Iceland Raises Volcano Aviation Alert Again

An anonymous reader writes Iceland’s authorities have raised an aviation warning for a region close to the Bardarbunga volcano after a small fissure eruption in the area. The eruption began around 0600 GMT prompting the Icelandic Met Office to raise the aviation warning code to red for the Bardarbunga/Holuhraun area, the Department of Civil Protection and Emergency Management said in a statement. The country’s meteorological agency described the eruption as a “very calm lava eruption and can hardly be seen on seismometers.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Iceland Raises Volcano Aviation Alert Again

Scientists Found the Origin of the Ebola Outbreak

Taco Cowboy sends this report from Vox: One of the big mysteries in the Ebola outbreak in West Africa is where the virus came from in the first place — and whether it’s changed in any significant ways. … In a new paper in Science (abstract), researchers reveal that they have sequenced the genomes of Ebola from 78 patients in Sierra Leone who contracted the disease in May and June. Those sequences revealed some 300 mutations specific to this outbreak. Among their findings, the researchers discovered that the current viral strains come from a related strain that left Central Africa within the past ten years. … Using genetic sequences from current and previous outbreaks, the researchers mapped out a family tree that puts a common ancestor of the recent West African outbreak some place in Central Africa roughly around 2004. This contradicts an earlier hypothesis that the virus had been hanging around West Africa for much longer than that. Researchers are also planning to study the mutations to see if any of them are affecting Ebola’s recent behavior. For example, this outbreak has had a higher transmission rate and lower death rate than others, and researchers are curious if any of these mutations are related to that. … The scientific paper on Ebola is also a sad reminder of the toll that the virus has taken on those working on the front lines. Five of the authors died of Ebola before it was published. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Scientists Found the Origin of the Ebola Outbreak

Wi-Fi Router Attack Only Requires a Single PIN Guess

An anonymous reader writes: New research shows that wireless routers are still quite vulnerable to attack if they don’t use a good implementation of Wi-Fi Protected Setup. Bad implementations do a poor job of randomizing the key used to authenticate hardware PINs. Because of this, the new attack only requires a single guess at the hardware PIN to collect data necessary to break it. After a few hours to process the data, an attacker can access the router’s WPS functionality. Two major router manufacturers are affected: Broadcom, and a manufacturer to be named once they get around to fixing it. “Because many router manufacturers use the reference software implementation as the basis for their customized router software, the problems affected the final products, Bongard said. Broadcom’s reference implementation had poor randomization, while the second vendor used a special seed, or nonce, of zero, essentially eliminating any randomness.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Wi-Fi Router Attack Only Requires a Single PIN Guess

For $1.5M, DeepFlight Dragon Is an "Aircraft for the Water"

Zothecula writes No one with red blood in their veins buys a sports car and hands the keys to a chauffeur, so one of the barriers to truly personal submarining has long been the need for a trained pilot, not to mention the massive logistics involved in transporting, garaging and launching the underwater craft … until now. Pioneering underwater aviation company DeepFlight is set to show an entirely new type of personal submarine at the 2014 Monaco Yacht Show next week, launching the personal submarine era with a submersible that’s reportedly so easy to pilot that it’s likely to create a new niche in the tourism and rental market. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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For $1.5M, DeepFlight Dragon Is an "Aircraft for the Water"

Fake NVIDIA Graphics Cards Show Up In Germany

An anonymous reader writes “Several fake NVIDIA cards — probably GeForce GT 440 — have had their BIOS reflashed to report themselves as GeForce GTX 660. They were sold under the brand “GTX660 4096MB Nvidia Bulk” but only deliver 1/4 of the speed of a real GTX 660. Investigations are ongoing into who did the reflashing, but several hundred of them have already been sold and are now being recalled.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Fake NVIDIA Graphics Cards Show Up In Germany

$75K Prosthetic Arm Is Bricked When Paired iPod Is Stolen

kdataman writes U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Ben Eberle, who lost an arm and both legs in Afghanistan, had his Ipod Touch stolen on Friday. This particular Ipod Touch has an app on it that controls his $75, 000 prosthetic arm. The robbery bricked his prosthesis: “That is because Eberle’s prosthetic hand is programmed to only work with the stolen iPod, and vice versa. Now that the iPod is gone, he said he has to get a new hand and get it reprogrammed with his prosthesis.” I see three possibilities: 1) The article is wrong, possibly to guilt the thief into returning the Ipod. 2) This is an incredibly bad design by Touch Bionics. Why would you make a $70, 000 piece of equipment permanently dependent on a specific Ipod Touch? Ipods do fail or go missing. 3) This is an intentionally bad design to generate revenue. Maybe GM should do this with car keys? “Oops, lost the keys to the corvette. Better buy a new one.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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$75K Prosthetic Arm Is Bricked When Paired iPod Is Stolen

