General News and Announcements

Twitter Hacked

Sat, 26 Dec 2009 09:52:48 GMT

The funny thing was that I couldn't tweet about it...

802.11N & 802.11W FINALLY APPROVED!

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 02:14:08 GMT

It's only been ->six<- years in the making, September 11, 2003 is when the draft N specification first saw the light of day.

Now, according to IEEE 802.11 Task Group N, the standard has been approved.

The user, jepstein on Merunetworks.com blog, Signal2Noise has posted the following:

http://s2n.merunetworks.com/2009/09/802-11n-appro v...

PCWorld.com has also published this same information on their website, these are the only two sources I have at this time but it makes sense to release this information on the specification's anniversary date.

It would wise to check your hardware manufacturers websites downloads sections for new firmware revisions in the coming days and weeks for updates that bring your draft N equipment into compliance with the official 802.11n standard.

I highly recommend that you only download them from genuine sources, stay away from newsgroup and bittorrent as sources for firmware updates, it may be faster but you really don't know what you're getting.

Notice a drop in spam?

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 10:43:58 GMT

From Wired

The World Bank Group's computer network hacked for over a year!

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 15:45:07 GMT

Fox News: One of the largest repositories of sensitive data about the economies of every nation — has been raided repeatedly by outsiders for more than a year.

The second major breach — of the bank's treasury network in Washington — was discovered in April 2008. The World Bank's Treasury manages $70 billion in assets for 25 clients — including the central banks of some countries. It carries out substantial collaborations with the world's finance ministers on public wealth and debt management, runs an active bond-trading desk in Washington, and does everything from currency trading to capital markets financings.

After a forensic analysis of the treasury breach, bank investigators discovered that spy software was covertly installed on workstations inside the bank's Washington headquarters — allegedly by one or more contractors from Satyam Computer Services, one of India's largest IT companies.

Justice: Hackers steal 40 million credit card numbers

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:43:21 GMT

CNN

Eleven people were indicted Tuesday for allegedly stealing more than 40 million credit and debit card numbers, federal authorities said.

The indictments, which alleged that at least nine major U.S. retailers were hacked, were unsealed Tuesday in Boston, Massachusetts, and San Diego, California, prosecutors said.

It is believed to be the largest hacking case that the Justice Department has ever tried to prosecute.

Three of the defendants are from the United States; three are from Estonia; three are from Ukraine, two are from China and one is from Belarus.

The remaining individual is known only by an alias and authorities do not know where that person is.

40 million?!?!?

SPAM King Dead....

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 22:07:41 GMT

ZDNet

Convicted spammer Eddie Davidson, who escaped from federal prison over the weekend, killed his wife and 3-year-old daughter before killing himself in what is being described as a murder-suicide.

Too bad he had to take someone with him....

Climate Researchers Tap 4,000-Chip IBM Supercomputer

Sat, 10 May 2008 17:20:32 GMT

InformationWeek

Thanks to Lestat:

One of the nation's top research centers for the study of weather and climate has installed an IBM (NYSE: IBM) supercomputer that runs more than 4,000 processors and is capable of performing 76 trillion floating point operations per second.

China may have back door to the DoD

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 12:09:31 GMT

From Above Top Secret

Some months ago, my contacts in the defense industry had alerted me to a startling development that has escalated to the point of near-panick in nearly all corners of Government security and IT infrastructure. The very-real concern, being investigated by the FBI, is that either the Chinese government or Chinese hackers (or both) have had the benefit of undetectable back-doors into highly secure government and military computer networks for months, perhaps years. The cause: a high-number of counterfeit Cisco routers and switches installed in nearly all government networks that experienced upgrades and/or new units within the past 18 months.

Gmail April Fools Not Very Funny.

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 17:22:17 GMT

TC:

Right on schedule: Google is releasing their April Fools jokes onto us as the calendars hit April 1 on the east coast (here’s last year’s efforts). Google Australia got a head start earlier today with the very funny Future Search. Gmail’s effort this year isn’t in my opinion as funny.

Gmail Custom Time lets users send emails with a custom date in the past, putting it in the recipients inbox at the old date:

Study: Cell Phones Worse Than Smoking

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 17:03:13 GMT

DailyTech:

Dr. Vini Khurana, a top British neurosurgeon and medical researcher, is trying ardently to grab people's attention about what he sees as a grave risk to health. He has published over 30 papers; his specialty -- cell phones and their links to disease. He has reviewed over 100 papers on the links between cell phones and cancer. His latest research, currently under peer-review prior to journal publication, emphasizes a strong link between cell phones and tumors.