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Israel’s electric grid hit by “severe” hack attack

Israel experienced a serious hack attack on its electrical grid that officials are still working to repel, the head of the country’s energy minister said Tuesday. “The virus was already identified and the right software was already prepared to neutralize it,” Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz told attendees of a computer security conference in Tel Aviv, according to this article published Tuesday by The Times of Israel . “We had to paralyze many of the computers of the Israeli Electricity Authority. We are handling the situation and I hope that soon, this very serious event will be over … but as of now, computer systems are still not working as they should.” The “severe” attack was detected on Monday as temperatures in Jerusalem dipped to below freezing, creating two days of record-breaking electricity consumption, according to The Jerusalem Post . Steinitz said it was one of the biggest computer-based attacks Israel’s power infrastructure has experienced, and that it was responded to by members of his ministry and the country’s National Cyber Bureau. The energy minister didn’t identify any suspects behind the attack or provide details about how it was carried out. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Israel’s electric grid hit by “severe” hack attack

After FBI briefly ran Tor-hidden child-porn site, investigations went global

(credit: Andrew ) In 2015, the FBI seized a Tor-hidden child-porn website known as Playpen and allowed it to run for 13 days so that the FBI could deploy malware in order to identify and prosecute the website’s users. That malware, known in FBI-speak as a “network investigative technique,” was authorized by a federal court in Virginia in February 2015. In a new revelation, Vice Motherboard has now determined that this operation had much wider berth. The FBI’s Playpen operation was effectively transformed into a global one, reaching Turkey, Colombia, and Greece, among others. Motherboard’s Joseph Cox wrote on Twitter on Friday that he was able to find a document describing this infiltration as something called “Operation Pacifier” by using creative “Google-fu.” Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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After FBI briefly ran Tor-hidden child-porn site, investigations went global

DOJ and 4 states want $24 billion in fines from Dish Network for telemarketing

Four states and the US Department of Justice (DOJ) are seeking up to $24 billion in fines from Dish Network after a judge ruled that the company and its contractors made more than 55 million illegal telemarketing calls using recorded messages and phoning people on do-not-call lists. The trial to decide whether Dish was aware that it was breaking the law and whether the company is responsible for calls made by its subcontractors began yesterday. A spokesperson for Dish, which is based outside of Denver, Colorado, noted in an e-mail to Ars that “Most of the Dish calls complained about took place almost ten years ago and Dish has continued to improve its already compliant procedures.” The spokesperson added that in 2008, the satellite TV and Internet provider hired Possible Now, a company that specializes in marketing and regulatory compliance, to make sure that Dish’s marketing practices were legal. According to Dish, Possible Now gave the company a passing grade on compliance with federal regulatory rules. However, the DOJ as well as Ohio, Illinois, California, and North Carolina say that Dish disregarded federal laws on call etiquette. US lawyers are asking for $900 million in civil penalties, and the four states are asking for $23.5 billion in fines, according to the Denver Post . “Laws against phoning people on do-not-call lists and using recorded messages allow penalties of up to $16,000 per violation,” the Post added. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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DOJ and 4 states want $24 billion in fines from Dish Network for telemarketing

Apple releases OS X 10.11.3 with fixes for bugs and security [Updated]

(credit: Andrew Cunningham) Today Apple released OS X 10.11.3, the third major update for El Capitan since the operating system was released to the public in September. You can grab it now through the Update tab of the Mac App Store, or you can manually download and install the Combo Update version from Apple’s support site. As with the iOS 9.2.1 update, Apple’s release notes are unusually light, and the more detailed release notes aren’t available on Apple’s support site as of this writing (they will be posted  here when they’re ready). The security release notes detail a handful of fixes for El Capitan and one for the still-supported Mavericks and Yosemite, most of which have been resolved thanks to memory handling improvements. Update : The general release notes are live. 10.11.3 fixes a pair of edge cases: One where a Mac connected to a 4K display wouldn’t wake from sleep, and one where “third-party .pkg file receipts stored in /var/db/receipts are now retained when upgrading from OS X Yosemite.” Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Apple releases OS X 10.11.3 with fixes for bugs and security [Updated]

