62741869
submission
nk497 writes:
Broadband customers are overwhelmingly choosing not to use parental-control systems foisted on ISPs by the government — with takeup in the single-digits for three of the four major broadband providers. Last year, the government pushed ISPs to roll out network-level filters, forcing new customers to make an "active" decision about whether they want to use them or not. Only 5% of new BT customers signed up, 8% opted in for Sky and 4% for Virgin Media. TalkTalk rolled out a parental-control system two years before the government required it and has a much better takeup, with 36% of customers signing up for it. The report, from regulator Ofcom, didn't bother to judge if the filters actually work, however.
58650527
submission
nk497 writes:
The Heartbleed bug in OpenSSL wasn't placed there deliberately, according to the coder responsible for the mistake — despite suspicions from many that security services may have been behind it. OpenSSL logs show that German developer Robin Seggelmann introduced the bug into OpenSSL when working on the open-source project two and a half years ago, according to an Australian newspaper. The change was logged on New Year's Eve 2011.
"I was working on improving OpenSSL and submitted numerous bug fixes and added new features," Seggelmann told the Sydney Morning Herald. "In one of the new features, unfortunately, I missed validating a variable containing a length." His work was reviewed, but the reviewer also missed the error, and it was included in the released version of OpenSSL.
57302465
submission
nk497 writes:
Florida-based security firm Team Cymru said it was examining a "widespread compromise" of 300,000 consumer and small office/home office (SOHO) routers in Europe and Asia. The DNS server settings were changed to a pair of IP addresses, which correspond to Dutch machines that are registered to a company that lists its address in central London.
The attack highlights the flaws in router firmware, the researchers said. "It's not new as an issue to the InfoSec community but this is one of the biggest we've seen recently as it's quite insidious," Cymru's Steve Santorelli said, adding the hack could let the attacks conduct man in the middle attacks, impersonating your bank, for example.
56813941
submission
nk497 writes:
A UX designer working at Microsoft has taken to Reddit to explain why Windows 8's Metro screen isn't designed for power users — but is still good news for them. Jacob Miller, posting as "pwnies", said Metro is the "antithesis of a power user", and designed for "your computer illiterate little sister", not for content creators or power users. By splitting Windows into Metro and the desktop, Microsoft has created space for casual users as well as power users.
"Before Windows 8 and Metro came along, power users and casual users — the content creators and the content consumers — had to share the same space," he added. "It was like a rented tuxedo coat — something that somewhat fit a wide variety of people." As an example, he cited multiple desktops, a feature frequently requested by power users that confuses average consumers, so hasn't been implemented. "It's not that the desktop was too difficult for casual users, it's that by tailoring the desktop for casual users and power users, we had our hands tied by what we could provide for the power users," he continued. "By separating the two workflows, we can make the desktop more advanced than what the casual users are comfortable with, to the benefit of the power users."
53885551
submission
nk497 writes:
Consumer hard drives don't fail any more often than enterprise-grade hardware — despite the price difference. That's according to online storage firm Backblaze, which uses a mix of both types of drive. It studied its own hardware, finding consumer hard-drives had a failure rate of 4.2%, while enterprise-grade drives failed at a rate of 4.6%.
CEO Gleb Budman noted: "It turns out that the consumer drive failure rate does go up after three years, but all three of the first three years are pretty good," he notes. "We have no data on enterprise drives older than two years, so we don’t know if they will also have an increase in failure rate. It could be that the vaunted reliability of enterprise drives kicks in after two years, but because we haven’t seen any of that reliability in the first two years, I’m sceptical."
53316879
submission
nk497 writes:
Only 25% of Yahoo staff have obeyed the company's request to "eat their own dog food" and switch to Yahoo Mail, a colourful internal memo has revealed. The leaked email, acquired by All Things Digital, implores staff to move over to the corporate version of Yahoo's webmail system, gently lambasting staff who refuse to part with Microsoft Outlook.
The message goes on to take a swipe at what appears to be Yahoo employees' preferred mail client, Microsoft Outlook, describing it as "anachronism of the now defunct 90s PC era, a pre-web program written at a time when NT Server terrorised the data centre landscape with the confidence of a T-Rex born to yuppie dinosaur parents who fully bought into the illusion of their son’s utter uniqueness because the big-mouthed, tiny-armed monster infant could mimic the gestures of The Itsy-Bitsy Pterodactyl".
52846941
submission
nk497 writes:
Criminals are taking advantage of unpatched holes in Internet Explorer to launch "diskless" attacks on PCs visiting malicious sites. Security company FireEye uncovered the zero-day flaw on at least one breached US site, describing the exploit as a "classic drive-by download attack".
But FireEye also noted the malware doesn't write to disk and disappears on reboot — provided it hasn't already taken over your PC — making it trickier to detect, though easier to purge. "[This is] a technique not typically used by advanced persistent threat (APT) actors," the company said. "This technique will further complicate network defenders' ability to triage compromised systems, using traditional forensics methods."
