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POPSSAIC Conflict Case Another story playing up the government's vulnerability as contractors gain clout. Pair this together with last week's reports (http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/cbo-iraq-contracts-close-to-hitting-100-billion-mark-2008-08-12.html) on the military's startling reliance on contractors in Iraq (190,000 there now). An equity analyst (ex-military) I spoke to last week on the topic mentioned that, even if political pressure mounts to rein in contractors, it would be very difficult and expensive for the government to do so.
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POPSInternet Design Flaw Makes Email Vulnerable, Too While some details leaked out early — security researchers accurately guessed parts of Kaminsky’s discovery — he was able to keep a few juicy bits secret until the talk. One of those was the susceptibility of many e-mail servers to the DNS vulnerability, an opening that gives criminals a way to plant themselves in the middle of the transmission from the sender to the recipient and redirect messages to their own servers, Kaminsky said. The result: criminals have a way not only to comb through the contents of those messages, but also to gain access to other password-protected Web sites the victims belong to. That’s because most sites have a feature that allows members to retrieve their passwords by e-mail if they’ve forgotten them. If a criminal has access to the account where that message is sent, he can then begin snooping on the contents of that account, from e-mail, to banking, to retailer sites.
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POPSLet the Hackers Hack Away I completely agree with the hackers' side of the story. Criminals will continue to pick locks and break security, whether hackers make how to do it public or not. The difference is by them making it public, we as consumers can better protect ourselves, and the companies that make the security products are required to continue making their products more secure. Both are wins for us as consumers. The only reason in my opinion, that security companies don't want people to make public how to break into their products, is because it costs them a lot of money to replace these products free of charge, and to continue spending on R&D. Why not hire hackers to try and get them to break into your products during the research phase?
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POPSOn line threats materializing faster online criminals have latched on to programs that help them automatically generate attacks based on publicly available information about vulnerabilities. In the past they apparently spent more time finding such holes themselves, but no longer find that as necessary. "The bad guys are not the ones actively finding vulnerabilities - they've shifted their business to standing on the shoulders of the security research community," Kris Lamb, operations manager for X-Force, said in an interview. "They don't have to do the hard work anymore. Their job is packaging what's been provided to them."
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POPSDeath in Small Doses A timely novel of jihad, terrorism, and vulnerability in America. The forces of death and destruction are unleashed once again on the American people. The enemies of America are plotting, the sleepers are awake and on the move. The Jihadists have entered the United States and blended with the populations of New York City and Washington DC. They are well financed, well armed, and ready to die for their beliefs. Can the attack be prevented? Will the enemy be captured or killed? Will the terrorists prevail? Find out in this fast paced novel by author Bernard Steele. If you love action, adventure and suspense this novel is for you.
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POPSPhotographs and Meditations on Death We are well used to reflections on individual mortality - it is the shaping force in the narrative of our existence. It emerges in childhood as a baffling fact, re-emerges possibly in adolescence as a tragic reality which all around us appear to be denying, then perhaps fades in busy middle life, to return, say, in a sudden premonitory bout of insomnia. One of the supreme secular meditations on death is Larkin's "Aubade": ... The sure extinction that we travel to And shall be lost in always. Not to be here, Not to be anywhere, And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true. We confront our mortality in private conversations, in the familiar consolations of religion - "That vast moth-eaten musical brocade," thought Larkin, "Created to pretend we never die."
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POPSUK Security Breach: New Batch Of Terror Files Left On Train It wants Iran to criminalise the financing of terrorism and stop illicit money being diverted to its nuclear programme. The watchdog says this is a significant vulnerability within the international financial system. It is negotiating with countries such as China, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Burma and the Comoros on their anti-terrorism policies. In 2000, an MI6 officer left a laptop in a taxi after a night drinking in a bar. Another was snatched when an MI5 officer put it down while buying a ticket at a Tube station. A Royal Navy laptop was stolen in Manchester in 2006, and an Army laptop containing data on 500 people was stolen from a recruiting office in Edinburgh in 2005.
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POPSRapid permafrost thaw expected
"Climate warming is degrading permafrost, and roads, runways and building foundations in many parts of the North have been buckling and cracking as the top layer of the ground thaws. The increasingly mushy ground also has created "drunken forests," where trees now lean at strange angles. At least 30 per cent of all the carbon stored in soils worldwide is found in the North -- and scientists worry rising temperatures will release carbon dioxide and methane, both potent greenhouse gases, now locked in the permafrost. "To me, probably the biggest uncertainty is whether methane emissions are going to go up, and if they are, by how much," says Lawrence. Last summer, the Arctic sea ice shrank to more than 30 per cent below average, setting a modern-day record. Temperatures over land in the western Arctic also were unusually warm, reaching more than 2 C above the 1978-2006 average and raising questions about whether the ice retreat was tied to the warming temperatures over land."
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POPSHacker Trick Can Destroy Hardware The idea of Chinese cyberspies blowing up your hard drive isn't fun. But as with most stories like this, the researchers are showing a proof-of-concept of the vulnerability, not an imminent threat.
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