It would appear that our beloved ‘moses’,of #hackuk / #2600uk fame, has gone and got himself engaged. Now living in sunny Perth, Australia, moses is set to marry his fiance, Krysty, in November 2007.
So, from everyone at 2600uk.com and the old school crew of Undernet. Congratulations! :D
Slashdot is running a story today sourced from Live Science on the patent application of an Iris Scanning technology that could see large scale deployment in the future for advertising and tracking purposes. For anyone who has seen The Minority Report, this will be a familiar scenario.
From the patent application:
“…a system for obtaining iris biometric information includes an array of cameras defining an image capture volume for capturing an image of an iris; and an image processor, coupled to the array of cameras, for determining at least one suitable iris image for processing from the images generated for the image capture volume … A subject within the capture volume is repeatedly imaged to produce a plurality of images of the subject. The plurality of images are processed to extract at least one clear image of the subject’s iris.”
The usual, and agreeable, Slashdot sceptism can be found on the articles comments page
From Slashdot:
“Security researcher Alex Ionescu claims to have successfully bypassed the much discussed DRM protection in Windows Vista, called ‘Protected Media Path’ (PMP), which is designed to seriously degrade the playback quality of any video and audio running on systems with hardware components not explicitly approved by Microsoft. The bypass of the DRM protection was in turn performed by breaking the Driver Signing / PatchGuard protection in the new operating system. Alex is now quite nervous about what an army of lawyers backed by draconian copyright laws could do to him if he released the details, but he claims to be currently looking into the details of safely releasing his details about this at the moment though.”
Robbed from slashdot, philba writes informing us that home theaters may become the new jurisdiction of our MPAA overlords. The MPAA is lobbying to make sure that home users authorize their entertainment systems before any in-home viewings.
From the article: “The MPAA defines a home theater as any home with a television larger than 29″ with stereo sound and at least two comfortable chairs, couch, or futon. Anyone with a home theater would need to pay a $50 registration fee with the MPAA or face fines up to $500,000 per movie shown.”
Original Post : Slashdot - MPAA Goes After Home Entertainment Systems
From the BBC:
Motorists who get stopped by the police could have their fingerprints taken at the roadside, under a new plan to help officers check people’s identities.
A hand-held device being tested by 10 forces in England and Wales is linked to a database of 6.5m prints which police say they will save time because people will no longer have to go to the station to prove their identity. Whilst officers promise prints will not be kept on file but concerns have been raised about civil liberties.
Bedfordshire are the first force to use the equipment, which is being distributed among the forces in Essex, Hertfordshire, Lancashire, North Wales, Northamptonshire, West Midlands and West Yorkshire, as well as to British Transport Police and the Metropolitan Police, over the next two months.
It is primarily aimed at motorists because banned or uninsured drivers often give false names, although pedestrians could also be asked to give prints if they are suspected to have committed an offence.
Police Minister Tony McNulty said:”The new technology will speed up the time it takes for police to identify individuals at the roadside, enabling them to spend more time on the frontline and reducing any inconvenience for innocent members of the public.”
Under the pilot, codenamed Lantern, police officers will be able to check the fingerprints from both index fingers of the suspect - with their permission - against a central computer database, with a response within a few minutes.
“The handheld, capture device is little bigger than a PDA,” said Chris Wheeler, head of fingerprint identification at the Police Information Technology Organisation PITO. “Screening on the street means they [police] can check an identity and verify it.”
Currently an officer has to arrest a person and take them to a custody suite to fingerprint them.
Electronic safeguards
The device will be used with the Automatic Number Plate Recognition team, who identify vehicles of interest.
If a vehicle is stopped, police will be able to identify the driver and passengers. At present about 60% of drivers stopped do not give their true identity.
Inspector Steve Rawlings, based in Luton, said it takes two sets of fingerprints and the fingerprints are not retained.
“The encounter can be 15 minutes on the roadside rather than three hours in the police station,he said.
The device has an accuracy of 94-95% and will be used for identification purposes only, say police, and there are electronic safeguards to prevent misuse.
It sends encrypted data to the national ID system using GPRS - a wireless system used by many mobile phones.
More than 6.5 million fingerprints are cross-referenced and sent back to the officer.
