Computer Mash

Northrop Grumman Says ‘I’m Sorry’ For Virginia IT Outage

admin — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:05:04 +0000

Lucas123 writes “After a storage area network in a data center run by Northrop Grumman went down last week, crippling 26 state agencies’ websites — some for more than a week — Northrop Grumman has now apologized to Virginia, saying it will learn from its mistakes in order to recover systems faster in the future. Northrop’s $2.6 billion service contract with Virginia’s government has come under harsh criticism in the past for service outages, along with project delays and cost overruns.”

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Facebook To Add Remote Logout

admin — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:05:04 +0000

angry tapir writes “Facebook users will soon have a new way of knocking spammers out of legitimate accounts. The social-networking company is rolling out a new security feature that lets users see which computers and devices are logged into their Facebook accounts, and then removing the ones that they don’t want to have access.”

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Google Releases Chrome 6, Pays $4337 In Bounties

admin — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:05:04 +0000

Trailrunner7 writes “Google has released a new version of its Chrome browser and has included more than a dozen security fixes in the update. The new version, 6.0.472.53, was released two years to the day after the company pushed out the first version of Chrome. Google Chrome 6 includes patches for 14 total security vulnerabilities, including six high-priority flaws, and the company paid out a total of $4,337 in bug bounties to researchers who reported the vulnerabilities. A number of the flaws that didn’t qualify for bug bounties were discovered by members of Google’s internal security team.” (Read on for more, below.)

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UN Telecom Chief Urges Blackberry Data Sharing

admin — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:05:04 +0000

crimeandpunishment writes “The top man in telecommunications at the United Nations is weighing in on the Blackberry battle … and he says share the data. The UN’s telecom chief says governments have legitimate security concerns, and Research in Motion should give them access to its customer data. In an interview with the Associated Press, Hamadoun Toure said ‘There is a need for cooperation between governments and the private sector on security issues.’”

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New German Government ID Hacked By CCC

admin — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:05:04 +0000

wiedzmin writes “Public broadcaster ARD’s show ‘Plusminus’ teamed up with the known hacker organization ‘Chaos Computer Club’ (CCC) to find out how secure the controversial new radio-frequency (RFID) chips were. The report shows how they used the basic new home scanners that will go along with the cards (for use with home computers to process the personal data for official government business) to demonstrate that scammers would have few problems extracting personal information. This includes two fingerprint scans and a new six-digit PIN meant to be used as a digital signature for official government business and beyond.” That was quick. Earlier this year, CCC hackers demonstrated vulnerabilities in German airport IDs, too.

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Security program automatically tracks down missing patches

admin — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:05:04 +0000

Secunia has updated its Personal Software Inspector (PSI) with the ability to silently download and apply patches from multiple vendors soon after their release. PSI 2.0 is now available in an open beta test.

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Feds name last two Health IT grant recipients

admin — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:05:04 +0000

The U.S. government today announced that Detroit and Cincinnati will receive a share of $220 million in grant money to deploy IT in support of higher quality health care in their areas.

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Microsoft uses Bing home page to push IE8

admin — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:05:04 +0000

Microsoft started featuring a small advertisement on its Bing home page for Internet Explorer 8 in an apparent effort to encourage more people to migrate to the latest version of its browser.

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SAS rolls out predictive analytics for business users

admin — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:05:04 +0000

SAS Institute on Thursday announced a new toolset aimed at giving business users the ability to work with predictive analytics software, which has historically been the province of specialized statisticians.

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Skyfire Browser (Beta)

admin — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:05:04 +0000

Although Android comes with its own stock Web browser, you may be left wanting more features (such as improved video streaming) or a better interface. Skyfire Browser (currently in beta) fulfills that desire in many respects but also occasionally stumbles in ways that, for now, confirm its not-yet-final status.

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