Eideard

The U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve have delayed the implementation date for a new Internet gambling payment ban for six months, a move that gives lawmakers time to overturn it or end confusion over illegal practices.

In a joint statement, the Treasury and Fed said the December 1 implementation date for the law passed in 2006 would not be achievable for some financial institutions. They set a new compliance deadline of June 1, 2010.

“Commentators expressed concern that the act and the final regulation do not provide a clear definition of ‘unlawful Internet gambling,’ which is central to compliance,” the two agencies said.

In addition, they said certain members of Congress have “expressed an intent to consider legislation that would allow problematic aspects of the act to be addressed.”

The 2006 law, which cost European Internet gambling companies billions of euros in lost market value, prohibits credit card, check, and electronic fund transfer payments by U.S.-regulated financial institutions in connection with “unlawful Internet gambling.”

But rather than define what types of gambling are illegal online, the bill relied on existing federal and state laws to answer that question.

Congress passed the anti-gambling legislation in 2006, when Republicans still controlled both the House and Senate. The final regulations issued to enforce the ban were issued by the Treasury and Fed just before former President George W. Bush left office in January.

In America you have the right to be stupid as long as it’s not immoral. You can vote for a moron but not play bingo online.

An ATM vendor has succeeded in getting a security talk pulled from the upcoming Black Hat conference after a researcher announced he would demonstrate a vulnerability in the system.

Barnaby Jack, a researcher with Juniper Networks, was to present a demonstration showing how he could “jackpot” a popular ATM brand by exploiting a vulnerability in its software.

Jack was scheduled to present his talk at the upcoming Black Hat security conference being held in Las Vegas at the end of July. But on Monday evening, his employer released a statement saying it was canceling the talk due to the vendor’s intervention.

“Juniper believes that Jack’s research is important to be presented in a public forum in order to advance the state of security,” the statement read. “However, the affected ATM vendor has expressed to us concern about publicly disclosing the research findings before its constituents were fully protected. Considering the scope and possible exposure of this issue on other vendors, Juniper decided to postpone Jack’s presentation until all affected vendors have sufficiently addressed the issues found in his research.”

In the description of his talk on the conference web site, Jack wrote that, “The most prevalent attacks on Automated Teller Machines typically involve the use of card skimmers, or the physical theft of the machines themselves. Rarely do we see any targeted attacks on the underlying software. This presentation will retrace the steps I took to interface with, analyze, and find a vulnerability in a line of popular new model ATM’s. The presentation will explore both local and remote attack vectors, and finish with a live demonstration of an attack on an unmodified, stock ATM…”

He can present it later. Missing the thrill of dazzling his peers ain’t as important as satisfying the goal of communicating security flaws to all concerned parties. Especially since Juniper participated in that decision.

Back into the garage, again…
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

Boeing’s share price dropped by nearly 9 per cent in intraday trading yesterday after it postponed the initial test flight of its first new aircraft in more than ten years.

The company said that problems with the body of the revolutionary 787 Dreamliner had forced it to delay the test, which had been scheduled for this month.

Boeing said that it would be several weeks before it could announce a new test flight date or details on how far the delay would push back the delivery of the Dreamliner, which is the company’s first new aircraft since the 777 was developed more than a decade ago.

This marks the fifth time that the test flight has been postponed, damaging Boeing’s credibility when it is struggling with cancelled orders because of the economic downturn…

The aircraft was originally scheduled to make its first flight in summer 2007, with delivery to airlines by early last year, but the test has been delayed four times because of design or production problems.

With the economic downturn hitting business in the travel industry, airlines have cancelled their orders for 45 Dreamliners, although Boeing said this month that it had orders for more than 850 of the aircraft.

“Disappointing” is hardly the appropriate term.

When the world market is down to two firms competing at this size of passenger aircraft, delays give a giant boost to your competitor. In this case, the crew at Airbus. The 380 is rolling out the door.