Free Republic

Khan has identified numerous vulnerabilities in NCC Group client products and is also the creator of Sniffle, the first open-source Bluetooth 5 sniffer. Sniffers can be used to track Bluetooth signals, helping identify devices. They are often used by government agencies that manage roadways to anonymously monitor drivers passing through urban areas.

Cheap, intelligent and, crucially, lightweight, rats are being trained in Tanzania to sniff out landmines and explosives. Their trainers at Sokoine University of Agriculture in Tanzania say that for the reward of a bit of banana the rats can do a much better job than dogs. "They are more mechanical than a dog and they are easier to transfer to different owners," the Belgian coordinator of the project, Christophe Cox, told BBC News Online. When working the rats are harnessed and hitched to a sliding rail mounted on a metal grid. Two human handlers roll the grid over a suspected...

BEIJING – It's not easy being the father of the Chinese Internet. Children are running by, boats are paddling, the smell of roast lamb fills the air, and Michael Robinson, a young American computer engineer, sits rigidly, facing an empty cafe on the shore of Qinghai Lake, speaking in a low voice of the crackdown. "What is better? Big Brother Internet? Or no Internet at all?" he asks. Robinson was hired as the lead support engineer in 1996 by the Chinese government and Global One, a Sprint-France Telecom-Deutsche Telekom joint venture, to build the first network in China providing public...