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Comment Re:Biometrics is a dead-end (Score 4, Interesting) 110

by teidou (#43318009) Attached to: Why Your Next Phone Will Include Biometric Security
Yep, that's a serious issue.

There is a difference between identity and authentication, and that difference is lost when one uses biometric identity measures for authentication.

Great writeup on this from 2006 over at MSDN

Short version: identify and authentication must remain distinct if you want to have a system where users are held responsible for their actions.
Security

BBC Twitter Accounts Hacked By Pro-Assad Syrian Electronic Army 129

Posted by timothy from the revolutionaries-in-the-amphitheatre dept.
DavidGilbert99 writes "Following BBC Weather on Twitter seems like it wouldn't throw up too many surprises — possibly news of the odd blizzard now and again. But today, the account's 60,000 followers got a little more than 'chance of a light drizzle' when the pro-Assad Syrian Electronic Army hacked the account, along with a couple of other BBC accounts, in an apparent protest at what it sees as reports which don't show the Syrian regime in the best light." Also at the BBC itself.
Education

Submission + - Raspberry Pi has gone to manufacturing (raspberrypi.org)

Submitted by
alecclews
alecclews writes: "After weeks of waiting the Raspberry Pi foundation, who are creating a US$25 computer to bootstrap Computing education, have flipped the switch on manufacturing.

They had wanted to build the board in the UK but it turns out to be uneconomic."
Security

Hackers Could Open Convicts' Cells In Prisons 203

Posted by Soulskill from the need-firewalls-to-go-with-those-real-walls dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Some of the same vulnerabilities that the Stuxnet superworm used to sabotage centrifuges at a nuclear plant in Iran exist in the country's top high-security prisons where programmable logic controllers (PLCs) control locks on cells and other facility doors. Researchers have already written three exploits for PLC vulnerabilities they found. 'Most people don't know how a prison or jail is designed; that's why no one has ever paid attention to it,' says John Strauchs, who plans to discuss the issue and demonstrate an exploit against the systems at the DefCon hacker conference next week. 'How many people know they're built with the same kind of PLC used in centrifuges?' A hacker would need to get his malware onto the control computer either by getting a corrupt insider to install it via an infected USB stick or send it via a phishing attack aimed at a prison staffer, since some control systems are also connected to the internet, Strauchs claims. 'Bear in mind, a prison security electronic system has many parts beyond door control such as intercoms, lighting control, video surveillance, water and shower control, and so forth,' adds Strauchs. 'Once we take control of the PLC we can do anything (PDF). Not just open and close doors. We can absolutely destroy the system. We could blow out all the electronics.'"
Android

Drawing the Line Between Android and Linux 258

Posted by timothy from the one-of-these-not-like-the-other dept.
jfruhlinger writes "The relationship between Linux and Android is on a technical level not hard to grasp — there's a shared kernel, but the application and interface layers are quite different. But, as Brian Proffitt points out, there are differences of philosophy and of community — which hasn't stopped Adobe from touting its Android dev tools as proof of its devotion to Linux."

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