An anonymous reader writes "The country that has bought Sukhois, tanks and 100,000 AK-103's, is planning to build a manufacturing plant of Russian rifles, and oppresses peaceful marches has decided to ban 'violent' video games because they 'promote violence and can alter the behavior of children.' The new legislation in Venezuela says, 'The violence found in video games is translated into the real world.' This new law affects people who sell, 'use,' produce, import and distribute these games. Video games as a whole have been labeled as 'a consequence of savage capitalism' by PSUV (United Socialist Party of Venezuela), which is the political party led by Hugo Chavez. Days before this law was approved by the National Assembly, Chavez promoted the use of traditional toys like the Yo-Yo and Trompo, and suggested that electronic toys like 'the Nintendo' be put aside because they promote 'egoism, individualism and violence.' Just today the AFP released a report showing Caracas as the second most violent city on the planet — even more violent than Baghdad. I guess all those violent gangs in Venezuela are addicted to video games."

carusoj writes "Computer scientists in Japan say they've developed a way to break the WPA encryption system used in wireless routers in about one minute. Last November, security researchers first showed how WPA could be broken, but the Japanese researchers have taken the attack to a new level. The earlier attack worked on a smaller range of WPA devices and took between 12 and 15 minutes to work. Both attacks work only on WPA systems that use the Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) algorithm. They do not work on newer WPA 2 devices or on WPA systems that use the stronger Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm."

CWmike writes "The Free Software Foundation today launched a campaign against Microsoft Corp.'s upcoming Windows 7 operating system, calling it 'treacherous computing' that stealthily takes away rights from users. At the Web site Windows7Sins.org, the Boston-based FSF lists the seven 'sins' that proprietary software such as Windows 7 commits against computer users. They include: Poisoning education, locking in users, abusing standards such as OpenDocument Format (ODF), leveraging monopolistic behavior, threatening user security, enforcing Digital Rights Management (DRM) at the request of entertainment companies concerned about movie and music piracy, and invading privacy. 'Windows, for some time now, has really been a DRM platform, restricting you from making copies of digital files,' said executive director Peter Brown. And if Microsoft's Trusted Computing technology were fully implemented the way the company would like, the vendor would have 'malicious and really complete control over your computer.'"

BenEnglishAtHome writes "Nearly all US government employees and contractors are subject to mandatory annual information security briefings. This year the official briefing flatly states that all downloaded music is stolen. The occasionally breathless tone of the briefing and the various minor errors contained therein are funny but the real eye-opener is a 'secure the building' exercise where employees stumble across security problems and resolve them. According to the material, the correct response to an employee who is downloading music is to shout 'That's stealing!' No mention is made of more-free licenses, public domain works, or any other legitimate download. If this were a single agency or department that had made a mistake in their training material it might not be so shocking. But this is a government-wide training package that's being absorbed by hundreds of thousands of federal employees, both civilian and military. If you see a co-worker downloading music, they're stealing. Period. Who woulda thunk it? Somebody should mirror this. Who wants to bet that copies will become hard to find if clued-in technogeeks take notice and start making noise?" Warning: this site gives a whole new meaning to "Flash heavy."

wanted writes "If you look at Microsoft's Poland business solutions Web site, you will probably not notice anything odd about the main picture. However, when you compare it with the original English version, you can see that someone decided that showing black people in Poland is probably not going to be convincing to business. They just Photoshopped the head of a white guy in for the black one, in an amateurish way, leaving his hand unchanged. (Here's a mirror in case something should happen to the original.)" We noted a few months back that the city of Toronto had done something similar.

tsu doh nimh writes "Organized cyber-gangs in Eastern Europe are increasingly preying on small and mid-size companies in the US, setting off a multimillion-dollar online crime wave that has begun to worry the nation's largest financial institutions, The Washington Post's Security Fix blog reports: '"In the past six months, financial institutions, security companies, the media and law enforcement agencies are all reporting a significant increase in funds transfer fraud involving the exploitation of valid banking credentials belonging to small and medium sized businesses," reads a confidential alert issued by the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, an industry group created to share data about critical threats to the financial sector.' The banking group is urging that commercial bank customers 'carry out all online banking activity from a standalone, hardened, and locked-down computer from which e-mail and Web browsing is not possible.' The story includes interviews with several victim businesses, and explains that in each case, the fraudsters — thought to reside in Eastern Europe — are using "'money mules,' unwitting or willing accomplices in the US hired via Internet job boards. The blog has more stories and details about these crimes."

