Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Feeds
31311 items (26798 unread) in 5 feeds
OpenSource
(5372 unread)
-
SourceForge.net: Front page news
(802 unread)
-
Slashdot: IT (4570 unread)
Security
(9893 unread)
-
Digg / Security (9893 unread)
Linux
(11533 unread)
-
-
Slashdot: Linux (1583 unread)
Items by Soulskill
Slashdot: IT
-
Pasadena Police Encrypt, Deny Access To Police Radio
Posted: February 8th, 2012, 6:15am CET by Soulskill
Tags: encryption
An anonymous reader writes "There is media (but not public?) outcry over the Pasadena, CA police switch from analog radio that can be picked up by scanners to encrypted digital radio that cannot. 'On Friday, Pasadena police Lt. Phlunte Riddle said the department was unsure whether it could accommodate the media with digital scanners. Riddle said the greatest concern remains officer safety. "People who do bank robberies use scanners, and Radio Shack sells these things cheap," Riddle said. "We just had a robbery today on Hill Avenue and Washington Boulevard," Riddle said. "The last thing I want to do is to have the helicopter or the officers set up on the street and the criminals have a scanner and know where our officers are." Just prior to the switch over, city staffers said they would look into granting access to police radio chatter, most likely by loaning media outlets a scanner capable of picking up the secure signal.'" -
Sandboxed Flash Player Coming To Firefox
Posted: February 6th, 2012, 10:55pm CET by Soulskill
Tags: mozilla
Trailrunner7 writes "Adobe, which has spent the last few years trying to dig out of a deep hole of vulnerabilities and buggy code, is making a major change to Flash, adding a sandbox to the version of the player that runs in Firefox. The sandbox is designed to prevent many common exploit techniques against Flash. The move by Adobe comes roughly a year after the company added a sandbox to Flash for Google Chrome. Flash, which is perhaps the most widely deployed piece of software on the Internet, has been a common attack vector for several years now, and the attacks in some cases have been used to get around exploit mitigations added by the browser vendors. The sandbox is designed to prevent many of these attacks by not allowing exploits against Flash to break out into the browser itself."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
-
Moglen: Facebook Is a Man-In-The-Middle Attack
Posted: February 6th, 2012, 7:42pm CET by Soulskill
Tags: facebook
jfruh writes "In an email exchange with privacy blogger Dan Tynan, Columbia law professor Eben Moglen referred to Facebook as a 'man in the middle attack' — that is, a service that intercepts communication between two parties and uses it for its own nefarious purposes. He said, 'The point is that by sharing with our actual friends through a web intermediary who can store and mine everything, we harm people by destroying their privacy for them. It's not the sharing that's bad, it's the technological design of giving it all to someone in the middle. That is at once outstandingly stupid and overwhelmingly dangerous.' Tynan is a critic of Facebook, but he thinks Moglen is overstating the case."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
-
German Government Endorses Chrome As Most Secure Browser
Posted: February 4th, 2012, 8:54pm CET by Soulskill
Tags: chrome
New submitter beta2 writes "Several articles are noting that the German IT security agency BSI is endorsing Google Chrome browser: 'BSI ticked off Chrome's anti-exploit sandbox technology, which isolates the browser from the operating system and the rest of the computer; its silent update mechanism and Chrome's habit of bundling Adobe Flash, as its reasons for the recommendation. ... BSI also recommended Adobe Reader X — the version of the popular PDF reader that, like Chrome, relies on a sandbox to protect users from exploits — and urged citizens to use Windows' Auto Update feature to keep their PCs abreast of all OS security fixes. To update applications, BSI gave a nod to Secunia's Personal Software Inspector, a free utility that scan a computer for outdated software and point users to appropriate downloads.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
-
Satellite Phone Encryption Cracked
Posted: February 4th, 2012, 12:38am CET by Soulskill
Tags: encryption
