David7 - Slashdot User

Submission + - Hacker Tries to Land IT Job at Marriott via Extort (securityweek.com) 1

Submitted by wiredmikey on Saturday November 26, 2011 @04:09PM

wiredmikey writes: A tough global economy has certainly created challenges for many people looking for jobs, but one Hungarian man took things to another level in an effort to gain employment at hotel giant Marriott International.

On Wednesday, a 26 year-old Hungarian citizen, pleaded guilty after hacking into Marriott computer systems, and threatening to reveal confidential company information he obtained if Marriott didn’t offer him a job.

Assuming his efforts were working, and the possibility of a new job with Marriott in his sights, the hacker arrived at Washington Dulles Airport on Jan. 17, 2011, on an airline ticket purchased by Marriott for him, for what he thought would be a job interview with Marriott personnel. Unbeknownst to him, he was actually being “interviewed” by a Secret Service agent posing as a Marriott employee....a meeting that eventually landed to his arrest and will likely put him behind bars for a while once he is sentenced in Feburary....

Submission + - Can Maintenance Make Data Centers Less Reliable? (datacenterknowledge.com)

Submitted by miller60 on Saturday November 26, 2011 @02:23PM

miller60 writes: Is preventive maintenance on data center equipment not really that preventive after all? With human error cited as a leading cause of downtime, a vigorous maintenance schedule can actually make a data center less reliable, according to some industry experts.“The most common threat to reliability is excessive maintenance,” said Steve Fairfax of "science risk" consultant MTechnology. "We get the perception that lots of testing improves component reliability. It does not.” In some cases, poorly documented maintenance can lead to conflicts with automated systems, he warned. Other speakers at the recent 7x24 Exchange conference urged data center operators to focus on understanding their own facilities, and then evaluating which maintenance programs are essential, including offerings from equipment vendors.

Submission + - Palantir, the War on Terror's Secret Weapon (businessweek.com)

Submitted by

hessian

on Saturday November 26, 2011 @09:57AM

hessian writes: "None of Fikri’s individual actions would raise suspicions. Lots of people rent trucks or have relations in Syria, and no doubt there are harmless eccentrics out there fascinated by amusement park infrastructure. Taken together, though, they suggested that Fikri was up to something. And yet, until about four years ago, his pre-attack prep work would have gone unnoticed. A CIA analyst might have flagged the plane ticket purchase; an FBI agent might have seen the bank transfers. But there was nothing to connect the two. Lucky for counterterror agents, not to mention tourists in Orlando, the government now has software made by Palantir Technologies, a Silicon Valley company that’s become the darling of the intelligence and law enforcement communities.

The day Fikri drives to Orlando, he gets a speeding ticket, which triggers an alert in the CIA’s Palantir system. An analyst types Fikri’s name into a search box and up pops a wealth of information pulled from every database at the government’s disposal. There’s fingerprint and DNA evidence for Fikri gathered by a CIA operative in Cairo; video of him going to an ATM in Miami; shots of his rental truck’s license plate at a tollbooth; phone records; and a map pinpointing his movements across the globe. All this information is then displayed on a clearly designed graphical interface that looks like something Tom Cruise would use in a Mission: Impossible movie."

Submission + - How Blocking the AT&T/T-Mobile Deal Hurts Riva (reuters.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 26, 2011 @09:53AM

An anonymous reader writes: The attempted merger between AT&T and T-Mobile has fallen on hard times amid antitrust concerns, but there's a potential silver lining for T-Mobile — one that would give them a boost over competitors anyway. Reuters reports that T-Mobile USA would be entitled to a hefty breakup fee including $3 billion in cash as well as spectrum and roaming agreements. 'In a research note, Moody's said that could also lead to a network sharing deal between the two companies, reasoning that it "would make sense given the spectrum that AT&T will have to cede to T-Mobile and the 3G roaming agreement between the two." That would make life especially hard for No. 3 U.S. carrier Sprint, which has been one of the most vocal opponents of the AT&T/T-Mobile deal, going so far as to file a lawsuit. ... Smaller rivals such as MetroPCS and Leap Wireless may be affected even more because T-Mobile is eyeing similar customer segments.'

