×
Security

Submission + - Chip and PIN Payment Card System Vulnerable to Attacks (net-security.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The chip and PIN system employed by most European and Asian banks is definitely more secure than the magnetic strip one, but it doesn't mean that it doesn't have its flaws. It can routinely be misused via ATM or POS skimmers and cameras recording PIN numbers as they are entered by card owners, but there are other ways as well. A team of Cambridge University researchers has recently discovered that a flaw in the way that the algorithms for generating unique numbers for each ATM or POS transaction are implemented makes it possible for attackers to authorize illegal transactions without ever having to clone the customers' card. "The UN (unique number) appears to consist of a 17 bit fixed value and the low 15 bits are simply a counter that is incremented every few milliseconds, cycling every three minutes," they discovered.

Submission + - Eve Online Players Rename Universe To Commemorate Dead Player (themittani.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Sean Smith, Known as Vile Rat in Eve Online was killed in an attack on the US Consulate In Benghazi. While most news agencies lead with the death of the US Ambassador in the same incident the Eve Online community has rallied around Vile Rat. In the game he was a Director and Diplomat for Goonswarm Alliance, and a former member of the Council For Stellar Management. Hundreds of outposts, Starbases and Spaceships are being renamed in rememberance of Vile Rat. Even enemies of goonswarm's current campaign are honoring the passing of this hugely popular player.
The Courts

Submission + - Dutch court rules hyperlinks illegal

Submitted by
Ubi_NL
Ubi_NL writes: "In today's ruling of Playboy (via publisher Sanoma) vs Dutch blog Geenstijl, the court ruled that hyperlinking to copyrighted material was itself infringement of copyright. The court ordered the blog to remove all links to the infringing links (court ruling in dutch). How this ruling fits into the supreme court ruling that hyperlinks cannot by themselves infringe copyright is still to be discussed, possibly in an appeal. An interesting detail of the case is that the anonymous source that pointed Geenstijl to the images did this from an IP address within the Sanoma organisation..."
Movies

Submission + - Discworld Fan Film Possibly the Largest Scale Fan Film Ever (snowgumfilms.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: After clocking in at $82,000 on their Kickstarter campaign, two Troll Bridge trailers have been released online showing helicopter shots in New Zealand and a large scale bridge set that was built and shot on.

A Behind the Scenes has also been released demonstrating what fans are now actually capable of given decent crowd-funding.

The film has finished shooting and is expected to be released next year. Sir Terry Pratchett has been apparently thrilled with the progress.
Biotech

Submission + - Homeland Security Faulted for BioWatch Biological Defense System (latimes.com)

Submitted by Mansing
Mansing writes: Eleven years after the attacks in the US, the citizens need to evaluate if they are indeed safer for all the "security precautions" put into place. The existing system's repeated false alarms have triggered tense, high-stakes deliberations over whether to order mass evacuations, distribute emergency medicines or shut down major venues. Is this just more money funneled to US companies, or is this really keeping the US safer? Is the same type of "security precautions" being instituted in Spain and the UK? Or is this preying on fear a uniquely US phenomenon?

Submission + - BBC Radiophonic Workshop revived online (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by ratbag
ratbag writes: From BBC news: "The BBC's Radiophonic Workshop, which created theme tunes and sound effects for programmes including Doctor Who and Blake's 7, is to reopen after 14 years. The original workshop was known for its pioneering use of electronic sounds. Founded in 1958, it was best-known for creating the eerie swoosh of the Doctor Who theme tune, but its compositions were also used in numerous radio dramas, The Goon Show and The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.As well as music, the workshop created sound effects — from champagne corks popping to the distorted, strangulated voices of the Daleks.'
Hardware

Submission + - Journalist goes undercover making the iPhone 5 at Foxconn (geek.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The news feeds will be filled with talk of the iPhone today, and most of it is probably going to be positive. However, the Chinese new agency Shanghai Evening Post has posted a pretty scathing review of the working conditions at Foxconn, and in particular the iPhone 5 production line.