Mark Wallace, who represents the civil liberties group the Freedom Association, told BBC Radio Five Live that he had concerns about the scheme.
“I don’t think we should be reassured by the fact that at the moment it’s voluntary and at the moment they won’t be recorded”, he said.
“Both of those things are actually only happening in the trial because the laws haven’t been passed to do this on a national basis compulsorily and with recording.”
Original Article : BBC News - Police to fingerprint on streets
Help fight for your privacy and freedom at www.no2id.net
A much talked about incident recently occurred in the states, whereby an Iranian-American student at the University of California was tasered up to five times after failing to produce his BruinCard during a random check at the campus library.
Please distribute this video so that we may make an effort to bring those responsible to justice and hope that they are severely reprimanded.
This video has also sparked an interesting debate on Slashdot as to the ubiquity of video phone technology and its roll in todays society. One mans claim has now given rise to a global backing in what could prove to be an important turn in justice issues.
More Information : Original YouTube Posting
Recently, users of GRISoft’s AVG Free Anti Virus software have been subjected to software popups informing them that, come 15 January 2007, their AVG Free protection will expire and they will be required to pay for the fully supported version of the popular anti virus system.
Fortunately, some confusion has arisen. GRISoft have stated that they will continue to offer the Free variant of the AVG software, and that the popup, whilst badly written, only serves to inform users of the upgrade from version 7.1 to version 7.5. The newer versions offer increased performance and compatibility with the upcoming Vista operating system.
zbuffered at Slashdot writes,
“Today, Mozilla made public bug #360493, which exposes Firefox’s Password Manager on many public sites. The flaw derives from Firefox’s willingness to supply the username and password stored on one page on a domain to another page on a domain. For example, username/password input tags on a Myspace user’s site will be unhelpfully propagated with the visitor’s Myspace.com credentials. It was first discovered in the wild by Netcraft on Oct. 27. As this proof-of-concept illustrates, because the username/password fields need not be visible on the page, your password can be stolen in an almost completely transparent fashion. Stopgap solutions include avoiding using Password Manager and the Master Password Timeout Firefox extension, which will at least cause a prompt before the fields are filled. However, in the original case detailed in the bug report, the phish mimicked the login.myspace.com site almost perfectly, causing many users to believe they needed to log in. A description of this new type of attack, dubbed the Reverse Cross-Site Request (RCSR) vulnerability, is available from the bug’s original author.”
More Information: Bugzilla Bug 360493
Police patrolmen in the Haringey area of London have recently been issued with a new camera system that will enable them to record their surroundings at a full 360 degrees simultaneously.
The new device comprises of 8 small cameras, each about the size of a single AA battery, and can be activated at the flick of a switch.
Detective superintendent Richard Wood said: “Should anyone commit any offences the officers will instantly have the evidence to hand to help them apply for an ASBO or pursue criminal charges. If the cameras prove successful they will be deployed to other units within Haringey and could be used to assist police raids and officers working at football matches.”
Needless to say, at £1,800 a pop, the new units will be an expensive addition to Big Brothers arsenal, and no doubt subjected to the odd misplaced pint glass or two.
It has just come to my attention that, last week, a rather hilarious example of skiddie stupidty occured whereby a 13 year old game enthusiast attempted to gain the login details of a gamer from Tennessee.
The 13 year old, posing as a Valve worker, started up a chat session via MSN with br0kenrabbit of the Futuremark gaming forums. The 13 year old, known as “Greg”. Attempted to steal br0kenrabbits Steam account by asking for sensitive information.
Not being as naive as Greg, br0kenrabbit turned the tables on his would be assailant posing as an official Valve employee himself. Notifying Greg that a true Valve agent would NEVER converse with customers over MSN and NEVER ask for sensitive account information, br0kenrabbit informed Greg that his account would be suspended, going on to acquire all the personal information from the fraudster himself.
Coming clean after blocking access to Gregs account, Greg expressed his horror with a..
i was just making a joke but not cerious honest dude just give
my acount back pllllleeease i’m only 13 and save d up for like a year to buy it
The full MSN log can be found here on Futuremark Gaming Forum.
Kudos to DrDeath at Hackers Voice for pointing out this story.