An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A federal appeals court in California on Monday dismissed a U.S. government lawsuit that accused ATT Inc of deception for reducing internet speeds for customers with unlimited mobile data plans once their use exceeded certain levels. The company, however, could still face a fine from the Federal Communications Commission regarding the slowdowns, also called “data throttling.” The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said it ordered a lower court to dismiss the data-throttling lawsuit, which was filed in 2014 by the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC sued ATT on the grounds that the No. 2 U.S. wireless carrier failed to inform consumers it would slow the speeds of heavy data users on unlimited plans. In some cases, data speeds were slowed by nearly 90 percent, the lawsuit said. The FTC said the practice was deceptive and, as a result, barred under the Federal Trade Commission Act. ATT argued that there was an exception for common carriers, and the appeals court agreed. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
See more here:
US Appeals Court Dismisses AT&T Data Throttling Lawsuit
An anonymous reader quotes an article from the Washington Times: Hackers on Friday successfully pulled off cyberattacks against Vietnam’s two largest airports and the nation’s flag carrier, Vietnam Airlines. The attacks — attributed to a Chinese hacking group known as 1937CN — ultimately failed to cause any significant security issues or air traffic control problems, Vice Minister of Transport Nguyen Nhat told local media. Nonetheless, the individuals briefly hijacked flight information screens and sound systems inside Noi Bai and Tan Son Nhat airports in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, respectively… Instead of departure and arrival details, the airports’ flight screens and speakers broadcast what local media described as anti-Vietnamese and Philippines slogans, in turn prompting authorities to shut down both systems… Vietnam Airlineâ(TM)s website, meanwhile, “was seized control and transferred to a malicious website abroad” and… passenger data pertaining to an undisclosed number of its frequent flyers was published online as well, the airline said in a statement. Local media on Friday said about 100 MB of data concerning roughly 40, 000 VMA passengers had been dumped online. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
A seed-funded company named Axiom wants to build a private-sector outpost in orbit by launching a new module for the International Space Station, according to an article on Space News. Once on the station, Axiom Space would use it for commercial purposes, ranging from research to tourism. [Former space station manager] Suffredini said that it would also be available for use by NASA when the company is not using it, helping the process of transitioning research done on the International Space Station to future private stations. Research hardware elsewhere in the station could eventually be moved to this module to allow its continued use after the station’s retirement. Slashdot reader MarkWhittington shares an article from Blasting News: In the meantime, Nanoracks, a company that is already handling some of the logistics for the ISS, is proposing a commercial airlock for the ISS. The development of commercial space stations, as well as commercial spacecraft such as the SpaceX Dragon and the Boeing Starliner, constitutes NASA’s long-term strategy of handing off low-Earth orbit to the private sector while it concentrates on deep space exploration. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: Using a new satellite-based method, scientists at NASA, Environment and Climate Change Canada, and two universities have located 39 unreported and major human-made sources of toxic sulfur dioxide emissions. A known health hazard and contributor to acid rain, sulfur dioxide (SO2) is one of six air pollutants regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The 39 unreported emission sources, found in the analysis of satellite data from 2005 to 2014, are clusters of coal-burning power plants, smelters, oil and gas operations found notably in the Middle East, but also in Mexico and parts of Russia. In addition, reported emissions from known sources in these regions were — in some cases — two to three times lower than satellite-based estimates. Altogether, the unreported and underreported sources account for about 12 percent of all human-made emissions of sulfur dioxide — a discrepancy that can have a large impact on regional air quality, said Chris McLinden, an atmospheric scientist and lead author of the study. The co-author of the study, Nickolay Krotkov, says quantifying the sulfur dioxide bull’s-eyes is a two-step process that would not have been possible without an improvement in the computer processing that transforms raw satellite observations from the Dutch-Finnish Ozone Monitoring Instrument aboard NASA’s Aura spacecraft into precise estimates of sulfur dioxide concentrations, and the ability to detect smaller concentrations using a new computer program that precisely detects sulfur dioxide that had been dispersed and diluted by winds. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
Two days after Fiverr, a marketplace for digital services, removed user listings from its website that advertised DDoS-for-hire services, the company’s website suffered a six-hour long DDOS attack. Softpedia reports: The incident took place on the morning of May 27 (European timezones), and the service admitted its problems on its Twitter account. At the time of writing, Fiverr has been back up and functioning normally for more than two hours. Fiverr’s problems stem from an Incapsula probe that found DDoS-for-hire ads on its marketplace, available for $5. Incapsula reported the suspicious listings to Fiverr, who investigated the issue and removed the ads. Fiverr first removed all listings advertising blatantly illegal DDoS services, but later also removed the ads offering to “test” a website for DDoS “protection” measures. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
An anonymous reader writes: Thursday one technology site reported that thousands of developers building bots for the team-collaboration tool Slack were exposing their login credentials in public GitHub repositories and tickets. “The irony is that a lot of these bots are mostly fun ‘weekend projects’, reported Detectify. “We saw examples of fit bots, reminding you to stretch throughout the day, quote bots, quoting both Jurassic Park…and Don Quixote….” Slack responded that they’re now actively searching for publicly-posted login credentials, “and when we find any, we revoke the tokens and notify both the users who created them, as well as the owners of affected teams.” Detectify notes the lapse in security had occurred at a wide variety of sites, including “Forbes 500 companies, payment providers, multiple internet service providers and health care providers… University classes at some of the world’s best-known schools. Newspapers sharing their bots as part of stories. The list goes on and on…” Read more of this story at Slashdot.