Sunday, March 4, 2007

WIRED Blogs: Danger Room - The Pentagon Wants TiVo (to Watch You) Reuters yesterday reported on a recently issued study on future technologies written by the Pentagon's Defense Science Board. More than anything, it seems these outside advisers want a surveillance system that would put Big Brother to shame, and they're looking at the commercial sector to provide it: 10:34:51 PM  PermaLink   / trackback []

The Pentagon Wants a 'TiVo' to Watch You. The Pentagon Wants a 'TiVo' to Watch You. An anonymous reader writes "Danger Room, a Wired blog, today cites a study of future electronic snooping technologies from Reuters, written by the Pentagon's Defense Science Board. More than anything, it seems these outside advisers want a surveillance system that would put Big Brother to shame, and they're looking at the commercial sector to provide it. 'The ability to record terabyte and larger databases will provide an omnipresent knowledge of the present and the past that can be used to rewind battle space observations in TiVo-like fashion and to run recorded time backwards to help identify and locate even low-level enemy forces. For example, after a car bomb detonates, one would have the ability to play high-resolution data backward in time to follows the vehicle back to the source, and then use that knowledge to focus collection and gain additional information by organizing and searching through archived data.'" [Slashdot] 10:31:33 PM  PermaLink   / trackback []

PC World - Microsoft OneCare Last in Antivirus Tests Microsoft's Windows Live OneCare came in dead last out of a group of 17 antivirus programs tested against hundreds of thousands of worms, viruses, Trojan horses and other malware, an Austrian antivirus researcher reported Wednesday. The AV Comparatives Web site, which is maintained by Andreas Cleminti from Innsbruck, Austria, posts quarterly results of tests that pit the top antivirus products against a dynamic list of nearly half a million individual pieces of malware. 10:27:26 PM  PermaLink   / trackback []

Microsoft OneCare Last in Antivirus Tests. Microsoft OneCare Last in Antivirus Tests. Juha-Matti Laurio writes  "PC World has a story reporting that Microsoft's Windows Live OneCare came in dead last out of a group of 17 antivirus programs tested against hundreds of thousands of pieces of malware. The report of an Austrian antivirus researcher was released at the AV Comparatives Web site this week. Several free AV products were included in the test as well." ---  While the top dog was able to find 99.5% of the malicious code, OneCare clocked in at 82.4%. Of course, there's no metric for the severity of the malware in the 17% gap. [Slashdot] 10:23:42 PM  PermaLink   / trackback []

Techdirt: An Economic Explanation For Why DRM Cannot Open Up New Business Model Opportunities Continuing my increasingly lengthy series of posts on the economics of non-scarce goods, I wanted to take a look at an issue that I mentioned in passing earlier this week concerning the ongoing insistence among the entertainment industry (and the DRM industry) that DRM somehow will open up new business models. I'd like to explain why, economically, that doesn't make sense. First, to clarify, I should point out that, technically, I mean that it doesn't make sense that DRM could ever open up feasible or successful business models. Anyone can create a new unsuccessful business model. For example, I'm now selling $1 bills for $1,000. It's a new business model (well, perhaps not to the dot coms of the original dot com boom), but it's unlikely to be a successful one (if you disagree, and would like to pay me $1,000 for $1, please use the feedback form above to make arrangements). However, for a new business model to make sense, it needs to provide more value. Providing more value than people can get elsewhere is the reason why a business model succeeds. So, any new business model must be based on adding additional value. 10:11:01 PM  PermaLink   / trackback []

Why DRM Cannot Open Up New Business Models. Why DRM Cannot Open Up New Business Models. An anonymous reader writes "Techdirt has a cool post up that doesn't just explain why DRM is bad, but gives a really interesting economic explanation for why DRM cannot create successful new business models. Since the RIAA and MPAA keep insisting that DRM will create new business models, it's useful to see an argument for why that's basically impossible." As the article says, anyone can create a "new" business model. Creating a successful "new" business model is what is so elusive here. [Slashdot] 10:08:11 PM  PermaLink   / trackback []

Month of PHP Bugs Has Begun. Month of PHP Bugs Has Begun. An anonymous reader writes  "The previously announced Month of PHP Bugs started three days ago, and already lists 8 security vulnerabilities in PHP and PHP related software. From the site: 'This initiative is an effort to improve the security of PHP. However we will not concentrate on problems in the PHP language that might result in insecure PHP applications, but on security vulnerabilities in the PHP core. During March 2007 old and new security vulnerabilities in the Zend Engine, the PHP core and the PHP extensions will be disclosed on a day by day basis. We will also point out necessary changes in the current vulnerability management process used by the PHP Security Response Team.'"  [Slashdot] 10:01:57 PM  PermaLink   / trackback []

