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Rogue Silk Road DEA agent arrested with “go bag,” 9mm pistol

SAN FRANCISCO—Federal prosecutors successfully argued Wednesday that Carl Mark Force, the former Drug Enforcement Administration agent who allegedly went rogue during the investigation of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, should not be granted bail. “I am not prepared to release him today,” United States Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Laporte said during the Wednesday hearing. She heard 90 minutes of argument from government lawyers and from one of Force’s defense attorneys. After the hearing, Force was transferred from Santa Rita Jail in nearby Alameda County to San Francisco County Jail. Read 36 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Rogue Silk Road DEA agent arrested with “go bag,” 9mm pistol

170-year-old champagne provides clues to past winemaking

Divers discovered bottles in a shipwreck off the Finnish Aland archipelago in the Baltic Sea in 2010. After tasting the bottles on site, the divers realized they were likely drinking century-old champagne. Soon after, 168 unlabeled bottles were retrieved and were identified as champagnes from the Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin (VCP), Heidsieck, and Juglar (known as Jacquesson since 1832) champagne houses. A few of the recovered bottles had been lying horizontal in close-to-perfect slow aging conditions. Discovery of these wines, likely the oldest ever tasted, unleashed a flood of questions. When were these wines produced? What winemaking processes were in use at the time? Where was the wine going when the shipwreck occurred? An analytic approach A team of scientists gathered to search for the answers through the application of current analytical techniques, an approach called archaeochemistry. Using a combination of targeted and nontargeted modern chemical analytic approaches, the researchers aimed to uncover aspects of the winemaking practices. Read 14 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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170-year-old champagne provides clues to past winemaking

Microsoft’s Office 365 “lockbox” gives customers last word on data access

One of the concerns that keeps many companies from adopting software-as-a-service for e-mail and other collaboration services has been the issue of who has control over the security of the content. Today at the RSA Conference, Microsoft is announcing changes to its Office 365 service that will allay some of those concerns, giving customers greater visibility into the security of their applications and control over what happens with them. At the same time, it will potentially be harder for government agencies and law enforcement to secretly subpoena the contents of an organization’s e-mail. In an interview with Ars, Microsoft’s general manager for Office 365 Julia White outlined the three new features, which are being announced in a blog post from Office 365 team Corporate Vice President Rajesh Jha today . Office 365 will now include a “Customer Lockbox” feature that puts customer organizations in control of when Microsoft employees can gain access to their data, requiring explicit permission from a customer before systems can be accessed to perform any sort of service on their Office 365 services. The capability will be turned on by the end of 2015 for e-mail and for SharePoint by the end of the first quarter of 2016. “We have automated everything we can to prevent the need for our people having to touch customer data,” White told Ars. “It’s almost zero—there are very rare instances when a Microsoft engineer has to log in to a customers’ services. Now we’re going to, in those rare instances, make customer approval mandatory to do so.” That would also apply to law enforcement requests for access, White acknowledged. “When the customer opts into the Lockbox, all requests would go into that process. So it’s a customer assurance of transparency. We want to systematically look at what kind of control and transparency customers want and provide it to them,” White said. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Microsoft’s Office 365 “lockbox” gives customers last word on data access

AMD abandons the microserver market, takes $75 million hit

As part of its 1Q 2015 earnings release, AMD has announced that it is leaving the high density microserver market, effective immediately. AMD bought SeaMicro in 2012 for $334 million to get a foothold into the microserver business. At the time, SeaMicro built systems containing dozens of Intel Atom and Xeon processors connected to a shared storage and network fabric. Since the acquisition, AMD has only released a single new SeaMicro system, the SM15000. This could use either AMD Opteron systems (using the Piledriver core) or Intel Xeons (using the Ivy Bridge core). With today’s announcement, it’s clear that system will also be the last new SeaMicro system to be released. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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AMD abandons the microserver market, takes $75 million hit

J.J. Abrams reveals new Force Awakens teaser, details

On Thursday, J.J. Abrams kicked off a weekend-long Star Wars convention by revealing the second teaser trailer for the upcoming Star Wars: The Force Awakens film, and it included the first reveal of Harrison Ford reprising his role as Han Solo. “Chewie, we’re home!” Ford says with Chewbacca standing behind him to close the teaser, which also included footage of a Millennium Falcon chase, a melted Darth Vader mask, a lightsaber hand-off, and Mark Hamill narrating a speech to an heir apparent (though unseen). Stormtroopers, X-Wings, TIE Fighters, new droids, and the sequel’s three new leads also feature prominently. As a lead-up to that teaser reveal, Entertainment Weekly columnist Anthony Breznican hosted a panel with Abrams and Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, where he asked questions about filming scenes in Abu Dhabi, designing new droids (including new droid “BB8,” whose impressive rolling ball design includes a head that swivels on its top), and casting the series’ three new lead actors. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Los Angeles school district demands multi-million dollar refund from Apple

