Eideard

A Brooklyn-based artist has caught the attention of the Secret Service after installing a computer program on Apple Store computers that takes Webcam photos every two minutes, and posting those images on the Internet…

Kyle McDonald took the photos and posted them on a Tumblr blog called “People Staring at Computers.” He told Mashable that he got permission from Apple security guards to take photos in the store, but it’s unclear if they were aware that McDonald also meant installing software and snapping Webcam shots. Given that it attracted Secret Service attention, it’s safe to say that not everyone was excited by the project.

When asked on Twitter if he got permission from every person whose photo appeared on his blog, McDonald said no because “as i understand, photography in open spaces is legal unless explicitly prohibited.” He will, however, remove any photos if asked, he said. Well, duh?

It appears McDonald was committed, however; Apple wipes its computers every night, so he had to reinstall the program every day he took photos, Mashable reports. That program focused only on photos…

McDonald said the warrant he received from the Secret Service said his actions violated 18 USC section 1030. That deals with “fraud and related activity in connection with computers,” and covers, among other things, accessing a computer without authorization…

He took 1,000 photos over three days at computers in New York Apple Stores…

Sounds like a creep to me. Wonder if he considers public restrooms to be public spaces, too?

A belief that heaven or an afterlife awaits us is a “fairy story” for people afraid of death, Stephen Hawking has said.

In a dismissal that underlines his firm rejection of religious comforts, Britain’s most eminent scientist said there was nothing beyond the moment when the brain flickers for the final time.

Hawking, who was diagnosed with motor neurone disease at the age of 21, shares his thoughts on death, human purpose and our chance existence in an exclusive interview with the Guardian…

The incurable illness was expected to kill Hawking within a few years of its symptoms arising, an outlook that turned the young scientist to Wagner, but ultimately led him to enjoy life more, he has said, despite the cloud hanging over his future.

“I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I’m not afraid of death, but I’m in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first,” he said.

“I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark,” he added.

Hawking’s latest comments go beyond those laid out in his 2010 book, The Grand Design, in which he asserted that there is no need for a creator to explain the existence of the universe…

The physicist’s remarks draw a stark line between the use of God as a metaphor and the belief in an omniscient creator whose hands guide the workings of the cosmos…

In the interview, Hawking rejected the notion of life beyond death and emphasised the need to fulfil our potential on Earth by making good use of our lives. In answer to a question on how we should live, he said, simply: “We should seek the greatest value of our action.”

In answering another, he wrote of the beauty of science, such as the exquisite double helix of DNA in biology, or the fundamental equations of physics…

He argues that tiny quantum fluctuations in the very early universe became the seeds from which galaxies, stars, and ultimately human life emerged. “Science predicts that many different kinds of universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing. It is a matter of chance which we are in,” he said.

Hawking’s writings are brilliant and inspiring. In fact, like much of the work described by John Brockman as “The third culture – those scientists and other thinkers in the empirical world who, through their work and expository writing, are taking the place of the traditional intellectual in rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are.”

Most of the authors thought their answers would be proven within 50 years.

The FBI’s unprecedented effort to behead the Coreflood botnet — comprising millions of hacked Windows machines — appears to be working, at least for now. The bureau has tracked a dramatic decline in the number of pings from the botnet since the takedown operation began earlier this month…

The government’s efforts have “temporarily stopped Coreflood from running on infected computers in the United States,” writes the government in its filing, “and have stopped Coreflood from updating itself, thereby enabling anti-virus software vendors to release new virus signatures that can recognize the latest versions of Coreflood.”

The Justice Department asked the court to extend authorization for “Operation Adeona” for an additional 30 days, through May 25, so the feds can continue to temporarily disable the malware as it reports in from infected hosts. The court approved the request on Monday.

Interestingly, the new filing also hints that the government may soon formally seek court permission to take the next step, and actually instruct infected computers to permanently uninstall the malware. It would be the first time a government agency automatically removed code from Americans’ computers.

“The process has been successfully tested by the FBI on computers infected with Coreflood for testing purposes,” writes FBI Special Agent Briana Neumiller in a declaration to the court…

At the beginning of 2010, Coreflood encompassed more than 2 million infected machines worldwide, the majority of them in the U.S. Coreflood is malicious software used by its controllers to steal online banking credentials from a victim’s computer to loot their financial accounts. In one case, the criminals managed to initiate more than $900,000 in fraudulent wire transfers from the bank account of a defense contractor in Tennessee before they were discovered. An investment company in North Carolina lost more than $150,000 in fraudulent wire transfers.

