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Submission + - Defeating UEFI's SecureBoot (net-security.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: UEFI is ment to replace the BIOS firmware interface. But is it secure enough? Or, at least, more resilient than BIOS? Corey Kallenberg, Security Researcher for the MITRE Corporation explains how he and his team have been able to circumvent that protection on roughly half of the computers that have it enabled, in order to install a malicious bootkit, and what this means for the future of UEFI.

Submission + - Staffers at Nuclear Regulatory Commission Report Backlash After Dissent (govexec.com)

Submitted by mdsolar
mdsolar writes: "Seventy-five percent of Nuclear Regulatory Commission employees who participated in an internal survey said they received poor performance reviews after registering formal objections to agency decisions, a report made public Wednesday says.

For employees that object to policy, technical or administrative statements contained in agency documents working their way up the NRC management chain for approval, the agency has a formal "non-concurrence" process meant to ensure that the concerns of those staffers are heard.

According to the survey, which was conducted last year by the NRC Office of Enforcement, many of those surveyed about their own experience submitting formal objections through the program believed there had been negative consequences to doing so.

In addition to the three quarters of survey participants who reported poor performance reviews after raising objections, 63 percent felt they were excluded from work activities and 25 percent thought they were passed over for promotions.

Meanwhile, 25 percent said they were verbally abused by their supervisors or colleagues after submitting a formal objection, and only 32 percent said their views were fully considered before a decision was made."

Submission + - Open Source Robot OS Finds Niches From Farms To Space (itworld.com) 1

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: Blue River Technology built a robot named LettuceBot that uses computer vision to kill unwanted lettuce plants in a field. Rather than build their creation from scratch, they built off of the Robot Operating System, an open source OS that, in the words of one engineer, 'allowed only a few engineers to write an entire system and receive our first check for service in only a few months.' With ROS robots starting to appear everywhere, including the International Space Station, it looks like open source may be making huge strides in this area.

Submission + - NSA knew about heartbleed two years ago

Submitted by Ric Aubern
Ric Aubern writes: So what we guessed was the case seems like it actually was according to this Bloomberg story. Can you say "separation of powers"? Very interesting is the article's bias against open source by describing the Internet's integrity as depending "on a small number of underfunded researchers who devote their energies to the projects."

Submission + - Bloomberg News: NSA has been using HeartBleed for years (bloomberg.com)

Submitted by jasonla
jasonla writes: We all knew this was coming, right? From the article:

"The U.S. National Security Agency knew for at least two years about a flaw in the way that many websites send sensitive information, now dubbed the Heartbleed bug, and regularly used it to gather critical intelligence, two people familiar with the matter said."

Submission + - The US nuclear weapons complex in disarray, disrepair, and perhaps dissolution (thebulletin.org)

Submitted by Lasrick
Lasrick writes: Kennette Benedict on the severe problems that plague the US nuclear weapons labs (Sandia, Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, Oak Ridge, etc.). A main issue is the privatization of these labs. As NNSA director Bruce Held put it, 'I don’t think we need national laboratories to aspire to be the low-cost producer of widgets. I don’t think that’s why national laboratories exist...What we need national laboratories for is to take on really hard technical challenges that are facing our nation and our national policymakers—take on high-risk, hard problems that involve too much risk for the private sector to honestly support.' Good read.

Submission + - US takes out gang that used Zeus malware to steal millions (networkworld.com)

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: The US Department of Justice today charged nine members of a group that used Zeus malware to infect thousands of business computers with Zeus malware and illegally siphon-off millions of dollars into over-seas bank accounts. The DoJ said an indictment was unsealed in connection with the arraignment this week at the federal courthouse in Lincoln, Neb., of two Ukrainian nationals, Yuriy Konovalenko, 31, and Yevhen Kulibaba, 36. Konovalenko and Kulibaba were recently extradited from the United Kingdom.

Submission + - Cost Skyrockets for United States' Share of ITER Fusion Project (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: ITER, the international fusion experiment under construction in Cadarache, France, aims to prove that nuclear fusion is a viable power source by creating a "burning plasma" that produces more energy than the machine itself consumes. Although that goal is at least 20 years away, ITER is already burning through money at a prodigious pace. The United States is only a minor partner in the project, which began construction in 2008. But the U.S. contribution to ITER will total $3.9 billion—roughly four times as much as originally estimated—according to a new cost estimate released yesterday. That is about $1.4 billion higher than a 2011 cost estimate, and the numbers are likely to intensify doubts among some members of Congress about continuing the U.S. involvement in the project.

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