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Security

Submission + - 'Murder By Internet-Connected Devices' is Dumbest Prediction of 2012, '13 &' (cio.com)

Submitted by
Curseyoukhan
Curseyoukhan writes: "Infosec vendor IID (Internet Identity) probably hopes that by the time 2014 rolls around no one will remember the prediction it just made. That is the year it says we will see the first murder via internet connected device. The ability to do this has been around for quite some time but the company won't say why it hasn't happened yet. Probably because that would have screwed up their fear marketing. CIO blogger challenges them to a $10K bet over their claim."
Government

Submission + - CIA whacks at Hollywood spy agency myths (networkworld.com) 2

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "The CIA had a few problems with the agency's portrayal in the recently released "Zero Dark Thirty" movie about the successful hunt for Usama Bin Ladin, so much so the acting director issued a statement about the film and the organization wrote up an interesting top "Hollywood Myths vs. the Real CIA" list."
Businesses

Submission + - Why do you want to kill my pet? Zynga to shut down PetVille and 10 Others (techcrunch.com) 1

Submitted by Dr Herbert West
Dr Herbert West writes: Executing the cost-reduction plan CEO Mark Pincus announced in November, Zynga has shut down, pulled from the app stores, or stopped accepting new players to more than 10 games such as PetVille, Mafia Wars 2, FishVille, Vampire Wars, Treasure Isle, Indiana Jones Adventure World, Mafia Wars Shakedown, Forestville, Montopia, Mojitomo, and Word Scramble Challenge.

Comments from gamers on the shutdown notices included things like “my daughter is heartbroken” and “Please don’t remove petville. I been playing for 4 yrs. and I’M going to miss my pet Jaime.why do you want cause depression for me and others. Why do you want to kill my pet?”

For players that have invested a lot of microtransactions and/or time, this comes as a heavy blow. Most readers on /. have become used to game publishers disabling content or shutting servers down with little or no notice-- is this a further sign of things to come, or will this cause enough outrage to reverse the trend?
Security

Submission + - The Only 2013 Cybersecurity Predictions List You Need to Read (cio.com)

Submitted by
Curseyoukhan
Curseyoukhan writes: "He read them all so you don't have to. This crack team of a researcher compiled and condensed all the painfully-obvious and self-serving 2013 cybersecurity-threat-prediction lists on the Web into a single tasty nugget. See the mighty experts say things like: 'Organizations must prepare for the unpredictable so they have the resilience to withstand unforeseen, high-impact events.' Ah, the life of the consultant."
The Internet

Submission + - ISP Walks Out of Piracy Talks: Not The Internet Police (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A leading Australian Internet service provider has pulled out of negotiations to create a warning notice scheme aimed at reducing online piracy. iiNet, the ISP that was sued by Hollywood after refusing to help chase down alleged infringers, said that it can’t make any progress with righthsolders if they don’t make their content freely available at a reasonable price. The ISP adds that holding extra data on customers’ habits is inappropriate and not their responsibility.
Security

Submission + - New Malware Wiping Data on Computers in Iran (threatpost.com)

Submitted by
L3sPau1
L3sPau1 writes: "Iran's computer emergency response team is reporting new malware targeting computers in the country that is wiping data from partitions D through I. It is set to launch on only particular dates. While there has been other data-wiping malware targeting Iran and other Middle East countries such as Wiper and Shamoon, researchers said there is no immediate connection."
Security

Submission + - Now Even Dumb Hackers Can Make Crime Pay (cio.com)

Submitted by
Curseyoukhan
Curseyoukhan writes: "The stereotypical hacker, regardless of hat color, is a smart, nerdy, computer wizard. And while many real-life hackers probably fit the bill, not all of them are smart or nerdy. This week ExploitHub, whose motto is “Helping security professionals test MORE vulnerabilities, FASTER,” allowed a group calling itself the "Inj3ct0r Team" to test whether ExploitHub itself was vulnerable. The group quickly determined that it was."
Australia

Submission + - Australian Prime Minister's spoof "apocalypse" speech goes viral in China (dailylife.com.au)

Submitted by
brindafella
brindafella writes: "Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, recorded a spoof speech about the Mayan calendar apocalypse several days ago, for radio station "Triple J". Gillard said in part, "Whether the final blow comes from flesh eating zombies, demonic hell beasts or from the total triumph of K-pop, if you know one thing about me it is this: I will always fight for you to the very end."