Rightscorp agrees to pay $450,000 for illegal robocalls

(credit: SRU.edu ) Online copyright enforcer Rightscorp has agreed to pay $450,000 to end a lawsuit accusing the company of making illegal calls to cell phones. Morgan Pietz, an attorney who played a key role in bringing down Prenda Law, sued Rightscorp in 2014 , saying that the company’s efforts to get settlements from alleged pirates went too far. Rightscorp’s illegal “robocalls” violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), a 1991 law that limits how automated calling devices are used. The class-action lawsuit claimed that some Rightscorp targets were receiving one robocall on their cell phone per day. It’s generally illegal to have automated devices call cell phones. Earlier this week, Pietz and his co-counsel filed court papers outlining the settlement. Rightscorp will pay $450,000 into a settlement fund, which will be paid out to the 2,059 identified class members who received the allegedly illegal calls. Each class member who fills out an “affidavit of noninfringement” will receive up to $100. The rest of the fund will pay for costs of notice and claim administration (about $25,000) and attorneys’ fees and costs, which cannot exceed $330,000. Rightscorp will also “release any and all alleged claims” against the class members. The company had accused the 2,059 class members of committing 126,409 acts of copyright infringement. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Rightscorp agrees to pay $450,000 for illegal robocalls

Multi-gigabit cable modems ready to help you blow past your data cap

(credit: CableLabs ) Next-generation cable modems that can deliver multi-gigabit speeds have been certified by CableLabs, the cable industry’s research and development lab. The new modems use version 3.1 of DOCSIS (the Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification), cable’s answer to fiber Internet speeds. The first DOCSIS 3.1 certifications were earned by Askey, Castlenet, Netgear, Technicolor, and Ubee Interactive, according to the announcement by CableLabs . The group’s testing confirms that the modems comply with the new DOCSIS spec. DOCSIS 3.1 reduces network latency and will enable “high-speed applications including Virtual and Augmented Reality, advanced video technologies such as Ultra High Definition 4K television, tele-existence and medical imaging, and gaming,” CableLabs said. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Multi-gigabit cable modems ready to help you blow past your data cap

David Bowie’s ISP, as remembered by the guy who helped create “BowieNet”

David Bowie. (credit: davidbowie.com ) When David Bowie became an Internet service provider in 1998, a man named Ron Roy helped him start the business. Now, three days after the legendary musician’s death at age 69, we’ve interviewed Roy about how “BowieNet” came to life and why it was so important to the artist. “David was tremendously involved from day one,” Roy told Ars via e-mail. Roy appeared in some of the first press releases that followed BowieNet’s US and UK launches; we tracked him down at his current business, Wines That Rock . It was a lot easier to become an Internet service provider in 1998 than it is today. Instead of the enormous expense of  deploying fiber or cable throughout a city, ISPs could spring to life by selling dial-up connections to anyone with a telephone line. BowieNet’s dial-up service sold full access to the Internet for $19.95 a month (or £10.00 in the UK), but it was also a fan club that provided exclusive access to David Bowie content such as live video feeds from his studio. Customers who already had a dial-up Internet provider and didn’t want to switch could buy access to BowieNet content separately for $5.95 a month. BowieNet had about 100,000 customers at its peak, Roy said. Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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David Bowie’s ISP, as remembered by the guy who helped create “BowieNet”

