Federal prosecutors arrested Raymond Bitar, chief executive officer of online poker site Full Tilt Poker, on Monday in connection with a $430 million Ponzi scheme his site was accused of running last year.
From Ars Technica: Chinese hackers steal Indian Navy secrets with thumbdrive virus
According to a report from The Indian Express, China-based hackers broke into the computer systems of India’s Eastern Naval Command… where India’s first nuclear submarine is undergoing trials. Using a virus transmitted by USB thumb drives (which are banned from Indian Navy offices), the hackers were able to cache information that matched keywords and transfer it to another thumb drive when one became available. That allowed the data to be moved to Internet-connected PCs, where the virus then dumped the data and transmitted it across the Internet to servers in China.
The virus is similar to one that attacked the US military’s classified networks in 2008. Those led to a Department of Defense ban on the use of USB drives and any other writable removable media. The DOD partially lifted the ban in 2009, restricting the use of USB drives to “carefully controlled circumstances.”
The Indian Navy has not revealed the extent of the hack, or how long it went on for. The Indian Express reports that at least six officers have been charged with “procedural lapses” that allowed the hack to happen.
from Ars Technica
From News: Synthetic ‘Bath Salts’ An Evolving Problem For DEA
Use of the street drug known as “bath salts,” sold legally in head shops and gas stations, has quickly spread across the country. The problem is that these new drugs are made up of substances that are generally legal, making it difficult for the Drug Enforcement Agency to prosecute producers and users.
from News
From Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now: Texas Students Hijack a U.S. Government Drone in Midair
Predator Drone US Air Force
The U.S. government, understandably, doesn’t want its drone technology to fall out of the sky and into other peoples’ laps. But being able to hijack a drone and control it? That’s even worse. And a team of researchers has done it for 1,000 bucks.
The University of Texas at Austin team successfully nabbed the drone on a dare from the Department of Homeland Security. They managed to do it through spoofing, a technique where a signal from hackers pretends to be the same as one sent to the drone’s GPS.
We’ve seen spoofing before; it was reportedly used to bring down the drone that crashed in Iran last year. As the researchers point out, we’ll be seeing (or maybe not seeing) more and more drones in the skies as the technology becomes more widely used, so making this technique ineffective will be high on Homeland Security’s priority list.
[RT]
from Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now
From Gizmodo: Watch the MacBook Pro Retina Go Hot Red At Maximum Power
From Ars Technica: Louisiana sex offenders must identify themselves on Facebook
Starting August 1, a new Louisiana state law will require sex offenders to disclose their status on social networks. But in theory, that shouldn’t be necessary: Facebook and other social networks’ existing policies already forbid registered sex offenders from creating accounts.
“I don’t want to leave in the hands of social network or Facebook administrators, ‘Gee, I hope someone is telling the truth,'” State Rep. Jeff Thompson told CNN Tuesday. “This is another tool for prosecutors.”
The new bill, formally known as Act 385, was signed into law by Gov. Bobby Jindal earlier this month.
from Ars Technica
