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+ - Barrett Brown, formerly of Anonymous, sentenced to 63 months

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Barrett Brown, a journalist formerly linked to the hacking group Anonymous, was sentenced Thursday to over five years in prison, or a total of 63 months. Ahmed Ghappour, Brown's attorney, confirmed to Ars that Brown's 28 months already served will count toward the sentence. That leaves 34 months, or nearly three years, left for him to serve. In April 2014, Brown took a plea deal admitting guilt on three charges: “transmitting a threat in interstate commerce,” for interfering with the execution of a search warrant, and to being "accessory after the fact in the unauthorized access to a protected computer." Brown originally was indicted in Texas federal court in December 2012 on several counts, including accusations that he posted a link from one Internet relay chat channel, called #Anonops, to another channel under his control, called #ProjectPM. The link led to private data that had been hijacked from intelligence firm Strategic Forecasting, or Statfor."

+ - Ask Slashdot: FCC vs Legal: Infinity WIFI user blocked b/c of DNSCrypt 1

Submitted by opendnsuser
opendnsuser (3991349) writes "I'm using Xfinity wireless hotspots and recently I am constantly being blocked. I am certain it is because of my use of dnscrypt to opendns servers. I will use their wifi fine for a while and after they block me I can still ping the Access Point I am connected to and their DNS servers, but nothing else. I believe they are using DPI to analyse traffic, after being reportedly told by the FCC not to. This is extremely annoying and I very literally feel bullied and forced to use their DNS servers, making me login every 10-15 minutes if I refuse. Using their DNS, none of this happens at all and I maintain a healthy connection for as long as needed. An important note is that this is a MAC based system, so any responses like you have to use their DNS for it to work properly are invalid, as I've been using it fine for months. When I get blocked, I get a message saying there's been a network error and to contact them. I am then able to access the login URL, but I sometimes get reverted to a login that reports invalid credentials, but it is definitely not a MITM attack. After a few invalid logins, they send me to the legitimate login and allow me through, but only if I am using their DNS servers at that point. Should I file an FCC complaint or contact a lawyer?"

+ - The EU proposes all companies share their encryption keys with the government->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Statewatch published a document revealing that Gilles de Kerchove, the EU counter terrorism coordinator, is advising the EU:

... to explore rules obliging internet and telecommunications companies operating in the EU to provide under certain conditions as set out in the relevant national laws and in full compliance with fundamental rights access of the relevant national authorities to communications (i.e. share encryption keys).

"
Link to Original Source

+ - Doomsday Clock is now 3 minutes to midnight!-> 1

Submitted by Lasrick
Lasrick (2629253) writes "Founded in 1945 by University of Chicago scientists who had helped develop the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created the Doomsday Clock two years later, using the imagery of apocalypse (midnight) and the contemporary idiom of nuclear explosion (countdown to zero) to convey threats to humanity and the planet. The decision to move (or to leave in place) the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock is made every year by the Bulletin's Science and Security Board in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes 17 Nobel laureates. The Clock has become a universally recognized indicator of the world's vulnerability to catastrophe from nuclear weapons, climate change, and new technologies emerging in other domains. Today, the Clock was moved up 2 minutes; it is now 3 minutes to midnight. Here is the Board's statement on the move."
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Comment: Re:Homeland Security? Everyone is a terrorist (Score 1) 126

by MrBingoBoingo (#48872465) Attached to: Silk Road 2.0 Deputy Arrested
This. I mean Charlie Shrem getting half the jail time of the dude he play the prisoner dilemma game with simply because they both surrendered to the States attourney and Shrem was the better mole... Nothing about this process is justice. Preet Baharara and his legal team are the legal equivalent of pick up artists and they get hammered in appelate courts for this bullshit. Appeals though cost money.

+ - Is the time over the code websites from scratch?

Submitted by thomawack
thomawack (3990089) writes "As a designer I always do webdesign from scratch and put them into CMSMS. Frameworks are too complicated to work into, their code usually too bloated and adaptable online solutions are/were limited in options. Also despite I know my way around html/css, I am not a programmer. My problem is, always starting from scratch create menus, forms and now everything responsive too, it has become too expensive for most customers. I see more and more online adaptive solutions that seem to be more flexible nowadays, but I am a bit overwhelmed in checking everything out because there are so many solutions around. Is there someting your readers can recommend? Be it an online adaptive website or a CMS that works similar, which are very flexible but bring a good basis / templates?"

Comment: Odd link substitution (Score 2, Informative) 126

by MrBingoBoingo (#48870089) Attached to: Silk Road 2.0 Deputy Arrested
The original submission to /. linked to http://qntra.net/2015/01/another-big-silk-road-2-0-arrest-full-complaint/ which actually included the complaint text. I don't see how a local San Antonio news outlet is even the slightest bit local to a Washinton State man being arrested in... Washinton State.

+ - Illinois Says Rule-Breaking Students Must Give Teachers Their Facebook Passwords->

Submitted by derekmead
derekmead (2466858) writes "School districts in Illinois are telling parents that a new law may require school officials to demand the social media passwords of students if they are suspected in cyberbullying cases or are otherwise suspected of breaking school rules.

The law (PDF), which went into effect on January 1, defines cyberbullying and makes harassment on Facebook, Twitter, or via other digital means a violation of the state's school code, even if the bullying happens outside of school hours.