The culture of embarrassment continues to overlay most successful uses of malicious software. The firms and individuals who have infected computers are loath to admit their carelessness and loss. Many banks don’t want these tales publicized for fear of losing accounts – even though banks are rarely penetrated.

And software companies selling defenses against such attacks usually end up sounding like a commercial for their own products – when discussing such attacks.

An audit of New Jersey state computers to be sold at public auction found that the vast majority of the machines’ hard drives had not been erased.

A report just released…said officials had discovered computers containing child-abuse reports, health records, Social Security numbers, and a state judge’s confidential memoranda and tax returns….

State rules require agencies to erase data from decommissioned computers before sending them to other agencies or to be auctioned to the public. The computers examined in the audit came from courts, the Department of Health and Senior Services, the Office of Administrative Law, and the Department of Children and Families.

Here’s the part I really love -

Employees from an unidentified state agency told auditors that they were reluctant to sweep the hard drives because the necessary equipment was noisy and they feared the magnetic fields it generated…

The audit followed the discovery in 2007 that employees at the warehouse where computers were stored before auction were selling parts as scrap and rigging the auctions. Five employees were charged; four have pleaded guilty and were fired.

It is unclear how many computers moved through the warehouse. The comptroller’s office said it could identify 2,357 pieces of equipment, including desktop computers, laptops, and other items, that were distributed to other agencies. But it could not say how much equipment the warehouse had auctioned.

“That’s part of the problem. The record-keeping is very poor to nonexistent,” said Pete McAleer, spokesman for the office.

The other part of the problem is employees who fail to do their job for some of the dumbest reasons possible.

Thanks, Helen

Daylife/Reuters pictures used by permission

NASA failed to delete sensitive data on computers and hard drives before selling the equipment as part of its plan to end the Space Shuttle program, an audit released on Tuesday shows…

“Our review found serious breaches in NASA’s IT security practices that could lead to the improper release of sensitive information related to the Space Shuttle and other NASA programs,” NASA Inspector General Paul Martin said in a statement…

The report cites 14 computers from the Kennedy Space Center that failed tests to determine if they were sanitized of sensitive information, 10 of which already had been released to the public. It also found that hard drives were missing from Kennedy and from the Langley Research Center in Virginia. Some of the Kennedy hard drives were later found inside a dumpster, where they were being stored before sale, that was accessible to the public, the audit says.

Investigators also found several pallets of computers being prepared for sale that were marked with NASA Internet Protocol addresses, which the report said could help hackers gain access to the NASA internal computer network.

As hard as some departments in our government work at increasing security, it feels like this sort of incompetence surfaces weekly.

Is NASA leaving these tasks to building maintenance or what?

Public officials are to use satnav devices to log the coordinates of dog mess on the streets of Toulouse, southern France.

Police and council staff will use hand-held computers to position and photograph the offending pile – then email the location to street cleaners.

The experiment, which Toulouse council says is a world first, comes after a flood of complaints about the increasingly dog-fouled streets.

A town hall spokesman said the project would be tested for six months next year. He added: “While reports of the dirty state of our roads are often exaggerated, no one can now say we are not on top of the problem.”

The scheme comes after a council chief in Paris claimed this summer that dog mess on the capital’s streets was to blame for not winning the 2012 Olympics…

Staff working at the city hall claim the situation has now improved, with motorised ‘pooper scoopers’ and higher fines combating the problem.

Har!

The shipment of laptop computers that arrived in Iraq’s main seaport in February was a small but important part of the American military’s mission here to win hearts and minds. What happened afterward is a tale of good intentions mugged by Iraq’s reality.

The computers — 8,080 in all, worth $1.8 million — were bought for schoolchildren in Babil, modern-day Babylon, a gift of the American taxpayers. Only they became mired for months in customs at the port, Umm Qasr, stalled by bureaucracy or venality, or some combination of the two. And then they were gone.

Corruption is so rampant here — and American reconstruction efforts so replete with their own mismanagement — that the fate of the computers could have ended as an anecdote in a familiar, if disturbing trend. Iraq, after all, ranks above only Sudan, Myanmar, Afghanistan and Somalia on Transparency International’s annual corruption index.

