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+ - Who is Avunit? The Hunt for LulzSec's Mysterious Sixth Member->

Submitted by DavidGilbert99
DavidGilbert99 writes "LulzSec's star burnt brightly in the short period it was active, but things quickly turned sour when its core members began getting arrested. Last week three of the six core members were sentenced in the UK, but this only served to highlight the fact that one member of the group, known as Avunit, has been able to remain unidentified despite the FBI having turned the group's leader Sabu into an informant. Who is Avunit? And does he hold the purse strings of the group's Bitcoin wallet which could have up to $180,000 in it?"
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+ - EFF starts accepting Bitcoin donations, Again->

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has started accepting donations in the form of Bitcoins again after two years of hiatus stating that the legal uncertainty, which was hovering over the digital currency, has all but disappeared. Announcing the latest development through a blog post the EFF noted that a report from U.S. Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) on top of its own research findings "have confirmed that, as a user of Bitcoin or any virtual currency, EFF itself is likely not subject to regulation.""
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Games

Steve Jackson Shows Off the Texas Brick Railroad (Video) 35

Posted by Roblimo
from the choo-choo-chug-chug-and-the-quiet-whir-of-a-monorail dept.
Imagine game designer Steve Jackson and a bunch of friends building Lego trains and tracks and scenery, including buildings and other props. Sounds like fun, doesn't it? The group calls itself the Texas Brick Railroad. A lot of members have children, so their meetings tend to be family affairs. Plus, as they're doing here, they often display their train sets at public events where -- yes -- their trains attract children like crazy. This video shows off both current Lego trains and some of the classic, no-longer-sold Lego trains that members have collected over the years, including the highly-prized monorails. There's a transcript, but face it: This is basically visual material, and worth checking out on a computer or handheld that runs Flash if your normal one doesn't. (We've requested an upgrade from Flash-only video, but don't hold your breath. It might be a good while before we get it.)

+ - Book review: Locked Down: Information Security for Lawyers

Submitted by benrothke
benrothke writes "Title: Locked Down: Information Security for Lawyers

Authors: Sharon Nelson, David Ries, John Simek

Publisher: American Bar Association

ISBN-13: 978-1614383642

Reviewer: Ben Rothke

Overview: Required reading for all lawyers

Rating:9/10









Had Locked Down: Information Security for Lawyersnot been published by the American Bar Association (ABA) and 2 of its 3 authors not been attorneys; one would have thought the book is a reproach against attorneys for their obliviousness towards information security and privacy. In numerous places, the book notes that lawyers are often clueless when it comes to digital security.



With that, the book is a long-overdue and valuable information security reference for anyone, not just lawyers.



Such a title is needed as the legal field has embraced digital technology for nearly every aspect of the legal field, has magazines and conferences about legal technology and much more. Wireless (often insecure) networks are pervasive in corporate offices throughout legal America.



The underlying problem is that while attorneys often know the intricacies of tort law, court proceedings and the like; they are utterly unaware of the information security and privacy risks surrounding the very technologies they are using. In many firms, the lawyers think that someoneis protecting their data, but don't understand theirrequirements around those areas of data protection.



Legal IT systems are a treasure trove of personal data. Many small law firms are extremely attractive to identity thieves gives their systems have significant amount of personal information via social security numbers, credit card information, birth dates, financial information and much more. Small law firms are notorious for weak information security controls and attackers will scan those systems and networks for vulnerabilities.



A pervasive aspect of the book is ABA rule 1.6 regarding the confidentiality of information regarding client-lawyer relationships. The rule requires that a lawyer not reveal information relating to the representation of a client unless the client gives informed consent. The lawyer though can reveal information relating to the representation of a client to the extent the lawyer reasonably believes necessary. The myriad details of 1.6 can be left to the bar association to enforce, suffice to say that a lawyer can find themselves on the wrong side of the law if they are not careful with information security controls.



The authors note that although lawyers are all well aware of rule 1.6, the challenge is how to keep client data secure in the digital age. In a world of paper, things were much easier and cheaper This is why the authors note that so many otherwise competent layers fails so miserably in reference to their duty to maintain the confidentiality of digital client data.



The book quotes an ABA 2011 technology survey in which 21% of large law firms reported that their firm had experiences some sort of security breach, and 15% of all firms reported that they suffered a security breach. It is figures like those which show that attorneys really need to read this book and take the information to heart.



The books 17 chapters are in a readable 150 pages, with an additional 120 pages of appendices. Written in an easily understandable style and non-technical for the technologically challenge lawyer.



When it comes to the security of client data, in chapter 4 the authors write that encryption is a topic that most attorneys don't want to touch with a ten-foot pole. But it has reached a point where attorneys must understand how and when encryption should be used. Just as important, they need to know about key managements, and what good encryption is. The chapter provides a high-level detail on what needs to be done regarding encryption.



