Tag: golf

Female scammer who taunted US authorities online finally caught in Mexico

A Southern California woman who mocked American authorities via Twitter—after having fled the country—was finally arraigned on Monday in a San Diego courtroom. Wanda Lee Ann Podgurski, 60, was arrested in Rosarito, Mexico on July 4, 2013. This was a month after she tweeted “ Catch me if you can , ” seemingly directed at San Diego District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis , apparently the only person Podgurski followed on Twitter at the time. A superior court judge sentenced Podgurski in absentia on June 21, 2013 to 20 years and four months in state prison. She was  convicted (PDF) of 29 felony counts stemming from an insurance fraud scam. Podgurski worked as a clerk for Amtrak and held health insurance policies with six different companies, then she filed claims with all of them after she declared that she was disabled from supposed fall in her home in August 2006. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Female scammer who taunted US authorities online finally caught in Mexico

Optical transistor switches states by trapping a single photon

NIST Optical connections are slowly replacing wires as a means of shuffling bits in between systems—there are already plans afoot to have different components within a single system communicate via an optical connection. But, so far at least, all the processing of those bits is taking place using electrons. Yesterday’s edition of Science includes a demonstration of an all-optical transistor that can be switched between its on and off states using a single photon. Although it’s an impressive demonstration of physics, the work also indicates that we’re likely to stick with electrons for a while, given that the transistor required two lasers and a cloud of a cold atomic gas. The work relied on a cold gas of cesium atoms. These atoms have an extremely convenient property: two closely separated ground states, each with a corresponding excited state. All of these states are separated by an energy that corresponds to a specific wavelength of light, so using a laser of that wavelength allows you to shift the system into a different state. Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Optical transistor switches states by trapping a single photon

Verizon would end “century of regulation” by killing wireline phone, says NY AG

Hurricane Sandy caused widespread damage in Fire Island, New York. Fireisland.com New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman this week accused Verizon of trying to “depart from a century of telephone service regulation” by ending wireline telephone service in a part of Fire Island devastated by Hurricane Sandy in October, 2012. In addition, Schneiderman has accused Verizon of violating a state order by telling customers outside of Fire Island that they should accept wireless phone service instead of repairs to their landline service. He says Verizon should be fined $100, 000 per customer, per day. Verizon says it has not violated the state order, and that its offer of wireless service outside Fire Island is strictly optional. Verizon is, however, trying to gain state approval to end wireline service entirely in western Fire Island. Read 19 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Verizon would end “century of regulation” by killing wireline phone, says NY AG

Windows 8.1 to go RTM in “late August”

During its Worldwide Partner Conference in a rainy and humid Houston today, Windows CFO Tami Reller announced that Windows 8.1, the free update to Windows 8, will be made available to OEMs by “late August, ” with devices reaching the market by the holiday season. Windows 8 was released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012. Microsoft is promoting a faster release cadence across its entire range of products, and Windows 8.1 is arguably the first mass-market consumer product from the company that will benefit from this new release schedule. Read on Ars Technica | Comments

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Windows 8.1 to go RTM in “late August”

Google making the Web faster with protocol that reduces round trips

Can Google’s QUIC be faster than Mega Man’s nemesis, Quick Man? Josh Miller Google, as is its wont, is always trying to make the World Wide Web go faster. To that end, Google in 2009 unveiled SPDY , a networking protocol that reduces latency and is now being built into HTTP 2.0. SPDY is now supported by Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and the upcoming Internet Explorer 11 . But SPDY isn’t enough. Yesterday, Google released a boatload of information about its next protocol, one that could reshape how the Web routes traffic. QUIC—standing for Quick UDP Internet Connections—was created to reduce the number of round trips data makes as it traverses the Internet in order to load stuff into your browser. Although it is still in its early stages, Google is going to start testing the protocol on a “small percentage” of Chrome users who use the development or canary versions of the browser—the experimental versions that often contain features not stable enough for everyone. QUIC has been built into these test versions of Chrome and into Google’s servers. The client and server implementations are open source, just as Chromium is. Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Google making the Web faster with protocol that reduces round trips

Password complexity rules more annoying, less effective than lengthy ones

Few Internet frustrations are so familiar as the password restriction . After creating a few (dozen) logins for all our Web presences, the use of symbols, mixed cases, and numbers seems less like a security measure and more like a torture device when it comes to remembering a complex password on a little-used site. But at least that variety of characters keeps you safe, right? As it turns out, there is some contrary research that supports both how frustrating these restrictions are and suggests it’s possible that the positive effect of complexity rules on security may not be as great as long length requirements. Let’s preface this with a reminder: the conventional wisdom is that complexity trumps length every time, and this notion is overwhelmingly true. Every security expert will tell you that “Supercalifragilistic” is less secure than “gj7B!!!bhrdc.” Few password creation schemes will render any password uncrackable, but in general, length does less to guard against crackability than complexity. A password is not immune from cracking simply by virtue of being long—44,991 passwords recovered from a dump of LinkedIn hashes last year were 16 characters or more. The research we describe below refers specifically to the effects of restrictions placed by administrators on password construction on their crackability. By no means does it suggest that a long password is, by default, more secure than a complex one. Read 13 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Password complexity rules more annoying, less effective than lengthy ones

Attackers sign malware using crypto certificate stolen from Opera Software

Alan Cleaver Hackers penetrated network servers belonging to Opera Software, stole at least one digital certificate, and then used it to distribute malware that incorrectly appeared to be published by the browser maker. The attack was uncovered, halted, and contained on June 19, according to a short advisory  that Opera published Wednesday morning. While administrators have cleaned the system and have yet to find any evidence of any user data being compromised, the breach still had some troubling consequences. “The attackers were able to obtain at least one old and expired Opera code signing certificate, which they have used to sign some malware,” Wednesday’s advisory stated. “This has allowed them to distribute malicious software which incorrectly appears to have been published by Opera Software or appears to be the Opera browser. It is possible that a few thousand Windows users, who were using Opera between June 19 from 1.00 and 1.36 UTC , may automatically have received and installed the malicious software.” Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Attackers sign malware using crypto certificate stolen from Opera Software

Kim Dotcom says Dutch firm deleted “at least 40 petabytes” of Megaupload data

Kim Dotcom (right) shares a lighthearted moment with colleague Finn Batato. Chris Keall A week ago, we reported that Kim Dotcom publicly accused LeaseWeb, a Dutch hosting company, of suddenly deleting all of Megaupload’s servers. The founder of Megaupload continues to fight legal battles worldwide concerning the shuttering of his file-sharing site. And he  wrote on Twitter that “all user data & crucial evidence for our defense [was] destroyed ‘without warning.’” LeaseWeb, for its part, defended its actions. On Wednesday, TorrentFreak published a new e-mail from Dotcom’s attorney to LeaseWeb, showing that Megaupload did request preservation of all of its data. “Megaupload continues to request that LeaseWeb preserve any and all information, documentation, and data related to Megaupload—as destruction by LeaseWeb would appear to be in violation of amongst other things the applicable civil litigation data preservation rules and would interfere with evidence in a criminal matter all of which may subject LeaseWeb to varying degrees of liability,” Ira Rothken, Dotcom’s counsel, wrote. The passage appeared in an e-mail to LeaseWeb’s lawyer, A.H. “Bram” de Haas van Dorsser, in March 2012. Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Kim Dotcom says Dutch firm deleted “at least 40 petabytes” of Megaupload data