E-health record will be hacked, says AusCERT

By
12 March 2012
2 min read
Leave a comment
In Health, Politics, Technology
675 views

One of Australia’s top IT security organisations has warned that the Federal Government’s flagship e-health records project is likely to be broken into, with Australians’ medical and identity information to be used for fraud and other criminal activities.

AusCERT, Australia’s Computer Emergency Response Team, which is not associated with the Government, in its submission to an inquiry about the legislation dated in January (PDF), criticised the Government’s Personally Controlled Electronic Health Records (PCEHR) Bill (2011). In its commitment to protecting the privacy and security of Australian Internet users, AusCERT has expressed concern that miscreants could potentially use the PCEHR for identity theft and fraud. The submission was first reported by the AustralianIT.

AusCERT opines that enabling accessibility to personal identifying information in the form of the PCEHR from personal computers over the Internet will only worsen an ongoing problem that will make Australians vulnerable to fraud and identity theft. The submission focuses on the use of untrustworthy end point computers and mobile devices, which when compromised, will enable attackers exert full control over the PCEHR to look at or change its contents with the same privileges as the owner or authorised users — via redwolf.newsvine.com

iiNet applies for .iinet TLD

By
12 March 2012
56 second read
Leave a comment
In Technology
940 views

iiNet will become the first Australian telecommunications company to apply for its own top-level domain (TLD), seeking to obtain the .iinet TLD.

The applications for TLDs close on 12 April, and iiNet has announced that it will partner with ARI Registry Services to get hold of the .iinet TLD.

The initial application will set iiNet back US$185,000, and, if iiNet gets its TLD, it will be required to pay an annual fee of US$25,000. The first TLDs will come into use in 2013 — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Mysterious code stumps researchers

By
12 March 2012
2 min read
Leave a comment
In Technology
782 views

Kaspersky security researchers analysing the Duqu malware have unexpectedly hit a wall, stumped by code that appears to be written in an unknown programming language, and are now appealing to the public for anyone that might recognise it to come forward.

Kaspersky Lab’s analysis has already revealed that Duqu is likely created by the same authors as Stuxnet, by revealing the similarities between the platforms used to create both trojans. However, in their most recent research, security experts Igor Sourmenkov and Costin Raiu have come across code that doesn’t appear to be written in any language they’ve seen before.

The Duqu trojan uses a dynamic link library (DLL) to communicate with a command and control server after it has infected a victim’s machine. This DLL operates independently of Duqu’s other modules and provides the trojan with several vectors through which it can phone home, such as through an HTTP server, via a proxy or through other network sockets.

It also delivers stolen information from the victim’s machine to the command and control server and enables Duqu to spread to other machines on the network — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Secret of the flashing Amazon jungle Drobo Explained

By
9 March 2012
41 second read
Leave a comment
In Technology
681 views

Drobo, the stylish desktop and small rackable storage box supplier, is finally adding flash drives to its rack-mounted box plus Amazon cloud storage for backup.

Drobo’s B1200i 12-slot, iSCSI SAN product for small and medium business users was announced with SSD support in February 2011. Thirteen months later, it has arrived — SSD qualification is a lengthy process — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Nuance to acquire medical transcription firm Transcend

By
8 March 2012
1 min read
Leave a comment
In Business, Technology
657 views

Expanding its software-aided medical transcription services, Nuance Communications will purchase medical transcription service provider Transcend Services for US$300 million, the two companies announced Wednesday.

Nuance will fold Transcend’s service into its own significant medical transcription and health care natural language processing (NLP) services. In particular, Nuance is interested in Transcend’s strong presence in the small- to mid-size hospital market, which accounts for about 90 percent of all hospitals in the US.

Medical transcription already accounts for approximately 30 percent of Nuance’s annual revenue, said Carina Edwards, Nuance vice president of healthcare solutions marketing. The purchase of the Atlanta-based Transcend will boost Nuance annual revenue by about $140 million to $150 million per year, the company estimates. The company’s health care practice accounted for $527 million in revenue for its fiscal 2011 — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Council bans daughter contact over child images

By
8 March 2012
56 second read
Leave a comment
In Rights, Technology, Weird
685 views

A man who informed police when he found child abuse images on his computer has not been allowed to be alone with his daughter for four months.

Nigel Robinson from Hull said he called police after trying to download music but instead finding pornographic images on his laptop last November.

As a result social services said he should not have unsupervised access with his own or other children.