Autonomous car makers hand over data on glitches and failures to California DMV

Delphi’s autonomous vehicle. (credit: Delphi ) If you want to build a self-driving car and test it on public roads in California, the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles says that every year you have to submit a disengagement report—basically a list of every time the human driver had to take over for the car. This year, Bosch, Delphi, Google, Nissan, Mercedes-Benz, Tesla, and Volkswagen Group were required to submit disengagement reports, and the results are largely what you’d expect from a novel and complicated technology. Google, as the company that’s driven the most miles on public roads in California, said it experienced 341 significant disengagement events over 424,000 miles of driving  (PDF). Similarly, Nissan reported that it drove 1,485 miles on public roads in California and it experienced 106 disengagements. Delphi’s two autonomous vehicles drove 16,662 miles and the company reported 405 disengagements. Tesla, for its part, reported no disengagements  (PDF) from fully-autonomous mode from the time it was issued a permit to test self-driving cars in California. While it’s tempting to use those numbers as a comparison point as to how good a company’s autonomous vehicles are, there are many variables that could obscure an otherwise accurate comparison. The numbers only reflect miles driven on California roads and disengagements that happen in that state. If a company primarily tests its public road driving in another state, those numbers won’t be reflected in these reports. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Autonomous car makers hand over data on glitches and failures to California DMV

iOS 9.3 brings multi-user mode to iPads, along with more features and fixes

(credit: Apple) Apple has just released the first beta of iOS 9.3 to its public beta testers and developers. The company regularly releases beta versions of its operating systems, but this update is unique because Apple has put together several pages extensively detailing its new features , something we normally don’t get until we see the release notes posted with the final version of the update. Collectively, this list of new features will make 9.3 the biggest release since iOS 9.0 . The first and most significant is a multi-user mode for iPads, aimed primarily at schools where buying a single iPad for each student is too expensive or otherwise undesirable. From Apple’s description, it sounds as though each student will have a roaming user profile that follows them from iPad to iPad so they can access the same apps and data no matter which iPad they use to login. User content can be cached so that students who regularly use the same iPad won’t have to wait for data to download each time they log in. These new user profiles are just one part of a larger group of features meant to make the iPad more appealing for schools. The “classroom” app gives teachers a bird’s-eye view of their students and what apps they’re using. The app can be used for screen sharing to help students out when they need it or to lock students out of specific apps when they’re not supposed to be using them. The Apple School Manager can be used by administrators to create Apple IDs, purchase apps, and manage devices. And a new type of Apple ID, the “Managed Apple ID,” can be created and assigned by schools independently of students’ normal Apple IDs. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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iOS 9.3 brings multi-user mode to iPads, along with more features and fixes

Two months after FBI debacle, Tor Project still can’t get an answer from CMU

Proof of connection: the site check.torproject.org will show you if you’re connected via Tor. (credit: Tor) Shari Steele, Executive Director of the Tor Project (credit: EFF ) It’s been quite a few months for the Tor Project. Last November, project co-founder and director Roger Dingledine  accused the FBI of paying Carnegie Mellon computer security researchers at least $1 million to de-anonymize Tor users and reveal their IP addresses as part of a large criminal investigation. The FBI dismissed things, but the investigation in question is a very high-profile matter focused on members of the  Silk Road  online-drug marketplace. One of the IP addresses revealed belonged to Brian Farrell, an alleged Silk Road 2 lieutenant. An early filing in Farrell’s case, first reported  by Vice Motherboard, said that a “university-based research institute” aided government efforts to unmask Farrell. That document fit with Ars reporting  from January 2015, when a Homeland Security search warrant affidavit stated  that from January to July 2014, a “source of information” provided law enforcement “with particular IP addresses” that accessed the vendor-side of Silk Road 2. By July 2015, the Tor Project managed to discover and shut down this sustained attack. But the Tor Project further concluded that the attack resembled a technique described by a team of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) researchers who a few weeks earlier had canceled a security conference presentation on a low-cost way to deanonymize Tor users . The Tor officials went on to warn that an intelligence agency from a global adversary also might have been able to capitalize on the vulnerability. Read 59 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Two months after FBI debacle, Tor Project still can’t get an answer from CMU