On Wednesday, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) told Apple that it would not accept any further deliveries of Pearson curriculum, which Apple has been providing as part of a $1.6 billion plan to give every student in the nation’s second-largest school district an iPad. LAUSD also asked for a “multi-millon dollar refund” for software that had already been delivered, according to local public radio station KPCC . In 2013 the school district signed an initial $30 million deal with Apple in a program that was supposed to cost up to $1.3 billion. As part of the program, LAUSD said it would buy iPads from Apple at $768 each , and then Pearson, a subcontractor with Apple, would provide math and science curriculum for the tablets at an additional $200 per unit. Not a month after the pilot program launched, students were found disabling app and browser limitations on their tablets. A month after that, LAUSD reported that a third of the 2,100 iPads distributed during the pilot program had gone missing . A year later, media investigations revealed possible malfeasance in securing the contract with Apple and Pearson by LAUSD superintendent John Deasy. While Deasy has denied wrongdoing , he recently stepped down from his position and his successor, Ramon C. Cortines, has said he will scrap the program . Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Botnet that enslaved 770,000 PCs worldwide comes crashing down

Law enforcement groups and private security companies around the world said they have taken down a botnet that enslaved more than 770,000 computers in 190 countries, stealing owners’ banking credentials and establishing a backdoor to install still more malware. Simda, as the botnet was known, infected an additional 128,000 new computers each month over the past half year, a testament to the stealth of the underlying backdoor trojan and the organization of its creators. The backdoor morphed into a new, undetectable form every few hours, allowing it to stay one step ahead of many antivirus programs. Botnet operators used a variety of methods to infect targets, including exploiting known vulnerabilities in software such as Oracle Java , Adobe Flash , and Microsoft Silverlight . The exploits were stitched into websites by exploiting SQL injection vulnerabilities and exploit kits such as Blackhole and Styx. Other methods included sending spam and other forms of social engineering. Countries most affected by Simda included the US, with 22 percent of the infections, followed by the UK, Turkey with five percent, and Canada and Russia with four percent. The malware modified the HOSTS file Microsoft Windows machines use to map specific domain names to specific IP addresses. As a result, infected computers that attempted to visit addresses such as connect.facebook.net or google-analytics.com were surreptitiously diverted to servers under the control of the attackers. Often the booby-trapped HOSTS file remains even after the Simda backdoor has been removed. Security researchers advised anyone who may have been infected to inspect their HOSTS file, which is typically located in the directory %SYSTEM32%driversetchosts. People who want to discover if they have been infected by Simda can check this page provided by AV provider Kaspersky Lab. The page is effective as long as a person’s IP address hasn’t changed from when the infection was detected. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Botnet that enslaved 770,000 PCs worldwide comes crashing down

Google Fiber plans expansion, then TWC makes speeds six times faster

With Google Fiber preparing an expansion into Charlotte, North Carolina, incumbent cable operator Time Warner Cable is trying to hold onto customers by dramatically increasing Internet speeds at no extra charge. “The Internet transformation will begin this summer and will include speed increases on TWC residential Internet plans at no additional cost, with customers experiencing increases up to six times faster, depending on their current level of Internet service,” Time Warner Cable announced last week . “For example, customers who subscribe to Standard, formerly up to 15Mbps, will now receive up to 50Mbps, customers who subscribe to Extreme, formerly up to 30Mbps, will now receive up to 200Mbps; and customers who subscribe to Ultimate, formerly up to 50Mbps, will receive up to 300Mbps, at no extra charge.” Google announced plans to enter Charlotte and a few other metro areas in January and is working with local officials to finalize the network design so that construction can begin. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Google Fiber plans expansion, then TWC makes speeds six times faster

Hacked French network exposed its own passwords during TV interview

While French authorities continued investigating how the TV5Monde network had 11 of its stations’ signals interrupted the night before, one of its staffers proved just how likely a basic password theft might have led to the incident. In an interview with French news program 13 Heures , TV5Monde reporter David Delos unwittingly revealed at least one password for the station’s social media presence. That’s because he was filmed in front of a staffer’s desk—which was smothered in sticky notes and taped index cards that were covered in account usernames and passwords. Delos’s segment revealed the usernames and passwords for TV5Monde’s Twitter and Instagram accounts, but they were too difficult to read in an archived video of the broadcast . That wasn’t the case for the YouTube information, however; Twitter user pent0thal confirmed that account’s displayed password was “lemotdepassedeyoutube,” which translates in English to “the password of YouTube.” Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Hacked French network exposed its own passwords during TV interview

Descent Underground Kickstarter crosses $600,000 finish line

It’s no doubt been a long day for Eric “Wingman” Peterson and the other folks at Descendent Studios , but their crowdfunded reboot of the six-degrees-of-freedom shooter Descent is now over the $600,000 mark and will receive its funding, which will allow Peterson and team to buckle down and get to work on the title—once the post-Kickstarter partying is over, of course. Though the funding campaign got off to a good start, pledges slowed over the last week of the campaign. However, backers donated more than $200,000 of the $600,000 goal in the past four days, with $70,000 of donations coming in today, on the campaign’s final day. With about two hours left on the clock, the donation mark stands at just a bit over $602,000. Descent Underground engine demo running on an Oculus Rift DK2. Our stomachs lurch in anticipation! Peterson and his team (which includes several former members of the Austin branch of Cloud Imperium, which is currently focusing on building Star Citizen’s persistent universe) have set their sights on resurrecting the Decent series of games, which reached the height of their popularity in the late 1990s and cast players as the pilot of a fast, maneuverable spaceship blasting killer robots in underground mines. The game’s hook was that unlike other FPS titles, Descent allowed full movement along all axes—you could move up, down, left right, forward, backward, and rotate in any direction. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Ken May

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