He said he was totally innocent. No arrests or charges have been made — via redwolf.newsvine.com

30,000 WordPress blogs infected to distribute rogue antivirus software

By
7 March 2012
54 second read
Leave a comment
In Technology
614 views

Almost 30,000 WordPress blogs have been infected in a new wave of attacks orchestrated by a cybercriminal gang whose primary goal is to distribute rogue antivirus software, researchers from security firm Websense said in a blog post on Monday.

The attacks have resulted in over 200,000 infected pages that redirect users to websites displaying fake antivirus scans. The latest compromises are part of a rogue antivirus distribution campaign that has been going on for months, the Websense researchers said — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Coles Twitter campaign goes down, down gurgler

By
7 March 2012
56 second read
Leave a comment
In Business, Technology
698 views

A social media experiment has backfired for Coles, exposing the supermarket to a flood of negative comments on Twitter

The supermarket is the latest company to have a social media marketing exercise go terribly wrong, following blunders from Qantas and Coca-Cola.

The official Coles account last night urged followers to complete the sentence in my house it’s a crime not to buy…

But the PR exercise quickly fizzled as Twitter users inundated the supermarket’s account with negative comments — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Hollywood will regret the Dotcom trial

By
7 March 2012
1 min read
Leave a comment
In Entertainment, Politics, Rights, Technology
951 views

Big Hollywood and the US government may think that by closing down Megaupload, they will have thwarted the alleged piracy problem.

But as Kim Dotcom says in his interview, much demand stems from people wanting the latest US movies or TV programs now, as opposed to typically waiting months for it.

Furthermore, there are similar sites offering the same or related content that Megaupload.com did, including sites in the US that are unmolested by the FBI.

Like a many-headed hydra, if you cut off one head, others will take its place.

The US authorities are fighting a losing battle, especially since digital downloads seem the way of the entertainment future — via redwolf.newsvine.com

WooCommerce

By
6 March 2012
17 second read
Leave a comment
In Technology
728 views

Transform your WordPress website into a thorough-bred online eCommerce store. Delivering enterprise-level quality & features whilst backed by a name you can trust. Say hello to WooCommerce

The Man From Degban, He Say, ‘Um… it wasn’t us, honest!’

By
6 March 2012
3 min read
Leave a comment
In Rights, Technology
700 views

Unfortunately, on February 17th this year, Flickr — who are owned by Yahoo! — deleted the image from their servers. The page it was on disappeared… and with it, all the comments, favourites, and the record of its views disappeared too. That stuff matters only because I’m vain… but every blog that linked to it now has a broken link that goes nowhere and that matters because links are what make the internet the internet. With all those links broken, 6 years worth of photo-sharing has been undone.

I don’t have a beef with Flickr for deleting the image. They didn’t do so because they wanted to or because they were being bloody minded. They did it because they had to. By law. It’s down to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Sites like flickr — and yahoo, twitpic, youtube, yfrog, facebook, blogger, wordpress etc etc — allow their users to upload content. If they were held responsible for every bit of content on their sites the way a print publisher is responsible for the content of their magazines/newspapers etc then they simply couldn’t function. To avoid being sued for breach of copyright they would have to check each bit of content before publishing it. Which is impossible. (There are more than 6 billion pictures on flickr already… who’d look through them all and how would they check who owned the copyright?)

So instead of being responsible for them they abide by the terms of the DMCA. Which means that when someone else sends them a legal notice saying that their copyright has been breached they have to take it at face value and remove the content. No questions asked. It gets deleted. They don’t have to check to see if it makes sense — in many cases it would be impossible to know anyway – they just have to delete the content — via redwolf.newsvine.com

State court system grants bloggers same courtroom photography access as MSM

By
5 March 2012
54 second read
Leave a comment
In Rights, Technology
667 views

The Supreme Judicial Court this week approved a new rule that for the first time will let citizen journalists photograph trials and other court proceedings on a routine basis.

The new rule, which takes effect 1 July, will let people who fall under a new, broader definition of news media to register with the court system for photography access to courtrooms. They’ll have to sign a statement agreeing to certain conditions (for example, no photographs of jurors) — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Judge rules eavesdropping law unconstitutional

By
5 March 2012
43 second read
Leave a comment
In Politics, Rights, Technology
664 views

A Cook County judge today ruled the state’s controversial eavesdropping law unconstitutional.

