65921549
submission
AlbanX writes:
The Australian Government has introduced a bill that would require telecommunications carriers and service providers to retain the non-content data of Australian citizens for two years of it can be accessed — without a warrant- by local law enforcement agencies.
Despite tabling the draft legislation into parliament, the bill doesn't actually specify the types of data the Government wants retained. The proposal has received a huge amount of criticism from the telco industry, other members of parliament and privacy groups.
65454811
submission
AlbanX writes:
Google researchers have discovered a vulnerability in a version of the SSL (secure sockets layer) web encryption protocol which allows attackers to break its cryptographic security.
The 'POODLE' attack allows attackers to steal secure HTTP cookies or other bearertokens. CDN provider CloudFlare has already disabled SSL 3.0 by default across its network, and Google said it hopes to do the same in the coming months.
57775517
submission
Bismillah writes:
If Attorney-General Brandis gets his way in the process of revising Australia's Telecommunications Interception Act, users and providers of VPNs and other encrypted services will by law be required to decrypt government intercepted data. Because, "sophisticated criminals and terrorists."
Across the Tasman, New Zealand already has a similar law, the Telecommunications Interception and Computer Security Act. Apparently, large Internet service providers such as Microsoft and Facebook won't be exempt from the TICSA and must facilitate interception of traffic.
56416573
submission
littlekorea writes:
Australia's weather bureau has racked up bills of $38 million for a water data system, based on Red Hat Linux, MySQL and Java, that was originally scheduled to cost somewhere between $2 million and $5 million. The Bureau's supplier, an ASX-listed IT services provider SMS Management and Technology, did a good job of embedding itself in the bureau, with all changes having to be made by the original consultant that built it. Smells fishy?
55740369
submission
littlekorea writes:
Data analysts in the US and Australia have come up with alternative means to predict the world's largest music vote, Triple J's Hottest 100. The Warmest 100 was close to spot on last year after analysts mined data from social posts auto-generated during the voting process. This year, with that avenue shut off, they relied on data extracted using the Instagram API , among others, and hope to achieve similar results.
54818423
submission
littlekorea writes:
A series of servers produced by Dell, air-gapped Windows XP PCs and switches and routers produced by Cisco, Huawei and Juniper count among the huge list of computing devices compromised by the NSA, according to crypto-expert and digital freedom fighter Jacob Applebaum. Revealing a trove of new NSA documents at his 30c3 address, Applebaum spoke about why the NSA's program might lead to broader adoption of open source tools and gave a hot tip on how to know if your machines have been owned.
51058027
submission
littlekorea writes:
The world's largest web-scale users of MySQL have committed to one further upgrade to the Oracle-controlled database — but Facebook and Twitter are also eyeing off more open options from MariaDB and cheaper options from the NoSQL community. Who will pay for MySQL enterprise licenses into the future?
50763213
submission
Bismillah writes:
Biometrics is hot stuff, not just for Apple but cleaning companies like the UK division of Denmark's IIS which tidies the London Underground railway network. However, the cleaners aren't happy about having to clock in and out with biometric fingerprint sensors, and are taking industrial action to stop the practice.
49539015
submission
AlbanX writes:
A gang of suspected Romanian criminals is using 3D printers and computer-aided design (CAD) to manufacture “sophisticated” ATM skimming devices to fleece Sydney residents.
One Romanian national has been charged by NSW Police.
The state police found one gang that had allegedly targeted 15 ATMs across metropolitan Sydney, affecting tens of thousands of people and nabbing around $100,000.
47133721
submission
Bismillah writes:
Following the example of the Dutch who enacted laws supporting network neutrality, EU is now looking at doing the same. No throttling or blocking over the top providers such as Skype and Whatsapp in the EU and there will be a service transparency requirement for ISPs so that people know what they're buying — like minimum speed. Be interesting to see how this pans out.
47099453
submission
aesoteric writes:
A man's backyard beer fridge in Australia has been busted interfering with the cellular network of major carrier Telstra. Engineers used an internally-developed software "robot" to crawl log files from the network and sent a field team out to pinpoint the cause of the interference.
45783005
submission
AlbanX writes:
An IT professional working in Sydney has been arrested for hacking a government website as part of the LulzSec movement.
The 24 year old man, residing in Point Clare, was arrested at his workplace late yesterday.
He claimed to be the leader of the hacker movement.
44908749
submission
littlekorea writes:
Mining companies are developing new systems for automating blasting of iron ore using the same open source physics engines adapted for games such as Grand Theft Auto IV and Red Dead Redemption. The same engine that determines 3D collision detection and soft body/rigid body dynamics in gaming will be applied to building 3D blast movement models — which will predict where blasted materials will land and distinguish between ore and waste.
42609255
submission
littlekorea writes:
A data analyst has successfully predicted the top ten songs of the world's biggest song contest — the Triple J Hottest 100 — by extrapolating voting intentions fans had posted on Twitter and Facebook. Nick Drewe's Warmest 100 list closely mimicked the Hottest 100 results, predicting the top three in correct order and predicting 92 of the most popular 100 songs.
39763317
submission
littlekorea writes:
Australia's telcos have declared that SMS technology should not be used by banks to verify identities for online banking transactions, in a bid to wash their hands of culpability for phone porting hacks. But three of Australia's largest four banks insist they will continue to use SMS messages to carry authentication codes for transactions.