New submitter The Mister Purple writes "A team of German researchers appears to have cracked the GMR-1 and GMR-2 encryption algorithms used by many (though not all) satellite phones. Anyone fancy putting a cluster together for a listening party? 'Mr. Driessen told The Telegraph that the equipment and software needed to intercept and decrypt satellite phone calls from hundreds of thousands of users would cost as little as $2,000. His demonstration system takes up to half an hour to decipher a call, but a more powerful computer would allow eavesdropping in real time, he said.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
-
Apple Forcing IT Shops To 'Adapt Or Die'
Posted: February 1st, 2012, 1:22am CET by Soulskill
Tags: apple
alphadogg writes "Many IT departments are struggling with Apple's 'take it or leave it' attitude, based on discussions last week at MacIT, which is Macworld|iWorld's companion conference for IT professionals. Much of the questioning following technical presentations wasn't about Apple technology or products. It was about the complexities and confusions of trying to sort out for the enterprise Apple's practices. Those practices include the use of Apple IDs and iTunes accounts, which are designed for individual Mac or iPad or iPhone users, and programs like Apple's Volume Purchase Program, which, according to Apple 'makes it simple to find, buy, and distribute the apps your business needs' and to buy custom, third-party B2B apps."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Slashdot: Linux
-
Why Linux Vendors Need To Sell More Than Linux
Posted: January 31st, 2012, 11:59pm CET by Soulskill
Tags: business
jfruh writes "Mandriva, a venerable Linux distro, is on the verge of shutting down. One of its main problems is that it never grew into more than just an OS vendor. The big players in the commercial Linux space — Red Hat, SuSE, Canonical — all built Linux into their larger computing visions. Is there any room in the marketplace for just a straight-up Linux distro anymore?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Slashdot: IT
-
Ongoing Attacks Target Defense, Aerospace Industries
Posted: January 31st, 2012, 9:10pm CET by Soulskill
Tags: government
Gunkerty Jeb writes "Researchers have identified a strain of malware that's being used in a string of targeted attacks against defense contractors, government agencies and other organizations by leveraging exploits against zero-day vulnerabilities. The attacks may have been going on since 2009 in some form and the emails containing the malicious attachments are specifically targeted at executives and officials in various industries using fake conference invitations. The attack campaign, as many do, appears to be changing frequently, as the attackers use different binaries and change up their patterns for connecting to remote command-and-control servers. The research, done by Seculert and Zscaler, shows that the attackers are patient, taking the time to dig up some information about their potential targets, and are carefully choosing organizations that have high-value intellectual property and assets (PDF)."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
-
10-Year Gary McKinnon Case To End This Year
Posted: January 30th, 2012, 11:47pm CET by Soulskill
Tags: government
judgecorp writes "The ten-year legal quagmire surrounding Gary McKinnon, who hacked into U.S. military and NASA computers in 2001 and 2002, must end this year, a British High Court Judge has ordered. McKinnon has been appealing against extradition to the U.S., and two medical experts must report in 28 days on his mental state, ruling whether he would be a suicide risk if deported. This ruling could short-circuit an extradition appeal hearing in July."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
-
DARPA Funding a $50 Drone-Droppable Spy Computer
Posted: January 27th, 2012, 11:56pm CET by Soulskill
Tags: security
Sparrowvsrevolution writes "At the Shmoocon security conference, researcher Brendan O'Connor plans to present the F-BOMB, or Falling or Ballistically-launched Object that Makes Backdoors. Built from just the disassembled hardware in a commercially-available PogoPlug mini-computer, a few tiny antennae, eight gigabytes of flash memory and some 3D-printed plastic casing, the F-BOMB serves as 3.5"-by-4"-by-1" spy computer. With a contract from DARPA, O'Connor has designed the cheap gadgets to be spy nodes, ready to be dropped from a drone, plugged inconspicuously into a wall socket, (one model impersonates a carbon monoxide detector) thrown over a barrier, or otherwise put into irretrievable positions to quietly collect data and send it back to the owner over any available Wi-Fi network. O'Connor built his prototypes with gear that added up to just $46 each, so sacrificing one for a single use is affordable."Read more of this story at Slashdot.