An American security consultant who stole hundreds of thousands of online bank passwords by employing a massive botnet that he often administered from work deserves at least five years in prison, prosecutors have told a federal judge. The request for a minimum 60-month sentence, followed by five years of supervised release, came in the case of John Kenneth Schiefer of Los Angeles, who in November of 2007 admitted he was the hacker known alternately as Acid and Acidstorm and wielded a 250,000-strong bot army. Prosecutors rejected Schiefer’s arguments that he should be allowed to continue working as a security consultant, saying the stiff penalty was justified by the extreme callousness and brazenness of his offences
Researchers at Intel, RTI International of North Carolina, and Arizona State University have shown that it’s possible to build an efficient microrefrigerator that can target hot spots on chips, saving power and space, and more effectively cooling the entire system. Their work also demonstrates, for the first time, that it is possible to integrate thermoelectric material into chip packaging, making the technology more practical than ever before
Underlying the Rudd Government’s plan to screen the internet is an offensive message: that parents cannot be trusted to mind their children online. Adult supervision should be front and centre of the effort to improve online safety, a responsibility accepted by most parents, grandparents, teachers and carers. But the Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, seems to think differently: filtering content at internet service provider level is central to the Government’s plan to make the internet a safer place for children
. There is no technological substitute for adult supervision and it’s irresponsible and misleading to infer otherwise. Mandating a so-called clean feed
has the potential to create a dangerous false sense of security, leading parents to believe ongoing supervision and vigilance is no longer needed
A New Zealand man has found confidential US military files on an MP3 player he bought in an Oklahoma thrift shop. Chris Ogle, 29, paid $15 for the player and when he plugged it into his computer he found 60 pages of military data. The files contained the names and personal details of US soldiers, including some who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as information about equipment deployed to bases and a mission briefing
Monster.com is advising its users to change their passwords after data including e-mail addresses, names and phone numbers were stolen from its database. The break-in comes just as the swelling ranks of the unemployed are turning to sites like Monster.com to look for work. The company disclosed on its Web site that it recently learned its database had been illegally accessed. Monster.com user IDs and passwords were stolen, along with names, e-mail addresses, birth dates, gender, ethnicity, and in some cases, users’ states of residence. The information does not include Social Security numbers, which Monster.com said it doesn’t collect, or resumes
Have you checked out Monty Python’s YouTube channel? It’s got a selection of their brilliant (as always) clips, and it’s got links to buy their DVDs on Amazon. As those crazy Monty Python dudes put it, We’re letting you see absolutely everything for free. So there! But we want something in return. None of your driveling, mindless comments. Instead, we want you to click on the links, buy our movies and TV shows and soften our pain and disgust at being ripped off all these years.
And you know what? Despite the entertainment industry’s constant cries about how bad they?ïre doing, it works. As we wrote yesterday, Monty Python’s DVDs climbed to No.2 on Amazon’s Movies and TV bestsellers list, with increased sales of 23,000 percent
Former National Security Agency analyst Russell Tice, who helped expose the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping in December 2005, has now come forward with even more startling allegations. Tice told MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann on Wednesday that the programs that spied on Americans were not only much broader than previously acknowledged but specifically targeted journalists
A Trojan horse that turns Macs into bots is being spread by pirated copies of Apple’s iWork 09 productivity suite. Malware writers are increasingly targeting Apple’s Mac OS X. Graham Cluley of Sophos said Mac users would be crazy
to download pirated copies of iWork 09, but it’s even worse because many are reckless about virus protection
Internet giant Google bucked the economic downturn to outperform Wall Street’s expectations, according to its latest financial results. The company reported revenues of $5.7bn for the three months ending in December, up 18% year-on-year, but an increase of just 3% on the previous quarter’s figures. Profit was down significantly to $382m, compared with $1.2bn a year ago — however, this was largely the result of investments in internet rival AOL and wireless broadband provider Clearwire
