Governments looking to silence critics and stymie opposition have added DDOS (distributed denial of service) attacks to their censoring methods, according to a security expert speaking at the Source Boston Security Showcase. As the use of DDOS for political gains increases, expect the Internet to become more militarized said Jose Nazario, senior security researcher at Arbor Networks
Vodafone has signed a deal with three of the UK’s biggest record labels in a bid to offer customers Digital Rights Management (DRM)-free music on their mobiles. Vodafone said the deals with Universal Music Group, Sony BMG and EMI would allows customer to download tracks from a catalogue of millions
In an unprecedented move, Australia’s communications regulator has threatened to fine a company up to $11,000 a day for indirectly leaking part of its top-secret list of banned internet web pages. The action by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has wide ramifications for media companies, online publishers, web hosting suppliers and any organisation that publishes feedback from readers or customers on their web site
Material scientists from the University of Southern Mississippi have created a new polymer that can fix its own scratches under regular sunlight, a feat that has no end of practical applications
Australian authors and publishers are set to receive a windfall from Google’s project to put millions of books online. In recent weeks several Australian publishing industry bodies, such as the Australian Society of Authors, the Copyright Agency Limited and the Australian Publishers’ Association, have been contacting members to let them know about the settlement Google has reached with American authors and publishers. Under the terms of this settlement, copyright holders are to be paid US$60 ($91.85) a book and US$15 an article or chapter copied from the more than 7 million items in the Google Library project
Software used to control thousands of home computers has been acquired online by the BBC as part of an investigation into global cyber crime. The technology programme Click has demonstrated just how at risk PCs are of being taken over by hackers. Almost 22,000 computers made up Click’s network of hijacked machines, which has now been disabled. The BBC has now warned users that their PCs are infected, and advised them on how to make their systems more secure
A recent report has revealed that France’s national police force has saved an estimated 50 million euros since 2004 by adopting open source software and migrating a portion of the organisation’s workstations to Ubuntu Linux. They plan to roll out the Linux distro to all 90,000 of their workstations by 2015
All of Europe’s energy needs could be supplied by building an array of solar panels in the Sahara. Technological advances combined with falling costs have made it realistic to consider North Africa as Europe’s main source of imported energy. By harnessing the power of the Sun, possibly in tandem with wind farms along the North African coastline, Europe could easily meet its 2020 target of generating at least 20 per cent of its energy from renewable sources
Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a way to charge lithium ion batteries in seconds, instead of hours, that could open the door to smaller, faster-charging batteries for mobile phones and other devices
Major security vendors Symantec, Sophos and Kaspersky yesterday said their products would block legalised hacking attempts by NSW Police under new legislation as they would any other security threat to users
Google’s Gmail e-mail service is down for an undetermined number of users, and while the outage has been partially fixed, some people could be locked out of their accounts for many more hours. In its latest update about the problem, posted at around 9.30 am US Eastern Time on Tuesday, Google said that it could take between 24 hours to 36 hours from that moment to restore all affected accounts
Google will block an iPhone application that harnesses its Google Talk chat program to provide a free text-message service after too many users flocked to download it. The Infinite SMS app, which cost US$0.99 and let users send unlimited text messages from an iPod or iPhone, quickly became one of the 10 most-downloaded apps in the iPhone Store after its release last month, developer Inner Fence said in a statement on its Web site
Sydney police have charged two men over what is alleged to be a multi-million dollar credit card fraud racket involving online auction giant eBay. NSW Police today issued a statement saying the pair had purchased more than $4.5 million in goods using fake credit cards bearing bank details skimmed or stolen from legitimate card-holders
. The goods were then allegedly sold online through eBay and other sites
Civil rights and privacy advocates yesterday expressed concern about a NSW Parliament proposal that would allow the state’s police to remotely access a suspect’s computer for up to 28 days without disclosing the hack for some time
The UK government wants to cut out users rights to access Internet content, applications and services. Some of the information used to justify the change has been cut and pasted from the Wikipedia. Amendments to the Telecoms Package circulated in Brussels by the UK government, seek to cross out users’ rights to access and distribute Internet content and services. And they want to replace it with a principle
that users can be told not only the conditions for access, but also the conditions for the use of applications and services. The UK government texts have been heavily criticised by the French campaigning group La Quadrature du Net. It is believed that they could have been drawn up by the UK regulator, Ofcom
Telcos can expect more downward pressure on their fixed-line income as the emerging generation of adolescents start leaving the nest, new research has revealed. The research by the federal communications regulator shows that 18 to 24 year-olds are relying on mobiles phones when they leave home and choosing not to sign up for landlines. The Australian Communications and Media Authority’s research, which was conducted by Roy Morgan between May and June 2008, revealed that 79 per cent of 18 to 24 year-olds used mobile more frequently than fixed-line services. By contrast, senior citizens used fixed-line services more frequently and saw little need to use a mobile phone
The shrill bleeps from 80s home computers and the hammering clicks of ancient calculating machines are noises that many people would prefer to forget, but not chip-tune musician Matthew Applegate. He plans on assembling a virtual orchestra of 20 retired relics of computing at the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park. The choice of venue will even allow Applegate to feature the famous Colossus Mark 2 computer in the event, which was used for code-breaking in World War II and was recently reconstructed at Bletchley Park in 2007
Mininova, one of the leading BitTorrent sites, has been suffering from a massive DDoS attack over the past few days. Originating from a botnet spanning three continents, the attacks vary in strength and are causing the site to be completely inaccessible at times. The Mininova team is working on a solution
Exact replicas of a man’s thumb bones have been made for the first time using a 3D printer. The breakthrough paves the way for surgeons to replace damaged or diseased bones with identical copies built from the patients’ own cells. In theory, you could do any bone,
says Christian Weinand of the Insel Hospital in Berne, Switzerland, head of the team that copied his thumb bones. Now I can put spares in my pocket if I want,
he says
A company that allegedly sold workers’ personal details, including union activities, to building firms is to be prosecuted by the information watchdog. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said the Consulting Association, in Droitwich, had committed a serious breach
of the Data Protection Act. The ICO said a secret system had been run for over 15 years to enable firms to unlawfully vet job applicants. Unions have called on the government to outlaw blacklisting
practices
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