Free Republic

Our Internet Surveillance State I'm going to start with three data points. One: Some of the Chinese military hackers who were implicated in a broad set of attacks against the U.S. government and corporations were identified because they accessed Facebook from the same network infrastructure they used to carry out their attacks. Two: Hector Monsegur, one of the leaders of the LulzSec hacker movement, was identified and arrested last year by the FBI. Although he practiced good computer security and used an anonymous relay service to protect his identity, he slipped up. And three: Paula Broadwell, who had an affair...

Patches 42 security holes Oracle has released a major security update for the version of Java programming language that runs inside Web browsers. The patch fixes 42 vulnerabilities within Java, including "the vast majority" of those that have been rated as the most critical. Oracle Executive Vice President Hasan Rizvisaid that a series of big security flaws in the Java plug-in for browsers have been uncovered in the past year by researchers and hackers, and some have been used by criminal groups. One hacking campaign infected computers using Microsoft Windows and Apple software inside hundreds of companies.Earlier this year the US Department...

Hi. Just wondering if anyone who owns one of these external hard drives (portable or desk) have a preference. Or if they had some bad experiences or better yet, swear by either one of the 2 if they crash easily or last long. We're changing our hard drives and prefer something physical to store for our staff, instead of relying solely on cloud-based storage. (Got rid of Carbonite when those clowns backstabbed Rush and we switched to Mozy) It's almost 50/50 on people we spoke with (friends, co-workers, business partners etc). Some say Seagate sucks and crash easily while the...

First, if you follow the link, you'll find that this does not appear to be an April Fools prank. Nuance on Monday launched Voice Ads, a voice enabled ad platform that allows a consumer to talk to brands. Companies get a new monetization vehicle and consumers presumably will get a say in brand advertising delivery. snip"Nuance, which is using its voice technology in mobile, health and auto applications, is obviously hoping to get on the ad gravy train. Voice Ads promise to give marketers an avenue "to deepen the relationship with their consumers." The theory is that you'll chat with...

INDEPENDENCE, Mo. - Authorities have taken four computers from a Catholic parish office in Independence after determining child pornography had been downloaded on the parish's unsecured Wi-Fi address. A spokeswoman with the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City – St. Joseph said an investigation began when authorities discovered two child pornography downloads from peer-to-peer websites on Feb. 5 with an IP address from the church’s rectory. Carrie Cooper, the Director of the Office of Child Protection with the Diocese, said all the computers and electronic storage devices have been taken from the building. Independence police referred questions about the investigation to...

One of Yahoo’s newest employees is a 17-year-old high school student in Britain. As of Monday, he is one of its richest, too. That student, Nick D’Aloisio, a programming whiz who wasn’t even born when Yahoo was founded in 1994, sold his news-reading app, Summly, to the company on Monday for a sum said to be in the tens of millions of dollars. Yahoo said it would incorporate his algorithmic invention, which takes long-form stories and shortens them for readers using smartphones, in its own mobile apps, with Mr. D’Aloisio’s help. “I’ve still got a year and a half left...

El Rushbo's Favorite Apple Tech Blogs March 22, 2013 BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Rosie in Lake Havasu, Arizona, it's great to have you here. Hi. CALLER: Hi. I just wanted to start off by saying that I'm 16, I'm in the 11th grade, and I'm also a freshman in college. I just wanted to start off in saying, thank you for helping me. In one of and has us debate certain thingslike immigration, national debt, unemployment -- and, my favorite, Obamacare.It's really refreshing to go home and, like, listen to you and realize,no, I'm not crazy.Because, as classical liberals, they...

FULL TITLE: Solving nearly century-old problem: Using graphene, professor finds out what causes low-frequency electronic 1/f noise =========================================================== A University of California, Riverside Bourns College of Engineering professor and a team of researchers published a paper today that show how they solved an almost century-old problem that could further help downscale the size of electronic devices. The work, led by Alexander A. Balandin, a professor of electrical engineering at UC Riverside, focused on the low-frequency electronic 1/f noise, also known as pink noise and flicker noise. It is a signal or process with a power spectral density inversely proportional to...

Mozilla has a long running interest in fostering greater transparency, trust and accountability related to privacy and the many cookie-based practices we see today. fx nightly v22.0a1 privacy tabOn Friday, Mozilla released a Firefox patch into its “Nightly” channel that changes how cookies from third party companies function. Users of this build of Firefox must directly interact with a site or company for a cookie to be installed on their machine. The patch also provides an additional control setting under the “Privacy” tab in Firefox’s Preferences menu (see image). Many years of observing Safari’s approach to third party cookies, a...

Enemies' doctrines include devastating blow as part of 'strategic operations' WASHINGTON – Warnings from U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano that enemy nations are carrying out cyber attacks on the U.S. are on the rise. The target? The U.S. electric infrastructure. Even President Obama has pointed out that “our enemies are also seeking the abilities to sabotage our power grid, our financial institutions and our air traffic control systems.” But that may not be the worst of it. Those same adversaries – China, Russia, Iran and North Korea – also incorporate in...

