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Submission + - HTTP/2 Zero-Day Exploited to Launch Largest DDoS Attacks in History (securityweek.com)

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: A zero-day vulnerability named ‘HTTP/2 Rapid Reset’ has been exploited by malicious actors to launch the largest distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks in internet history. One of the attacks seen by Cloudflare was three times larger than the record-breaking 71 million requests per second (RPS) attack reported by company in February. Specifically, the HTTP/2 Rapid Reset DDoS campaign peaked at 201 million RPS, while Google’s observed a DDoS attack that peaked at 398 million RPS. The new attack method abuses an HTTP/2 feature called ‘stream cancellation’, by repeatedly sending a request and immediately canceling it.

Submission + - Some dead stars may harbor enough uranium to set off a thermonuclear bomb (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: A thermonuclear bomb might be ticking deep in the cores of some dead stars. A new theoretical study traces out how certain stellar corpses known as white dwarfs could accumulate a critical mass of uranium that would trigger a massive supernova explosion.

The findings could yield insights into the destruction habits of white dwarfs, which are responsible for creating heavy elements like iron and nickel. White dwarf supernovae light up their surroundings with the power of 5 billion Suns, and astronomers have used them as “standard candles” to measure vast distances across the cosmos. But such blasts are still not entirely understood, and the new study could account for certain, anomalously dim observations of this type of supernovae.

Submission + - Sony Won't Back Down on $1,400.00 in Charges Made to Grandmothers's Credit Card (ctvnews.ca) 5

Submitted by theshowmecanuck
theshowmecanuck writes: A grandmother let her 13 year old grandson use her credit card to buy added content for one of his games for which she thought would be a $15 charge. After the account opened up because of the credit card on it, he started downloading other things not realizing they were adding substantial charges to her credit card. She asked Sony to refund the charges, it's not like they can't disable the added content if they wanted, but they told her basically too bad so sad.

Submission + - Chalking tires to enforce parking rules is unconstitutional, court finds (nbcnews.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Marking your tires with chalk is trespassing, not law enforcement, the federal appeals panel said in a Michigan case.

U.S. Circuit Judge Bernice Bouie Donald wrote that when drivers pull into parking spaces, "the city commences its search on vehicles that are parked legally, without probable cause or even so much as 'individualized suspicion of wrongdoing' — the touchstone of the reasonableness standard."

Moreover, overstaying your welcome at a parking space doesn't cause "injury or ongoing harm to the community," she wrote, meaning the city is wrong to argue that parking enforcement is part of its "community caretaking" responsibility, potentially justifying a search without a warrant.

In fact, she wrote, "there has been a trespass in this case because the City made intentional physical contact with Taylor's vehicle."

Comment Re:Application usage logs and restrictions (Score 1) 196

by JynxMe (#34664652) Attached to: Google Pushes Openness Over Rooting
It's not a perfect solution, but Android Gingerbread did implement an option to log (or notify/crash/dialog/etc) particular actions (such as network access) within the StrictMode API. The best part is that you can enable this through reflection, even on older apps - in theory you could push this back to everything running on the phone if you so desired.

Comment Include all the costs (Score 1) 765

by JynxMe (#32883604) Attached to: Retrieving a Stolen Laptop By IP Address Alone?

The laptop hardware might be worth $1000. But if you start including the cost of the software and documents on it the prices start going up rapidly.

I write software for a living, and if my laptop was stolen there's a good chance for it to contain 1000's of hours of my work on it (so even at a paltry $/hr that adds up quickly). If you start including the value of trade secrets for clients that goes up even more.

Yes, things are encrypted, backed up and a thief may be unlikely to gain access (or even know what to do with it) but that doesn't negate the fact that the docs are still on the laptop and very much worth something.

Heck, even if you only used the laptop to listening to music and watch cat videos on Youtube, you could use RIAA pricing for your mp3s.
Censorship

Submission + - Google Publicizes Government Requests (google.com)

Submitted by D H NG
D H NG writes: In the aftermath of Google's exit from mainland China, it had sought to be more open about what it sensors. Google has launched a new tool to track the number of government request targeted at Google and YouTube. These include both requests for data and removal requests. A quick look at the tool shows that Brazil is the top country for both categories and information for China can not be disclosed because "Chinese officials consider censorship demands as state secrets". As part of its four-part plan, Google hopes to "change the behavior of repressive governments", "establish guiding principles for dealing with issues of free expression", "build support online to protest repression", and "better provide resources and support for developing technology designed to combat and circumvent Internet censorship".

Comment Re:key (Score 1) 496

by JynxMe (#31642466) Attached to: In the last 24 hours, I've consumed ...
I understand the constant eating just to keep from wasting away, but as one skinny guy (6'0", 135lbs here) to another introduce some more fruits and whole grains into your diet.

I never felt "bad", but about two years ago I started doing steel cut oats for breakfast (follow Alton Brown's recipe) and doing almost all my own cooking; now I feel great. The pipes are all flowing and the body's working better since I gave up that old (similar to yours) diet.

Comment Re:Queue . . . (Score 1) 542

by JynxMe (#31605628) Attached to: High Fructose Corn Syrup Causes Bigger Weight Gain In Rats
My brother is highly allergic to corn products (more precisely starches) - the trace amounts that can remain in HFCS sends him into severe gastro-intestinal stress. He's been going without HFCS (and corn, rice, soy, barley, oats, wheat, tapioca, quinoa, etc, etc) for nearly 3 years now. While I'm not saying it's an easy thing to do, it's not nearly as difficult as you're making it out to be. HFCS is fairly pervasive and to avoid it does mean that you'll be doing some more of your own cooking - but that's a good thing.

Comment Mbone & VIC (Score 5, Interesting) 170

by JynxMe (#30853092) Attached to: Affordable and Usable Video Conferencing?
A few years back, my multi-site development group set up a web cam on just a regular PC running windows. Then we just set up Mbone and VIC to run the actual conferencing part. It worked really well and supported as many clients as we needed it to. I'm not sure if it's still around or under any development - but you can't beat the price ($0). And they have clients for most OSes.
Politics

Submission + - Prosecutors Want "Open Source" AIG Investigation (nytimes.com)

Submitted by VValdo
VValdo writes: As you may recall, the citizens of the US shelled out about $85 billion to bail out AIG and its creditors (Goldman Sachs in particular) last year. But as 80% owners of AIG, we still don't know what happened exactly. That may change. In an NYTimes Op-Ed, former prosecutors (including former NY governor Eliot Spitzer) are calling for the US Treasury to force to AIG release its treasure-trove of emails to the public before allowing AIG to "break free" of our control. As the prosecutors put it, "By putting the evidence online, the government could establish a new form of "open source" investigation. Once the documents are available for everyone to inspect, a thousand journalistic flowers can bloom, as reporters, victims and angry citizens have a chance to piece together the story." Good idea?

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