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Who Should We Blame For Friday’s DDOS Attack?

“Wondering which IoT device types are part of the Mirai botnet causing trouble today? Brian Krebs has the list, tweeted Trend Micro’s Eric Skinner Friday, sharing an early October link which identifies Panasonic, Samsung and Xerox printers, and lesser known makers of routers and cameras. An anonymous reader quotes Fortune: Part of the responsibility should also lie with lawmakers and regulators, who have failed to create a safety system to account for the Internet-of-Things era we are now living in. Finally, it’s time for consumers to acknowledge they have a role in the attack too. By failing to secure the internet-connected devices, they are endangering not just themselves but the rest of the Internet as well. If you’re worried, Motherboard is pointing people to an online scanning tool from BullGuard (a U.K. anti-virus firm) which checks whether devices on your home network are listed in the Shodan search engine for unsecured IoT devices. But earlier this month, Brian Krebs pointed out the situation is exacerbated by the failure of many ISPs to implement the BCP38 security standard to filter spoofed traffic, “allowing systems on their networks to be leveraged in large-scale DDoS attacks…” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Who Should We Blame For Friday’s DDOS Attack?

American ‘Vigilante Hacker’ Defaces Russian Ministry’s Website

An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes CNN Money: An American vigilante hacker — who calls himself “The Jester” — has defaced the website of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in retaliation for attacks on American targets… “Comrades! We interrupt regular scheduled Russian Foreign Affairs Website programming to bring you the following important message, ” he wrote. “Knock it off. You may be able to push around nations around you, but this is America. Nobody is impressed.” In early 2015, CNN Money profiled The Jester as “the vigilante who hacks jihadists, ” noting he’s a former U.S. soldier who now “single-handedly taken down dozens of websites that, he deems, support jihadist propaganda and recruitment efforts. He stopped counting at 179.” That article argues that “the fact that he hasn’t yet been hunted down and arrested says a lot about federal prosecutors and the FBI. Several cybersecurity experts see it as tacit approval.” “In an exclusive interview with CNNMoney this weekend, Jester said he chose to attack Russia out of frustration for the massive DNS cyberattack that knocked out a portion of the internet in the United States on Friday… ‘I’m not gonna sit around watching these f—-rs laughing at us.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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American ‘Vigilante Hacker’ Defaces Russian Ministry’s Website

Amazon May Handle 30% Of All US Retail Sales

An anonymous reader quotes USA Today: Amazon’s yearly sales account for about 15% of total U.S. consumer online sales, according to the company’s statements and the Department of Commerce. But the Seattle e-commerce company may actually be handling double that amount — 20% to 30% of all U.S. retail goods sold online — thanks to the volume of sales it transacts for third parties on its website and app. Only a portion of those sales add to its revenue. “The punchline is that Amazon’s twice as big as people give them credit for, because there’s this iceberg under the surface, but you only see the tip, ” said Scot Wingo, executive chairman of Channel Advisor, an e-commerce software company that works with thousands of online sellers. When third-party sales are taken into account, Amazon’s share of what U.S. shoppers spend online could be as high as $125 billion yearly… Amazon’s share will grow even larger when they can offer two-hour deliveries, warns one analyst, while another puts it more succinctly. “Amazon’s just going to slowly grab more and more of your wallet.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Amazon May Handle 30% Of All US Retail Sales

"Splat" of Schiaparelli Mars Lander Likely Found

Long-time Slashdot reader Tablizer quotes Space Flight Now: Views from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter released Friday show the crash site where Europe’s experimental Schiaparelli lander fell to the red planet’s surface from a height of several miles, leaving a distinct dark patch on the Martian landscape…The image from MRO’s context camera shows two new features attributed to the Schiaparelli spacecraft, including a large dark scar spanning an estimated 50 feet (15 meters) by 130 feet (40 meters). Schiaparelli’s ground team believes it is from the high-speed impact of the lander’s main body… A little more than a half-mile (1 kilometer) to the south, a bright spot appears in the image, likely the 39-foot-diameter (12-meter) supersonic parachute and part of Schiaparelli’s heat shield, which released from the lander just before ESA lost contact.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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"Splat" of Schiaparelli Mars Lander Likely Found

Feds Walk Into a Building, Demand Everyone’s Fingerprints To Open Phones

An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes the Daily Herald: Investigators in Lancaster, California, were granted a search warrant last May with a scope that allowed them to force anyone inside the premises at the time of search to open up their phones via fingerprint recognition, Forbes reported Sunday. The government argued that this did not violate the citizens’ Fifth Amendment protection against self incrimination because no actual passcode was handed over to authorities… “I was frankly a bit shocked, ” said Andrew Crocker, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, when he learned about the scope of search warrant. “As far as I know, this warrant application was unprecedented”… He also described requiring phones to be unlocked via fingerprint, which does not technically count as handing over a self-incriminating password, as a “clever end-run” around constitutional rights. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Feds Walk Into a Building, Demand Everyone’s Fingerprints To Open Phones

New Text Adventures Compete In 22nd ‘Interactive Fiction Competition’

