Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Feed Google News Sci Tech: Report: NSA paid RSA to make flawed crypto algorithm the default - Ars Technica (google.com)

From feed by feedfeeder

Firstpost
Report: NSA paid RSA to make flawed crypto algorithm the default
Ars Technica
Security company RSA was paid $10 million to use the flawed Dual_EC_DRBG pseudorandom number generating algorithm as the default algorithm in its BSafe crypto library, according to sources speaking to Reuters.
NSA Reportedly Paid A Security Firm Millions To Ship Deliberately Flawed ... TechCrunch
Exclusive: Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneerReuters
NSA Gave RSA $10 Million To Promote Crypto It Had Purposely WeakenedTechdirt
The Verge-SlashGear
all 15 news articles

Submission + - Open source add-on rewrites the user interface of IE11 (quero.at)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: This is how Internet Explorer would look like if you move the tabs to the top like in other browsers. Developed as a design and UX study, the open source add-on replaces the default navigation bar and combines three traditionally separate toolbars into one. The UX project started in 2004 to demonstrate that it is feasible to combine the address, search, and find box into one. Additionally, Quero offers a variety of customization options for IE, including making the UI themeable or starting Microsoft's desktop browser always maximized.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Why do mobile versions of websites suck? 4

Submitted by Kelbear
Kelbear writes: As user traffic over mobile devices grows in leaps and bounds, it's surprising to me as a layman that so many companies still have crippled and broken mobile pages in late 2013. There must be justifiable reasons for this, so: Fellow Slashdotters, can you please share the obstacles you've seen in your own companies that have delayed or defeated efforts to develop competent mobile sites? Are the issues in obtaining or maintaining compatibility driven by platform owners like Apple and Google?

Submission + - BBC: US Scientists Report "Reverse Aging" Drug (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by retroworks
retroworks writes: US scientists have performed a dramatic reversal of the ageing process in animal studies.

They used a chemical to rejuvenate muscle in mice and said it was the equivalent of transforming a 60-year-old's muscle to that of a 20-year-old — but muscle strength did not improve. Their study, in the journal Cell, identified an entirely new mechanism of ageing and then reversed it. http://www.cell.com/retrieve/pii/S0092867413015213

Other researchers said it was an "exciting finding".

Submission + - How to Keep a Job Search Going Through the Holidays

Submitted by Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: Companies don’t hire during the holidays, you say? Corporate hiring managers are all out on vacation? Nobody’s going to get back to you, so you’re just going to go stand in line at a big-box store on Black Friday and dive into shopping mob frenzy? Bah, humbug! The truth is: Companies do plenty of hiring during the last two months of the year, and the rare job seeker who keeps up the hunt is a big fish in a shrinking pond.

It's a lousy time of year to be out of work (I know; I was once fired on December 15th, after paying for presents with credit cards), when everyone else is cheerfully spending money. And, you're sure, all the hiring managers are all off drinking at holiday parties. Except... it isn't true, or not anymore. For example, 62% of recruiters say that hiring decisions increase in November and December or stay the same as at other times of the year. Fifty-three percent of executive recruiters report their interviewing activity stays the same or increases over the holidays. Lisa Vaas offers a few holiday-themed suggestions about what to do during this time period; for example, all those holiday parties? It's a good time to schmooze with people who are a bit more relaxed than usual.

Submission + - ScareMail Tries to Disrupt NSA Email Surveillance (hackaday.com)

Submitted by Okian Warrior
Okian Warrior writes: "Are you on the NSA’s email watchlist? Do you want to be? The ScareMail project is designed to mess with the NSA’s email surveillance programs.

Benjamin Grosser has written a plugin for many popular web browsers that uses an algorithm to generate a clever but ultimately useless narrative in the signature of your email using as many probable NSA search terms as possible. The idea behind this is if enough people use it, it will overload the NSA’s search results, ultimately making their email keyword tracking useless.

Ben has a video describing the project."

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: DIY Computational Neuroscience

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Over the last couple years, I have taught myself the basic concepts behind Computational Neuroscience, mainly from the book by Abbott and Dayan. I am not currently affiliated with any academic Neuroscience program. I would like to take a DIY approach and work on some real world problems of Computationa Neuroscience. My questions: (1) What are some interesting computational neuroscience simulation problems that an individual with a workstation class PC can work on? (2) Is it easy for a non-academic to get the required data? (3) I am familiar with (but not used extensively) simulators like Neuron, Genesis etc. Other than these and Matlab, what other software should I get? (4) Where online or offline, can I network with other DIY Computational Neuroscience enthusiasts ?

My own interest is in simulation of Epileptogenic neural networks, music cognition networks, and perhaps a bit more ambitiuously, to create a simulation on which the various Models of Consciousness can be comparatively tested.

