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Security

RFID Passports Cloned Without Opening the Package 168

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the step-one-cut-a-hole-in-a-box dept.
Jeremy writes to tell us that using some simple deduction, a security consultant discovered how to clone a passport as it's being mailed to its recipient, without ever opening the package. "But the key in this first generation of biometric passport is relatively easy to identify/crack. It is not random, but consists of passport number, the passport holder's date of birth and the passport expiry date. The Mail found it relatively easy to identify the holder's date of birth, while the expiry date is 10 years from the issue date, which for a newly-delivered passport would clearly fall within a few days. The passport number consists of a number of predictable elements, including an identifier for the issuing office, so effectively a significant part of the key can be reconstructed from the envelope and its address label."
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - Ten Tips for Choosing the Right CPU

Submitted by
ThinSkin
ThinSkin writes: "Loyd Case over at ExtremeTech has come up with ten tips for choosing the right CPU, citing that "on the surface, the fastest processor you can afford for your needs" is the first misstep someone can take. Some tips include building a well-balanced system, recognizing your usage patterns, and considering power output."
Security

Submission + - cingular voicemail hack

Submitted by
gomez
gomez writes: "i have no idea where to let people know about this. but i'm loyal to slashhdot so why not here?

i'm an admin for a call center and i was messing around with caller id the other day. i remember dialing voicemail by pressing 1 on my cingular cell phone and getting straight in w/ out a verification of password. well i thought, what if i can change my outbound ISDN caller ID on my landline phone to a friends phone, figuring that if the mechanism is only checking caller ID why not fake it? it totally worked. i was in my friends voicemail checking his messages.

i thought, well who has the power to change caller id? only admins right? well i checked the client app for use with our PBX, and lo and behold they of course (with certain user privileges) have the power to change outbound caller ID on the fly. I think most phone systems these days in a business environment allow a user to do so, but again only if they have the privileges.

cingular has already been notified about this, i just thought i'd light the fire under their arses.

check your phone software to see if you can change your outbound caller id.. i bet you see the same result.

    — gomez"
Windows

Submission + - Has XP Suddenly Slowed Down?

Submitted by WhoaNotSoFast
WhoaNotSoFast writes: For the last few weeks, I've noticed XP boxes slowing down dramatically. Typically the screen freezes for 10-30 seconds — e.g. the Start menu won't come up — and there's lots of disk activity. It's happening on unrelated PCs at different locations. I notice it most on quitting IE or Firefox, but it occurs at other times also. Most of the PCs have 256MB of RAM and adequate free disk space. Most are running Windows Firewall, AVG Anti-Virus and either Windows Defender or Counterspy Enterprise. They're not loading much else at startup. The XP event logs don't show anything unusual. I've run Rootkit Revealer on some of the machines, and found nothing. Task Manager doesn't show any excess CPU utilization. Unplugging the network connection doesn't seem to make a difference. Has anyone else noticed this behavior? Is there an infection I haven't found? Is there a paging problem? Has XP grown so large that it needs more physical memory? Or could it be a ploy by MS to nudge us toward Vista? Is XP developing early dementia? Or am I?

Feed Gates Wants More Visas (wired.com)

From feed by wiredfeed
Bill Gates asks Congress to reform the immigration system and let more highly skilled scientists and engineers into the country. In 27B Stroke 6.


Software

Submission + - Torrent Overview | goitexpert.com | XP-Erienced IT

Submitted by
Tdak
Tdak writes: "This article offers a simple, no high tech stuff, description of the BitTorrent network and how it works, it also offers a list of most popular Torrent applications, with pros and cos of them. One section is dedicated to tweaking your bit torrent. From the article: "BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer network based on the idea that many people sharing a single file is more productive than a single host for a single file. It was not designed as a haven for pirates and copyright violation." Also this article offers an overview of common bit torrent files Click here to read it "
Security

Submission + - Leak Hunters

Submitted by
darkreadingman
darkreadingman writes: "How does a company know when its employees are giving away confidential information via blogs or chat rooms? How does it know when phishers or competitors are misusing its logos or brand information? Most companies don't. Now there's a growing group of cyberintelligence companies that are trying to help. Using Web crawlers and skilled researchers, these companies scour the Internet for evidence of security leaks or misuse of confidential information. Want to know if a prospective employee blogs too much about his company? Want to know what competitors are saying about your company? These services can tell you. But while such services may help companies beef up their security, they raise some interesting privacy issues. Should a corporation use its employee's personal blogs against them? Is it ethical for companies to monitor what employees say in online chat rooms? Some interesting questions here. http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=118 872&WT.svl=news1_2"
Microsoft

Submission + - SharpDevelop 2.1 is out!

Submitted by fiffilinus
fiffilinus writes: Work on SharpDevelop 2.1 started on 12th February 2006, two months before we shipped Beta 3 of SharpDevelop 2.0. Since then, we have been busy implementing new features that in retrospect would have qualified for an increment of SharpDevelop's major version number!
For those of you that have been actively using SharpDevelop 2.0, Matt has put together a nice overview of which features were added.
Matt also updated the feature tour to include 2.1's features, so if you are new to SharpDevelop, we definitely encourage you to visit it before you start exploring SharpDevelop on your own.
And of special interest to some developers — there now is SDA: SharpDevelop for applications. Now you can add .NET scripting support to your application.
A new Web site joins our universe — the homepage for SharpDevelop Reports.
There, you will find a feature tour specifically for SDR, an index of available samples plus the roadmap for future releases.SharpDevelop 2.1 is available on the Downloads page.
Please note that to take full advantage of SharpDevelop 2.1 features, you must install the following software too:
  • NCover (Code Coverage)
  • FxCop (Code Analysis)
  • TortoiseSVN (Source Control)
Microsoft

Submission + - The Deal Steve Jobs Couldn't Refuse

Submitted by
Government Drone
Government Drone writes: "Remember the 1997 deal in which Microsoft bought $150 million in non-voting Apple stock? According to this story in InformationWeek, it wasn't done all out of the goodness of Bill Gates' heart:

Weeks prior to bailing out a struggling Apple Computer by purchasing $150 million of its stock, Microsoft officials threatened to cut development of a key product for the Macintosh in order to coerce its rival to make the deal, according to an e-mail unearthed during a recent court hearing.

The original text of the E-mail is here, which mentions a threat to pull the plug on Office for Mac, but argues against it for a variety of reasons. An interesting backend view of what was happening in Apple's darkest days."
Data Storage

Submission + - Samsung Begins Shipping Hybrid Hard Drives

Submitted by
writertype
writertype writes: "Samsung has become the first company begin shipping hybrid hard drives, we report on ExtremeTech. Unfortunately, there's no word yet (besides "soon") on when retail shipments will begin, or when (or if) 3.5-inch models will be available. Note that these are different than the ReadyBoost USB flash drives optimized for Vista; hybrid drives contain a smaller amount of flash, and work as a write cache for your notebook drive, extending battery life."

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