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Researchers spoof, bypass face-recognition authentication systems
Vietnamese researchers have cracked facial recognition technology in Lenovo, Asus, and Toshiba laptops; the researchers demonstrated feat at this week's Black Hat DC event
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Cybersecurity contractor's network hacked
A large U.S. government contractor specializing in providing cybersecurity and privacy services, has warned its employees their personal information may have been stolen after hackers planted a virus on its computer network
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Nuclear mattersWorld's largest supercomputer will be used for nuclear stockpile research
IBM to build a 20 petaflops supercomputer, called Sequoia, for the Lawrence Livermore lab; a petaflop stands for a quadrillion floating-point operations per second; to put Sequoia's computing power in perspective, what it can do in one hour would take all 6.7 billion people on Earth with hand calculators 320 years, if they worked together on the calculation for 24 hours per day, 365 days a year
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Experts watch for Conficker superworm to be activated
Conficker has infected at least 9 million computers; security experts anxiously wait for it to be activated; infection dwarfs the zombie army created by the infamous Storm worm, which reached a mere 1 million at its peak in September 2007
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China syndromePair behind Chinese counterfeit computer components arrested
Two California men arrested for illegally exporting sensitive technology to China; pair also accused of conspiring to purchase counterfeit electronic components for distribution in the U.S.
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Software analyzes news reports to identify terrorists
Rice University researchers develop artificial intelligence-based computer program which can scan news reports quickly to identify which terrorist group is behind a terrorist attack being covered in the reports
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New, major weakness in Internet security reported
New weakness discovered in Internet security; the vulnerability allows impersonation of secure Web sites and e-mail servers; it also allows hackers to perform virtually undetectable phishing attacks
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IRS's IG says agency IT staff too lax
IG report says IT staff were not always saving or reviewing system audit logs, and clock settings on some firewalls and routers did not comply with IRS rules, increasing likelihood of unauthorized intrusion
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Microsoft releases critical Internet Explorer patch
The update fixes a JavaScript-related vulnerability which is being actively exploited through hacked Web sites
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Nuclear mattersRadioactive-waste tracking software deployed at U.K. nuclear sites
The radioactive-waste tracking software developed by Tennessee-based AttentionIT will be deployed in decommissioned U.K. nuclear facilities; the waste tracking software provides electronic storage of information related to "cradle to grave" treatment of radioactive and mixed waste
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Researchers inadvertently release IE7 attack code
Chinese researchers fail to note that the last security patch released by Microsoft did not take care of a problem they had earlier identified; thinking the problem has been fixed, the researchers release code that might be misused to exploit an unpatched IE 7 vulnerability
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TrendHackers target rich content files
New security report says that PDF and Flash files will be used by cybercriminals much more in 2009
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No end in sight for Moore's Law
Moore's Law lives! Worries that reduction in transistor size to below ~20 nm would create heating and quantum effects so severe that such transistors will not be of practical use (read: an end to Moore's Law) are misplaced; researchers show the Moore's Law will obtain for a while yet
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DSL routers vulnerable to malware attacks
New reports says DSL modems are susceptible to attacks more typically associated with Web sites: Hackers can insert malware onto the victim's computer or recruit the computer as a bot for a botnet
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TrendEU considers allowing police to place Trojans on suspects' computers
Remote searches of suspects' computers could become a mainstay of cybercrime investigations under a new EU strategy announced last week
The Long View
DARPA seeks deep-learning AI to cope with flood of information
The growing use of UAVs to loiter over enemy territory and send images and streaming videos back to HQ has created a glut of information; DARPA seeks a better, deeper, and more layered artificial intelligence to help the intelligence community cope with the avalanche of information coming in
No end in sight for Moore's Law
Moore's Law lives! Worries that reduction in transistor size to below ~20 nm would create heating and quantum effects so severe that such transistors will not be of practical use (read: an end to Moore's Law) are misplaced; researchers show the Moore's Law will obtain for a while yet
Good code, bad computations: A computer security vulnerability
Beware of return-oriented programming -- that is, if you want to make sure your computer or server is not tricked into undertaking malicious or undesirable behavior
