"Apparently security cameras are even less secure than we thought. Eighteen popular brands of cameras have been found to have serious flaws in their own security, leaving at least 58,000 unsecured, open-to-basically-anyone security cams out there. In short, the flaw allows anyone connected to a specific port full access to the DVR functions of the cameras." Continue reading →
"Cyber-attacks on Iran are turning it into a 'force to be reckoned with' America's top cyber-soldier has warned. Since 2010, Iran has come under attack many times by malicious viruses written specifically to target key industrial installations in the country. The repeated attacks have provoked Iran to improve its cyber-capabilities, said Gen William Shelton who oversees US cyber-operations. That improved capability had helped it protect itself against subsequent attacks on oil terminals and other manufacturing plants. Its capability might well be turned against Iran's enemies in the coming years, he said." Continue reading →
"While Yahoo!’s chief Marissa Mayer told the forum there was a 'trade off' between privacy and the benefits of increasingly personalised services offered by Internet giants, the network’s founding father took up the ethical issues at stake. 'The dream is of a more open web,' Berners-Lee told the gathering in the Swiss ski resort, citing social media as a way of breaking down barriers. But he said the recent suicide of Aaron Swartz, a 26-year-old US Internet activist who faced charges of illegally copying and distributing millions of academic articles, highlighted government efforts to police the Internet." Continue reading →
"Cybersecurity is on the minds of the Davos-ians because it could cost them money. Apparently they have just learned that 'there is barely a large company out there today which has not had its infrastructure and systems breached.' They have also realized that this is going to require some sort of collective action–and the private sector does not do collective action well. Australia and the United Kingdom are actively forcing companies to work together. Last week the European Union proposed a law that would require tech companies to report server issues and security breaches to the government." Continue reading →
"While the video above may not win an award for action movie of the year, it’s illustrating an exciting new breakthrough for the way we manufacture medicines and drugs. Depicting the brain child of Professor Lee Cronin, the chair of chemistry at Glasgow University, the video shows a new 3D printing process he and his team developed to synthesize chemicals. He believes his research could one day lead to low-cost chemical printers in the home that allow patients to print out their prescriptions." Continue reading →
"The United States government says that Kim Dotcom, a German millionaire formerly known as Kim Schmitz, masterminded a vast criminal conspiracy by operating the file-storage site Megaupload. Dotcom, on the other hand, begs to differ. One year after the high-profile raid of his home and the shut-down of one of the most popular sites on the Web, Dotcom hosted a launch party for his latest endeavor, simply called Mega. On the anniversary of the end of Megaupload, Dotcom discusses the year since his arrest and what the future holds in regards to both his court case and the Internet alike." Continue reading →
"In October 2012, the Librarian of Congress, who determines exemptions to a strict anti-hacking law called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), decided that unlocking mobile phones would no longer be allowed. Unlocking a phone frees it from restrictions that keep the device from working on more than one carrier's network, allowing it run on other networks that use the same wireless standard. This can be useful to international travellers who need their phones to work on different networks. Other people just like the freedom of being able to switch carriers as they please." Continue reading →
"A variety of firewall, VPN, and spam filtering gear sold by Barracuda Networks contains undocumented backdoor accounts that allow people to remotely log in and access sensitive information, researchers with an Austrian security firm have warned. The SSH, or secure shell, backdoor is hardcoded into 'multiple Barracuda Networks products' and can be used to gain shell access to vulnerable appliances, according to an advisory published Thursday by SEC Consult Vulnerability Lab. A timestamp and version relevant for the code that enables the backdoor bears a date from 2003, suggesting it may have existed in the Barracuda appliances for a decade." Continue reading →
"The fact is that a driverless car would slash hundreds of billions of dollars of annual revenue, or even trillions, from all sorts of entities: car makers, parts suppliers, car dealers, auto insurers, auto financiers, body shops, emergency rooms, health insurers, medical practices, personal-injury lawyers, government taxing authorities, road-construction companies, parking-lot operators, oil companies, owners of urban real estate, and on and on and on. At the same time, the driverless car will create enormously lucrative business opportunities to serve new customer needs. I’ll turn first to the revenue that is in peril and then examine the opportunities." Continue reading →
"As more and more of our personal data — and those of the people we know and are related to — gets posted online, the anonymity promised by the remove of a computer screen gets more and more elusive. That’s what a team of scientists uncovered when they started playing Sherlock with a batch of genetic data posted online for researchers to use. The data was anonymous: the participants’ names were not published. But using the information that was provided, including age and where they live, along with freely available Internet resources, the researchers were able to identify nearly 50 of the individuals in the genomic database." Continue reading →