52759559
submission
nk497 writes:
A Motorola Mobility patent application has proposed using an "electronic skin tattoo" as a smartphone microphone and wireless transceiver. The temporary tattoo would also include a "power supply configured to receive energising signals from a personal area network", according to the filing with the US Patent and Trademark Office. It would be applied to "a throat region of a body" — otherwise known as the neck. Motorola thinks the technology would be ideal for noisy environments, such as large stadiums and busy streets, or in emergency situations.
52690287
submission
nk497 writes:
Amazon plans to give independent booksellers 10% of the takings from ebooks bought on Kindles they sell, the online giant has revealed. The new Amazon Source programme aims to encourage independent bookstores and small retailers to sell Kindle readers by offering commission for the first two years of the device's life. As an alternative to the 10% kickback from book sales, retailers opting into the Amazon Source programme can choose instead to receive a larger discount up front when buying the devices for resale.
52621953
submission
nk497 writes:
Smartphones and tablets have reportedly been banned from Cabinet Office meetings, apparently in response to spying fears. Number 10's security team swiftly removed a batch of iPads from a presentation given earlier this month by the minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude, and Government Digital Service boss Mike Bracken.
According to the Mail on Sunday, Maude and Bracken were giving an update on the government's cost-cutting move to online services, using iPads as part of the presentation. But before any sensitive discussions could start, security staff reportedly removed the devices from the room. Separate reports suggest that ministers working for sensitive government departments must also now place their phones in lead-lined, soundproofed boxes before conducting confidential conversations.
52310901
submission
nk497 writes:
Police in Manchester have arrested a man for 3D printing the components to a gun — but some have suggested the objects actually appear to be spare printer parts. Police arrested a man after a "significant" discovery of a 3D printed "trigger" and "magazine", saying they were now testing the parts to see if they were viable. 3D printing experts, however, said the objects were actually spare parts for the printer.
"As soon as I saw the picture... I instantly thought 'I know that part'," said Scott Crawford, head of 3D printing firm Revolv3D. "They designed an upgrade for the printer soon after it was launched, and most people will have downloaded and upgraded this part within their printer. It basically pulls the plastic filament, and it used to jam an awful lot. The new system that they've put out, which includes that little lever that they're claiming is the trigger, is most definitely the same part."
52308771
submission
nk497 writes:
Web users are vulnerable to mass online spying because the US has too much power online, according to a leading security researcher. Discussing revelations of US spying at his LinuxCon keynote speech, F-Secure’s chief research officer Mikko Hypponen argued that the internet had "become a US colony", at the expense of democracy. "We’re back in the age of colonisation," he said. "We should think about the Americans as our masters."
Hypponen argued that its dominance over the web gave the US too much power over foreign countries, noting that while the majority of European politicians likely use US services every day, most US politicians and business leaders don’t, for example, use Swedish-based cloud services. "It’s an imbalanced situation," he said. "All the major services are based in the US."
52242727
submission
nk497 writes:
Linus Torvalds has welcomed the arrival of Valve’s Linux-based platform, SteamOS, and said it could boost Linux on desktops. The Linux creator praised Valve's "vision" and suggested its momentum would force other manufacturers to take Linux seriously — especially if game developers start to ditch Windows. Should SteamOS gain traction among gamers and developers, that could force more hardware manufacturers to extend driver support beyond Windows.
That's a sore point for Torvalds, who slammed Nvidia last year for failing to support open-source driver development for its graphics chips. Now that SteamOS is on the way, Nvidia has opened up to the Linux community, something Torvalds predicts is a sign of things to come. "I’m not just saying it’ll help us get traction with the graphics guys," he said. "It’ll also force different distributors to realise if this is how Steam is going, they need to do the same thing because they can’t afford to be different in this respect. They want people to play games on their platform too."
51230187
submission
nk497 writes:
If Google can block child abuse images, it can also block piracy sites, according to a report from MPs, who said they were "unimpressed" by Google's "derisorily ineffective" efforts to battle online piracy, according to a Commons Select Committee report looking into protecting creative industries.
John Whittingdale MP, the chair of the Committee — and also a non-executive director at Audio Network, an online music catalogue — noted that Google manages to remove other illegal content. "Google and others already work with international law enforcement to block for example child porn from search results and it has provided no coherent, responsible reason why it can't do the same for illegal, pirated content," he said.
50195415
submission
nk497 writes:
Amazon is bundling ebooks with print copies for the first time, via its Kindle MatchBook programme, admitting that "bundling print and digital has been one of the most requested features from customers".
The digital copies won't all be free — as with AutoRip, which offers free MP3s for selected CDs and records — but Amazon promises to charge no more than $3 per digital copy. The programme will apply to books bought as far back as Amazon's 1995 launch. So far, only 10,000 books are listed as being part of Kindle MatchBook, but Amazon hopes to add more, telling publishers it "adds a new revenue stream".
