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Security

Submission + - Point and click Gmail hacking at Black Hat (tgdaily.com)

Submitted by
not5150
not5150 writes: "Using Gmail or most other webmail programs over an unsecured access points just got a bit more dangerous. At Black Hat, Robert Graham, CEO of errata security, showed how to capture and clone session cookies. He even hijacked a shocked attendee's Gmail account in the middle of his Black Hat speech."
United States

Submission + - Forensics Expert says Al-Qaeda Images Altered

Submitted by WerewolfOfVulcan
WerewolfOfVulcan writes: Wired reports that researcher Neal Krawetz revealed some veeeeeery interesting things about the Al-Qaeda images that our government loves to show off.

From the article: "Krawetz was also able to determine that the writing on the banner behind al-Zawahiri's head was added to the image afterward. In the second picture above showing the results of the error level analysis, the light clusters on the image indicate areas of the image that were added or changed. The subtitles and logos in the upper right and lower left corners (IntelCenter is an organization that monitors terrorist activity and As-Sahab is the video production branch of al Qaeda) were all added at the same time, while the banner writing was added at a different time, likely around the same time that al-Zawahiri was added, Krawetz says." Why would Al-Qaeda add an IntelCenter logo to their video? Why would IntelCenter add an Al-Qaeda logo? Methinks we have bigger fish to fry than Gonzo and his fired attorneys... }:-) The article contains links to Krawetz's presentation and the source code he used to analyze the photos.
Amiga

Submission + - Hacker does a DIY Amiga in FPGA (hetnet.nl)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Developer Dennis van Weeren recently announced completion of his from-scratch completely re-engineered Amiga chipset. His PCB design is fully operational and compatible and his verilog code has been released under GPL. Will this finally give the Amiga community a new breath of life?
Music

Submission + - Multiformat Listening Test at 64kbps

Submitted by Anonymous
Anonymous writes: The Hydrogenaudio community is conducting a "Public, Multiformat Listening Test" (http://www.listening-tests.info/mf-64-1/) to see which codecs (AAC, WMA Pro and Vorbis) provide the best sound quality when compressing samples at 64kbps.

This test is open until the 5th of August and seems to be much, much harder than what one would expect, even for experienced developers of sound codecs, at bitrates that the public would find "too little", as the comments on the thread at the discussion forums (see: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?show topic=56397).

Do you think that you have good ears? That 64kbps is "too little"? Then try it for yourself and participate. Your participation will help us improve the codecs so that they are even closer to being "transparent" at such "low" bitrates.
Programming

Submission + - Plans for the Rich Web Application Backplane 2

Submitted by IndioMan
IndioMan writes: Both mashups and Ajax are now firmly entrenched in the Web landscape. Put them together and you have the makings for Rich Web applications. This article explains the Rich Web Application Backplane, currently a W3C Note, which is designed to bring standardization to the field, proving a set of common building blocks, or components, these applications tend to use.
Businesses

Submission + - Fewer African-Americans, more Asians in IT (cioinsight.com)

Submitted by
lizzyben
lizzyben writes: "This CIO Insight analysis of government data shows that the percentage of employed blacks in IT managerial and staff professional positions in the United States declined nearly 26 percent over the past 6 and a half years while the employment within IT among Asians soared by more than 17 percent.

From the article: "African-Americans are proportionally less represented in IT than they are in other professions. African-Americans represent 6.5 percent of employed IT managers and staff professionals but 11 percent of all types of managers and staff professionals. However, 16.3 percent of Asians hold IT managerial and professional staff jobs versus 4.6 percent of overall managerial and professional staff jobs in the U.S. Citing other research, CIO Insight reports that a majority of surveyed African-American IT managers have considered leaving their jobs over the previous 12 months. Fewer than half saw the possibility of career advancement in IT.""
Programming

Submission + - Are 80 columns enough? 1

Submitted by ThinkGeek
ThinkGeek writes: Dating back to the venerable DEC VT100, the 80 column terminal has served us well for over 25 years. Even now, many open source projects and common conventions require lines of code and documentation to fit on that terminal. I am not alone, judging by code I've seen in and out of the open source world, in finding that number insufficient for coding, much less more verbose writing. Given that modern graphical displays (and all popular editors) are capable of far more, is it time we came up with a new standard-sized terminal? If so, what should the new standard be?
United States

Submission + - Realtor's Actions Make it Hard to Discount Bubble

Submitted by kgolf
kgolf writes: While the US housing market continues to be a hot debate, the NAR (National Realtors Association) continues to make it difficult for individuals to believe that the housing bubble is a hoax. New NAR chief economic spokesman, Lawrence Yun, is being criticized for having the same rosy forecasts that forced his predecessor to resign. And it is now learned that real estate agents are even hiding DOM (days-on-market) data from buyers, saying that 'the real estate professional are in the best position to explain to your customer — buyer or seller — what the true DOM figure is and what it means.'
Handhelds

Submission + - Apple files patent for Nano iPhone

Submitted by thefickler
thefickler writes: Apple has file a patent application that indicates the company may be working on a Nano-like iPhone. The patent clearly depicts a rotary-styled keypad that works in conjunction with the already existent scroll wheel in iPods. Not only that, it displays a direct correlation between the numbers being selected and the classic 3 letter to a number layout (i.e abc, def, ghi, etc.