Chapter 13 is on secure disposal, is an important topic to everyone, and not just lawyers. Digital media needs to be effectively disposed of; and for many lawyers, they often think that means reformatting a hard drive or simply erasing files. The chapter effectively details the issues and offers numerous valuable hardware and software-based solutions.



Chapter 14 on outsourcing and cloud computingis an area where too many attorneys are oblivious to of the security and privacy risks. For example, the authors advise attorneys against the use of the free Gmail service since the terms of service allow Google to do anything it wants with the data. That opens a Pandora's Box when it comes to securing client data. The authors advise to use premium Google business versions, so attorneys can stay in control of their data with added security and privacy features.



Two omissions in chapters 13 and 14 are that the authors don't reference NAID(National Association for Information Destruction) or the CSA(Cloud Security Alliance (CSA).



Firms that outsource their digital disposal to non-NAID certified firms run the risk of having a glorified recycler do their work. As to NAID, it is an international trade association for companies providing information destruction services. NAIDs mission is to promote the information destruction industry and the standards and ethics of its member companies; while the mission of the CSA is to promote the use of best practices for providing security assurance within cloud computing and to provide education on the uses of cloud computing to help secure all other forms of computing.



The authors include many real-world stories and case law to reinforce their point.



The book closes with a number of appendices on various rules from the FTC, state information protection regulations, the SANS Institute glossary of security terms and more.



For the lawyer looking for an easy to read introduction to nearly everything they need to know about information security and privacy, the bookis a great resource.



The book closes with the note that since lawyers have an ethical duty to protect their client's data, they have no choice but to keep themselves as well educated as possible.



For the attorney that wants to ensure their requirements remain current and are looking for an easy to read introduction about information security and privacy Locked Down: Information Security for Lawyersshould be considered required reading.







About the reviewer: Ben Rothke."

+ - Dell Dumps Its Public Cloud Offerings->

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes "Last week, Dell said that it would be 'refining' its OpenStack plans. Now we know that 'refining' means 'backing away from'. Although the company wouldn't answer direct questions on the subject, a press release spells it out like this: 'Sales of Dell's current in-house multi-tenant public cloud IaaS will be discontinued in the U.S. in favor of best-in-class partner offerings.' Interestingly, none of Dell's initial partners, including Joyent, ScaleMatrix and ZeroLag, have platforms built on OpenStack."
Link to Original Source

+ - First drone touch and go at sea (video)->

Submitted by garymortimer
garymortimer writes "An X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System (UCAS) demonstrator conducts a touch and go landing on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77), marking the first time any unmanned aircraft has completed a touch and go landing at sea. George H.W. Bush is conducting training operations in the Atlantic Ocean."
Link to Original Source

+ - Google drops support for Jabber in latest Hangouts-> 1

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes "Google is busy replacing its Talk chat client with the recently announced Hangouts, which was introduced last week at the Google I/O 2013 conference and will bring an end to Talk, Google+ Messenger and the original Google+ Hangouts. The new app, available as a Chrome extension as well as for Android, iOS, and Windows, has a serious disadvantage to the previous Talk client – it doesn’t support the XMPP open source chat protocol aka Jabber. Support for XMPP allowed Talk to communicate to XMPP accounts that were not registered with Google servers thereby allowing users to communicate with their contacts outside of Google."
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Medicine

Uptick In Whooping Cough Linked To Subpar Vaccines 239

Posted by samzenpus
from the always-buy-name-brand dept.
sciencehabit writes "Whooping cough, or pertussis, has exploded in the United States in recent years. A new study (abstract) confirms what scientists have suspected for some time: The return of the disease is caused by the introduction of new, safer vaccines 2 decades ago. Although they have far fewer side effects, the new shots don't offer long-lived protection the way older vaccines do."
Earth

NWS Announces Big Computer Upgrade 154

Posted by timothy
from the in-these-troubled-economic-times dept.
riverat1 writes "After being embarrassed when the Europeans did a better job forecasting Sandy than the National Weather Service Congress allocated $25 million ($23.7 after sequestration) in the Sandy relief bill for upgrades to forecasting and supercomputer resources. The NWS announced that their main forecasting computer will be upgraded from the current 213 TeraFlops to 2,600 TFlops by fiscal year 2015, over a twelve-fold increase. The upgrade is expected to increase the horizontal grid scale by a factor of 3 allowing more precise forecasting of local features of weather. The some of the allocated funds will also be used to hire some contract scientists to improve the forecast model physics and enhance the collection and assimilation of data."

+ - Least used key on your keyboard?->

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes "Over on Slashdot Japan (between discussions of the price of beef bowl and Linux kernel vulnerabilities) there has been some discussion over which key is least used on a PC keyboard. According to a small survey conducted by Yahoo Japan it is unsurprisingly the Pause/Break key. More interesting are the next three keys in descending order of unpopularity: F3, F6 and F12. No mention of the "multimedia" keys found on many keyboards these days, or Num Lock.

Which key do you use the least? What, if anything, would you replace it with?"
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Mystics always hope that science will some day overtake them. -- Booth Tarkington

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