How does it work? A Verizon technician installs a small box with an antenna in your home. It plugs into an electrical socket and a telephone jack, which powers all the telephone jacks in the house. The device also accepts AA batteries or has a rechargeable battery pack if there is a power outage. Three AA batteries provide 36 hours of standby time.
Dutch police may get right to hack in cyber crime fight
Under a new bill, investigators would be able to hack into computers, install spyware, read emails and destroy files.
They could also break into servers located abroad, if they were being used to block services.
via BBC News – Dutch police may get right to hack in cyber crime fight.
This is no threat to a properly secured system. AV software is not a panacea for securing a system.
AI card game knows how to bend the rules
Automatic rule-balancing systems could cater for a variety of player abilities, too, generating different rules for different players. A game with variations built in can be a great way to have fun without anyone having an unfair advantage …
via AI card game knows how to bend the rules – tech – 04 May 2013 – New Scientist.
Internet Census 2012
Abstract While playing around with the Nmap Scripting Engine (NSE) we discovered an amazing number of open embedded devices on the Internet. Many of them are based on Linux and allow login to standard BusyBox with empty or default credentials. We used these devices to build a distributed port scanner to scan all IPv4 addresses. These scans include service probes for the most common ports, ICMP ping, reverse DNS and SYN scans. We analyzed some of the data to get an estimation of the IP address usage.
All data gathered during our research is released into the public domain for further study.
via Internet Census 2012.
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Lawrence Livermore Scientists Set a New Simulation Speed Record on the Sequoia Supercomputer
The records were set using the ROSS (Rensselaer’s Optimistic Simulation System) simulation package developed by Carothers and his students, and using the Time Warp synchronization algorithm originally developed by Jefferson.
“The significance of this demonstration is that direct simulation of ‘planetary scale’ models is now, in principle at least, within reach,” Barnes said. “‘Planetary scale’ in the context of the joint team’s work means simulations large enough to represent all 7 billion people in the world or the entire Internet’s few billion hosts.”
Maybe they can get SimCity modeled correctly.
Ketchikan students trick teachers to access computers
Students fooled teachers by asking them to enter account information to update their computer’s software, which they regularly do. Teachers were presented with a display that looked “exactly like” it does when prompted for a software update, but instead it was a request for administrative access, according to district technology supervisor Jurgen Johannsen.
via KETCHIKAN, Alaska: Ketchikan students trick teachers to access computers | State News | ADN.com.
Use a Software Bug to Win Video Poker? That’s a Federal Hacking Case
It’s the latest test of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a 1986 law originally intended to punish hackers who remotely crack defense or banking computers over their 300 baud modems. Changes in technology and a string of amendments have pushed the law into a murky zone where prosecutors have charged people for violating website terms-of-service or an employer’s computer use policies.
via Use a Software Bug to Win Video Poker? That’s a Federal Hacking Case | Threat Level | Wired.com.
Under the relevant section of the CFAA, Kane and Nestor aren’t charged with hacking into the Game King from the outside, but rather with exceeding their otherwise legitimate access “to obtain or alter information in the computer that the accesser is not entitled so to obtain or alter.”
BT unleashes SIP licensing troll army
VoIP-to-PSTN termination providers and SIP vendors will be watching their inboxes for a lawyer’s letter from BT, which has kicked off a taxing licensing program levying a fee on the industry, based on a list of 99 patents.
via BT unleashes SIP licensing troll army • The Register.
A useful comment from slashdot.
The IETF MMUSIC (Multiparty Multimedia Session Control) Working Group started working on Session Protocols [ietf.org] in 1993.
Initial Internet drafts for a Session Invitation Protocol and a Simple Conference Invitation Protocol were prepared in 1996, and merged to a single first draft of SIP by December 1996 (slide 10 [columbia.edu]), with further drafts (2-12) leading up to the publication of RFC 2543 in March of 1999 (slides 11-13, ibid.).
I don’t see anything that says BT had a hand in anything to do with SIP up to 1996. More than half the patents BT claims (Exhibit C [btplc.com]) were filed after RFC 2543 was published.
I hope this information is a useful starting point for some SIP vendor.
Belgian ISPs sued for providing Internet access without paying copyright levies
ISPs over the years have profited from the switch to online media consumption and they have offered unlimited Internet access with very high download speeds in advertising campaigns, Sabam said. “The Internet access providers have never paid copyright levies for this activity. They hide behind their status as intermediary, without taking responsibility for the information transmitted over their networks,” the organization said.
via Belgian ISPs sued for providing Internet access without paying copyright levies | PCWorld.
HP Calls Out Cisco With Data-Center Switches
The star of HP’s show, or at least the product with the biggest number, is the FlexFabric 12900 core switch, which can fit 768 10Gbit/s ports or 256 40Gbit/s ports. Cisco’s 18-slot Nexus 7018 claims to have the same 10Gbit/s density but only has cards to support 96 40Gbit/s ports.
via Light Reading – HP Calls Out Cisco With Data-Center Switches.