Air Force Requests Info For Replacement Atlas 5 Engine

schwit1 (797399) writes The U.S. Air Force on Thursday issued a request for information from industry for the replacement of the Russian-made engines used by ULA’s Atlas 5 rocket: “Companies are being asked to respond by Sept. 19 to 35 questions. Among them: “What solution would you recommend to replace the capability currently provided by the RD-180 engine?” Air Force officials have told Congress they only have a broad idea of how to replace the RD-180. Estimates of the investment in money and time necessary to field an American-built alternative vary widely. Congress, meanwhile, is preparing bills that would fund a full-scale engine development program starting next year; the White House is advocating a more deliberate approach that begins with an examination of applicable technologies. In the request for information, the Air Force says it is open to a variety of options including an RD-180 facsimile, a new design, and alternative configurations featuring multiple engines, and even a brand new rocket. The Air Force is also trying to decide on the best acquisition approach. Options include a traditional acquisition or a shared investment as part of a public-private partnership. [emphasis mine]” The Atlas 5 is built by Lockheed Martin. This is really their problem, not the Air Force or ULA. In addition, the Air Force has other options, both from Boeing’s Delta rocket family as well as SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Air Force Requests Info For Replacement Atlas 5 Engine

Oregon Sues Oracle For "Abysmal" Healthcare Website

SpzToid (869795) writes The state of Oregon sued Oracle America Inc. and six of its top executives Friday, accusing the software giant of fraud for failing to deliver a working website for the Affordable Care Act program. The 126-page lawsuit claims Oracle has committed fraud, lies, and “a pattern of activity that has cost the State and Cover Oregon hundreds of millions of dollars”. “Not only were Oracle’s claims lies, Oracle’s work was abysmal”, the lawsuit said. Oregon paid Oracle about $240.3 million for a system that never worked, the suit said. “Today’s lawsuit clearly explains how egregiously Oracle has disserved Oregonians and our state agencies”, said Oregon Atty. Gen. Ellen Rosenblum in a written statement. “Over the course of our investigation, it became abundantly clear that Oracle repeatedly lied and defrauded the state. Through this legal action, we intend to make our state whole and make sure taxpayers aren’t left holding the bag.” Oregon’s suit, alleges that Oracle, the largest tech contractor working on the website, made falsely convinced officials to buy “hundreds of millions of dollars of Oracle products and services that failed to perform as promised.” It is seeking $200 million in damages. Oracle issued a statement saying the suit “is a desperate attempt to deflect blame from Cover Oregon and the governor for their failures to manage a complex IT project. The complaint is a fictional account of the Oregon Healthcare Project.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Oregon Sues Oracle For "Abysmal" Healthcare Website

Why Chinese Hackers Would Want US Hospital Patient Data

itwbennett (1594911) writes In a follow-up to yesterday’s story about the Chinese hackers who stole hospital data of 4.5 million patients, IDG News Service’s Martyn Williams set out to learn why the data, which didn’t include credit card information was so valuable. The answer is depressingly simple: people without health insurance can potentially get treatment by using medical data of one of the hacking victims. John Halamka, chief information officer of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and chairman of the New England Healthcare Exchange Network, said a medical record can be worth between $50 and $250 to the right customer — many times more than the amount typically paid for a credit card number, or the cents paid for a user name and password. ‘If I am one of the 50 million Americans who are uninsured … and I need a million-dollar heart transplant, for $250 I can get a complete medical record including insurance company details, ‘ he said. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Why Chinese Hackers Would Want US Hospital Patient Data

New Cridex Malware Copies Tactics From GameOver Zeus

Trailrunner7 writes The GameOver Zeus malware had a nice run for itself, making untold millions of dollars for its creators. But it was a run that ended with a multi-continent operation from law enforcement and security researchers to disassemble the infrastructure. Now researchers have identified a new variant of the Cridex malware that has adopted some of the techniques that made GOZ so successful in its day. Researchers at IBM’s X-Force research team have seen a new version of Cridex, which is also known as Bugat and Feodo, using some of the same techniques that GOZ used to such good effect. Specifically, the new strain of malware has adopted GOZ’s penchant for using HTML injections, and the researchers say the technique is nearly identical to the way that GOZ handled it. “There are two possible explanations for this. First, someone from the GOZ group could have moved to the Bugat team. This would not be the first time something like this has happened, which we’ve witnessed in other cases involving Zeus and Citadel; however, it is not very likely in this case since Bugat and GOZ are essentially competitors, while Zeus and Citadel are closely related. The second and more likely explanation is that the Bugat team could have analyzed and perhaps reversed the GOZ malware before copying the HTML injections that made GOZ so highly profitable for its operators, ” Etay Maor, a senior fraud prevention strategist at IBM, wrote in an analysis of the new malware. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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New Cridex Malware Copies Tactics From GameOver Zeus