A letter sent out to parents in the Triad Community Unit School District #2, a district located just over the Missouri-Illinois line near St. Louis, that was obtained by Motherboard says that school officials can demand students give them their passwords."
Link to Original Source

+ - Nanobots Deliver Medical Payload in Living Creature for the First Time->

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula (1870348) writes "Researchers working at the University of California, San Diego have claimed a world first in proving that artificial, microscopic machines can travel inside a living creature and deliver their medicinal load without any detrimental effects. Using micro-motor powered nanobots propelled by gas bubbles made from a reaction with the contents of the stomach in which they were deposited, these miniature machines have been successfully deployed in the body of a live mouse."
Link to Original Source

+ - The Blue Book is Open

Submitted by argStyopa
argStyopa (232550) writes "130,000 pages of declassified files from Project Blue Book (and its predecessors) has been posted online at http://www.theblackvault.com/ the result of decades of FOIA requests. Previously the National Archive has had these available in microfilm, but this is the first posting of the full collection online. Somehow, there is no mention of Roswell 1947 in the documents, leaving conspiracy theorists something to chew on as well."

+ - Book Review: "FreeBSD Mastery: Storage Essentials", by Michael W. Lucas-> 1

Submitted by Saint Aardvark
Saint Aardvark (159009) writes "(Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book for review. Disclaimer to the disclaimer: I would gladly have paid for it anyway.)

If, like me, you administer FreeBSD systems, you know that (like Linux) there is an embarrassment of riches when it comes to filesystems. GEOM, UFS, soft updates, encryption, disklabels — there is a *lot* going on here. And if, like me, you're coming from the Linux world your experience won't be directly applicable, and you'll be scaling Mount Learning Curve. Even if you *are* familiar with the BSDs, there is a lot to take in. Where do you start?

You start here, with Michael W. Lucas' latest book, "FreeBSD Mastery: Storage Essentials". You've heard his name before; he's written "Sudo Mastery" (which I reviewed previously), along with books on PGP/GnuPGP, Cisco Routers and OpenBSD. This book clocks in at 204 pages of goodness, and it's an excellent introduction to managing storage on FreeBSD. From filesystem choice to partition layout to disk encryption, with sidelong glances at ZFS along the way, he does his usual excellent job of laying out the details you need to know without every veering into dry or boring.

Do you need to know about GEOM? It's in here: Lucas takes your from "What *is* GEOM, anyway?" (answer: FreeBSD's system of layers for filesytem management) through "How do I set up RAID 10?" through "Here's how to configure things to solve that weird edge-case." Still trying to figure out GUID partitions? I sure as hell was...and then I read Chapter Two. Do you remember disklabels fondly, and wonder whatever happened to them? They're still around, but mainly on embedded systems that still use MBR partitions — so grab this book if you need to deal with them.

The discussion of SMART disk monitoring is one of the best introductions to this subject I've ever read, and should serve *any* sysadmin well, no matter what OS they're dealing with; I plan on keeping it around for reference until we no longer use hard drives. RAID is covered, of course, but so are more complex setups — as well as UFS recovery and repair for when you run into trouble.

Disk encryption gets three chapters (!) full of details on the two methods in FreeBSD, GBDE and GELI. But just as important, Lucas outlines why disk encryption might *not* be the right choice: recovering data can be difficult or impossible, it might get you unwanted attention from adversaries, and it will *not* protect you against, say, an adversary who can put a keylogger on your laptop. If it still make sense to encrypt your hard drive, you'll have the knowledge you need to do the job right.

I said that this covers *almost* everything you need to know, and the big omission here is ZFS. It shows up, but only occasionally and mostly in contrast to other filesystem choices. For example, there's an excellent discussion of why you might want to use FreeBSD's plain UFS filesystem instead of all-singing, all-dancing ZFS. (Answer: modest CPU or RAM, or a need to do things in ways that don't fit in with ZFS, make UFS an excellent choice.) I would have loved to see ZFS covered here — but honestly, that would be a book of its own, and I look forward to seeing one from Lucas someday; when that day comes, it will be a great companion to this book, and I'll have Christmas gifts for all my fellow sysadmins.

One big part of the appeal of this book (and Lucas' writing in general) is that he is clear about the tradeoffs that come with picking one solution over another. He shows you where the sharp edges are, and leaves you well-placed to make the final decision yourself. Whether it's GBDE versus GELI for disk encryption, or what might bite you when enabling soft updates journaling, he makes sure you know what you're getting into. He makes recommendations, but always tells you their limits.

There's also Lucas' usual mastery of writing; well-written explanations with liberal dollops of geek humour that don't distract from the knowledge he's dropping. He's clear, he's thorough, and he's interesting — and that's an amazing thing to say about a book on filesystems.

Finally, technical review was done by Poul Henning-Kamp; he's a FreeBSD developer who wrote huge parts of the GEOM and GBDE systems mentioned above. That gives me a lot of warm fuzzies about the accuracy of this book.

If you're a FreeBSD (or Linux, or Unix) sysadmin, then you need this book; it has a *lot* of hard-won knowledge, and will save your butt more than you'll be comfortable admitting. If you've read anything else by Lucas, you also know we need him writing more books. Do the right thing and buy this now."
Link to Original Source

+ - Iran forced to cancel its space program, dashing Ahmadinejad's astronaut dream->

Submitted by MarkWhittington
MarkWhittington (1084047) writes "The War is Boring blog reported that the Islamic Republic of Iran has been obliged to cancel its nascent space program. This development means that former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s dream of being the first astronaut to be launched into space by Iran have been dashed. Ironically, Anousheh Ansari, who was obliged to flee to the United States from Iran to avoid religious oppression, remains the only Iranian-born space traveler. She did it by going to Texas, making her fortune in the electronics business, and paying for her trip to the International Space Station."
Link to Original Source

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