Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

The CNCI consists of a number of mutually reinforcing initiatives with the following major goals designed to help secure the United States in cyberspace: To establish a front line of defense against today’s immediate threats by creating or enhancing shared situational awareness of network vulnerabilities, threats, and events within the Federal Government—and ultimately with state, local, and tribal governments and private sector partners—and the ability to act quickly to reduce our current vulnerabilities and prevent intrusions. To defend against the full spectrum of threats by enhancing U.S. counterintelligence capabilities and increasing the security of the supply chain for key information technologies. To strengthen the future cybersecurity environment by expanding cyber education; coordinating and redirecting research and development efforts across the Federal Government; and working to define and develop strategies to deter hostile or malicious activity in cyberspace.

"The only way programming errors can be eradicated is by making software development organizations legally liable for the errors," he said. SANS and Mitre, a Bedford, Mass.-based government contractor, also released their second annual list of the top 25 security errors made by programmers. The authors said those errors have been at the root of almost every major type of cyberattack, including the recent hacks of Google and numerous utilities and government agencies. According to the list, the most common mistakes continue to involve SQL injection errors, cross-site scripting flaws and buffer overflow vulnerabilities. All three have been well-known problems for

The DMCA Chills Free Expression and Scientific Research. Experience with section 1201 demonstrates that it is being used to stifle free speech and scientific research. The lawsuit against 2600 magazine, threats against Princeton Professor Edward Felten's team of researchers, and prosecution of Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov have chilled the legitimate activities of journalists, publishers, scientists, students, programmers, and members of the public. The DMCA Jeopardizes Fair Use. By banning all acts of circumvention, and all technologies and tools that can be used for circumvention, the DMCA grants to copyright owners the power to unilaterally eliminate the public's fair use rights. Already, the movie industry's use of encryption on DVDs has curtailed consumers' ability to make legitimate, personal-use copies of movies they have purchased. The DMCA Impedes Competition and Innovation. Rather than focusing on pirates, some have wielded the DMCA to hinder legitimate competitors. For example, the DMCA has been used to block aftermarket competition in laser printer toner cartridges, garage door openers, and computer maintenance services. Similarly, Apple has used the DMCA to tie its iPhone and iPod devices to Apple's own software and services. The DMCA Interferes with Computer Intrusion Laws. Further, the DMCA has been misused as a general-purpose prohibition on computer network access, a task for which it was not designed and to which it is ill-suited. For example, a disgruntled employer used the DMCA against a former contractor for simply connecting to the company's computer system through a virtual private network ("VPN").

Known as 'polyandry' among scientists, the phenomenon of females having multiple mates is shared across most animal species, from insects to mammals. This study suggests that polyandry reduces the risk of populations becoming extinct because of all-female broods being born. This can sometimes occur as a result of a sex-ratio distortion (SR) chromosome, which results in all of the Y chromosome 'male' sperm being killed before fertilisation. The all-female offspring will carry the SR chromosome, which will be passed on to their sons in turn resulting in more all-female broods. Eventually there will be no males and the population will die out. For this study, the scientists worked with the fruitfly Drosophila pseudoobscura. They gave some populations the opportunity to mate naturally, meaning that the females had multiple partners. The others were restricted to having one mate each. They bred several generations of these populations, so they could see how each fared over time. Over fifteen generations, five of the twelve populations that had been monogamous became extinct as a result of males dying out. The SR chromosome was far less prevalent in the populations in which females had the opportunity to have multiple mates and none of these populations became extinct. The study shows how having multiple mates can suppress the spread of the SR chromosome, making all-female broods a rarity. This is because males that carry the SR chromosome produce only half as many sperm as normal males. When a female mates with multiple males, their sperm will compete to fertilise her eggs. The few sperm produced by males carrying the SR chromosome are out-competed by the sperm from normal males, and the SR chromosome cannot spread.

Bloomberg.com has reported that the Obama administration is planning to launch an official complaint against China with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) pertaining to the country's stringent web censorship policies. Illinois Senator Richard Durbin has announced that he plans to pass a legislation that will allow the government to prosecute US internet companies if they violate the human rights of their customers when a foreign government asks them to do so. 

GPS jammers send out a radio signal that’s the same frequency as the satellite signal. Since GPS satellite signals are weak, a GPS jamming device that puts out approximately 2 watts is sufficient to disrupt a GPS signal in a vehicle that’s approximately within 10 feet of the device. This leaves the in-vehicle system unable to establish its position and report back to a GPS tracking center, where the vehicle is registered. There are also fears that terrorists can use these devices to disrupt air traffic and cause severe safety and economic damage to the US. More powerful jammers could disrupt GPS signals in close proximity of airports, causing safety concerns. Our military overseas use GPS extensively to record their position as well as the position of the enemy. With GPS jamming devices in the hands of our enemy, U.S. and allied forces can be severely impacted when launching ground and air-strikes.

Microsoft revealed on Wednesday that it gained a court order that compelled VeriSign, the .com registry, to remove 277 ".com" names from its rolls, effectively cutting off communication between the Waledac's controllers and their infected machines. The legal action is unprecedented at the domain name level, said Andre' M. DiMino, co-founder of The Shadowserver Foundation, a group that tracks botnets and helped take down Waledac. In June 2009, a federal court ordered the shutdown of 3FN, a rogue ISP supplying connectivity to botnets such as Pushdo and Mega-D, but this appears to be the first major action at the domain-name level. "It's definitely pretty groundbreaking," DiMino said. "To disable and disrupt a botnet at this level is really pulling the weed out by the root." But behind the scenes, Microsoft's legal action was just one component of a synchronized campaign to bring down Waledac. Last year, researchers with the University of Mannheim in Germany and Technical University Vienna in Austria published a research paper showing how it was possible to infiltrate and control the Waledec botnet. They had studied Waledac's complicated peer-to-peer communication mechanism. Microsoft -- which was annoyed by Waledec due to its spamming of Hotmail accounts -- contacted those researchers about two weeks ago to see if they could perform their attack for real, according one of the University of Mannheim researchers, who did not want to be identified. "They asked me if there was also a way besides taking down those domains of redirecting the command-and-control traffic," said the Mannheim researcher. Waledac distributes instructions through command-and-control servers that work with a peer-to-peer system. Led by a researcher who did his bachelor thesis on Waledac, the action began early this week. "This was more or less an aggressive form of what we did before," the Mannheim researcher said. "We disrupted the peer-to-peer layer to redirect traffic not to botmaster servers but to our servers." At the same time, Microsoft's legal efforts brought down domain names that were used to send new instructions to drones. The result has been dramatic: Up to 90 percent of the infected machines, which amount to at least 60,000 computers, are now controlled by researchers, half of which are in the U.S. and Europe and the rest scattered around the globe.