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Comment Re:Just Protecting Him From Himself (Score 0) 158

by BreazySpeculation (#37101374) Attached to: Essex Police Arrest Man Over Blackberry Water Fight Plan
Gee, you think they are being overly cautious? kind of an understatement. I wish any law enforcement personnel that had anything to do with this should be fired on the spot. This world is now officially out of control now that people can be arrested for planning a water fight. I am planning a pillow fight tonight and only hot babes are allowed to join in. I hope they are not monitoring slashdot right no.
Security

Submission + - Olympus digital camera ships with computer worm (sophos.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Olympus Japan has issued a warning to customers who have bought its Stylus Tough 6010 digital compact camera that it comes with an unexpected extra — a virus on its internal memory card.

The Autorun worm cannot infect the camera itself, but if it is plugged into a Windows computer USB port it can copy itself onto the PC, and then subsequently infect any attached USB device. Olympus says it "humbly apologises" for the incident which is believed to have affected some 1700 units, and that it will make every effort to improve its quality control procedures in future.

Security company Sophos says that more companies need to wake up to the need for better quality control to ensure that they don't ship virus-infected gadgets. At the same time, consumers should learn to always ensure Autorun is disabled, and scan any device for malware, before they use it on their computer.
Transportation

Submission + - 66% Misunderstand Gas Mileage. Here's Why (greencarreports.com)

Submitted by thecarchik
thecarchik writes: OK, so here's a little test: Which saves more gasoline, going from 10 to 20 mpg, or going from 33 to 50 mpg? If you're like most Americans, you picked the second one. But, in fact, that's exactly backwards. Over any given mileage, replacing a 10-mpg vehicle with one that gets 20 mpg saves five times the gasoline that replacing a 33-mpg vehicle with one that gets 50 does. Last summer, Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business released a study that shows how much damage comes from using MPG instead of consumption to measure how green a car is. Management professors Richard Larick and Jack Soll's experiments proved that consumers thought fuel consumption was cut at an even rate as mileage increased.
Medicine

Submission + - Germany's Artificial Cornea Restores Sight (singularityhub.com)

Submitted by kkleiner
kkleiner writes: A German lead team of researchers have developed a new version of an opthalmological polymer which the eye will bond to and still allow to function properly. The new polymer could help restore sight to thousands waiting for corneal transplants around the world. The artificial cornea has passed clinical trials and is ready to see expanded use in patients this year.
Security

Submission + - Botnets Using Ubiquity as Security (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: As major botnet operators have moved from top-down C&C infrastructures, like those employed throughout the 1990s and most of the last decade, to more flexible peer-to-peer designs, they also have found it much easier to keep their networks up and running once they're discovered. When an attacker at just one, or at most, two, C&C servers doling out commands to compromised machines, evading detection and keeping the command server online were vitally important. But that's all changed now. With many botnet operators maintaining dozens or sometimes hundreds of C&C servers around the world at any one time, the effect of taking a handful of them offline is negligible, experts say, making takedown operations increasingly complicated and time-consuming.

It's security through ubiquity.

Security researchers say this change, which has been occurring gradually in the last couple of years, has made life much more difficult for them. While it's a simpler task to find a C&C server when it's one of a hundred or so, taking the server offline if much less effective than it used to be. Researchers in recent months have identified and cleaned hundreds of domains being used by the Gumblar botnet, but that's had little effect on the botnet's overall operation.

Submission + - Why cyberwarfare is just fiction (blogspot.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In response to calls by Russia and the UN for a "cyberwarfare arms limitation treat", this article explains

"Cyberwar" and "cyberweapons" are fiction. The conflicts between nation states in cyberspace are nothing like warfare, and the tools hackers use are nothing like weapons. Putting "cyber" in front a something is just way for people to grasp technical concepts, the analogies quickly break down, and are useless when taken too far (such as a "cyber disarmament treaty").

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