But the American military commander in southern Iraq, Maj. Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, was clearly furious. Even if the culprits are not exactly known, the victims are: Iraqi children and American taxpayers. He issued a rare and stinging public rebuke of a government that the United States hopes to treat as an equal, strategic partner — flawed, perhaps, but getting better.

In a statement, he demanded an investigation into the actions of “a senior Umm Qasr official,” who, even now, has not been identified…

Then, in August, Iraqis auctioned off 4,200 of the computers — for $45,700. The whereabouts of the rest are unknown…

In early September, the auctioned computers were recovered, according to Iraqi officials, who nevertheless declined to discuss how or where. They had been sold to a businessman in Basra, Hussein Nuri al-Hassan. He could not be found last week at the address he gave when buying the computers..

None of the officials, most of whom would speak only on the condition of anonymity, could explain what happened to the rest of the computers…

RTFA. There’s lots of detail before the disappearance – and after. You should be able to imagine most of it.

I don’t think things were especially different before we started on this neocon, nation-building adventure in the Middle East. Not in my experience, anyway. But, watching our government trying week after week to put a shiny coat of wax on a rusty 1957 Plymouth – and call it a Chrysler Imperial – is a farce.

Which kind of robot will be the first to arise and smite us? A study called Experimental Security Analysis of a Modern Automobile suggests we keep an eye on the family car…

Unlike the mindless jalopies of the past, it points out, “Today’s automobile is no mere mechanical device, but contains a myriad of computers.”

This myriad has powers to do good things for us humans, as well as bad things to us. Already, in some cases, the microchip hordes quietly, beneficently take control from the driver. The Lexus LS460 luxury sedan can automatically parallel-park itself. Many General Motors cars will soon have what the study calls “integration with Twitter”…

Limiting themselves to the here and now (“we concern ourselves solely with the vulnerabilities in today’s commercially available automobiles”), they tell, in professionally dull, let’s-remember-we’re-engineers fashion, how they conducted an experimental reign of terror…

The study focuses on automobiles. But indirectly, it forsees the day when our very toasters and teapots might turn against us. There is little publicly available research about the threat of hijackable household appliances.

In 1996, security experts based partly at the Rand Corporation wrote a report called Information Terrorism: Can You Trust Your Toaster?

No doubt Karl Rove still has a copy.

OTOH – I admit to have occasional concerns about my satellite TV DVR. I’ve been up in the middle of the night and witnessed strange patterns flashing in the assorted lights on the front control panel.

Last one out the door at night – turn out the lights!

When a corporation as large as Ford decides to do something as simple as shutting down its computers at night, the savings can be astronomical. In the case of Ford, powering down computers can save the company $1.2 million each year.

The new program called PC Power Management, utilizes energy saving settings provided by Microsoft Windows. The energy settings will be used on company laptops and desktops to reduce energy waste. A managed shutdown will occur each night and during the weekend period. Additionally, computers will be awake to receive updates during pre-selected non-business hours, freeing up time previously used for updates throughout the working day.

According to Ford, an estimated 60 percent of the company’s computers remained on after business hours resulting in wasted energy. The new managed shutdown will eliminate waste to the tune of over a million dollars in savings for the company and reduce its carbon footprint by an estimated 16,000-25,000 metric tons per year.

The folks at autobloggreen have the whole press release at their site.

Rock on, Mulally!

Faraday Cage VW for nutballs

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood says his agency is widening its probe of sudden acceleration complaints in Toyota Motor Corp. vehicles to look at the possibility of electromagnetic interference with electronic throttle systems, and said he wants to talk directly with company Chief Executive Akio Toyoda…

The car industry could face a broader challenge because of Mr. LaHood’s decision to have the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigate claims that electromagnetic interference could cause electronic throttle systems such as those used in many Toyota models to malfunction.

That in turn could raise questions about the industry’s wholesale move to computerized systems, done in part to meet fuel-efficiency requirements…

Electronic throttles replace mechanical links between the gas pedal and the throttle with electronic relays. The systems, used widely in the industry, reduce vehicle weight and fuel waste.

NHTSA said it had begun a “fresh look” at both electronic throttle control systems and the possible effects of electromagnetic interference on them. The agency said it has no reason at this point to believe there are safety defects in the systems or in their ability to function when exposed to electromagnetic interference.

Instead, it is “a background examination of the underlying technological issues,” NHTSA said.

This is either CYA PR or there are enough tinfoil hats in Congress to mandate more foolishness.

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