Beyond The Broken Spectrum

Cisco unveiled a new Internet technology Tuesday that it says will provide the ultra-fast data speeds necessary to stay ahead of users’ rapidly growing online video demands.

The new technology, known as “CRS-3,” is a network routing system that will be able to offer downloads of up to 322 Terabits per second, according to the company.

Translation: Well in Cisco terms, the router will be able to provide download speeds of 1 Gigabit per second for everyone in San Francisco, download the entire printed collection of the Library of Congress in 1 second and stream every movie ever created in less than 4 minutes. Read More

A 42-year-old HIV patient with leukemia appears to have no detectable HIV in his blood and no symptoms after a stem cell transplant from a donor carrying a gene mutation that confers natural resistance to the virus that causes AIDS, according to a report published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. Read More

Hackers in Europe and China successfully broke into computers at nearly 2,500 companies and government agencies over the last 18 months in a coordinated global attack that exposed vast amounts of personal and corporate secrets to theft, according to a computer-security company that discovered the breach.

The damage from the latest cyberattack is still being assessed, and affected companies are still being notified. But data compiled by NetWitness, the closely held firm that discovered the breaches, showed that hackers gained access to a wide array of data at 2,411 companies, from credit-card transactions to intellectual property. Read More

The Pentagon’s mad science arm may have come up with its most radical project yet. Darpa is looking to re-write the laws of evolution to the military’s advantage, creating “synthetic organisms” that can live forever — or can be killed with the flick of a molecular switch.

As part of its budget for the next year, Darpa is investing $6 million into a project called BioDesign, with the goal of eliminating “the randomness of natural evolutionary advancement.” The plan would assemble the latest bio-tech knowledge to come up with living, breathing creatures that are genetically engineered to “produce the intended biological effect.” Darpa wants the organisms to be fortified with molecules that bolster cell resistance to death, so that the lab-monsters can “ultimately be programmed to live indefinitely.”

Of course, Darpa’s got to prevent the super-species from being swayed to do enemy work — so they’ll encode loyalty right into DNA, by developing genetically programmed locks to create “tamper proof” cells. Plus, the synthetic organism will be traceable, using some kind of DNA manipulation, “similar to a serial number on a handgun.” And if that doesn’t work, don’t worry. In case Darpa’s plan somehow goes horribly awry, they’re also tossing in a last-resort, genetically-coded kill switch:

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s unsurprising affirmation of support for network neutrality is a victory for the high-minded principle of open, unfettered internet access. Too bad it means the days of all-you-can-eat, flat-rate internet access are probably over.

Net neutrality sounds like a good idea. After all, it’s the internet’s openness to any and all users, applications and content that gave it such a resounding victory over closed networks like AOL, CompuServe and Prodigy. And there’s no question that as a general business and networking principle, “anything goes” is both desirable and beneficial, to users and network operators alike. Over the long run, the most open networks attract the most customers and will be the most successful — and the most profitable.

But somewhere along the way, this principle of good network architecture turned into a political tenet that, according to some true believers, is almost equivalent to the Bill of Rights in importance.

The argument goes like this: Internet service providers have such strong motivations to restrict access to content or applications that they don’t like that the government needs to step in to ensure a level playing field. For net neutrality’s true believers, Comcast and Verizon no longer get to decide how best to configure the networks they spent billions building: Their networks are so ubiquitous, and so critical to the common good, that the government has a responsibility to ensure they are managed fairly.

It’s easy to see the merits of the argument, and when we’re talking about ISPs that are near-monopolies built in large part on the basis of government subsidy or exclusive federal licensing, it seems downright un-American to argue against net neutrality.

Unfortunately, there are at least three big problems with making net neutrality a federal mandate.

Read More http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/09/fcc-neutrality-mistake/

The World Health Organization (WHO) is considering a plan to ask governments to impose a global consumer tax on such things as Internet activity or everyday financial transactions like paying bills online.

Such a scheme could raise “tens of billions of dollars” on behalf of the United Nations’ public health arm from a broad base of consumers, which would then be used to transfer drug-making research, development and manufacturing capabilities, among other things, to the developing world.

Article at Fox News

Google said Tuesday the company and at least 20 others were victims of a “highly sophisticated and targeted attack” originating in China in mid-December, evidently to gain access to the e-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.

“Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective,” according to a statement by David Drummond, senior vice president of corporate development and chief legal officer for Google, operator of the most popular Internet search engine.

Drummond said that as a result of the attacks, Google has decided it is no longer willing to consider censorship of its Google site in China and may have to shut down its site and its offices in that nation. Article continued at CNN

Sorry that I’m a little late on this one, but better late than never!

Developers of the widely used WordPress blogging software have released an update that fixes a vulnerability that let attackers reset the administrator password.

The bug in version 2.8.3 is trivial to exploit remotely using nothing more than a web browser and a specially manipulated link. Using the special URL, the old password is removed and a new one generated in its place with no confirmation required, according to this alert published on the Full-Disclosure mailing list.
The flaw lurks in some of the PHP code that fails to properly scrutinize user input when the password reset feature is invoked. Exploiting it is as easy is directing a web browser to a link that looks something like:

http://domain_name.tld/wp-login.php?action=rp&key[]=

According to WordPress documentation here, the bug has been fixed by changing a single line of code so the program checks to make sure the input supplied for the new password isn’t an array. If it is, the user gets an error message and must try again. After this article was first published, version 2.8.4 was released.

Remember to upgrade your wordpress version if you haven’t already done so.

Article at The Register

Counterfeiting is becoming commonplace. Fortunately, nano threads, color-shifting inks, and even built-in windows are improving our currency.

Story at Fox News

Cybercriminals are capitalizing on the Christmas holiday in a new Facebook scam that renders users’ computers useless, reports PandaLabs, Panda Security’s malware analysis and detection laboratory.

Following the posting of malicious links on Facebook users’ walls, the bait directs to a fake embedded video player that poses as a Christmas greeting. When users try to play the video or click on a link on the page, their computers download and install a variant of the well-known Koobface worm, Koobface.GK. An image of the scam is available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/panda_security/4166135978/.

After the virus is installed on a computer, a captcha is displayed that threatens to reboot the computer within three minutes. Although nothing happens after three minutes, the computer is rendered useless. Every time a user enters the captcha text, Koobface.GK registers a new domain where the infection files are hosted, facilitating the worm’s continued distribution. For an image of the captcha, visit http://www.flickr.com/photos/panda_security/4166136042/.

Read the rest of the article at Yahoo!

Want to know how much phone companies and internet service providers charge to funnel your private communications or records to U.S. law enforcement and spy agencies?

That’s the question muckraker and Indiana University graduate student Christopher Soghoian asked all agencies within the Department of Justice, under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed a few months ago. But before the agencies could provide the data, Verizon and Yahoo intervened and filed an objection on grounds that, among other things, they would be ridiculed and publicly shamed were their surveillance price sheets made public.

Yahoo writes in its 12-page objection letter (.pdf), that if its pricing information were disclosed to Soghoian, he would use it “to ’shame’ Yahoo! and other companies — and to ’shock’ their customers.”

Story at Wired

Intel Corp. is paying Silicon Valley rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. $1.25 billion to squash a legal battle over Intel’s sales tactics, a rift that led to antitrust charges against Intel in several countries and was headed toward a costly and nasty trial next year.

The settlement announced Thursday between Intel and AMD — which make essentially all the microprocessors that serve as the brains in today’s personal computers — doesn’t let Intel off the hook. It still has to deal with the antitrust charges that AMD pressed governments to file.

The biggest case is in Europe, where regulators have fined Intel a record $1.45 billion over what they described as Intel’s illegal tactics to bully PC makers into choosing Intel chips over AMD’s. EU spokesman Jonathan Todd said that the European Commission “takes note” of Intel’s settlement with AMD but that it does not change Intel’s duty to comply with European antitrust law.

Intel is also fighting an $18.6 million fine in Korea, and a federal lawsuit filed last week by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who accused Intel of abusing its market dominance to “rule with an iron fist.” The U.S. Federal Trade Commission also is investigating.

Continued at Yahoo Tech News

According a recent ruling by Judge Michael Mosman of Portland, Oregon stems from a case where the government had probable cause for a search and asked Google for nine months of the suspect’s email log from their GMail account in an effort to obtain evidence of a crime. The government also asked that the search warrant be sealed and that the suspect shouldn’t be told what was happening.

Many email services already state in their terms of service that they will cooperate with the government and give them the information when sought by a warrant. The problem with this new ruling allows the government to go in and search your email account without any sort of notice to the owner of the account. This reverses a previous ruling that required the government to issue a receipt to anyone whose email account they went through.

