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Collar-bomber tracked by Gmail accesses->

Submitted by RockDoctor
RockDoctor writes "Reports are that a suspect has been arrested in the Australian "collar bomb" hostage/ extortion case. The allegation is that the suspect had set up a Gmail account, through which he (allegedly) planned to communicate with the extortion victims and arrange delivery of the payment.

Unfortunately for him, sufficient records have been kept that the location and time that the account was set up can be identified, and also for a number of accesses. This information combined with "CCTV footage and motor vehicle records" allowed the police to put an identity to the suspect, and arrange for his arrest and to start extradition proceedings.

So, if you're planning an extortion, don't drive your car to the internet cafe, don't set up the account from an airport, wear anonymous clothes (like Jason Bourne does?) and do all your accesses through hacked shell accounts somewhere in Outer Mongolia.

But this being Slashdot, everyone knew that already."
Link to Original Source

Skype protocol has been reverse engineered ->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Skype has been in the news a lot recently, mainly due to rumors of it being acquired a few months before a planned IPO. We thought Facebook and Google may pounce on the company for as much as $4 billion, but then Microsoft turned up, put $8.5 billion on the table, and walked away with their very expensive prize.

Now Microsoft own the most popular VoIP service out there, and surely plans to make it an integral part of their operations and products going forward. At the same time, one researcher has decided he wants to make Skype open source by reverse engineering the protocol the service uses.

In fact, he claims to have already achieved that reverse engineering feat on a new skype-open-source blog. The source code has been posted for versions 1.x/3.x/4.x of Skype as well as details of the rc4 layer arithmetic encoding the service uses.

While his intention may be to recreate Skype as an open source platform, it is doubtful he will get very far without facing an army of Microsoft lawyers. Skype is not an open platform, and Microsoft will want to keep it that way. Posting reverse engineered code online is not going to go down well in Redmond and this is surely a blog that will disappear shortly."
Link to Original Source
Data Storage

Best Format For OS X and Linux HDD? 253

Posted by timothy
from the cross-the-beams dept.
dogmatixpsych writes "I work in a neuroimaging laboratory. We mainly use OS X but we have computers running Linux and we have colleagues using Linux. Some of the work we do with Magnetic Resonance Images produces files that are upwards of 80GB. Due to HIPAA constraints, IT differences between departments, and the size of files we create, storage on local and portable media is the best option for transporting images between laboratories. What disk file system do Slashdot readers recommend for our external HDDs so that we can readily read and write to them using OS X and Linux? My default is to use HFS+ without journaling but I'm looking to see if there are better suggestions that are reliable, fast, and allow read/write access in OS X and Linux."
Bug

Microsoft Plans Largest-Ever Patch Tuesday 341

Posted by timothy
from the 24-hours-but-bigger-minutes dept.
CWmike writes "Microsoft said it will deliver its largest-ever number of security updates on Tuesday to fix 13 flaws in every version of Windows, as well as Internet Explorer (IE), Office, SQL Server, important developer tools and Forefront Security client software. Among the updates will be the first for the final, or release to manufacturing, code of Windows 7, Microsoft's newest operating system. The 13 updates slated for next week, eight of them pegged 'critical,' beat the previous record of 12 updates shipped in February 2007 and again in October 2008." Update Reader Kurt Seifried writes to correct the math a bit, pointing to Microsoft's Advance Notification page for the release, which says that rather than 13 flaws, this Patch Tuesday involves "13 bulletins (eight critical and five important), addressing 34 vulnerabilities ... Most of these updates require a restart so please factor that into your deployment planning."

Comment: Re:What is this thing called Boxee? (Score 1) 335

by Flooded77 (#26814055) Attached to: Build a BoxeeBox and Wean Yourself From Cable
I've been using Boxee for a few months and as far as I can tell, registering with site allows you to add friends and rss audio and video feeds that are then populated in the boxee menu. The forums don't require an account unless you want to post.

I don't really utilize the social aspect of it, but it's nice to manage my feeds in one location rather than on each box in the house.

You don't need to register to add the repositories or download binaries (you can find links to them on the internets) and I haven't received any email from boxee, so I think the registration is purely for managing rss feeds and friends.

Comment: Re:Just Like When He Led Microsoft (Score 1) 841

by Flooded77 (#26739247) Attached to: Bill Gates Unleashes Swarm of Mosquitoes

This is a beautiful illustration if the Liberal mindset. Rather than trying to raise the poor by eliminating mosquitoes he's trying to equalize everyone by lowering the wealthy.

Liberal mindset? How was he 'lowering the wealthy' by reminding them that when it comes to mosquito-borne illness, they are just as susceptible as the poor? When it comes to malaria, everyone is equal - mosquitoes couldn't care less about your politics or taxable income. As long as you've got blood in your veins, you're susceptible. Bill was just reminding them of that fact.

To be is to be related. -- C.J. Keyser.