The speech has been picked up in China on Sina Weibo (China's Twitter) and has achieved well over 23,000 repeats, without anyone picking up the irony.

This is just days after another Australian radio station, 2Day FM, created an international sensation with a prank (spoof) call to the hospital in London where Princess Catherine was undergoing treatment, and a nurse killed herself following the revelation of the prank."
Japan

Submission + - Japan police offers first-ever reward for wanted hacker (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: Japanese police are looking for an individual who can code in C#, uses a "Syberian Post Office" to make anonymous posts online, and knows how to surf the web without leaving any digital tracks — and they're willing to pay. It is the first time that Japan's National Police Agency has offered a monetary reward for a wanted hacker, or put so much technical detail into one of its wanted postings. The NPA will pay up to $36,000, the maximum allowed under its reward system. The case is an embarrassing one for the police, in which earlier this year 4 individuals were wrongly arrested after their PCs were hacked and used to post messages on public bulletin boards. The messages included warnings of plans for mass killings at an elementary school posted to a city website.
Privacy

Submission + - Why Do Companies Bother to Protect Customer Data? (cio.com)

Submitted by
Curseyoukhan
Curseyoukhan writes: "The upside to protecting consumer data is practically nonexistent, and the downside is barely any greater for the bottom line of most companies. Your business could have state-of-the-art protection or you could have the barest of bare bones security, and it wouldn't make any difference in the consumer-choice process. Furthermore the overwhelming majority of consumers could care less about privacy anyway. So why not just protect the stuff that's actually important to your business?"
Security

Submission + - Hacked review system leads to fake reviews and retraction of scientific papers (wordpress.com)

Submitted by dstates
dstates writes: Retraction Watch reports that fake reviewer information was placed in Elsevier's peer review database allowing unethical authors to review their own or colleagues manuscripts. As a result, 11 scientific publications have been retracted. The hack is particularly embarrassing for Elsevier because the commercial publisher has been arguing that the quality of its review process justifies its restrictive access policies and high costs of the journals it publishes.

Submission + - Intellectual Property Claims Gone Wild (huffingtonpost.com)

Submitted by tiqui
tiqui writes: With individuals, businesses and governments all seeking easy ways to get money without working for it, it's perhaps no longer surprising to see an archeologist and the country of Belize going after Disney and Spielberg for using the likeness of a crystal skill in an Indiana Jones movie... heat-up the popcorn, it should be interesting to see how much hypocrisy Disney deploys in its own defense.
Science

Submission + - Scientists Use Electrical Hum to Fight Crime

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "A suspected terrorist has been taped planning a deadly attack and the police want to use this evidence in court or someone has been captured on CCTV threatening an assault. Increasingly, recordings like these are playing a role in criminal investigations but how can the police be sure that the audio evidence is genuine and has not been tampered with or cleverly edited? Now Rebecca Morelle writes on BBC that a technique known as Electric Network Frequency (ENF) analysis is helping forensic scientists separate genuine, unedited recordings from those that have been tampered with and the technique has already been used in court. Any digital recording made anywhere near an electrical power source will pick up the noise from electricity supplied by the national grid and it will be embedded throughout the audio. This buzz is an annoyance for sound engineers trying to make the highest quality recordings but for forensic experts, it has turned out to be an invaluable tool in the fight against crime. Due to unbalances in production and consumption of electrical energy, the ENF is known to fluctuate slightly over time rather than being stuck to its exact set point so if you look at the frequency over time, you can see minute fluctuations and the pattern of these random changes in frequency is unique over time providing a digital watermark on every recording. Forensic Scientist Philip Harrison has been logging the hum on the national grid in the UK for several years. "Even if [the hum] is picked up at a very low level that you cannot hear, we can extract this information," says Dr. Harrison. "If we have we can extract [the hum] and compare it with the database, if it is a continuous recording, it will all match up nicely.""

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It's a naive, domestic operating system without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.

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