Submission + - Philippines call centers overtake India (nytimes.com) 1

Submitted by ajitk on Saturday November 26, 2011 @09:38AM

ajitk writes: This year, call centers in Philippines employed 50,000 more people than India’s 350,000.
From the New York Times article:
More Filipinos — about 400,000 — than Indians now spend their nights talking to mostly American consumers, industry officials said, as companies like AT&T, JPMorgan Chase and Expedia have hired call centers here, or built their own.
Nevertheless, the financial benefits of outsourcing remain strong enough that the call center business is growing at 25 to 30 percent a year here in the Philippines, compared to 10 to 15 percent in India
In spite of its recent growth, the Philippines is a much smaller destination for outsourcing more broadly — India earns about 10 times as much revenue from outsourcing.

Submission + - US Gov't Seizes 130+ More Domains In Crackdown (torrentfreak.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 26, 2011 @09:10AM

An anonymous reader writes: The DoJ and ICE have once again taken up the banner of anti-piracy and anti-counterfeiting by seizing over 130 domains allegedly involved in those activities. TorrentFreak points out that this newest digital raid happened just before 'Cyber Monday,' a time when consumers are encouraged to do a bunch of online shopping. From the article: 'Compared to previous seizure rounds, there are also some notable differences to report. This time the action appears to be limited to sites that directly charge visitors for their services. Most of the domains are linked to the selling of counterfeit clothing (e.g. 17nflshop.com), and at least one (autocd.com) sold pirated auto software. Last year several sites were taken down because they allowed their users to access free music and movie downloads, and these were followed by several streaming services a few months later. No similar sites have been reported in the current round.'

Submission + - Verizon Connectivity Issues in Upstate SC (wyff4.com)

Submitted by David7 on Wednesday August 17, 2011 @01:00PM

David7 writes: Verizon officials tell News 4 they were having connectivity issues in the Upstate Wednesday, and that some customers were experiencing a cell phone outage.

Submission + - Malicious Spam Spikes to 'Epic' Level (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7 on Wednesday August 17, 2011 @12:14PM

Trailrunner7 writes: There has been a huge spike in spam volume in the last few days, including a massive amount of malicious spam with infected attachments, and researchers say that levels of junk mail are now far higher than they were before the takedown of the notorious Spamit affiliate program last fall.

The huge spike comes at a time when spam should, in fact, be dropping because of the takedown of the Rustock botnet, the Spamit network and other botnets.

"From the beginning of August, we have observed a huge surge of malicious spam which far exceeds anything we have seen over the past two years, including prior to the SpamIt takedown last October. The majority of the malicious spam comes from the Cutwail botnet, although Festi and Asprox are among the other contributors," M86 researcher Rodel Mendrez said.

Submission + - Customer Email Address Leaks 2

Submitted by anyaristow on Wednesday August 17, 2011 @12:09PM

anyaristow writes: Since the mid nineties I've used a unique email address for everyone I do business with and for every service or site I sign up with, so that if someone leaks my email address to spammers I know who did the leaking. Until this year I'd only had a few of these addresses compromised (including a national flower seller and a major music gear maker). This year I'm getting about one every other month, including a telecommunications giant and one of the three credit reporting agencies. There are no mailboxes or accounts associated with these email addresses; I receive all email to the domain. These addresses exist only as text I typed into a web form, and as header fields in received email. I'd consider a man-in-the-middle or someone gaining access to my mailbox as possible culprits except I haven't had communication with that credit agency in years, and I just yesterday started receiving spam to that address. That, and only a few of these addresses are compromised. Is anyone else seeing this, and can anyone think of a reason other other than lax security or the use of third-party email campaigns?

Submission + - Tampa teen bomber spies FBI spies (usatoday.com) 1

Submitted by minstrelmike on Wednesday August 17, 2011 @12:07PM

minstrelmike writes: The expelled teen planning to blow up his high school knew something was wrong Sunday when he looked for wireless networks:

On Sunday evening, he posted this interesting item on his Facebook status page: "The weirdest thing happened today ... when my homie was trying to connect to a wireless network the connections list came up and one of them was called: FBI_SURVEILLANCE_VAN It was weird..."

