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Submission + - Amazon's customer service backdoor (medium.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Eric Springer describes his recent troubles with Amazon to highlight one of the biggest weak points in information security: customer service. You can use complex passwords and two-factor authentication all you want — all it takes is a low-level representative trying to be helpful and your account information can be easily compromised. In this case, a bad actor was able to use Amazon's online chat support and a fake address to get the rep to tell him Springer's real address and phone number. That was enough to commit fraud with a couple of unrelated online services. Springer complained, but months later the same thing happened again. That time, he had Amazon put a note on his account not to give out his details.

But that didn't help; the attacker contacted Amazon's phone support line instead, and gathered yet more information. Springer writes, "At this point, Amazon has completely betrayed my trust three times. I have done absolutely everything in my power to secure my account, but it’s hopeless. I am in the process of closing my Amazon account, and migrating as much to Google services which seem significantly more robust at stopping these attacks." Springer's advice for fixing this: "Never do customer support unless the user can log in to their account. The only exception to this, would be if the user forgot the password, and there should be a very strict policy." He also says email services should make aliases easier, and whois protection should be default.

Comment Another reason (Score 3, Insightful) 530

by citricshooter (#27083119) Attached to: State of Colorado Calls Firefox Insecure, IE6 Safe
From their FAQ: "Can I use Firefox or another Browser? No! For security reasons, and some significant processing issues as well, the only supported Browser is Internet Explorer Release 6 or later." I suspect the processing issues are the real reasons and they are trying to scare people into not using Firefox so they don't get the phone calls about their site not working.
Programming

Threads Considered Harmful 266

Posted by kdawson from the history-rhymes dept.
LBR9 writes "James Reinders compares native threads with the goto statement so famously denounced 40 years ago by Edsger Dijkstra. Paraphrasing Dijkstra, he says they both 'make a mess of a program,' and then argues in favor of a higher level of abstraction. A couple of people commenting on the post question whether or not we should be even be treading into the 'swamp of parallelism,' echoing the view recently espoused by Donald Knuth."

Feed Tom's Hardware: The Inquirer: Year End Predictions For 2008 (pheedo.com)

From feed by thfeed
Someone apparently pulled The Inquirer clan away from the pub long enough to think a clear thought about 2008. They've put together a top ten list of events they believe will happen. What are your thoughts? Is The Inquirer clan on the mark? Or off the wagon?
Handhelds

Submission + - Single-chip x86 chipsets around the corner? (linuxdevices.com)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Kontron, a giant among industrial single-board computer vendors, yesterday revealed a credit-card sized board apparently based on a single-chip x86 chipset that clocks to 1.5GHz and supports a gig of RAM. It targets portable devices — not x86's usual forte. Kontron isn't saying whether the board uses a Via or an Intel chip(set) — both vendors reportedly have single-chip chipsets in the works, part of their respective missions to drive "x86 everywhere." At 1.5GHz, the new highly integrated x86 SoC — whatever it is — would certainly clobber the currently available crop of 386- and 486-class X86 SoCs, and if truly battery-friendly, could even make x86 somewhat more viable as a portable device architecture.
Media

Submission + - Plexiglas-like DVD to hold 1TB of data (computerworld.com)

Submitted by jcatcw
jcatcw writes: Lucas Mearian has a story about a company that plans to demonstrate a new DVD-format at the January CES conference. The .6mm thick disc stores 500GB of data by writing 5GB of data on each of 100 layers within a polymer material similar to Plexyglas. The Israel-based company, Mempile Inc., said its TeraDisc DVDs will offer 1TB of storage for consumers in the next few years, but it's also targeting corporate data archive needs with the new technology that write bits at the molecular level on the florescent-colored polymer. The company plans to sell its first product, a 700GB disc for $30.

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