The agency managed to get one of its reporters a job working undercover in a Foxconn factory where the iPhone 5 is being manufactured for Apple. He spent 10 days there and then wrote up the entire experience to demonstrate just how bad it is for the thousands of workers Foxconn employs.

In summary, the dorms are infested with cockroaches, smell of sweat and foam, and only offer dirty sheets. Facilities are mostly free, but rundown and in need of serious attention. Working conditions are just as bad. Loud machinery and the smell of plastic fills the air while the journalist had to accurately place (within 5mm) one oil dot on an iPhone 5 every 3 seconds for 10 hours. Rinse and repeat. Add to that the 7-day intensive training and 70 penalties that can be incurred compared to the mere 13 rewards that can be earned, and you have a very stressful environment.
Science

Submission + - Confusion and Criticism over ENCODE's Claims (arstechnica.com) 1

Submitted by As_I_Please
As_I_Please writes: In response to the previous report of the ENCODE project discovering "biochemical functions for 80 percent of the genome," many scientists have questioned what was meant by "function." Ars Technica Science Editor John Timmer wrote an article calling ENCODE's definition of functionality "broad to the point of being meaningless. At worst, it was actively misleading." Nature magazine also has a followup discussing the ambiguity surrounding the 80% figure and claims about junk DNA.
Network

Submission + - Apple's iCloud Mail Suffering Global Fail (apple.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: iCloud's mail servers have been unavailable to millions of users around the globe over the past 24 hours. Apple's iCloud Status page notes that only 1.1% of users are affected and promise service to resume soon. Over the past 24 hours the status page has slowly edged up the percentage of affected users, but information regarding the problem and repair status have remained the same. Apple Technical Support has no knowledge or comment on the problem. Apple has major new product event today.
Security

Submission + - Chip and pin (EMV) 'weakness' exposed by Cambridge researchers (bbc.com)

Submitted by another random user
another random user writes: A vulnerability in the widely used chip and pin payment system has been exposed by Cambridge University researchers.

Cards were found to be open to a form of cloning, despite past assurances from banks that chip and pin could not be compromised.

In a statement given to the BBC, a spokeswoman for the UK's Financial Fraud Action group said: "We've never claimed that chip and pin is 100% secure and the industry has successfully adopted a multi-layered approach to detecting any newly-identified types of fraud."

Submission + - Engineers Build Supercomputer Using Raspberry Pi, Lego (paritynews.com) 1

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: Team of computational engineers over at the University of Southampton led by Professor Simon Cox have built a supercomputer using Raspberry Pi and Lego. The supercomputer comprises of 64 processors, 1TB of memory (16GB SD Cards in each of the Raspberry Pi) and can be powered on using just a single 13 Amp mains socket. Message Passing Interface is used for communications between the nodes through the Ethernet port. The team managed to build the core of the supercomputer under the £2500 (excluding switches for networking). Named “Iridis-Pi” after University of Southampton’s supercomputer Iridis, software for the supercomputer has been built using Python and Scratch. Professor Cox used the free plug-in 'Python Tools for Visual Studio' to develop code for the Raspberry Pi.
Moon

Submission + - NASA's Garver lists moon as goal for astronauts against Obama space policy (examiner.com)

Submitted by
MarkWhittington
MarkWhittington writes: "NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver delivered an address to the AIAA 2012 Space Conference in Pasadena, California that consisted of a full throated defense of Obama administration space policy and the direction of NASA. Garver was especially keen to defend the Obama space exploration effort that has replaced the Bush era Constellation space exploration program.

However Garver included the moon as a future destination for American astronauts, despite the fact that President Obama specifically ruled out a return to the moon in his April 15, 2010 speech at the Kennedy Space Center. This raises questions about the future direction of NASA space exploration and who is really determining it."