Submission + - MIT Researchers Aim To Help Keep Track of Planes (itworld.com)

Submitted by

itwbennett

on Wednesday August 17, 2011 @11:53AM

itwbennett writes: "'Aboard a floating airport like the US Navy’s USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier, hundreds of millions of dollars of equipment and thousands of lives are all managed by something that looks like a board game,' says IDG News Service's Nick Barber in this video report. But researchers at MIT are working to digitize that system. The Navy-funded research is 'primarily investigating how humans and computers can work together and schedule operations on the aircraft carrier collaboratively,' said Jason Ryan, a Ph.D. student in the Humans & Automation Lab at MIT."

Submission + - Argentina: Judge blocks hundreds of Blogger sites. (globalvoicesonline.org)

Submitted by

LeandroTLZ

on Wednesday August 17, 2011 @11:19AM

LeandroTLZ writes: "This hit the Internet about a week ago, but all of the news outlets reporting it have missed a very important detail. A federal judge ordered all of Argentina's ISPs to block a website that was publishing private emails from the president and some aides. The resolution to block the site can be read here at their national communications agency, and you will notice that it specifies one IP address to block, 216.239.32.21. The major ISPs have indeed blocked that IP address completely. The problem is that the IP address was not just hosting that website; a simple WHOIS query reveals who it belongs to: none other than Google, Inc. Specifically, the address is used by Blogger to serve websites. Because of this, a significant number of blogs and webpages hosted at Blogger have disappeared from Argentina's ISPs. Magazines like www.habitantesdemoria.com, independent films like www.elpozolapelicula.com.ar, business websites like www.torrealsur.com.ar and webcast sites like www.radiotelevisionatlantis.tk — they are all inaccessible from Argentina. No news outlet seems to be aware of this at the moment, and are treating the block as a freedom of speech issue against a single website, unaware that the judge has accidentally silenced hundreds, possibly thousands of websites."

Submission + - NASA shoots down comet Elenin doomsday predictions (networkworld.com)

Submitted by

coondoggie

on Wednesday August 17, 2011 @11:08AM

coondoggie writes: "The comet Elenin which will pass by Earth October 16 has generated such an inordinate amount of doomsday reports from a number of different sources that NASA today issued a release meant to address a variety of them. To address the myriad concerns, NASA said its scientists compiled a list of the most popular questions it has received about Elenin."

Submission + - Mozilla Ships Firefox6, Patches 10 Vulnerabilities (computerworld.com)

Submitted by

JohnBert

on Wednesday August 17, 2011 @10:22AM

JohnBert writes: "Mozilla released Firefox 6, the second edition since it shifted to a rapid-ship cycle that delivers a new version of the browser every six weeks. The company also patched 10 bugs with the upgrade and issued an update to 2010's Firefox 3.6 that fixed seven flaws total, six of them different than the ones quashed in Firefox 6.

Today's release of Firefox 6 was the second time in a row that Mozilla met its self-imposed deadline since the debut of a faster shipping schedule in March. Mozilla has historically struggled to ship browser upgrades on time, but is now 2-for-2 after picking up the pace.

Although Mozilla listed more than 1,600 changes to Firefox 6 in a full bug list, the open-source developer called out only a few in its release notes, among them highlighting domain names in the address bar — both Chrome and Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) do something similar by boldfacing domain names."

Submission + - How to steal ATM PINs with a thermal camera (sophos.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 17, 2011 @10:11AM

An anonymous reader writes: Researchers from UCSD have demontrated how thermal imagery cameras can be used to steal customers' PINs when you withdraw cash from ATMs.

Their paper, entitled "Heat of the Moment: Characterizing the Efcacy of Thermal Camera-Based Attacks", discovered that plastic PIN pads were the best for retaining heat signatures showing which numbers (and in which order) were used by bank customers.

Fortunately the methodology does not appeared to have been used by criminals yet, but a third of people surveyed admit that they do not check ATMs for tampering before withdrawing cash.

Slashdot Top Deals