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Submission + - Anonymous Files Petition to Make DDoS Legal form of Protest (paritynews.com) 1

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: Anonymous has filed a petition with the US Government asking the Obama administration to make Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks a legal form of protests. Anonymous has argued that because of advancement in internet technology, there is a need for new ways of protests. The hacking collective doesn’t consider DDoS as a form of attack and equates it to hitting the ‘refresh’ button on a webpage. Comparing these attacks to the 'occupy' protests Anonymous notes that instead of people occupying an area, it is their computers occupying a website for a particular period of time.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Security Essentials loses AV-Test certificate (neowin.net)

Submitted by
helix2301
helix2301 writes: "Every two months, AV-Test takes a look at popular antivirus software and security suites and tests them in several ways. In their latest test which was performed on Windows 7 during September and October, Microsoft Security Essentials didn't pass the test to achieve certification. Although that may not sound that impressive, Microsoft's program was the only one which didn't receive AV-Test's certificate. For comparison, the other free antivirus software, including Avast, AVG and Panda Cloud did."
Businesses

Submission + - Should Hacked Companies Disclose Their Losses? (vice.com)

Submitted by derekmead
derekmead writes: By law, US companies don’t have to say a word about hacker attacks, regardless of how much it might’ve cost their bottom line. Comment, the group of Chinese hackers suspected in the recent-reported Coke breach, also broke into the computers of the world’s largest steel company, ArcelorMittal. ArcelorMittal doesn’t know exactly how much was stolen and didn’t think it was relevant to share news of the attack with its shareholders. Same goes for Lockheed Martin who fended off a “significant and tenacious” attack last May but failed to disclose the details to investors and the Securities Exchange Commission. Dupont got hit twice by Chinese hackers in 2009 and 2010 and didn’t say a word.

Former U.S. counterintelligence chief Joel Brenner recently said that over 2,000 companies, ISPs and research centers had been hit by Chinese hackers in the past decade and few of them told their shareholders about it. This is even after the SEC has made multiple requests for companies to come clean about cyber security breaches in their quarterly or annual earnings reports. Because the potential losses, do hacked companies have a responsibility to report security breaches to investors?

There’s no easy way for the SEC to force companies to comply with their requests. In some cases, the companies don’t even know they’ve been targeted by hackers until well after the attack. Sometimes, they give passing mention to an incident with boilerplate language about a security breach or the risk of data theft. They’re not likely to admit that hackers cost them billions, though. Unless rules change, it looks like if the SEC is going to get any serious hacking disclosure at all, they’ll need the help of a few companies leading the way on the disclosures.
Government

Submission + - Showdown Set on Bid to Give UN Control of Internet (securityweek.com)

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: When delegates gather in Dubai in December for an obscure UN agency meeting, the mother of all cyber diplomatic battles is expected, with an intense debate over proposals to rewrite global telecom rules to effectively give the United Nations control over the Internet.

Russia, China and other countries back a move to place the Internet under the authority of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), a UN agency that sets technical standards for global phone calls.
While US officials have said placing the Internet under UN control would undermine the freewheeling nature of cyberspace, some have said there is a perception that the US owns and manages the Internet.

The head of the ITU, Hamadoun Toure, claims his agency has "the depth of experience that comes from being the world's longest established intergovernmental organization." But Harold Feld of the US-based non-government group Public Knowledge said any new rules could have devastating consequences. Some are concerned over a proposal by European telecom operators seeking to shift the cost of communication from the receiving party to the sender. This could mean huge costs for US Internet giants like Facebook and Google.

"There is no Internet central office. Its openness and decentralization are its strengths," Terry Kramer, the special US envoy for the talks, said, reminding that Washington is opposing proposals by Russia, China and others to expand the ITU's authority to regulate the Internet.

Paul Rohmeyer, who follows cybersecurity at the Stevens Institute of Technology, pointed to a "sense of anxiety" about the meeting in part because of a lack of transparency. He said it was unclear why the ITU is being considered for a role in the Internet.

Comment Re:smudgy fingers (Score 3, Informative) 39

by k28 (#41765709) Attached to: Magellan Telescope First Mega-Mirror Polished and Ready
I'm sure one of the first things that you think of when using big pieces of glass is the fact that they'll get dirty. A little bit of googling tells us that the mirrors will be regularly CO2 -cleaned, (basically blasting all dirt off the surface of the mirror) - see section 10.11: http://www.gmto.org/science-conceptu.html . Each mirror will also get recoated every 2 years, to prevent scratches and blemishes.

Comment Broken PDF link? (Score 1) 117

by k28 (#41691481) Attached to: "New Statesman" Pirates Its Own Magazine
Can't seem to access the PDF link to read more into it. Interesting that the (sometimes) hours of effort involved in derailing a message thread or debate only pays 50 cents - one might argue that you'd be looking at 50-100 threads at once, but surely that's still not enough to justify the hours of work that must go into it each day?

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