Long-time Slashdot reader kbahey writes: Can a single pixel cost you your livelihood and/or freedom? Apparently, this has already happened in Turkey to thousands of people and their relatives. It all stems from the purge by president Edrogan following a failed coupe. The result is that many innocent people lost their jobs (and source of income), their freedom, their reputation, and more.

The details are frightening. The underlying technology is the use of 1x1 transparent pixels, as most web sites do, to track their visitors. This particular pixel was used by Bylock, a messaging app that the Turkish government deemed seditious, in their purge against Fethullah Gulen loyalists. Pre-dawn raids by police were conducted on those who have this pixel. The long legal proceedings caused a digital forensic expert to challenge those cases, because [the pixel using] the servers for Bylock was also being used by other applications for music streaming, and prayer times/direction of Mecca.
30,000 innocent people may have been swept up among the 150,000 Turks detained, arrested or forced from their jobs under state of emergency decrees since the summer of 2016. One 29-year-old high school teacher "wished the worst" for the revolutionaries accused of using Bylock, "until authorities said he was one of them."

The government eventually exonerated 11,480 of the wrongly accused, but some had already spent months in prison, and reportedly some even committed suicide.

Long-time Slashdot readers Agilulf, Sara Chan, and wiredmikey -- plus an anonymous reader -- all submitted the same story. Agilulf writes: Dutch hackers from AIVD (their intelligence agency) infiltrated Russian hackers, had access to their CCTV system, and followed them for more than a year, watched their attack on the DNC, provided the proof to the U.S. intelligence community that Russia was behind those hacks and the stolen emails, and were disappointed with the response from the U.S.
The Dutch agents also watched Russian agents breach a non-classified network at the U.S. State Department in 2014, where the Russians then sent a phishing email to the White House, successfully stole login credentials, and then accessed email from embassies and diplomats.

"Three American intelligence services state with 'high confidence' that the Kremlin was behind the attack on the Democratic Party," according to the article, which adds that that certainty "is derived from the AIVD hackers having had access to the office-like space in the center of Moscow for years."

An anonymous reader writes: "I will be short. I've got an order to kill you," the note said, demanding $2,800 in U.S. dollars or Bitcoin. "I switched from being upset about it to, 'I need to get the word out'," one of its targets told a local newscaster. They filed a report through the FBI's web site.

"If only 1% of people send money -- there's no overhead for them; that's money in the bank," one FBI agent tells the news team. A quick Google search finds recent reports of two nearly identical threats using the same text.

"I have been thinking for a long time whether it is worth sending this notice, and decided that you still have the right to know... I've got an order to kill you, because some of your activity causes trouble to several people... I decided to break some rules, as this will be my final order... As soon as I receive the funds, I will forward you the name of the man [this] order came from, and all other information I have."

Newsweek reports: A private satellite company launched a three-foot-wide, carbon-fiber orb called the Humanity Star into the sky last week. Rocket Lab has promised the Humanity Star will be "the brightest thing in the sky," presumably other than the sun. The orb will reflect light from the sun back to Earth to achieve this effect. It's expected to orbit the Earth once every 90 minutes for the next nine months before it falls out of the sky and burns up in the atmosphere. The reaction on social media has been largely swift and scornful...

The stated goal of the project, at least, seems admirable: "No matter where you are in the world, rich or in poverty, in conflict or at peace, everyone will be able to see the bright, blinking Humanity Star orbiting Earth in the night sky," Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck said in a statement on the project's website. "Wait for when the Humanity Star is overhead, and take your loved ones outside to look up and reflect. You may just feel a connection to the more than 7 billion other people on this planet we share this ride with."
Slashdot reader dmoberhaus writes that "astronomers are annoyed by what they perceive as just another piece of space junk getting in the way."

