How does someone in Moscow step up to a cash machine and withdraw money from an account holder half a world away? Even when the debit card is still in the victim’s wallet? To show me how easy it was, two executives from MagTek Inc., one of the largest makers of credit card stripe readers, visited MSNBC.com and gave a demonstration.
Tags: computer security, Digg, security
The 4GB flash drive encrypts all data with 128-bit AES, and then adds an extra layer of security: a self destruct feature. If anyone tries to use a brute-force attack to guess your password, the drive will automatically erase itself after 25 wrong guesses.
Now that’s what I call secure, or at least it would seem to be. The 128-bit AES encryption should be enough to prevent a brute-force attack in any case but the 25 guess limit adds a good second tier of security.
A question does come to mind though what is to prevent the copying of the encrypted data off the drive to stage a brute-force attack on the data using a different machine?
Tags: computer security, Digg, security
Ho wow, very amazing, i never seen something like that built with Lego. Include all the staff !! (With screenshots)
This is friggin awesome. Fucking unbelievably detailed, I want one.
read more | digg story
The movie V for Vendetta based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore is in cinemas from today and is stirring up controversy for a whole variety of reasons.
Debbie Schlussel: “V” for Propaganda
Time Warner promotes terrorism and anti-Christian bigotry in new leftist movie, ‘V for Vendetta’
The BBC wildlife documentary Planet Earth is just simply stunning and worth a fair chunk of the licence fee all by itself. The footage of the snow leopard and her cub was quite magnificent and to discover that it took so much effort by the cameramen really puts it in perspective.
To basically sit on a mountain for weeks including over Christmas and New Year just waiting for that rare sighting to enable them to set up the cameras to catch the shots shows amazing fortitude. I’m in awe of their work.
The story of the giant panda and her new-born cub was heartbreaking simply because of the ludicrousness of their knife-edge existence. To have evolved to live on such a select diet of bamboo that exists only in a certain elevation of the highlands of China and that is so nutritionally poor is astonishing and bewildering. Panda cubs do not generally survive very long as the milk of their mothers is as nutritionally poor as their mother’s diet of bamboo.
Amazingly crisp and clear shots of the mother panda in her den tending to her new-born and again showed the skill of the BBC cameramen who was able to get these shots.
The Guardian has started a campaign to get the UK Government to stop charging for tax payer funded data; in the USA, it’s free – allowing the creation of great tools like Google Maps. Get behind it!
read more | digg story
Tags: Digg
I think the sexual predators have more to fear of the MySpace generation of kids than vice versa these days.
Boys’ MySpace prank results in sex crime arrest
Man allegedly tried to meet fictitious 15-year-old girl for sex
Tags: sex
The BBC showed tonight a Panorama documentary presented by Peter Taylor about the events of July 22nd 2005 that saw the killing of the Brazilian electrician Jean Charles De Menezes by firearms officers of the Metropolitan Police force.
No new evidence was revealed but it was good to have all the little bits of information that have leaked slowly out about the operation presented together as a whole here.
I think the most striking thing was that in contrast to the Israeli policy concerning suicide bombers where the bomb or suicide belt must be seen before the order to shoot to kill is given there is no such need contained within the Operation Kratos guidelines.
Officers operating under the Kratos guidelines must be sure that such a device is present but need not actually see it.
Also the Designated Senior Officer must give the order to fire but the firearms officers radios could not communicate with the command center as they were underground. Therefore the order was not given by the DSO immediately prior to the shooting, it was either given at a time before the officers had entered the underground station or was not given at all.
There was also in the programme the slightly bizarre denial that there was a shoot-to-kill policy to deal with suicide bombers but admission that the policy was to shoot at the head in order to cause immediate incapacity of the bomber. Now I’m sure there is a very slim chance that a person could survive being shot in the head to the extent that they have become incapacitated. So whilst strictly speaking the purpose isn’t to kill it will in all but the very rarest of circumstances actually result in the killing of the bomber.
The Guardian: Surveillance on drivers may be increased
The case for cameras to be focused on people using mobiles as they drive is made by the independent adviser to the transport select committee, Robert Gifford, of the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety (Pacts).
He argues that automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) technology should be applied in new ways to help defray costs of cameras and to catch offenders. “One of the good things about ANPR is that people are often multiple offenders so it would provide useful intelligence,” he said. “Those responsible for 7/7 got to Luton station by car.”
My god why is it necessary to mention terrorists or terrorism every time there is mention of new applications of surveillance technologies. Mr Gifford seems to mention it as an aside but the implication is that perhaps 7/7 could have been prevented if the system was in operation at the time. It’s like he feels the need to justify the use of surveillance by using our greatest fears. But why should that surprise me it is what has become almost a standard line by government spokesmen so why not independent advisors also.
Mr Gifford said expanding the use of technology for tracking the movements of cars could lead police to people who had committed other offences in the same way that Al Capone was eventually caught through his income tax evasion. He claimed that for greater safety and “the greater good of society”, most people would be prepared to accept “a slight reduction of our liberty”.
Interesting that the public don’t actually get to say whether they wish to give up some liberty in order for the greater good of society.
In any case as Marcel Berlins writes it’s not a civil liberties issue.
Currently being floated in parliament is a proposal for more road surveillance cameras, partly to catch out motorists who use mobile phones while driving. I have seen several accidents caused by chatting drivers; someone I knew quite well was killed because she was talking and driving at the same time. I would have expected the proposal, aimed at deterring dangerous conduct and thereby reducing accidents and saving lives, to be greeted with enthusiasm. But no.
The whingers have emerged. It would cost too much; the technology isn’t good enough; it won’t prevent accidents; it’s a cynical scheme to make money by fining the poor put-upon British motorist; Britain has become the most watched country in the world. To the last of those ill-founded objections I say, “So what?” I don’t care how many cameras we have on the roads, provided they are used for the public good, which, to my mind, includes catching dangerous drivers and lowering fatalities. This is not a civil liberties issue.
If this technology leads to prosecutions of people like Donna Marie Maddock who was caught on camera driving whilst using both hands to apply makeup then it surely is a good thing.
But I think Mr. Berlins is mistaken in believing that the issue of whether the technology will work is irrelevant.
It’s pointless to expand the system to catch people talking on mobile phones or applying makeup if the technology isn’t good enough to distinguish between those behaviours and innocent actions such as scratching one’s ear or sneezing or something equally innocuous. I don’t know what the true case is but you wouldn’t use speed cameras if the technology was unable to tell if a car was travelling at a legal speed of 56 MPH and an illegal 72 MPH so it clearly is an issue that needs to be at least considered before implementation.
Also it would seem to me that if every single motor vehicle is scanned by the ANPR then there may be a civil liberties issue here as well depending on what is done with the data. I wrote briefly last year in a much longer post about the use of ANPR in Bath following this article in The Bath Chronicle: Cameras scan for criminals.
It’s fine if my number plate is scanned, checked against the database of offenders and then discarded but if my travel into Bath is logged then eventually the police will have built up a log of my movements into and out of the city along with every other drivers’.
Tags: liberty, surveillance, terrorism
Government plans to make all passport applicants also have an ID card have been defeated in the Lords reports the BBC.
Tags: ID cards