The law makes it a felony offence to make audio recordings of police officers without their consent even when they’re performing their public duties.

Judge Stanley Sacks, who is assigned to the Criminal Courts Building, found the eavesdropping law unconstitutional because it potentially criminalises wholly innocent conduct –via redwolf.newsvine.com

Seti Live website to crowdsource alien life

By
1 March 2012
52 second read
Leave a comment
In Science, Technology
740 views

A website has been launched that aims to get the public involved in the search for extraterrestrial life.

Announced at the TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference in Los Angeles, the site will stream radio frequencies that are transmitted from the Seti (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Allen Telescope Array.

Participants will be asked to search for signs of unusual activity.

It is hoped the human brain can find things the automated system might miss — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Confessions of a Stratfor subscriber

By
29 February 2012
2 min read
Leave a comment
In Business, Technology
712 views

Yesterday I received an email from Stratfor CEO and founder George Friedman. Deplorable, unfortunate and illegal, he thundered

Having had our property stolen, we will not be victimised twice by submitting to questions about them.

The release of these emails is, however, a direct attack on Stratfor. This is another attempt to silence and intimidate the company, and one we reject. As you can see, emails sent to many people about my resignation were clearly forged.

It’s the most exciting correspondence I’ve ever received from Stratfor.

Unfortunately after all this time as a low-level subscriber, Stratfor has never given me the inside running on a story. Not even once.

Nor, during my years travelling for Foreign Correspondent, have I ever seen evidence that Stratfor’s big corporate clients, who pay many thousands of dollars for their subscriptions, received insights they couldn’t have gleaned if they were avid readers of Britain’s Economist, the august US journal Foreign Affairs, or the excellent Australian foreign policy blog, The Interpreter.

Stratfor’s real talent lies in marketing to corporate America — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Smithsonian turns to 3D to bring collection to the world

By
29 February 2012
1 min read
Leave a comment
In Technology
729 views

With just 2 percent of the Smithsonian’s archive of 137 million items available to the public at any one time, an effort is under way at the world’s largest museum and research institution to adopt 3D tools to expand its reach around the country.

CNET has learned that the Smithsonian has a new initiative to create a series of 3D-printed models, exhibits, and scientific replicas–as well as to generate a new digital archive of 3D models of many of the physical objects in its collection.

Representative of that effort, the museum is touting the 3D printed replica of a Thomas Jefferson statue that it recently installed for the Slavery at Jefferson’s Monticello: Paradox of Liberty exhibit at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. According to the museum, this is the largest 3D printed museum quality historical replica on Earth and is a copy of a statue on display at Monticello, the Thomas Jefferson museum in Virginia — via redwolf.newsvine.com

East Africa internet access slows to a crawl after anchor snags cable

By
29 February 2012
1 min read
Leave a comment
In Technology
590 views

The old theory that a butterfly flapping its wings can cause a hurricane on the other side of the world may be somewhat far-fetched. But that a ship dropping anchor can disrupt the lives of millions has become painfully evident.

That is what happened off the Kenyan coast when, by unlucky chance, an anchor scored a direct hit on an underwater fibre-optic cable.

The knock-on effect is a predicted 20% slowdown in internet speeds in Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Ethiopia and South Sudan, the BBC reported.

The offending ship was waiting to enter the port of Mombasa at the weekend when it halted in a restricted area.

The damaged cable, owned by The East African Marine Systems (Teams) — in which the Kenyan government has a share — is one of three serving east Africa. It could take up to three weeks to repair — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Conroy misleads public on Internet filter

By
29 February 2012
1 min read
Leave a comment
In Politics, Rights, Technology
573 views

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy today appeared to consciously tell a factual inaccuracy with respect to the current implementation status of Labor’s controversial Internet filtering project, stating that Telstra and Optus had implemented the mandatory filtering system, when they have only implemented a drastically reduced voluntary version.

In a press conference this afternoon with Prime Minister Julia Gillard televised live nationally, Conroy was asked whether he was still philosophically committed to the Internet filter project, and whether it would be implemented during the current term of government, or the next. The full transcript is available online here.

Well, two companies, in fact three companies have already introduced it, he said. It may come as a great surprise to you that the internet hasn’t slowed down or collapsed. Telstra and Optus and a small — apologies to the third company — have introduced the filter.

However, as Conroy is aware, no Australian Internet service provider has implemented the Internet filtering system which remains the current policy of the Federal Government — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Previous 33 34 3536 37 Next