"Wow. Intentionally bright long-term space graffiti. Thanks a lot Rocket Lab," complained an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology. And one New Zealand journalist accused Rocket Lab of "vandalising the night sky with shiny space rubbish."

jwhyche, Slashdot reader #6,192, writes: If you bought some illegal narcotics off Silk Road or even gave money to Wikileaks. Researchers at Qatar University and Hamad Bin Khalifa University have been able to link these transactions with real world identities. They have been able to do this even if the transactions are years old. Their research shows how easy it is to link accounts to these transactions without using any of the tools available to law enforcement like search warrants or subpoenas.
The researchers started with 88 unique bitcoin addresses from Tor hidden services, and then searched 5 billion tweets and 1 million pages on the Bitcoin Talk forum -- ultimately linking 125 unique users to 20 Tor hidden services. "Bitcoin addresses should always be considered exploitable," the researchers conclude, "as they can be used to deanonymize users retroactively."

Their paper is titled "When a Small Leak Sinks a Great Ship: Deanonymizing Tor Hidden Service Users Through Bitcoin Transactions Analysis," and Wired summarizes one of their conclusions. "Even deleting profile information that includes bitcoin addresses may not be enough if a post has been cached or captured by services like the Internet Archive, they point out. 'If you're vulnerable now, you're vulnerable in the future.'"

An anonymous reader quotes The Hill: Uber's chief executive is calling for Washington state to develop a "portable benefits system" to give contract workers in the so-called gig economy access to health care and retirement planning accounts. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi signed onto a letter with Service Employees International Union (SEIU) 775 President David Rolf and Seattle investor and workers rights advocate Nick Hanauer urging the state to take action.

Uber does not hire drivers as actual employees meaning the company does not offer them benefits beyond compensation. Khosrowshahi said having the state change laws so that contract workers can carry benefits between jobs would be preferable to Uber hiring them as full employees.

An anonymous reader quotes CSO: "The strategy around Zero Trust boils down to don't trust anyone. We're talking about, 'Let's cut off all access until the network knows who you are. Don't allow access to IP addresses, machines, etc. until you know who that user is and whether they're authorized,'" says Charlie Gero, CTO of Enterprise and Advanced Projects Group at Akamai Technologies in Cambridge, Mass... The Zero Trust model of information security basically kicks to the curb the old castle-and-moat mentality that had organizations focused on defending their perimeters while assuming everything already inside didn't pose a threat and therefore was cleared for access. Security and technology experts say the castle-and-moat approach isn't working. They point to the fact that some of the most egregious data breaches happened because hackers, once they gained access inside corporate firewalls, were able move through internal systems without much resistance...

Experts say that today's enterprise IT departments require a new way of thinking because, for the most part, the castle itself no longer exists in isolation as it once did. Companies don't have corporate data centers serving a contained network of systems but instead today typically have some applications on-premises and some in the cloud with users -- employees, partners, customers -- accessing applications from a range of devices from multiple locations and even potentially from around the globe... The Zero Trust approach relies on various existing technologies and governance processes to accomplish its mission of securing the enterprise IT environment. It calls for enterprises to leverage micro-segmentation and granular perimeter enforcement based on users, their locations and other data to determine whether to trust a user, machine or application seeking access to a particular part of the enterprise... Zero Trust draws on technologies such as multifactor authentication, Identity and Access Management (IAM), orchestration, analytics, encryption, scoring and file system permissions. Zero Trust also calls for governance policies such as giving users the least amount of access they need to accomplish a specific task.
"Most organizational IT experts have been trained, unfortunately, to implicitly trust their environments," says the chief product officer at an IAM/PIM solutions supplier.

"Everybody has been [taught] to think that the firewall is keeping the bad guys out. People need to adjust their mindset and understand that the bad actors are already in their environment."

An anonymous reader quotes the Verge: DuckDuckGo is launching updated versions of its browser extension and mobile app, with the promise of keeping internet users safe from snooping "beyond the search box." The company's flagship product, its privacy-focused search engine, will remain the same, but the revamped extension and app will offer new tools to help users keep their web-browsing as safe and private as possible. These include grade ratings for websites, factoring in their use of encryption and ad tracking networks, and offering summaries of their terms of service (with summaries provided by third-party Terms of Service Didn't Read). The app and extension are available for Firefox, Safari, Chrome, iOS, and Android.

