jones_supa (887896) writes “In Russia, the State Duma (lower house) on Friday ratified a 2012 agreement to write off the bulk of North Korea’s debt. It said the total debt stood at $10.96 billion as of Sept. 17, 2012. Russia sees this lucrative in advancing the plans to build a gas pipe and railroad through North to South Korea. The rest of the debt, $1.09 billion, would be redeemed during the next 20 years, to be paid in equal installments every six months. The outstanding debt owed by North Korea will be managed by Russia’s state development bank, Vnesheconombank. Moscow has been trying to diversify its energy sales to Asia away from Europe, which, in its turn, wants to cut its dependence on oil and gas from the erstwhile Cold War foe. Russia’s state-owned top natural producer Gazprom is dreaming shipping 10 billion cubic meters of gas annually through the Koreas. Russia has written off debts to a number of impoverished Soviet-era allies, including Cuba. North Korea’s struggling communist economy is just 2 percent of the size of neighboring South’s.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Russia Writes Off 90 Percent of North Korea Debt
itwbennett writes “An estimated one in four user applications sent from HealthCare.gov to insurance providers have errors introduced by the website, an official with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said during a press briefing Friday. The errors include missing forms, duplicate forms and incorrect information in the applications, such as wrong information about an applicant’s marital status, said Julie Bataille, communications director for HHS Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). While the software bugs leading to the errors have largely been fixed, as many as 10 percent of insurance applications may still have errors and consumers who have used HealthCare.gov to buy insurance and have concerns that their applications haven’t been processed or have errors should contact their insurers, Bataille said.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
Trailrunner7 writes “A security researcher discovered a simple vulnerability in Verizon Wireless’s Web-based customer portal that enabled anyone who knows a subscriber’s phone number to download that user’s SMS message history, including the numbers of the people he communicated with. The vulnerability, which has been resolved now, resulted from a failure of the Verizon Web app to check that a number entered into the app actually belonged to the user who was entering it. After entering the number, a user could then download a spreadsheet file of the SMS activity on a target account. Cody Collier, the researcher who discovered the vulnerability, said he decided right away to report it to Verizon because he is a Verizon customer and didn’t want others to have access to his account information. ‘I am a Verizon Wireless customer myself, so upon finding this, I immediately looked for a way to contact Verizon. I wouldn’t want my account information to exposed in such way, ‘ Collier said via email.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
hypnosec writes “If you are a BlackBerry owner, navigate to BlackBerry World (or just visit the website) and you will find that developer S4BB has developed over 47k apps for the BB platform. Unsurprisingly, most of them are just spammy apps that don’t add any value. Apps like ‘Restart Me Free, ‘ ‘Daily Quote, ‘ ‘Lock for SMS, ‘ ‘Search for Amazon, ‘ ‘Silent Foto Free’ are just a few among the thousands of apps on BlackBerry World that actually have no utility whatsoever. BlackBerry announced back in May that developers were increasingly interested in making apps for the platform, and that BlackBerry World had more than 120, 000 apps. This raises questions about the authenticity of the claims, and about the approval process that’s been accepting these apps. S4BB may have a few useful apps for the platform, but that doesn’t mean all of their apps are of ‘A’ quality. A statement from BlackBerry said, ‘Developers in all app stores employ a number of different monetization tactics. BlackBerry World is an open market for developers and we let market forces dictate the success or failure of these tactics.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
New submitter cpitman writes “In a house hearing Wednesday the NSA admitted that it could query not only a suspect’s records, but also perform up to a ‘three hop query’. Considering that most people in the world are separated by under 6 degrees of separation, the NSA essentially claims that any single suspect gives them rights to investigate a large chunk of the world’s population. With the terror watch list having over 700, 000 names, just how many times has Kevin Bacon been investigated?” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
More than two dozen advanced weapons systems were accessed, although documents obtained by The Washington Post do not indicate whether the breaches occurred on government or contractor networks. [Read more] 
awaissoft writes “If attorney general Eric Holder wanted to perform even a momentary Internet wiretap on Fox News’ e-mail accounts, he would have had to persuade a judge to approve what lawyers call a ‘super search warrant.’ A super search warrant’s requirements are exacting: Intercepted communications must be secured and placed under seal. Real-time interception must be done only as a last resort. Only certain crimes qualify for this technique, the target must be notified, and additional restrictions apply to state and local police conducting real-time intercepts. But because of the way federal law was written nearly half a century ago, Holder was able to obtain a normal search warrant — lacking those extensive privacy protections — that allowed federal agents to secretly obtain up to six years of email correspondence between Fox News correspondent James Rosen and his alleged sources.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.