Emerging markets will be the first to get the devices *********************************************EXCERPT************************************** BARCELONA, Spain--Mozilla formally launched its Firefox OS here ahead of the start of Mobile World Congress. However, the smartphone platform is focusing its attention on emerging markets and will likely not launch in the U.S. market until 2014.Mozilla, best known for its Firefox browser, said the first Firefox OS devices will be available to consumers in Brazil, Colombia, Hungary, Mexico, Montenegro, Poland, Serbia, Spain and Venezuela, and that additional markets will be announced soon. The platform seems clearly aimed at emerging markets, and Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs said the platform...

Linaro to Deliver Initial Linux Builds for ARM Servers in 1H 2013 Linaro, the not-for-profit engineering organization developing open source software for the ARM architecture, today announced the formation of the Linaro Networking Group (LNG) with twelve founding member companies including AppliedMicro, ARM, Enea, Freescale, LSI, MontaVista, Nokia Siemens Networks and Texas Instruments (TI) at the Embedded Linux Conference (ELC).With ARM-based SoCs at the heart of the transformation occurring in cloud and mobile infrastructure applications such as switching, routing, base-stations and security, Linaro’s members are collaborating on fundamental software platforms to enable rapid deployment of new services across a range...

HANOVER, VA –The FBI raided a Hanover County home in search of child porn, only to discover they'd raided the wrong house. Federal investigators targeted the Mechanicsville home after discovering child porn was being downloaded to computers using the homeowner's internet service, according to federal court documents. But after raiding the home in November and subsequently launching a full investigation, court documents show agents discovered the computers with the downloaded child porn didn't belong to the couple, but a neighbor. David Edward Sleezer, of J David Lane, was arrested and charged with five counts of receiving and distributing child porn....

Mozilla releases information about developer phones running its Firefox OSMozilla is bringing its particular brand of open and innovative dedication to the Open Web to a cellular phone near you.The nonprofit maker of the popular Firefox browser recently announced that it will release a preview phone running its mobile operating system, Firefox OS, in February. The OS is designed to allow HTML5 applications to integrate directly with the deviceÂ’s hardware, and the lighter system will allow apps to run smoothly while maintaining longer battery life than its competitors. MozillaÂ’s new operating system is built entirely on open web standards. (Via:...

(Reuters) - China's largest auto parts maker won U.S. government approval to buy A123 Systems Inc (AONEQ.PK), a maker of electric car batteries, despite warnings by some lawmakers that the deal would transfer sensitive technology developed with U.S. government money. The sale of the lithium-ion battery maker to a U.S. unit of Wanxiang Group was approved by a U.S. government committee on foreign investment, according to a statement from the Chinese company. Last month, Wanxiang's U.S. unit agreed to pay $257 million for A123's automotive battery business and related assets in a bankruptcy auction, beating U.S. rival Johnson Controls Inc...

New DARPA program seeks performers for transient electronics demonstration The sophisticated electronics used by war-fighters in everything from radios, remote sensors and even phones can now be made at such a low cost that they are pervasive throughout the battlefield. These electronics have become necessary for operations, but it is almost impossible to track and recover every device. At the end of operations, these electronics are often found scattered across the battlefield and might be captured by the enemy and re-purposed or studied to compromise DoD’s strategic technological advantage.

GlobalFoundries to Establish Massive R&D Center Near Fab 8 GlobalFoundries on Tuesday said it would build its new technology development center (TDC) at its Fab 8 campus in Saratoga County, New York. The TDC will provide a collaborative space to develop end-to-end solutions covering the full spectrum of silicon technology, from new interconnect and packaging technologies that enable three-dimensional (3D) stacking of chips to leading-edge photomasks for extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography and everything in between.“As the industry shifts from the PC era to a market focused on mobile devices, we have seen increasingly strong interest from customers in migrating to...

An Iranian semi-official news agency says there has been another cyberattack by the sophisticated computer worm Stuxnet, this time on the industries in the country’s south. … (Provisional civil defense chief Ali Akbar) Akhavan says Iranian computer experts were able to “successfully stop” the worm. …

Wipes hard drives Iranian computers are being hit by malware that wipes entire disk partitions clean, according to an advisory issued by that country's Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Centre. Dubbed Batchwiper, the malware systematically wipes any drive partitions starting with the letters D through I, along with any files stored on the Windows desktop of the user who is logged in. It is the second time that a wiper program has hit the region. An earlier program called Wiper shared a file-naming convention almost identical to those used by the state-sponsored Stuxnet and Duqu operations. Batchwiper, which gets its...

How to remove a computer virus QUICK SIMPLE VIDEO http://www.tvkim.com/watch/2555/kim-on-komand-how-to-remove-a-computer-virus?utm_medium=nl&utm_source=tvkim&utm_content=2012-12-14-article-screen-shot-b Computer viruses are the most dreaded inhabitants of the digital world! Here's how to kill them dead. Visit my security center for more detailed tips:      http://www.komando.com/securitycenter