Ryan Whitwam
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Posts by Ryan Whitwam
Nevada Approves Self-Driving Cars for Use
05 days ago
by Ryan Whitwam
in Syndicated Sites
Nevada drivers might be seeing a new sight on the roads in the coming months. That state is the first to officially approve self-driving cars to use public roads. This is a necessary first step for Google’s autonomous vehicles to move forward, but other firms are likely to follow suit. Nevada worked with Google, as well as various industry groups and law enforcement to develop the regulations that will govern self-driving cars.
For the time being, all self-driving cars will have a bright red license plate so drivers will be able to identify them. If the vehicles are even approved for public use in the state, those cars will have a green plate. There will be special licensing procedures for companies to go through before self-driving cars can be used in the state. Clearly, everyone is being very cautious, but Google isn’t worried. In 2010 it announced that its self-driving cars had driven 160,000 miles without incident.
Google’s driverless cars make use of range-finding and image recognition technology to stay on the road. Humans will still need to be present in the driver’s seat for now, but who knows how long that will last? Napping on the way to work, anyone?
UK Student Gets 8 Months in Prison for Hacking Facebook
05 days ago
by Ryan Whitwam
in Syndicated Sites
A UK court handed down an 8 month sentence this week to a British student convicted of infiltrating Facebook’s internal network. 26 year-old Glenn Mangham hacked into Facebook’s servers from his home in York, England last Spring. Facebook, believing it was the victim of industrial espionage, called in the feds. It didn’t take long to track down Mangham.
Prosecutors have called this attack both “extensive and flagrant.” Facebook told the court that it had to spend $200,000 dealing with the matter. Though, that seems to be what Mangham wanted. It was his claim that he was only attempting to show Facebook that its system was insecure, as he had done in the past with Yahoo. The court was having none of it, ruling that his actions were malicious in nature.
No data was taken in the attacks, and Facebook has since sealed the hole that Mangham exploited. What’s your take on this? Was Mangham a helpful hacker, or a cyber-thug out for himself?
Court Overturns Conviction of Programmer on Appeal
05 days ago
by Ryan Whitwam
in Syndicated Sites
A federal appeals court has overturned the 2010 conviction of former Goldman Sachs programmer Sergey Aleynikov, ordering the trial court to enter a judgement of acquittal. Aleynikov was previously convicted under the Economic Espionage Act of stealing source code from projects he had worked on at Goldman Sachs. It seems technology outstripped the law once again in this case.
The issue in the case was the wording of the 15 year-old Economic Espionage Act, which demands harsh penalties for anyone that steals a “product produced for interstate commerce.” Mr. Aleynikov worked on building high-volume trading platforms for Goldman Sachs, which were never used for public commerce. Aleynikov uploaded source code from his system to an off-shore server prior to leaving Goldman for another, higher-paying job. He was arrested in short order.
The government held up the prosecution of Aleynikov as proof that it was fighting the war against high-tech crime. As the judgement today proves, the feds just don’t have the criminal statutes to deal with today’s complicated business technology. If Aleynikov had been tried under different, less severe statutes, the conviction might have stuck.
FBI Preparing to Shut Down Temporary DNS Servers, Kill Unknown Number of Internet Connections
06 days ago
by Ryan Whitwam
in Syndicated Sites
The FBI is currently scheduled to take several temporary DNS servers offline on March 8th; an action that could result in the disconnection of millions of Internet users. This dilemma stems from a nasty trojan that was circulating back in 2011 called DNSChanger. This bug was used to alter a user’s DNS settings, and law enforcement used temporary DNS servers to give everyone time to fix the problem. Experts fear that many systems are still infected, and risk failure on March 8th.
DNSChanger used the modified DNS server settings to route users to malicious (and possibly illegal) domains instead of the ones they intended to visit. The feds worked with Estonian authorities to apprehend the creators of DNSChnager, but that left millions of computers still infected. The fix was to set up a few DNS servers to intercept the traffic from these systems and keep the data flowing. Now that the servers are due to be taken offline, some people might suddenly have busted connections.
DNSChanger was a surprisingly widespread infection that wormed its way into half of all Fortune 500 companies and nearly that proportion of government agencies. There is still a chance that the FBI will be allowed to leave the servers in place a little longer, but no guarantees. Do you think DNSChanger will have one final laugh on March 8th?
Leaked Recording Industry Document Threatens Google Lawsuit
06 days ago
by Ryan Whitwam
in Syndicated Sites
The recording industry has long been critical of Google’s handling of its search results, and several months ago, the RIAA and IFPI accused Google of profiting from piracy, and throwing up roadblocks to prevent copyright holders from removing infringing material. According to a leaked document, this war of words might be headed to court soon. Industry groups have obtained confidential legal opinions on the viability of a lawsuit against Google.
For its part, Google has always said it is only indexing the Internet as it exists. To proactively weed out everything that could be copyright infringing would break search and be nearly impossible anyway. The document details the ways Google has been cooperating with the industry, including providing a batch search interface to assist in tracking down infringing sites, and compliance in shutting down a number of Blogger sites hosting copyrighted content. The legal document claims that is not enough.
A lawsuit would seek to force Google to stop providing links to pirate websites in search results. The RIAA and IFPI would essentially be arguing on antitrust grounds that Google’s market position should require it to censor its search results. If the case is filed as explained in the document, it would be truly unprecedented.