Several months after joining the Apache Foundation, Microsoft has made its first code contribution to an Apache project. The project, known as Stonehenge, is made up of companies and developers seeking to test the interoperability of Web standards implementations — via Slashdot
US researchers have developed a new type of semiconductor ink that brings companies a step closer to making bendable computer screens or inexpensive sensor tags to help retailers keep track of their inventory. The discovery lies in the new material &8212; a soluble semiconductor ink capable of carrying a negative electrical charge, said Philippe Inagaki, chief executive officer of Polyera Corp, a specialty chemicals company in Skokie, Illinois, that makes materials for flexible and printed electronics
Surgical procedures could soon be helped along with tiny robots, according to researchers. Miniaturisation of motors has not kept pace with that of electronics, leaving such tiny robots with no means to get around in the body. Now, research reported in the Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering has demonstrated a motor about twice the size of a human hair
A vicious worm-infection has crashed the New Zealand Ministry of Health’s computer systems but an official says the medicine is working and they are back running. But deputy director general Alan Hesketh said their staff were still not allowed to use the internet
Proteus Biomedicals, a company in California, has developed an intelligent pill that sends digital signals to an external receiver after being swallowed. The pill still works as an ordinary drug that a patient might take to control a health issue such as heart trouble or a psychiatric disorder. But it also has digestible sensors that are made of food products and are activated by stomach fluids. Once swallowed, the sensors can send a digital signal through the body to a receiver. The receiver date- and time-stamps, decodes, and records information about the drug and the dosage. It also measures and reports heart rate, activity, and respiratory rate
Net neutrality really is the hot topic at the moment. After the FCC slapped Comcast for slowing down BitTorrent users, Canada is now looking into the network management practices of its ISPs. And rightly so, as a CRTC investigation reveals that most of the ISPs in Canada actively slow down customers using P2P applications
Belkin’s alleged, and now confirmed, payola scheme may have been one of the first times we’ve heard about their shady practices, but an employee of Belkin says it’s actually very common. To summarise the note, Belkin’s supposedly paid for positive reviews, gave products with custom firmware to reviewers in order to hide bugs, faked certification logos, writing poor reviews of competitor’s products and backing out of CES for lack of funding. The company’s supposedly in such bad shape that it’s commonly accepted that current CEO Mark Reynoso is running everything into the ground, while increasing his salary year after year
Tools for grabbing videos from YouTube have existed for some time now, but Google’s video portal began experimenting this weekend with allowing users to download a high-quality H.264 version directly from a video’s site. The feature appeared first on the Obama campaign’s ChangeDotGov account, and it is expected to roll out to the rest of YouTube users in the coming weeks
In addition to Google’s announcements about the elimination of 100 recruiting positions and the shutdown of offices in Austin, Texas; Trondheim, Norway; and Lulea, Sweden, the company said it would close Dodgeball, Google Catalog Search, Google Mashup Editor, Google Notebook, and Jaiku. It also said it’s discontinuing the ability to upload videos to Google Video. Jaiku, however, will live on as an open source project. Gundotra said that Google engineers have been porting the microblogging service to Google App Engine and that when the migration is completed, the company plans to make the code available under the Apache license — via Slashdot
A distributed denial-of-service attack turned dark at least several thousand Web sites hosted by GoDaddy.com Wednesday morning. The outage was intermittent over several hours, according to Nick Fuller, GoDaddy.com communications manager. Neither e-mail nor DNS services were interrupted, Fuller said
It was recently discovered that Belkin’s lead online sales rep, Michael Bayard, has been secretly paying internet users to review his company’s products favourably on Amazon.com and other websites like Newegg, whether or not they’ve ever used the devices. Bayard instructed the people he was paying to Write as if you own the product and are using it… Mark any other negative reviews as ‘not helpful’ once you post yours.
Ironically, he was using Amazon’s own Mechanical Turk service to hire his fraudsters. Did he honestly think he wouldn’t get caught? — via Slashdot
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