Hacker Defeats Hardware-based Rootkit Detection. Hacker Defeats Hardware-based Rootkit Detection. Manequintet writes "Joanna Rutkowska's latest bit of rootkit-related research shatters the myth that hardware-based (PCI cards or FireWire bus) RAM acquisition is the most reliable and secure way to do forensics. At this year's Black Hat Federal conference, she demonstrated three different attacks against AMD64 based systems, showing how the image of volatile memory (RAM) can be made different from the real contents of the physical memory as seen by the CPU. The overall problem, Rutkowska explained, is the design of the system that makes it impossible to reliably read memory from computers. "Maybe we should rethink the design of our computer systems so they they are somehow verifiable," she said." [Slashdot] 9:52:23 PM  PermaLink   / trackback []

Angry Ex Goes Too Far. Angry Ex Goes Too Far. A Virginia man endangers his ex-girlfriend after she dumps him by leaving explicit DVDs of the two of them on car windshields, along with her contact information. In Sex Drive Daily. [Wired News: Top Stories] 9:49:40 PM  PermaLink   / trackback []

U.S. Royalty Rates Hit Webcasting. U.S. Royalty Rates Hit Webcasting. It looks grim for webcasters -- the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board announces retroactive rates, endorsing a per-play proposal by RIAA-associated SoundExchange. In Listening Post. [Wired News: Top Stories] 9:47:12 PM  PermaLink   / trackback []

Lawmakers get less combative on data-breach bills - USATODAY.com SAN FRANCISCO -- It's Round 2 in Congress' bid to craft federal law that would require businesses to notify U.S. consumers about computer data-security breaches. Legislation introduced in February soon could become law, given the cooperative tone of federal lawmakers, says Ari Schwartz, a privacy advocate and deputy director of the Center for Democracy & Technology. That would be a reversal from the previous few years, when members of the House and Senate could not agree on a national data-breach law, and dozens of states passed their own laws. But the feds waited too long to act, and their actions now are unnecessary, say state legislators and privacy advocates. "With so many conflicting agendas from the financial industry, data brokers and security companies, there is the danger any bill could be watered down," says Evan Hendricks, editor of Privacy Times newsletter. The fear is that a federal law would pre-empt stronger state laws. "A national standard that provides less protection than currently afforded is really a step backward, not a step forward," says state Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Calif., author of the first law in the USA that required companies to publicly disclose data breaches. More than 100 million records containing personal information have been subject to some sort of security breach since February 2005, starting with data broker ChoicePoint, according to the non-profit Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. There are at least four bills in Congress this year to address data-breach notification that would pre-empt 35 state laws on the books. 9:44:27 PM  PermaLink   / trackback []

Open Source Conversations:The openLiberty Project - Jason Rouault The openLiberty Project, announced in January 2007, is a global open source initiative formed to provide open source developers with tools for integrating the privacy and security services of multivendor Liberty Federation and Liberty Web Services into many new identity-based services. In this episode, Jason Rouault discusses openLiberty, and how it could accelerate rollout of Web services, such as presence, contact book, geolocation and calendaring. Rouault also talks about openLiberty's choice of the Apache open source license, how openLiberty could lead to stronger integration between Liberty and Eclipse. why the Liberty form of geolocation is preferable to mobile carriers' typical methods. He also touches on the Liberty People Service, why Liberty's standards work is superior to work at OASIS, and answers Scott's obligatory Microsoft question. 9:10:45 PM  PermaLink   / trackback []

IT Conversations: Open Telephony and Open Identity - Bill Weinberg, Brad Templeton, Johannes Ernst Many developers, especially small start-ups, are being out-competed by the big name players in financial terms. Regulations, including the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA, are major challenges for start-ups, because they lack armies of lawyers. In a humorous and sarcastic presentation, Brad Templeton of EFF considers the implications of government-mandated wiretapping. While consumers are concerned about their privacy, they also struggle to keep their digital identities organized. Johannes Ernst of NetMesh explains projects that have sprung up to provide unified identification and authentication for all of our digital communication. LID, OpenID, and i-names are providing consumers with interoperable digital identities in a world where new methods of communication and collaboration are invented daily. 9:08:51 PM  PermaLink   / trackback []