Submission + - Over 200,000 Tons of Deep Water Horizion Oil and Gas Consumed by Bacteria (phys.org)

Submitted by SchrodingerZ
SchrodingerZ writes: The University of Rochester and Texas A&M University have determined that in the five months following the Deepwater Horizon Disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, bacteria have consumed over 200,000 tons of oil and natural gas. The researched was published in the journal; Environmental Science and Technology (abstract available, full text pay-walled). 'A significant amount of the oil and gas that was released was retained within the ocean water more than one-half mile below the sea surface. It appears that the hydrocarbon-eating bacteria did a good job of removing the majority of the material that was retained in these layers," said co-author John Kessler of the University of Rochester.' The paper debuts for the first time 'the rate at which the bacteria ate the oil and gas changed as this disaster progressed, information that is fundamental to understanding both this spill and predicting the behavior of future spills'. It was also noted that the oil and gas consumption rate was correlated with the addition of dispersants at the wellhead . Still an estimated 40% of the oil and natural gas from the spill is still in the Gulf today.
Facebook

Submission + - Facebook Chiefs quizzed over Facial Recognition Technology (mirolta.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: This summer, Facebook’s ever growing ability to collect valuable information about its 900m users has come under scrutiny from the most senior law makers in America.

Facebook’s Privacy and Policy Manager Rob Sherman has been summoned to the US senate about the social network behemoth’s use of facial recognition technology. Minnesota Senator Al Franken called the hearing to examine Facebook and get answers from its senior management about new features such as default tagging suggestions in photos and about why there is so little information about the technology it utilises on its site....

Submission + - Mathematician Claims Proof of Connection between Prime Numbers (nature.com)

Submitted by cekerr
cekerr writes: A Japanese mathematician claims to have the proof for the ABC conjecture, a statement about the relationship between prime numbers that has been called the most important unsolved problem in number theory.

Mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki of Kyoto University in Japan has released a 500-page proof of the abc conjecture, which proposes a relationship between whole numbers — a 'Diophantine' problem.

The abc conjecture, proposed independently by David Masser and Joseph Oesterle in 1985, might not be as familiar to the wider world as Fermat’s Last Theorem, but in some ways it is more significant. “The abc conjecture, if proved true, at one stroke solves many famous Diophantine problems, including Fermat's Last Theorem,” says Dorian Goldfeld, a mathematician at Columbia University in New York. “If Mochizuki’s proof is correct, it will be one of the most astounding achievements of mathematics of the twenty-first century.”

The proof is contained over four papers produced by Mochizuki: INTER-UNIVERSAL TEICHMULLER THEORY I-IV

Submission + - Secret International Agreements to Censor the Internet (commondreams.org)

Submitted by stoicio
stoicio writes: kurzweilai.net has a story linked from the original located at CommonDreams.org stating, "Negotiators from the U.S. and eight other Pacific Rim countries meeting at a secluded resort in Leesburg, Viriginia, working out deals in the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement that could hamper free speech on the Internet"

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has also presented notes on this.

Submission + - Author Threatens to Sue Book Reviewers over Trademark Infringement (the-digital-reader.com)

Submitted by Nate the greatest
Nate the greatest writes: Do you know what is crazier than sending DMCA notices to a site like Lendink which doesn't host any content? It's when an author threatens to sue book reviewers over trademarks. Jazan Wild, a comics creator, is sending out threatening emails to any and all book blogs who review a recently published book called Carnival of Souls. The book was written by Melissa Marr, and it happens to use a title which Jazan Wild owns the registered trademark. He's also suing the publisher for trademark infringement, but HarperCollins is laughing it off. The book blog Bookalicious posted the email they got from Jazan. Needless to say they did not take down the review.

Submission + - 58% of South Australia's Power Generated by Wind Farms (reneweconomy.com.au)

Submitted by SA_Democrat
SA_Democrat writes: You've probably heard people saying that wind energy doesn't work, well, South Australia would beg to differ. Ongoing investment in wind farms has resulted in wind providing 58% of demand . Australia has a National electricity grid, so excess energy is exported to other states. Of course, in a country this size, the wind is always blowing somewhere.

Slashdot Top Deals