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Submission + - Leaked Documents Detail al-Qaeda's Efforts To Fight Back Against Drones (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Washington Post reports, "Al-Qaeda’s leadership has assigned cells of engineers to find ways to shoot down, jam or remotely hijack U.S. drones ... In July 2010, a U.S. spy agency intercepted electronic communications indicating that senior al-Qaeda leaders had distributed a “strategy guide” to operatives around the world advising them how “to anticipate and defeat” unmanned aircraft. The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) reported that al-Qaeda was sponsoring simultaneous research projects to develop jammers to interfere with GPS signals and infrared tags that drone operators rely on to pinpoint missile targets. Other projects in the works included the development of observation balloons and small radio-controlled aircraft, or hobby planes, which insurgents apparently saw as having potential for monitoring the flight patterns of U.S. drones... Al-Qaeda has a long history of attracting trained engineers ... Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, holds a mechanical-engineering degree ... In 2010, the CIA noted in a secret report that al-Qaeda was placing special emphasis on the recruitment of technicians and that “the skills most in demand” included expertise in drones and missile technology. "

Submission + - myOpenID to shut down in February (myopenid.com) 1

Submitted by kriston
kriston writes: This is an email sent to myOpenID.com users this afternoon.

Hello,

I wanted to reach out personally to let you know that we have made the decision to end of life the myOpenID service. myOpenID will be turned off on February 1, 2014.

In 2006 Janrain created myOpenID to fulfill our vision to make registration and login easier on the web for people. Since that time, social networks and email providers such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn and Yahoo! have embraced open identity standards. And now, billions of people who have created accounts with these services can use their identities to easily register and login to sites across the web in the way myOpenID was intended.

By 2009 it had become obvious that the vast majority of consumers would prefer to utilize an existing identity from a recognized provider rather than create their own myOpenID account. As a result, our business focus changed to address this desire, and we introduced social login technology. While the technology is slightly different from where we were in 2006, I’m confident that we are still delivering on our initial promise – that people should take control of their online identity and are empowered to carry those identities with them as they navigate the web.

For those of you who still actively use myOpenID, I can understand your disappointment to hear this news and apologize if this causes you any inconvenience. To reduce this inconvenience, we are delaying the end of life of the service until February 1, 2014 to give you time to begin using other identities on those sites where you use myOpenID today.

Speaking on behalf of Janrain, I truly appreciate your past support of myOpenID.

Sincerely,
Larry

—
Larry Drebes, CEO, Janrain, Inc.

Submission + - Facebook to include profile photos in its facial recognition database? (sophos.com)

Submitted by Em Adespoton
Em Adespoton writes: Facebook has published a summary of the updates it's proposing to make to its Data Use Policy and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities which shows a large volume of rewriting.

Most of the changes are minimal, but one area has caught people's attention — photo tagging.

Facebook has highlighted how it plans to use members' profile pictures as an identification tool to allow their friends to tag them in photos.

NakedSecurity's Lee Munson has more details, including comments from Facebook's chief privacy officer Erin Egan on why this is a "good thing".

Submission + - The Old Reader Will Stay Open To The Public After All Thanks To US Corporation

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Old Reader, a popular RSS service and alternative to Google Reader, last week revealed it would be closing its service to the public in two weeks. Soon after the backlash, there was hint of a stance reversal, and now it’s happened: The Old Reader will remain open to the public, thanks to a bigger team and ‘significantly more’ resources, both provided by a new corporate entity located in the US.

While details about this “corporate entity” are indeed scarce, we do know the announcement was authored by an individual named Ben Wolf. He promises his team consists of “big fans and users” of The Old Reader who want to help it “grow and improve for years to come” and who will be introduced properly in the coming weeks.

Submission + - How Apple could turn Apple TV into a fantastic business tool (citeworld.com)

Submitted by rjupstate
rjupstate writes: Apple may like to call the Apple TV just a "hobby," but that hobby is gaining serious traction in business and education (and in many homes) thanks to AirPlay. With iOS 7 and Mavericks, Apple has the chance to make the $99 set top box into a major business solution — if it can streamline the setup and management challenges Apple TV presents to IT.

Submission + - Anonymous Hacks FEMA, Leaks Database (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by coolnumbr12
coolnumbr12 writes: In response to a Homeland Security drill aimed at fighting against hacker collectives, Anonymous posted to CyptoBin what it claims to be the database of a server used by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA. The leak, if legitimate, included the names, addresses and other private information of FEMA and private defense contractors, federal agents and local authorities.

Submission + - Backdoor Discovered in Atlassian Crowd

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Recently published on the Command Five website is a technically detailed threat advisory in relation to a recurring vulnerability in Atlassian Crowd. Tucked away inconspicuously at the end of this document in a section entitled 'Unpatched Vulnerabilities' is the real security bombshell:

Atlassian's turnkey solution for enterprise single sign-on and secure user authentication contains an unpatched backdoor. The backdoor allows anyone to remotely take full control of a Crowd server and, according to Command Five, successful exploitation "invariably" results in compromise of all application and user credentials as well as accessible data storage, configured directories (for example Active Directory), and dependent systems.

Despite having over 25,000 customers, including lots of big names and Fortune 500 companies, this isn't the first time Atlassian has been in the news for epic security-fail. In 2010 Atlassian suffered a security breach in which hackers compromised customer credentials that were stored on a server in plain-text. The server then collapsed under load as customers scrambled to change their passwords.

