Saturday, May 04, 2013

A fly in the ointment?
"Dutch police are set to get the power to hack people's computers or install spyware as part of investigations — but antivirus experts say they won't help police reach their targets. Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at F-Secure, said the Dutch bill could lead to antivirus firms being asked asked to cooperate with authorities to let an attack reach the target. So far, Hypponen hasn't seen a single antivirus vendor cooperate with such a request, and said his own firm wouldn't want to take part. Purely for business reasons, it doesn't make sense to fail to protect customers and let malware through 'regardless of the source.'"


Even if Bill Gates is behind this, something could go {insert Blue Screen of Death here} horribly wrong!
Paula Katinas reports:
Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott defended a controversial plan to allow private businesses to get a look at information about public school students, telling a town hall audience in Bensonhurst that pupil’s privacy would not be violated.
Read more on the Brooklyn Eagle.
The fact that the schools will be providing “names, addresses, test scores, and disciplinary, health and attendance records” is a violation of pupils’ privacy as far as I’m concerned if the parents have not consented to it and have made it clear that they want to opt out but are not being allowed to.
It’s funny how politicians who go apeshit over making the morning-after pill available to 15 year-olds, claiming it infringes on parental rights, are quiet when it comes to parental rights to protect their children’s privacy when it comes to school records.


A small legal question. What would my Ethical Hackers need to prove that they are acting for the government (rather than the mob) and would that change their legal status if kidnapped and dragged before a foreign court? What would Robert Oppenheimer's status have been if Hitler got his hands on him?
Alleged ‘SpyEye’ Botmaster Ends Up in America, Handcuffs
A 24-year-old Algerian man landed in Atlanta, Georgia on Thursday to face federal charges that he hijacked customer accounts at more than 200 banks and financial institutions, capping a months-long extradition battle.
Hamza Bendelladj, who went by the name Bx1 online, is also accused of operating botnets of machines infected with the SpyEye banking trojan, and is suspected of operating Zeus botnets as well, although the charges against him in Georgia do not mention Zeus.
A civil complaint filed by Microsoft and the Financial Services – Information Sharing and Analysis Center last year names Bx1 among a long list of more than 50 defendants allegedly operating separate ZeuS botnets that have infected more than 13 million machines and have been used to steal more than $100 million in the last five years.
… Bendelladj was arrested in January at the Bangkok airport in Thailand en route from Malaysia to Egypt and arrived in the U.S. on Thursday for a Friday arraignment. Thai authorities dubbed him the “happy hacker” because he smiled during a press conference there discussing his arrest. U.S. authorities had been tracking him for three years and had issued a warrant for his arrest.


To Tweet or not to Tweet, that is the 140 character question. We are a “Technical” University, so why not use technology in all our classes?
… Twitter … is a great way to simply interact with other like-minded people. One particularly active group of people on Twitter fall into the literary category.
… If you’re not sure where to start your literary journey on Twitter, we’ve got a few tips to get you going – from who to follow, what hashtags to keep an eye on, and even how to get your Twitterary works out to a wider audience.

(Related) Don't Tweet like a Twit?
Navigating Twitter Tutorial: The Basics
This is a short 6-min tutorial to help new and existing Twitter users learn a bit more about navigating in the Twitter web application. Do you know where to find the code to embed a tweet? How about where to make a new list or follow a list? How do you view a tweetstream as a conversation? What’s the difference between a mention and a reply? Who can see a mention? Who can see a reply? Learn it here.


Zero tolerance requires zero thought. “We don't understand this 'science stuff' so it must be evil.”
Expelled girl's 'bomb': Toilet cleaner and foil
As the scientific community rallies around Kiera Wilmot, the 16-year-old expelled for a scientific experiment gone slightly awry, court papers reveal hers was an ordinary experiment. The school, meanwhile, insists it did the right thing.


I'm sure criminals will keep that chunk of steel in their guns.
Daniel_Stuckey writes with this snippet from Motherboard with an update on Cody Wilson's Defense Distributed project:
"On Friday morning, Forbes's Andy Greenberg published photos of the world's first completely 3D-printed gun. It has a 3D-printed handle, a 3D-printed trigger, a 3D-printed body and a 3D-printed barrel, all made of polymer. It's not completely plastic, though. So as not to violate the Undetectable Firearms Act and guarantee it would get spotted by a metal detector, Wilson and friends embedded a six-ounce hunk of steel inside the gun. They're calling it 'The Liberator.'"
(A name I'm sure that Wilson didn't come up with accidentally.)

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