The ability to block ad tracking networks is probably the most important feature here. These networks are used by companies like Google and Facebook to follow users around the web, stitching together their browsing history to create a more accurate profile for targeted advertising.
DuckDuckGo calls it "a major step to simplify online privacy," adding that without it, "It's hard to use the Internet without it feeling a bit creepy -- like there's a nosey neighbor watching everything you do from across the street."

Cory Doctorow writes: Millions of new cars sold in the US and Europe are "connected," having some mechanism for exchanging data with their manufacturers after the cars are sold; these cars stream or batch-upload location data and other telemetry to their manufacturers, who argue that they are allowed to do virtually anything they want with this data, thanks to the "explicit consent" of the car owners -- who signed a lengthy contract at purchase time that contained a vague and misleading clause deep in its fine-print.
Slashdot reader Luthair adds that "OnStar infamously has done this for some time, even if the vehicle's owner was not a subscriber of their services." But now 78 million cars have an embedded cyber connection, according to one report, with analysts predicting 98% of new cars will be "connected" by 2021. The Washington Post calls it "Big Brother on Wheels."

"Carmakers have turned on a powerful spigot of precious personal data, often without owners' knowledge, transforming the automobile from a machine that helps us travel to a sophisticated computer on wheels that offers even more access to our personal habits and behaviors than smartphones do."

schwit1 shares an interesting story. Newsweek reports: A British teenager managed to obtain access to sensitive U.S. plans about intelligence operations in different Middle East countries by acting as former CIA Director John Brennan, a court heard on Friday. Kane Gamble, 18, researched Brennan and used the information he gathered to speak to an internet company and persuade call handlers to give him access to the spy chief's email inbox in 2015. He pretended to be both a Verizon employee and Brennan to access Brennan's internet account.

Astonishingly, Gamble managed to gain access to Brennan's emails and his addressbook, as well as his iCloud storage. He even managed to remotely access the iPad of Brennan's wife... Gamble, aged 15 at the time, also persuaded a helpdesk at the FBI that he was the then deputy director Mark Giuliano... In October 2017, Gamble pleaded guilty to 10 charges, including eight charges of "performing a function with intent to secure unauthorized access" to the computers and two of "unauthorized modification of computer material."

The Guardian quotes Paul Verhoeven, the director of Starship Troopers: Robert Heinlein's original 1959 science-fiction novel was militaristic, if not fascistic. So I decided to make a movie about fascists who aren't aware of their fascism... I was looking for the prototype of blond, white and arrogant, and Casper Van Dien was so close to the images I remembered from Leni Riefenstahl's films. I borrowed from Triumph of the Will in the parody propaganda reel that opens the film, too. I was using Riefenstahl to point out, or so I thought, that these heroes and heroines were straight out of Nazi propaganda...

With a title like Starship Troopers, people were expecting a new Star Wars. They got that, but not really: it stuck in your throat. It said: "Here are your heroes and your heroines, but by the way -- they're fascists."
The actors weren't even clear on what the giant arachnids would look like, since their "Bug" battles were filmed entirely with green screens, remembers one of the movie's stars, Denise Richards. Instead Verhoeven "would be there jumping up and down with a broom in the air so we would have a sense of how big they were."

Verhoeven told one interviewer that he never actually read Robert Heinlein's original book. "I stopped after two chapters because it was so boring. It is really quite a bad book."

An anonymous reader quotes InfoWorld: When it comes to which programming languages are in demand by employers, JavaScript, Java, Python, C++, and C -- in that order -- came out on top in a recent developer survey. Developers, however, want to learn languages like Python, Go, and Kotlin. A survey of developers by technical recruiter HackerRank, conducted in October, found no gap between languages employers want and what developers actually know, with JavaScript barely edging out Java...

