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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 7 declined, 1 accepted (8 total, 12.50% accepted)

GNU is Not Unix

Artifex misstates the effects of the GPL 1

Submitted by JanMark
JanMark writes "Ghostscript was originally written by L Peter Deutsch and released under the GPL. Later, Aladdin Enterprises distributed a Ghostscript fork under a proprietary license. Currently Artifex Software exercises a commercial and a Copyleft license on Ghostscript. A friend of mine asked me if he could distribute Ghostscript as post processor for the output of a proprietary program. I told him, "Under GPL? No problem!" But he pointed me to the Artifex Licensing Information page. They seemed to have a very narrow view on what the GPL allows. So I wrote rms and he agrees with me. Artifex's description of the effects of the GPL is incorrect. IMHO, it even borders on fraud. It also has a very damaging side effect. Lots of people already think that any usage of GPLed software means they have to give away their own software for free (beer and speech). Actually it is the most common misconception I encounter. It makes me wonder maybe the misconception comes from within?"
Hardware Hacking

Successful Relay Attack Dutch PubTrans RFID Card

Submitted by Jan-Mark
Jan-Mark writes "Roel Verdult, an MSc. student from the Raboud University of Nijmegen, used an RFID tag emulator to perform a successful practical relay attack on the single-use OV Chipkaart, that uses MIFARE Ultralights (no crypto). There's a news video of the relay attack available (Dutch spoken). Roel used a homemade tag emulator that was modeled after Kfir and Wool's "ghost and leech", to perform a simple relay attack. Almost anyone can perform the same attack using the RFID Guardian, whose hardware and software is freely available online. Roel's thesis is also online in English. (Full disclosure: I am Dutch, I am somewhat involved with the Guardian, I am an RFID skeptic.)"
Privacy

RFID Personal Firewall

Submitted by
JanMark
JanMark writes "Prof. Andrew Tanenbaum and his student Melanie Rieback (who published the RFID virus paper in March) and 3 coauthors have now published a paper on a personal RFID firewall called the RFID Guardian. This device protects its owner from hostile RFID tags and scans in his or her vicinity, while letting friendly ones through. Their work has won the Best Paper award at the USENIX LISA Conference. More information about the RFID Guardian can be found at www.rfidguardian.org."

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