Expect more prize competitions to address tough IT, high-tech challenges

Many people criticize the federal government for myriad problems, but there is at least one program in recent years that has been a success – the use of competitions or crowdsourcing to address sometimes complex problems. And because of those accomplishments you can expect many more such contests in the future.+More on Network World: DARPA’s $4M cyber-threat clash down to seven challengers+The White House Office of Science and Technology notes that in January 2015 the government will celebrate the fifth anniversary of the America Competes Act which in combination with Challenge.gov has prompted more than 400 public-sector prize competitions which have doled out some $72 million in prizes.  Some agencies like NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency as well as private entities like the X Prize Foundation have used competitions to address high-tech challenges for years with great success.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

SLAPPED! The Year in Tech Industry Fines

NAUGHTY, NAUGHTY, NAUGHTY’It’s not like most of the big carriers and tech companies can’t afford a fine or two from the FCC, Justice Department or Federal Trade Commission here and there, but it’s still not the best publicity. Here’s a rundown of the year in tech industry fines to date:VERIZON 911The FCC in March fined Verizon $3.4 million for failing to notify police and fire departments last year during a six-hour 911 service outage affecting 750,000 California residents. The outage stemmed from a coding error at a big 911 routing center. Other carriers were also involved.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Startup Radar: Verilume Builds Private Clouds From Spare Capacity

Startup Verilume uses OpenStack, Ceph, and proprietary software to assemble private clouds and Hadoop clusters from spare capacity in VMware environments. The product targets developers and data scientists.

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Drew Conry-Murray

I'm a tech journalist, editor, and content director with 17 years' experience covering the IT industry. I'm author of the book "The Symantec Guide To Home Internet Security" and co-author of the post-apocalyptic novel "Wasteland Blues," available at Amazon.
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The post Startup Radar: Verilume Builds Private Clouds From Spare Capacity appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Drew Conry-Murray.

Senate bill proposes cyber security standard for cars

Cars will have to be much better protected against hacking and new privacy standards will govern data collected from vehicles under proposed legislation introduced in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday.The Security and Privacy in Your Car Act of 2015 seeks to get a step ahead of what is seen by some as one of the next fronts in hacking: connected vehicles, which are always on the Internet and rely on sophisticated computer control systems.Proposed by Senators Edward J. Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, and Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, the act would mandate that critical software systems in cars be isolated and the entire vehicle be safeguarded against hacking by using “reasonable measures.” The proposed bill doesn’t define those measures.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Former Hacking Team supplier stops selling zero-day exploits on ethical grounds

Italian surveillance software maker Hacking Team recently claimed that it hasn’t lost any customers after the massive leak of its internal data two weeks ago. But it has lost at least one business partner: U.S.-based penetration testing specialist and zero-day exploit broker Netragard.Over the weekend, Netragard announced that it is terminating its long-time running Exploit Acquisition Program (EAP), citing revelations about Hacking Team’s customers as one of the reasons.Set up in 1999, EAP allowed Netragard to broker the sale of exploits for unpatched vulnerabilities—also known as zero-day exploits—between private researchers and select organizations interested in such computer intrusion tools.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple hires Chrysler executive, furthering speculation of its automotive ambitions

Apple has hired an automotive industry veteran, increasing speculation that the company is working on an electric car.Earlier this month, former Fiat Chrysler Automobiles executive Doug Betts took an operations role at Apple, according to his LinkedIn profile, which didn’t offer additional information on his new job. The Wall Street Journal first reported the story Monday.Betts has spent nearly 20 years in the car industry and held management roles at three major vehicle makers. As a senior vice president at Chrysler, he focused on product service and quality. Prior to joining Chrysler, he was the head of total customer satisfaction for the Americas at Nissan where his responsibilities included engineering quality and proving-ground operations.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Network Break 45

Network Break 45 talks Plexxi switches, Cisco moves, Intel revenue, the latest open networking news from CloudRouter and OpenStack, a prediction of rising cloud prices, and why Flash should die.

Author information

Drew Conry-Murray

I'm a tech journalist, editor, and content director with 17 years' experience covering the IT industry. I'm author of the book "The Symantec Guide To Home Internet Security" and co-author of the post-apocalyptic novel "Wasteland Blues," available at Amazon.
TwitterLinkedIn

The post Network Break 45 appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Drew Conry-Murray.