Though he says electronic communications are protected by the Fourth Amendment, which guards against unreasonable search and seizure, those protections don’t apply to the e-mail user. If the government takes a look at your e-mail, the obligation to disclose what was searched ends at the Internet Service Provider.

Judge Mosman gives this analogy: If the government seizes a package sent by FedEx, the recipient and the sender don’t have to be told, as long as FedEx gets a copy of the warrant. Also, Mosman wrote that the government didn’t take any property, so to speak, because e-mail can be viewed from anywhere. He goes on to further say that the law remains unclear about whether information stored online is like a “virtual home”, which has increased demand for legislation that will clear up this problem.

A botnet that was once responsible for an estimated third of the world’s spam has been knocked out of commission thanks to researchers from security firm FireEye.

After carefully analyzing the machinations of the massive botnet, alternately known as Mega-D and Ozdok, the FireEye employees last week launched a coordinated blitz on dozens of its command and control channels. The channels were used to send new spamming instructions to the legions of zombie machines that make up the network.

Almost immediately, the spam stopped, according to M86 Security blog. Last year, the email security firm estimated the botnet was the leading source of spam until some of its servers were disabled.

Story at The Register

By: Bob Barr, 2008 Libertarian Presidential Candidate

The great industrialist Henry J. Kaiser, father of the famous Liberty Ship that helped win World War II, understood the concept of progress. He knew that no matter how hard one might try to hold it back, ultimately the force of progress will prevail. As he put it – “You can’t sit on the lid of progress. If you do, you will be blown to pieces.”

Major Hollywood studios are sitting on that pressure cooker right now, hoping mightily to avoid the fate Kaiser predicted will eventually befall obstructionists. However, Hollywood does have one ally it hopes will be a game-changer and permit it to cheat the march of progress: the courts.

In two recent legal cases – one federal, one state – judges sided with the studios in dealing body blows to two innovative technology companies trying to market products allowing consumers to more easily and conveniently view their DVDs. The mere fact that these two companies – Kaleidescape and RealNetworks – would have the audacity to develop and market such products, was sufficient to incur Hollywood’s wrath and cause it to unleash its army of lawyers against them.

In a single week in mid-August, two rulings breathed new life into the relentless and longstanding drive by the major studios and their surrogates to thwart technology innovators from marketing devices that expand viewing options for DVD consumers.

The first of these anti-innovation body blows was delivered against a software technology company – RealNetworks – by a federal court in San Francisco. This company since last year had been trying to market a product called RealDVD, which Hollywood truly seems to hate. Why the hatred? Because RealDVD allows a consumer to copy a DVD onto the hard drive of their computer. This then permits the consumer to view their movies from a computer directly, without having to cart around and load a DVD into the unit every time they want to watch a movie. This simple and logical process is premised on the one principle Hollywood apparently will spend whatever it takes to defeat – the idea that purchasers of DVDs have the right to watch them under whatever circumstances they wish.

Recently, RealNetworks indicated it will appeal.

The second judicial body blow took place a day after the RealDVD decision, and was rendered by a California appeals court against another technology company – Kaleidescape, which manufactures a high-end home entertainment system that allows consumers to use a central server to deliver movies to players anywhere in their house. Kaleidescape actually had won its case – brought indirectly by the studios by an industry group, DVD Copy Control Association – in a California trial court, but lost the next round.

In neither of these instances do the products permit the consumer to “rip” or illicitly copy DVDs – so-called “pirating.” However, the RealDVD software and the Kaleidescape hardware do allow the consumer to “copy” a DVD into their own computer or entertainment system for their own viewing ease.

In the long run, however, it may very well turn out that the studios’ short-term gain will be their long-term loss. Hollywood’s drive to squelch consumer-driven DVD products will never halt the march of that technology; but it will push consumer to do what imaginative consumers have always done, to find other ways to increase the choices available to them. This is especially easy in today’s fast-moving world of Internet-driven technology.

Particularly at a time when DVD sales are dropping, it makes little sense for the movie studios to accelerate that process by fighting rather than working with companies that are ready, willing and able to give consumers what they want. But, Hollywood continues to try and hold back the tide. Consumers are fortunate there are entrepreneurial companies willing to battle on their behalf.