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Encryption

Colossus Cipher Challenge Winner On Ada 168

Posted by timothy from the ada-operiert-die-blinkenlights dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Colossus Cipher Challenge winner Joachim Schueth talks about why he settled on Ada as his language of choice to unravel a code transmitted from the Heinz Nixdorf Museum in Germany, from a Lorenz SZ42 Cipher machine (used by the German High Command to relay secret messages during the World War II). 'Ada allowed me to concisely express the algorithms I wanted to implement.'"
The Military

Unmanned Aircraft Will Test Air Traffic Control 144

Posted by samzenpus from the bumper-planes dept.
coondoggie writes "While the skies aren't exactly buzzing with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) just yet, experts are warning their explosive growth will require military and public officials to address the issue sooner than they might think. The four chiefs of service aviation and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) branches told the Army Aviation Association of America's unmanned aircraft symposium last week that the military should crystallize combat air control regarding UAVs, while domestic authorities must work out access and use of UAVs in domestic airspace. "I'm surprised we haven't had a collision yet," said Rear Adm. Joseph Aucoin, director of the Navy's aviation plans and requirements branch."
Security

RealPlayer Zero-Day Flaw Under Attack 150

Posted by Zonk from the my-kingdom-for-a-patch dept.
openOption writes "ZDNet is reporting that hackers are actively exploiting a zero-day hole in RealNetworks' RealPlayer media player, a software program installed on tens of millions of Windows computers worldwide. The in-the-wild attacks targets a previously unknown and unpatched ActiveX vulnerability in the way RealPlayer interacts with Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser. The flaw is causing drive-by malware downloads when an IE user simply browsers to a maliciously rigged Web page."
The Internet

How Burmese Dissidents Crack Censorship 154

Posted by samzenpus from the monks-and-the-net dept.
s-orbital writes "According to a BBC News article, "Images of saffron-robed monks leading throngs of people along the streets of Rangoon have been seeping out of a country famed for its totalitarian regime and repressive control of information. The pictures, sometimes grainy and the video footage shaky, are captured at great personal risk on mobile phones — but each represents a powerful statement of political dissent." The article goes on to tell the stories of how Burma's bloggers use proxy servers, free hosting services, and other technologies to overcome Burma's "pervasive" filtering of internet access and news."

Feed Day dawns for Metasploit 3.0 (theregister.com)

From feed by registerfeed
H D Moore unveils the latest release

Interview The Metasploit Framework is a development platform for creating security tools and exploits. Federico Biancuzzi interviewed H D Moore to discuss what's new in release 3.0, the new license of the framework, plans for features and exploits development, and the links among the bad guys, Metasploit and the law.

Comment Re:oh no, not again (Score 1) 446

by Sivaram_Velauthapill (#17195030) Attached to: Vista the End of An Era?
I think there will be little difference between the service model and the shrink-wrapped product model when it comes to costs and the profits generated for the software company. Some companies profit more than others right now too so it's sort of the same thing. You are saying that you won't pay $300/month but what if it's $300/year? I think it is more likely that each software company will price their product differently. A specialized, high-end, software (say something targetted towards businesses) will likely charge more per month than a mass-market consumer oriented, low-end, product. The latter may charge $100/year whereas the former may charge $100/month.

There is no reason to think that people are going to get ripped off or get charged even more than now. It may happen in some areas but I expect costs to be lower since distribution costs for the provider will be lower (CD pressing, boxes, shipping to retail outlets, profit for retailer, etc). In fact, don't forget that most retail products, software or not, are marked up 50%+ by the retailer.

People always diss Microsoft and its so-called monopoly but I think online provider model will result in even more monopolies--contrary to what many think. It will be far easier to lock in customer by bundling things and making it easy for newbies and non-tech-savvy-people to stick with a single provider than now. For instance, how many people end up using Google, as an example (not dissing the company or anything), to do their search, e-mail, maps, etc. In the future, Google may lock in users for their future services (say maps, or who knows what). Similarly, Yahoo doesn't get a lot of respect on Slashdot but they own most of the top internet sites ("suite") on the web. How many people who start out using Yahoo stick with it?

Growing Insulin 251

Posted by samzenpus from the hormones-growing dept.
McLuhanesque writes "The Globe and Mail reports that a Calgary biotech firm has developed a process to turn genetically modified safflower oil into human insulin in commercial quantities. The process reduces capital costs by 70% and product cost by 40%. 'SemBioSys says it can make more than one kilogram of human insulin per acre of safflower production. That amount could treat 2,500 diabetic patients for one year and, in turn, meet the world's total projected insulin demand in 2010 with less than 16,000 acres of safflower production.'"

Hack in the Box Meets Windows Vista 159

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the book-your-flights-now dept.
Strange_Brew writes "It appears Microsoft is really going all out to get Windows Vista secured before its release date in 2007. There's an article on PC World which talks about Microsoft's plan to give Asia's largest hackers conference an inside look at the new security features in Windows Vista this coming September." From the article: "The Hack In The Box conference will host two speakers from Microsoft. The first, Dave Tamasi, a lead security program manager at Microsoft, will give a presentation on security engineering in Vista. The talk will include a discussion about features suggested by hackers and other security conscious members of the computing community, in addition to security improvements made on Vista. The second speaker, Douglas MacIver, a penetration engineer at Microsoft, will review Vista's BitLocker Drive Encryption and the company's analysis of threats and attempts to penetrate the security feature."

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