An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: 58 brand-new text adventures are now available free online for the 22nd Annual Interactive Fiction Competition. The public is encouraged to play the games, and on November 16th the contest’s organizers will announce which ones received the highest average ratings. After 22 years, the contest is now under “the auspices of the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation, a new, charitable non-profit corporation dedicated to supporting the technologies and services that enable IF creation and play…” according to the contest’s organizers. “[T]he competition now runs on servers paid for by the IF-loving public, and for this I feel sincere gratitude.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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New Text Adventures Compete In 22nd ‘Interactive Fiction Competition’

Facebook Employees Tried To Remove Trump Posts As Hate Speech

An anonymous reader quotes a report from USA Today: Facebook employees pushed to remove some of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s Facebook posts — such as one proposing the ban of Muslims from entering the U.S. — from the service as hate speech that violated the giant social network’s policies, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday. The decision not to remove the Trump posts was made by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the newspaper reported. Employees complained that Facebook was changing the rules for Trump and some who review content on Facebook threatened to quit. “When we review reports of content that may violate our policies, we take context into consideration. That context can include the value of political discourse, ” Facebook said in an emailed statement. “Many people are voicing opinions about this particular content and it has become an important part of the conversation around who the next U.S. president will be. For those reasons, we are carefully reviewing each report and surrounding context relating to this content on a case by case basis.” Senior members of Facebook’s policy team posted more details on its policy on Friday: “In the weeks ahead, we’re going to begin allowing more items that people find newsworthy, significant, or important to the public interest — even if they might otherwise violate our standards.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Facebook Employees Tried To Remove Trump Posts As Hate Speech

First New US Nuclear Reactor In 20 Years Goes Live

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: The Tennessee Valley Authority is celebrating an event 43 years in the making: the completion of the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant. In 1973, the TVA, one of the nation’s largest public power providers, began building two reactors that combined promised to generate enough power to light up 1.3 million homes. The first reactor, delayed by design flaws, eventually went live in 1996. Now, after billions of dollars in budget overruns, the second reactor has finally started sending power to homes and businesses. Standing in front of both reactors Wednesday, TVA President Bill Johnson said Watts Bar 2, the first U.S. reactor to enter commercial operation in 20 years, would offer clean, cheap and reliable energy to residents of several southern states for at least another generation. Before Watts Bar 2, the last time an American reactor had fired up was in 1996. It was Watts Bar 1 — and according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, it cost $6.8 billion, far greater than the original price tag at $370 million. In the 2000s, some American power companies, faced with growing environmental regulations, eyed nuclear power again as a top alternative to fossil fuels such as coal and oil. A handful of companies, taking advantage of federal loan guarantees from the Bush administration, revived nuclear reactor proposals in a period now known as the so-called “nuclear renaissance.” Eventually, nuclear regulators started to green light new reactors, including ones in Georgia and South Carolina. In 2007, the TVA resumed construction on Watts Bar 2, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. The TVA originally said it would take five years to complete. The TVA, which today serves seven different southern states, relies on nuclear power to light up approximately 4.5 million homes. Watts Bar 2, the company’s seventh operating reactor, reaffirms its commitment to nukes for at least four more decades, Johnson said Wednesday. In the end, TVA required more than five years to build the project. The final cost, far exceeding its initial budget, stood at $4.7 billion. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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First New US Nuclear Reactor In 20 Years Goes Live

Spanish Police Arrest Their First Ever eBook Pirate

An anonymous reader writes: Spain’s Ministry of the Interior has announced the first ever arrest of an eBook pirate. The suspect is said to have uploaded more than 11, 000 literary works online, many on the same day as their official release. More than 400 subsequent sites are said to have utilized his releases. The investigation began in 2015 following a complaint from the Spanish Reproduction Rights Centre (CEDRO), a non-profit association of authors and publishers of books, magazines, newspapers and sheet music. According to the Ministry, CEDRO had been tracking the suspect but were only able to identify him by an online pseudonym. However, following investigations carried out by the police, his real identity was discovered. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Spanish Police Arrest Their First Ever eBook Pirate

California City Converts Its Street Lights Into A High-Speed IoT Backbone

Harvard Law professor Susan Crawford describes how the city of Santa Monica installed its own high-speed IoT backbone on its street lights and traffic signals — and why it’s important. Neutral “micro” cell sites can make very high-capacity wireless transmissions available, competitively, to everyone (and every sensor) nearby. This can and should cause an explosion of options and new opportunities for economic growth, innovation, and human flourishing in general… Very few American cities have carried out this transmogrification, but every single one will need to. Santa Monica…is a city that will be able to control its future digital destiny, because it is taking a comprehensive, competition-forcing approach to the transmission of data… Cities that get control of their streetlights and connect them to municipally overseen, reasonably priced dark fiber can chart their own Internet of Things futures, rather than leave their destinies in the hands of vendors whose priorities are driven (rationally) by the desire to control whole markets and keep share prices and dividends high rather than provide public benefits. Santa Monica’s CIO warns that now telecoms “are looking for exclusive rights to poles and saying they can’t co-locate [with their competitors]. They’re all hiring firms to lock up their permits and rights to as many poles as possible, as quickly as possible, before governments can organize.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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California City Converts Its Street Lights Into A High-Speed IoT Backbone