Submission + - MIT Researchers Can See Through Walls (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: MIT Professor Dina Katabi and graduate student Fadel Adib have developed a system they call Wi-Vi that uses Wi-Fi signals to visualize moving forms behind walls. How it works: 'Wi-Vi transmits two Wi-Fi signals, one of which is the inverse of the other. When one signal hits a stationary object, the other cancels it out. But because of the way the signals are encoded, they don't cancel each other out for moving objects. That makes the reflections from a moving person visible despite the wall between that person and the Wi-Vi device. Wi-Vi can translate those faint reflections into a real-time display of the person's movements.'

Submission + - US entertainment industry to Congress: make it legal for us to deploy rootkits (boingboing.net) 3

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The hilariously named "Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property" has finally released its report, an 84-page tome that's pretty bonkers. But amidst all that crazy, there's a bit that stands out as particularly insane: a proposal to legalize the use of malware in order to punish people believed to be copying illegally. The report proposes that software would be loaded on computers that would somehow figure out if you were a pirate, and if you were, it would lock your computer up and take all your files hostage until you call the police and confess your crime. This is the mechanism that crooks use when they deploy ransomware.

Submission + - Microsoft to launch Kinect for Windows sensor in 2014 (wordpress.com)

Submitted by awaissoft
awaissoft writes: Microsoft will finally deliver a Kinect sensor for Windows sometime next year.

The company announced Thursday that the Kinect for Windows sensor will use the same set of technologies key to the new Kinect sensor for the Xbox One, both of which will allow people to issue commands using voice and gestures.

The sensor will include a high-definition color camera and a noise-isolating multi-microphone array. Also part of the system will be a technology called Time-of-Flight, which measures how long it takes for photons to bounce off a person or object. Combined, these features promise greater accuracy and precision in detecting your movements and voice commands.

Like its Xbox One counterpart, the Kinect for Windows sensor will be able to pinpoint more parts of the body, opening up more accurate skeletal tracking. The sensor will also use a greater field of view to handle a variety of room sizes. A new infrared feature will help the sensor “see” better, especially in darker conditions.

The launch of the Kinect for Windows sensor and the corresponding software development kit means that developers will be able to create apps that take advantage of the features.

“We’re continuing our commitment to equipping businesses and organizations with the latest natural technology from Microsoft so that they, in turn, can develop and deploy innovative touch-free applications for their businesses and customers,” Microsoft said in a blog post Thursday. “A new Kinect for Windows sensor and software development kit (SDK) are core to that commitment....

Submission + - Ron Paul found guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking in domain dispute (domainnamewire.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Ron Paul lost his two cybersquatting complaints against RonPaul.com and RonPaul.org.

In the case of RonPaul.org, Paul was been found guilty of "reverse domain name hijacking".

A reverse domain name hijacking finding means that the arbitration panel believes the case was filed in bad faith, resulting in the abuse of the administrative process.

The panel ruled this way since Paul filed the case after the owner of RonPaul.org had already offered to give him the domain for free.

The panel also ruled against Paul for the RonPaul.com domain name.

Submission + - Main U.S. Weather Satellite Fails Days Before Hurricane Season (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by Rebecka
Rebecka writes: Just as the 2013 hurricane season is about to begin, one of the U.S.' main weather satellites failed this week. The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, also known as GOES-13, reportedly ceased to operate as of Tuesday, making it impossible to predict weather patterns on the East Coast.

Submission + - Google converts links sent via Google Chat to referral links 1

Submitted by MotorMachineMercenar
MotorMachineMercenar writes: Google has apparently introduced a new feature to track user behavior in the revamped Google Chat, called Hangouts.

A friend of mine sent me a link, incidentally about an MIT study about the futility of folio hats in blocking the thought police. I use Chrome for Gmail, but being the folio-hat -wearing type, I do all my other browsing in a tightly locked down FF. I copy-pasted the link to FF, and noticed that there was flash of a Google URL before it went to the right URL.

After pasting the link to a note, I noticed it's a Google referral link, similar to the ones most (all?) links on Google search are — in case you weren't aware. So now Google knows who sent what link to whom. The only way around that is to select the entire link, and copy the text.

Now, I'm aware that by definition of me being on a Google platform they implicitly know our conversations. But the fact that they bother to make a referral link means there is even more datamining going on behind the scenes than what we already knew of.

Submission + - Supreme Court Rules For Monsanto In Patent Case (huffingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Pigskin-Referee
Pigskin-Referee writes: WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has sustained Monsanto Co.'s claim that an Indiana farmer violated the company's patents on soybean seeds that are resistant to its weed-killer.

The justices, in a unanimous vote Monday, rejected the farmer's argument that cheap soybeans he bought from a grain elevator are not covered by the Monsanto patents, even though most of them also were genetically modified to resist the company's Roundup herbicide.

Justice Elena Kagan says a farmer who buys patented seeds must have the patent holder's permission. More than 90 percent of American soybean farms use Monsanto's "Roundup Ready" seeds, which first came on the market in 1996.

Submission + - Psychiatrists Cast Doubt on Biomedical Model of Mental Illness (guardian.co.uk) 2

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: British Psychological Society's division of clinical psychology (DCP) will on Monday issue a statement declaring that, given the lack of evidence, it is time for a 'paradigm shift' in how the issues of mental health are understood. According to their claim, there is no scientific evidence that psychiatric diagnoses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are valid or useful. The statement effectively casts doubt on psychiatry's predominantly biomedical model of mental distress – the idea that people are suffering from illnesses that are treatable by doctors using drugs. The DCP said its decision to speak out 'reflects fundamental concerns about the development, personal impact and core assumptions of the (diagnosis) systems', used by psychiatry.

The provocative statement by the DCP has been timed to come out shortly before the release of DSM-5, the fifth edition of the American Psychiatry Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The manual has been attacked for expanding the range of mental health issues that are classified as disorders.

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