Tag: security

Netflix Gives Data Center Tools To Fail

Nerval’s Lobster writes “Netflix has released Hystrix, a library designed for managing interactions between distributed systems, complete with ‘fallback’ options for when those systems inevitably fail. The code for Hystrix—which Netflix tested on its own systems—can be downloaded at Github, with documentation available here, in addition to a getting-started guide and operations examples, among others. Hystrix evolved out of Netflix’s need to manage an increasing rate of calls to its APIs, and resulted in (according to the company) a ‘dramatic improvement in uptime and resilience has been achieved through its use.’ The Netflix API receives more than 1 billion incoming calls per day, which translates into several billion outgoing calls (averaging a ratio of 1:6) to dozens of underlying systems, with peaks of over 100,000 dependency requests per second. That’s according to Netflix engineer Ben Christensen, who described the incredible loads on the company’s infrastructure in a February blog posting. The vast majority of those calls serve the discovery user interfaces (UIs) of the more than 800 different devices supported by Netflix.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Netflix Gives Data Center Tools To Fail

That Facebook Copyright Notice Is Worthless

There’s a copyright notice people have been posting on Facebook over the past couple of days similar to privacy notice that made the rounds several months ago. Before you copy paste it on your own profile, stop. It’s bogus and unenforceable . More »

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That Facebook Copyright Notice Is Worthless

“Anonymous” File-Sharing Darknet Ruled Illegal By German Court

An anonymous reader writes “A court in Hamburg, Germany, has granted an injunction against a user of the anonymous and encrypted file-sharing network RetroShare. RetroShare users exchange data through encrypted transfers and the network setup ensures that the true sender of the file is always obfuscated. The court, however, has now ruled that RetroShare users who act as an exit node are liable for the encrypted traffic that’s sent by others.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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“Anonymous” File-Sharing Darknet Ruled Illegal By German Court

The World Falls Back In Love With Coal

Hugh Pickens writes “Richard Anderson reports on BBC that despite stringent carbon emissions targets in Europe designed to slow global warming and massive investment in renewable energy in China, coal, the dirtiest and most polluting of all the major fossil fuels, is making a comeback with production up 6% over 2010, twice the rate of increase of gas and more than four times that of oil. ‘What is going on is a shift from nuclear power to coal and from gas to coal; this is the worst thing you could do, from a climate change perspective,’ says Dieter Helm. Why the shift back to coal? Because coal is cheap, and getting cheaper all the time. Due to the economic downturn, there has been a ‘collapse in industrial demand for energy,’ leading to an oversupply of coal, pushing the price down. Meanwhile China leads the world in coal production and consumption. It mines over 3 billion tons of coal a year, three times more than the next-biggest producer (America), and last year overtook Japan to become the world’s biggest coal importer. Although China is spending massive amounts of money on a renewable energy but even this will not be able to keep up with demand, meaning fossil fuels will continue to make up the majority of the overall energy mix for the foreseeable future and when it comes to fossil fuels, coal is the easy winner — it is generally easier and cheaper to mine, and easier to transport using existing infrastructure such as roads and rail, than oil or gas. While China is currently running half a dozen carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects — which aim to capture CO2 emissions from coal plants and bury it underground — the technology is nowhere near commercial viability. ‘Renewed urgency in developing CCS globally, alongside greater strides in increasing renewable energy capacity, is desperately needed,’ writes Anderson, ‘but Europe’s increasing reliance on coal without capturing emissions is undermining its status as a leader in clean energy, and therefore global efforts to reduce CO2 emissions.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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The World Falls Back In Love With Coal

HTTP Strict Transport Security Becomes Internet Standard

angry tapir writes “A Web security policy mechanism that promises to make HTTPS-enabled websites more resilient to various types of attacks has been approved and released as an Internet standard — but despite support from some high-profile websites, adoption elsewhere is still low. HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) allows websites to declare themselves accessible only over HTTPS (HTTP Secure) and was designed to prevent hackers from forcing user connections over HTTP or abusing mistakes in HTTPS implementations to compromise content integrity.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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HTTP Strict Transport Security Becomes Internet Standard

Hacker steals entire nation’s identity

A Greek hacker stole the personal data of about 9,000,000 Greek residents, which is approximately the same as the population of Greece itself. As Kevin at Lowering the Bar points out, this means that “If You’re Greek, Someone Probably Just Stole Your Identity.” Third, according to some reports, the files ” appeared to include duplicate entries ,” so the actual number of affected Greeks may be lower than 9 million, but we don’t know how much lower yet. For now we have to assume the number is 9 million, so your answer should have been that there is approximately a 91% chance that any particular Greek citizen’s identity has been stolen. That number is high enough that it seems reasonable to say that  somebody just stole an entire country’s identity , and to use italics to do it. If You’re Greek, Someone Probably Just Stole Your Identity

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Hacker steals entire nation’s identity

The Senate Is About to Let More Than 22 Agencies Spy on Your Email and Documents Without a Warrant (Update: Not Any More)

What began as a bill designed to protect the privacy of your digital life has been mangled at the behest of law enforcement agencies. CNET reports that if the revised Senate bill isn’t stopped before it goes to vote next week, 22 federal agencies will have warrantless access to troves of your private information. Let’s stop them. Updated below More »

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The Senate Is About to Let More Than 22 Agencies Spy on Your Email and Documents Without a Warrant (Update: Not Any More)