The NY Times has a story and a blog backgrounder focusing on a weapon now being wielded by bad guys (most likely in Eastern Europe, according to the Times): Trojan horse keyloggers that report back in real-time. The capability came to light in a court filing (PDF) by Project Honey Pot against "John Doe" thieves. The case was filed in order to compel the banks — which are almost as secretive as the cyber-crooks — to reveal information such as IP addresses that could lead back to the miscreants. Or at least allow victims to be notified. Real-time keyloggers were first discovered in the wild last year, but the court filing and the Times article should bring new attention to the threat. The technique menaces the 2-factor authentication that some banks have instituted: "By going real time, hackers now can get around some of the roadblocks that companies have put in their way. Most significantly, they are now undeterred by systems that create temporary passwords, such as RSA's SecurID system, which involves a small gadget that displays a six-digit number that changes every minute based on a complex formula. If [your] computer is infected, the Trojan zaps your temporary password back to the waiting hacker who immediately uses it to log onto your account. Sometimes, the hacker logs on from his own computer, probably using tricks to hide its location. Other times, the Trojan allows the hacker to control your computer, opening a browser session that you can't see."

k33l0r writes "The BBC is reporting that the US Justice Department has approved Oracle's takeover of Sun Microsystems. The acquisition gives Oracle control over (or a leading role in), among other things, Java, MySQL, (Open)Solaris, ZFS, OpenOffice, and the NetBeans IDE. 'The European Commission has still to rule on the deal, a step that will be required before it can close. That body has indicated it will issue an initial opinion on Sept. 3, according to the Wall Street Journal. It may OK the deal at that time or launch a four-month probe of it. ... The Justice Department ruling came earlier than expected, a possible response to Sun's declining revenues and precarious business position in a steep recession, as the required reviews proceeded.' We first discussed the deal back when it was announced in April."

phantomfive writes "Terry Childs, who was arrested nearly a year ago for refusing to turn over the passwords to San Francisco's FiberWAN network, has been cleared of three of the four charges against him. The dropped charges referred to the attachment of modems to the network; the remaining charge is for refusing to turn over the password. The prosecutor has vowed to appeal, to have the charges reinstated. We have the original story, and the story where Childs tells his side, for those who want a refresher."

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA's claim that personalized internet radio stations were 'interactive services' was flatly rejected 'as a matter of law' by the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in Arista Records v. Launch Media. In affirming the jury's verdict in favor of the defendant, Launch Media — acquired during the lawsuit by Yahoo! — the Court said it did not even need to concern itself with possible errors in the jury instructions, since the trial judge should have directed a verdict for defendant 'as a matter of law' on the question of whether the radio stations were 'interactive services.' At pages 23-42 of its 42-page opinion (PDF), the appeals court carefully analyzed how Launch Media's personalized internet radio stations worked, and noted that the users could neither obtain and play on demand a particular song, nor obtain the transmission of a particular program, thus rendering the RIAA's claim of 'interactivity' meritless."

Death Metal writes "Psychologists at the University of California, Los Angeles say the human body has a gene that connects physical pain sensitivity with social pain sensitivity. The findings back the common theory that rejection 'hurts' by showing that a gene regulating the body's most potent painkillers — mu-opioids — is involved in socially painful experiences too."

An anonymous reader writes "The Free Software Foundation's Holmes Wilson is just back from Berlin, where he participated in the Ogg Theora book sprint put on by FLOSS Manuals. Here is a broad look at Ogg Theora and how it fits into the push for free formats: where we're winning, what works, and what could be improved."

An anonymous reader writes "Security researchers at Purewire have leveraged vulnerabilities in malware infrastructure to track the criminals behind it. In a three-month long project, they used security flaws in exploit kits to get operators to expose themselves (Obnoxious interstitial ad between link and content) when they access the kits' admin control panels. Data collected shows that 50% of those tracked use Firefox, while 25% use Opera."

Ant writes "The Linux Foundation's report (PDF) on who writes Linux — "... Linux isn't written by lonely nerds hiding out in their parents' basements. It's written by people working for major companies — many of them businesses that you probably don't associate with Linux. To be exact, while 18.2% of Linux is written by people who aren't working for a company, and 7.6% is created by programmers who don't give a company affiliation, everything else is written by someone who's getting paid to create Linux. From top to bottom, of the companies that have contributed more than 1% of the current Linux kernel, the list looks like this: ..."

flynn writes "Ireland's oldest and largest ISP will be blocking access to The Pirate Bay from September 1st, while other ISPs have rejected the request to block TPB. From the Irish Times: 'Under an out-of-court agreement with EMI Records, Sony Music, Universal Music and Warners in January, Eircom agreed to cut off customers found to be repeatedly downloading music illegally. The deal also required Eircom to cut off access to Pirate Bay if requested. Yesterday, cable TV operator UPC, which has more than 120,000 broadband subscribers, announced it would not comply with a request to block access to Pirate Bay.'"