Nasdaq hosts and manages our IR website, and we explicitly instructed them not to release our results until after the market close and only upon our specific instructions, which is consistent with prior quarters. We are continuing to investigate with them exactly what occurred."

Submission + - Windows XP support deal not renewed by government, leaves PCs open to attack (v3.co.uk)

Submitted by girlmad
girlmad writes: The government's one-year £5.5m Windows XP support deal with Microsoft has not been extended, sources have told V3, despite thousands of computers across Whitehall still running the ancient software, leaving them wide open to cyber attacks. It's still unclear when all government machines will be migrated to a newer OS.

Submission + - Russia 1,700 ~~~ America 0 (wakeupfromyourslumber.com)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: Russia has evacuated 1,700 of its citizens from Yemen while the total number of United States citizens the government of the United States of America has evacuated from Yemen stands at a perfect ZERO

In fact, Russia has evacuated American citizens from Yemens while the State Department of the United States of America has yet to do anything
Please watch the vids at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
and at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... and read the news at
http://rt.com/news/253001-yeme...
and at
http://rt.com/news/252173-yeme...

Submission + - The creation of Fact-Free-Zone in the modern world (soufangroup.com)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: This report outlines how the Islamic State is able to create a Fact Free Zone with very little objective reporting coming from areas under the group’s control or areas it is contesting and the way Islamic States has purported the social media services, from Facebook, to Youtube, to Tweeter, to further its course

In this age of ubiquitous information-sharing technology the Islamic State’s media effort is an integral and essential part of its operations, on a par with its military and administrative effort. In this respect it is greatly helped by the decentralized nature of social media (particularly Twitter), which has allowed each of its supporters effectively to create and operate his or her own ministry of information, echoing a standard party line as well as creating and spreading IS’s messaging. In effect, IS is crowdsourcing its own propaganda

However, Islamic States' deliberate targeting, kidnapping, and brutal killing of journalists has resulted in a vacuum in which the job for 'news reporting' falls to the laps of avid supporters of the Islamic State

There is no precedent for this, given the novelty of social media platforms and file-sharing sites, and so, in a counterintuitive move, the group has indeed maximized control of its message by giving up control of its delivery

The importance of social media to the group is evident in the way that pictures of leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declaring the Caliphate on July 4, 2014 appeared on Twitter before the video of his full speech was uploaded on YouTube, helping to ensure that it would be carried on most major international news networks

For example, links to the violent hour-long video “Flames of War,” issued by The Islamic State on September 16, 2014 through its official outlet, al Hayat Media, were posted in several places on the widely-used file-sharing site justpaste.it. These links were then tweeted out to tens of thousands of online supporters, who then re-tweeted the links, and, importantly, created new pages and links on justpaste.it. The video was also uploaded to YouTube on many accounts in order to overcome the inevitable suppression of the video for violating YouTube standards of use. Just one randomly selected page promoting the video among dozens of others, recorded 18,034 views in just seven hours on September 18, 2014, showing the ease, breadth, and speed with which the group is able to spread its message directly to the intended audience. The problems with censoring such a decentralized distribution system were well-illustrated by the two days it took mainstream social media to take notice of what was happening

The crowdsourcing of messages negates the need for a single point of contact. This might leave the group vulnerable to unofficial messages polluting its media stream but it is a small annoyance compared to the gains it reaps

Submission + - Microsoft infringes other's patents (reuters.com)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: A judge of the International Trade Commission of the United States of America has found that the software giant used InterDigital Inc's technology in its mobile phones without permission

The judge, Theodore Essex, said that Microsoft infringed two wireless cellular patents owned by InterDigital, and that it would not be against the public interest to ban the Microsoft devices from being imported into the United States

The ITC has the authority to stop the import of products that it determines infringe a U.S. patent. Companies frequently sue at the ITC to win an import ban and in district court to win damages

InterDigital Executive Vice President Lawrence Shay said the company looks forward to "continued discussion" with Microsoft to license its patents

The case at the ITC is No. 337-613

Submission + - A Cheap, Ubiquitous Earthquake Warning System (ieee.org)

Submitted by Tekla Perry
Tekla Perry writes: Earthquake alert systems that give a 10 or 20 second warning of an impending temblor, enabling automatic systems to shut down and people to take cover, are hugely expensive to build and operate. (One estimate is $38.3 milllion for equipment to span California, and another $16.1 million annually to operate.) But a Palo Alto entrepreneur thinks he's got a way to sense earthquakes and provide alerts far more cheaply and with much greater resolution. And he's got money from the National Science Foundation to begin the first test of his system--covering the Bay Area from Santa Cruz to Napa and the cities of Hollister, Coalinga, and Parkfield. He starts that test next month.

Submission + - 10 Easy Rules to Curb Over-optimistic Reporting in Computational Biology (plos.org)

Submitted by sandbagger
sandbagger writes: In in biomedical research in particular, is most often overoptimistic with respect to the superiority of new therapies or the strength of association between a risk factors and outcomes. Published results appear more more spectacular, or more satisfactory than they actually would if they reflected the truth.

Causes of this problem are diverse, numerous, and interrelated. The effects of 'fishing for significance' strategies or selective/incomplete reporting are exacerbated by design issues or publication bias. Research and guidelines on how to reduce overoptimistic reporting in the context of computational research, including computational biology as an important special case, however, are surprisingly scarce. Many methodological articles published in computational literature report the superior performance of new methods , too often in general terms and—directly or indirectly—implying that the presented positive results are generalizable to other settings.

Such overoptimistic reporting confuses readers, makes literature less credible and more difficult to interpret, and might even ultimately lead to a waste of resources in some cases.

Here are ten simple rules to address the problem of overoptimistic reporting.

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