Submission + - Iran & Atoms for Peace: The Origins of the Islamic Republic's Nuclear Narrat (wordpress.com)

Submitted by Lasrick
Lasrick writes: Aaron Stein has a fascinating analysis on the origins of #Iran's nuclear program & the help it got from US atoms for peace. Fantastic research: 'For the past 18 months, I have been slowly working my way through the Atomic Energy Commission’s “Atoms for Peace” archives to piece together the differences between Turkey and Iran’s nuclear decision making. Thus, while I often write about Turkey related issues, I have, for at least the last five years of my life, been researching and studying Iranian nuclear decision-making.'

Submission + - U. S. Military Settles for Software Piracy (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Rambo Tribble
Rambo Tribble writes: The BBC reports that the U. S. government has agreed to pay software maker Apptricity $50 million to settle claims that the U. S. Army pirated thousands of copies of the firm's provisioning software. The report indicates 500 licensed copies were sold, but it came to light an army official had mentioned that "thousands" of devices were running the software.

Submission + - Hopkins physician charged in Silk Road drug sales (baltimoresun.com)

Submitted by ddruck
ddruck writes: As reported in today's Baltimore Sun, a junior faculty member from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine was suspended following criminal charges that she assisted another physician with selling controlled substances on the Silk Road website.

Submission + - Healthcare.gov and the Gulf Between Planning and Reality (shirky.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: From Shirky.com, "The idea that “failure is not an option” is a fantasy version of how non-engineers should motivate engineers. That sentiment was invented by a screenwriter, riffing on an after-the-fact observation about Apollo 13; no one said it at the time. (If you ever say it, wash your mouth out with soap. If anyone ever says it to you, run.) Even NASA’s vaunted moonshot, so often referred to as the best of government innovation, tested with dozens of unmanned missions first, several of which failed outright. Failure is always an option. Engineers work as hard as they do because they understand the risk of failure. And for anything it might have meant in its screenplay version, here that sentiment means the opposite; the unnamed executives were saying “Addressing the possibility of failure is not an option.” ... Healthcare.gov is a half-billion dollar site that was unable to complete even a thousand enrollments a day at launch, and for weeks afterwards. As we now know, programmers, stakeholders, and testers all expressed reservations about Healthcare.gov’s ability to do what it was supposed to do. Yet no one who understood the problems was able to tell the President. Worse, every senior political figure—every one—who could have bridged the gap between knowledgeable employees and the President decided not to. And so it was that, even on launch day, the President was allowed to make things worse for himself and his signature program by bragging about the already-failing site and inviting people to log in and use something that mostly wouldn’t work. Whatever happens to government procurement or hiring (and we should all hope those things get better) a culture that prefers deluding the boss over delivering bad news isn’t well equipped to try new things."

Submission + - The Neuroscientist Who Discovered He Was a Psychopath

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Joseph Stromberg writes at the Smithsonian that one afternoon in October 2005, neuroscientist James Fallon was sifting through thousands of PET scans to find anatomical patterns in the brain that correlated with psychopathic tendencies in the real world. “Out of serendipity, I was also doing a study on Alzheimer’s and as part of that, had brain scans from me and everyone in my family right on my desk," writes Fallon. “I got to the bottom of the stack, and saw this scan that was obviously pathological." When he looked up the code, he was greeted by an unsettling revelation: the psychopathic brain pictured in the scan was his own. When he underwent a series of genetic tests, he got more bad news. “I had all these high-risk alleles for aggression, violence and low empathy,” he says, such as a variant of the MAO-A gene that has been linked with aggressive behavior. It wasn’t entirely a shock to Fallon, as he’d always been aware that he was someone especially motivated by power and manipulating others. Additionally, his family line included seven alleged murderers, including Lizzie Borden, infamously accused of killing her father and stepmother in 1892. Many of us would hide this discovery and never tell a soul, out of fear or embarrassment of being labeled a psychopath. Perhaps because boldness and disinhibition are noted psychopathic tendencies, Fallon has gone in the opposite direction, telling the world about his finding in a TED Talk, an NPR interview and now a new book published last month, The Psychopath Inside. “Since finding all this out and looking into it, I’ve made an effort to try to change my behavior,” says Fallon. “I’ve more consciously been doing things that are considered ‘the right thing to do,’ and thinking more about other people’s feelings.”

Submission + - CryptoLocker gang casts tentacles into botnet crime world (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: The cyber-gang running the CryptoLocker extortion racket is sharing a big cut of any payments they squeeze out of their victims with criminal botnet owners working closely with them, says Symantec, which has been monitoring this underworld activity online. The CryptoLocker gang, believed to be mainly Russian-speaking, created the malware that makes use of strong encryption to lock up the victim’s electronic files until the victim pays a ransom, which typically starts at least $150 to get the key to unlock their scrambled files. The gang itself is paying criminal botnet owners operating vast command-and-control systems of compromised computers to distribute CryptoLocker as a dangerous attachment in spam, says Liam O’Murchu, manager of security response operations at Symantec. In addition to spam distribution, which relies on the victim opening the malware-laden attachment to spread CryptoLocker, the gang is willing to pay a botnet owner as much as 75% of any extortion money they can get from victims if the botnet owner directly drops CryptoLocker onto a compromised machine it already controls.

Slashdot Top Deals

If you want to put yourself on the map, publish your own map.

Close