Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

For years, Diebold has embarrassed itself by claiming that obvious faults were actually not faults at all, and during the past decade or so, it mastered the act of pointing the finger. Now that it has ironically renamed itself Premier Election Solutions, it’s finally coming clean. According to spokesman Chris Riggall, a “critical programming error that can cause votes to be dropped while being electronically transferred from memory cards to a central tallying point” has been part of the software for ten years. The flaw is on both optical scan and touchscreen machines, and while Mr. Riggall asserts that the logic error probably didn’t ruin any elections (speaking of logic error…), the outfit’s president has confessed to being “distressed” about the ordeal. More like “distressed” about the increasingly bleak future of his company.

[Via Techdirt]

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Filed under: Networking

Considering that mechanical beings will be fighting our real wars here in just a few years, it’s no shock to see more focus placed on the areas where actual humans will still be the ones waging. DARPA is looking to create what it calls a National Cyber Range, which would essentially act as a training ground for cyber warriors. The setup would enable defense gurus to simulate battle against attacks our on nation’s most highly prized data, and of course, give victors over virtual phishing scams immense bragging rights. Come to think of it, Estonia could have totally benefited from something like this last year.

[Via Information Week, image courtesy of Sandia]

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Shortly after hearing a sad tale of a 7-year old cancer patient having his medication and PSP stolen whilst en route to treatment comes yet another story of the world’s meanest preying on the helpless. This go ’round, a group of griefers (assuming to be members of Anonymous) managed to invade a support forum established by the nonprofit Epilepsy Foundation and use JavaScript code and messages littered with flashing animations to effectively assault dozens of visitors who suffer from the disorder. The Foundation managed to catch wind of the problem within 12 hours of the attack, and while the boards were closed down temporarily to purge it of offending messages, many readers (such as RyAnne Fultz, pictured) experienced headaches and seizures before rescue arrived. Let’s just say we sincerely hope the culprits get what’s comin’ to ‘em.

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Filed under: Laptops

After a week full of Red Bulls, Fruit by the Foot and dreams of In-N-Out, the mighty Sony VAIO loaded with Linux stood as the only machine unhacked by the end of the PWN 2 OWN hacking contest at CanSecWest. As you’re well aware by now, the MacBook Air on display was seized in two minutes by the presumably well prepared Charlie Miller, and after two full days of work, Shane Macaulay and a few of his 1337 associates managed to crack the Vista rig on Friday. Reportedly, Shane and his pals weren’t expecting to do battle with the extra protected SP1 version of Vista, and while the exact loophole won’t be divulged, we are told that it was a cross-platform bug that “took advantage of Java to circumvent Vista’s security.” In the end, it was reported that some folks on hand had discovered bugs in the Linux OS, but many of them “didn’t want to put the work into developing the exploit code that would be required to win the contest.”

[Image courtesy of TippingPoint]

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Filed under: Laptops

And just think — last year you were singing Dino Dai Zovi’s praises for taking control of a MacBook Pro in nine whole hours. This year, the PWN 2 OWN hacking competition at CanSecWest was over nearly as quickly as the second day started, as famed iPhone hacker Charlie Miller showed the MacBook Air on display who its father really was. Apparently Mr. Miller visited a website which contained his exploit code, which then “allowed him to seize control of the computer, as about 20 onlookers [read: unashamed nerds] cheered him on.” Of note, contestants could only use software that came pre-loaded on the OS, so obviously it was Safari that fell victim here. Nevertheless, he was forced to sign a nondisclosure agreement that’ll keep him quiet until “TippingPoint can notify the vendor,” but at least he’ll have $10,000 and a new laptop to cuddle with during his silent spell.

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Filed under: Laptops

Last year’s PWN 2 OWN contest at the CanSecWest security conference went over way better than expected (read: exploits were glorified), so this year, organizers have spiced things up by letting hackers have their way with three separate machines. The Linux, OS X and Vista-based rigs were all setup as similarly as possible in order to “make sure the attack surface was the same on all of them.” For attendees in Vancouver, there sits a $20,000 top prize — which dwindles with each passing day as restrictions on attacks ease up — but it can only be acquired if an all new zero-day cyber roundhouse kick is used. Anyone here going to give it a go? You get to keep the freshly victimized laptop too, you know.

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

We know, hackers tend to get a pretty bad rap these days, but with some of ‘em out there creating ginormous gridlocks in Los Angeles and shutting down networks in enemy territories, we sort of understand the sentiment. Most recently, it seems that hackers are being blamed for “penetrating power systems (sound familiar?) in several regions outside the US, and in at least one case, causing a power outage affecting multiple cities.” That’s according to Tom Donahue, a CIA official, who failed to dole out critical details such as where or when the attacks occurred nor how many folks were actually left in the dark. ‘Course, Bruce Schneier, CTO of security firm BT Counterpane, warns that these attacks could in fact be aided by individuals with administrative access to said systems, implying that “human vulnerability” could share at least some of the blame. Don’t worry guys, we’re faxing CTU right now, they’ll be right on it within 72 business hours.

[Image courtesy of WPS]

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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

Regardless of what those oh-so-knowledgeable analysts had to say, we all knew this day was coming. Yep, that highly-touted, totally “impenetrable” copy protection technology known as BD+ has officially been brought to its knees, and it’s not at all surprising to hear that we have SlySoft to thank. The AnyDVD 6.1.9.6 beta has quite a comical change log too, and aside from noting that users now have the ability to backup their BD+ movies and watch titles sans the need for HDCP-compliant equipment, it also includes a candid note to Twentieth Century Fox informing the studio that its prior assumptions about BD+’s effectiveness were apparently incorrect. You know the drill, hit the read link below to try ‘er out.

[Thanks, Aaron]

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