However Mac Blorge speculates that Apple is simply applying for a patent to stop Chinese and Japanese knock offs of Nano-like iPhones.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft security group makes 'worst jobs' list (computerworld.com.au)

Submitted by Stony Stevenson
Stony Stevenson writes: What do whale-feces researchers, hazmat divers and employees of Microsoft's Security Response Center have in common? They all made Popular Science magazine's 2007 list of the absolute worst jobs in science.

From the article: The MSRC ranked near the middle as the sixth-worst job in this year's list, published in the July issue of the magazine. "We did rate the Microsoft security researcher as less-bad than the people who prepare the carcasses for dissection in biology laboratories," Moyer said.

Moyer didn't have to think long when asked whether he'd rather have the number 10-ranked whale research job. "Whale feces or working at Microsoft? I would probably be the whale feces researcher," he said. "Salt air and whale flatulence; what could go wrong?"
Security

Submission + - RFID Security: Hacking your local truckstop (forbes.com)

Submitted by
RFhack3r
RFhack3r writes: "We have to change the way we think when implementing a new technology. RFID is a perfect example of this. The old way of thinking is "operations before security" but as we have learned that will leave IT systems and corporate data open to attacks. The supply-chain (Wal-Mart, Gillete, DoD, and Publix) to name a few are currently implementing RFID to phase out traditional barcodes for product identification and tracking. If implementers do not apply security best practices they may be vulnerable to a variety of attacks. This example uses off-the shelf hardware and can be performed by anyone with a few 100 bucks and some spare time. Attacks may be able to scan the entire inventory of an 18-wheeler while sitting at a truck-stop or going down the road. This may be used to gain information on what is inside so that attackers can target only the expensive items worth stealing. This may be the same for DoD and .gov implementations of RFID. The entire tech industry needs to implement the mindset of "Security BEFORE operations" if we are to progess with the implementation of future technology without opening the doors to more attack vectors."
Sun Microsystems

Submission + - Sun Studio 12 - GCC Alternative, now on Linux

Submitted by xocp
xocp writes: Sun Studio 12 has been released.

Jeet Kaul, vice president, Developer Products and Programs, Sun: "For the first time Sun Studio 12 software offers a complete development environment and record-setting compilers for the Linux platform."
Includes parallelizing C, C++, and Fortran compilers. GCC is about to get some more competition.

Free, full-license copy for Sun Developer Network members.
Announcements

Submission + - Supplemental Shrubbery Sound Source

Submitted by
Chris Vecchio
Chris Vecchio writes: " Supplemental Shrubbery Sound Source an installation at the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education
May 6 — October 30, 2007


Description
An array of motion sensitive modules is installed along a section of a nature trail. When someone walks past, the modules emit sounds which supplement the sounds occurring naturally in the environment. The sound samples are arranged along the path in a sequence which proceeds from the most "natural" to the most "man-made". The effect varies depending upon which way one happens to be moving along the path. At the "natural" end, it is not clear whether what one is hearing is part of the installation or part of the (natural) landscape. Central to this installation are questions about what constitutes "natural" versus "man-made". Just as man has dramatically modified the environment through the introduction of invasive species and transformed the landscape with technological intervention, this installation supplements and modifies the forest's sound environment, both subtly and dramatically, with invasive and technological additions.

For more information: http://www.noisemantra.com/Shrubbery/S4.htm

Supplemental Shrubbery Sound Source is part of Green Machine, a multi-media exhibition featuring work by Chris Vecchio, Keiko Miyamori, and Katie Murken in partnership with P'unk Avenue."
The Internet

Submission + - Top 17 Search Innovations Outside Of Google

Submitted by
VelvetsFan
VelvetsFan writes: "There are an abundance of new search engines, each pioneering some innovation in search technology. Read/WriteWeb has a list of the top 17 search innovations that will prove disruptive in the future. These innovations are classified into four types: Query Pre-processing; Information Sources; Algorithm Improvement; Results Visualization and Post-processing. While some of these innovations are present in various Google properties, they are either missing or available only in limited form in the main search page.

The article posits: it is very likely that in the future, the simple "search box" on the Google front page will hide a variety of specialized search engines behind it. On the other hand, trying to cram in an increasing number of these sophisticated features has the potential to make the overall architecture for Google (or any mainstream web search engine) very complex and difficult to change, so the trade-offs will present an increasingly difficult challenge."

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