10 (harrowing) tales of outdated tech used way past its prime

Old but unable to be forgottenImage by U.S. Census Bureau/WikipediaIn May, Rhode Island politics was roiled by the revelation that the state Department of Human Services's attempt to move away from its outdated InRhodes computer system wasn't going to happen. If you know anything about major government computer rollouts, you know this wasn't the first time this had happened, either; a state legislator compared it to "a similar situation as we have with the DMV where we had to practically get people out of nursing homes to come keep our old programs working."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

There’s more to municipal broadband than public funding, says report

U.S. communities looking for faster broadband service than incumbent ISPs provide have alternatives to the increasingly controversial choice of seeking to publicly fund a network, according to a new handbook for city officials. Public funding of broadband is just one of several possibilities, according to "The Next Generation Connectivity Handbook: a Guide for Community Leaders Seeking Affordable Abundant Bandwidth," released Tuesday by Gig.U, a coalition of universities focused on building high-speed broadband networks, and the Benton Foundation, an advocacy group focused on media and telecom issues. Most city officials say that their local broadband networks aren't good enough in the long term, according to the report, which advises that "the time to begin thinking about faster speeds, more competition and better service is now. Network upgrades do not happen overnight."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Verizon nabs another speed crown as low-cost carriers lag far behind

Despite ads that suggest, "Yes, you can have it all," wireless service really doesn't work that way. You can go for speed, or you can go for a low price, but you can't have both. A new series of speed tests from respected tech website Tom's Guide reiterates this fact. The tests also confirm that Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile are much faster, and more expensive, than Sprint. When it comes to discount, prepaid carriers, download and upload speeds are so slow in some cases that customers may have problems watching videos or using other data-intensive applications.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Invalidating Identity Interdiction

identity-theft

It used to be that a data breach was a singular event that caused massive shock and concern. Today, data breaches happen regularly and, while still shocking in scope, are starting to dull the senses. Credit card numbers, security clearances, and even illicit dating profiles have been harvested, coallated, and provided for everyone to expose. It seems to be an insurmountable problem. But why?

Data Cake

Data is a tantalizing thing. Collecting it makes life easier for customers and providers as well. Having your ordering history allows Amazon to suggest products you might like to buy. Having your address on file allows the pizza place to pull it up without you needing to read your address again. Creating a user account on a site lets you set preferences. All of this leads to a custom experience and lets us feel special and unique.

But, data is just like that slice of cheesecake you think you want for dessert. It looks so delicious and tempting. But you know it’s bad for you. It has calories and sugar and very little nutritional value. In the same manner, all that data you collect is a time bomb waiting to be exposed. The more Continue reading

Car hackers urge you to patch your Chrysler, Ram, Durango, or Jeep

A hacker duo pretty much just made the case for going old school and steering clear of “smart” and “connected” vehicles as they remotely attacked one. Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek revealed 20 of the “most hackable” vehicles last year, but this year at Black Hat they will blow people’s mind when they present “Remote Exploitation of an Unaltered Passenger Vehicle.”It’s not the first remote hack; when DARPA’s Dan Kaufman remotely hacked a car for 60 Minutes, he triggered the windshield wipers, blasted the car’s horn and then disabled the brakes. That and a report (pdf) claiming that nearly all new cars can be hacked led to a lawsuit against GM, Ford and Toyota for "dangerous defects in their hackable cars."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Watch hackers remotely immobilize a car while it’s traveling on a highway

One brave Wired journalist agreed to drive a Jeep on a St. Louis highway while two hackers hacked it remotely, taking control of everything from the air conditioning to the transmission. The entire ordeal was captured on video, which you can view with the article at Wired.  The hackers, Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek, had just two years earlier performed a similar hack while the same journalist drove a car slowly in a parking lot. The bigger difference that time was that the hack was performed through a laptop that was hardwired to the car's onboard diagnostic port, and which the hackers controlled from the backseat. In that case, they limited their exploits to toying with the seatbelt and honking the horn.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Watch hackers immobilize a car while it’s traveling on a highway

One brave Wired journalist agreed to drive a Jeep on a St. Louis highway while two hackers hacked it remotely, taking control of everything from the air conditioning to the transmission.The entire ordeal was captured on video, which you can view with the article at Wired. The hackers, Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek, had just two years earlier performed a similar hack while the same journalist drove a car slowly in a parking lot. The bigger difference that time was that the hack was performed through a laptop that was hardwired to the car's onboard diagnostic port, and which the hackers controlled from the backseat. In that case, they limited their exploits to toying with the seatbelt and honking the horn.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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