HackerRank also found gaps in JavaScript frameworks between what employers want and what developers know. The React JavaScript UI library had the biggest delta between employers and developers, with about 37 percent of employers wanting React skills but only about 19 percent of developers having them... [But] problem-solving skills are the most-sought by employers, more than language proficiency, debugging, and system design.
The survey involved 39,441 developers, and concluded that "Python ruled among all age groups," according to Application Development Trends, "except for those 55 years or older, who narrowly prefer C."

A newly-released affidavit reveals that money was at stake in a game of Call Of Duty: World War II which led to the fatal real-life police shooting of Andrew Finch. The Wichita Eagle reports: Investigators learned that Shane Gaskill, who lives in Wichita, was involved in an online video game with other people when he accidentally [virtually] shot and killed one of his teammates in the online game. The teammate who was killed in the game became "extremely upset" and began talking trash to Gaskill, the affidavit says. The dispute escalated until the teammate, who the document identifies as Casey Viner of North College Hill, Ohio, threatened via Twitter to "SWATT" Gaskill, according to the affidavit. Gaskill replied, "Please try some s---." He then posted the address...
Viner "is considered a suspect in several 'swatting' incidents in Cincinnati," reports the Los Angeles Times, adding that prosecutors are still deciding whether these two gamers should also face criminal charges.

Meanwhile, Kansas officials have been informed that the third gamer who actually made the phone call, 25-year-old Tyler Barriss, matches the voice on a fake 2015 bomb threat, and is already the subject of an open investigation by an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Tesla's problems with battery production at the company's Gigafactory in Sparks, Nevada, are worse than the company has acknowledged and could cause further delays and quality issues for the new Model 3, according to a number of current and former Tesla employees. These problems include Tesla needing to make some of the batteries by hand and borrowing scores of employees from one of its suppliers to help with this manual assembly, said these people. Tesla's future as a mass-market carmaker hinges on automated production of the Model 3, which more than 400,000 people have already reserved, paying $1,000 refundable fees to do so. The company has already delayed production, citing problems at the Gigafactory. On Nov. 1, 2017, CEO Elon Musk assured investors in an earnings call that Tesla was making strides to correct its manufacturing issues and get the Model 3 out. But more than a month later, in mid-December, Tesla was still making its Model 3 batteries partly by hand, according to current engineers and ex-Tesla employees who worked at the Gigafactory in recent months. They say Tesla had to "borrow" scores of employees from Panasonic, which is a partner in the Gigafactory and supplies lithium-ion battery cells, to help with this manual assembly. Tesla is still not close to mass producing batteries for the basic $35,000 model of this electric sedan, sources say.

Archaeologists in Israel have discovered the oldest fossil of a modern human outside Africa, suggesting that humans first migrated out of the content much earlier than previously believed. NPR reports: The scientists were digging in a cave called Misliya, on the slopes of Mount Carmel on the northern coast of Israel. "The cave is one of a series of prehistoric caves," says Mina Weinstein-Evron of the Zinman Institute of Archaeology at the University of Haifa, who led the team. "It's a collapsed cave, but people lived there before it collapsed." The cave had been occupied for several hundred thousand years, she says. All the archaeological evidence suggested that the ancient people who lived in the cave were hunter-gatherers. "They were hunting animals, mainly ungulates, like fallow dear, gazelle, aurochs [an extinct species of wild cattle] and other small animals," says Weinstein-Evron. "They built fireplaces throughout the length of the cave, again and again, in the same place, in the same sort of defined arrangement."

Weinstein-Evron says she and her team wanted to find out which species of ancient humans lived in the cave. So, she says, they kept digging. "And among the animal bones and flint tools we found a jawbone, an upper jawbone of an individual," she says. A detailed analysis of the jawbone and the teeth confirmed that it indeed belonged to someone of our species, Homo sapiens. And when they dated the fossil, it turned out to be between 177,000 and 194,000 years old, making it the oldest known such fossil outside the African continent.