Technology

Pentagon trains workers to hack Defense computers

By cnn.com technology on March 10, 2010

Washington (CNN) — The Pentagon is training people to hack into its own computer networks.

"To beat a hacker, you need to think like one," said Jay Bavisi, co-founder and president of the International Council of Electronic Commerce Consultants, or EC-Council. His company was chosen by the Pentagon to oversee training of Department of Defense employees who work in computer security-related jobs and certify them when the training is complete.

The Department of Defense does not consider this hacking.

"DoD personnel are not learning to hack. They are learning to defend the network against hackers," said spokesman Lt. Col. Eric Butterbaugh.

But the EC-Council calls the program "Certified Ethical Hacker certification." The purpose of the training is to teach Defense Department employees to defend their computer network.

Almost 45,000 attacks on Defense Department computers were reported in the first half of 2009, according to a government report. The report estimated that for all of 2009, the number of attacks would be up 60 percent from the previous year. Fending off the attacks costs the Pentagon about $100 million.

Bavisi said the training focuses on teaching the art of hacking, using the same tools and tricks that traditional hackers use to break into computer networks.

The basic concept is Defense Department employees would use the training to hack into the departments computers, Bavisi said. Once the ethical hackers find the vulnerabilities that unethical hackers could use to attack, they increase the security to remove the potential threat. He said they are like bodyguards for the Defense Department network. Their only goal is to defend the network, even if the means of doing so are similar to those used by cyberattackers, Bavisi said.

This kind of training has been done before in the Defense Department on an ad hoc basis, said Bavisi. Now every Defense Department agency and unit is required to include hacker training as one option for employees involved in cybersecurity.

EC-Council has 450 training partners that will handle standard "ethical hacking" training, which has been used by civilian agencies and private businesses for years. If a Defense Department agency wants its employees to focus on a particular type of hacker training, EC-Council will perform customized training.

The training requires 40 hours of instruction and 4,500 pages of reading on the latest hacker techniques.

Bavisi said that Defense Department employees who complete the training and certification will not be assigned to use their new knowledge to hack into privately owned or civilian computers. But he said that any kind of training, including ethical hacking, could be used for nefarious purposes.

"You can teach me to cut an apple with a knife, and I can turn around and stab you with the knife," Bavisi said.

EC-Council will be paid a fee per student, between $450 to $2,500 depending on the extent of the training and certification. It wont be clear for months exactly how many students will be trained.

EFF Knocks Apple for Dumping on Devs

By technewsworld.com on March 10, 2010

The first rule of Apple’s App Club is: You do not talk about App Club. Any developer who writes an app for the App Store is forbidden from making any public statements about the iPhone Developer Program Licensing Agreement. Second rule of App Club is: Said developers also can’t sell their apps to other app stores, even if that app is eventually rejected by Apple.

AT and T tries to avoid outages at SXSW conference

By cnn.com technology on March 10, 2010

New York (CNN) — On Friday, the major movers in the tech industry will gather in Austin, Texas, for the annual South by Southwest Interactive Conference.

Mobile service provider AT&T is working to ensure attendees wont face the flaky service they experienced last year when a convergence of thousands of smartphone users strained the companys wireless network to the point of breakage.

After several days of dropped calls and spotty service at last years event — not to mention bad publicity from the many bloggers in attendance — AT&T was forced to add wireless capacities in downtown Austin to deal with the problem.

"The demand we saw on our network during South by Southwest was unprecedented," AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel said.

This year, AT&T, which is the exclusive mobile service provider for Apples iPhone, is implementing a new system for the five-day event, which ends March 16.

AT&T says it added temporary cell sites in areas expected to experience high call traffic. The provider also updated software to expand network capacity and will send a team of network engineers to monitor the service 24 hours a day.

"I suspect there will be even more iPhones at the conference this year," said TechCrunch blogger MG Siegler. "There are at least a dozen location-based services planning big pushes at the conference this year, most of them are based around the iPhone. If AT&T fails again, these services might suffer from a failure to launch."

The conference is known for debuting some of the worlds hippest Web sites, including Twitter and Foursquare.

"Weve learned from last year, and weve taken very strong steps to help people have a better experience this year," Siegel said, noting that AT&T has seen 5,000 percent growth in mobile data traffic over the past three years. Thats likely due to a surge in the iPhones popularity.

TechCrunchs Siegler, who attended SXSW last year, said, "From my understanding, AT&T was simply crushed under the weight of how many iPhones there were at the conference. The problem seemed to be that iPhone users were using much more of the data pipeline than AT&T was used to in Austin, and they were unprepared."

According to Josh Williams, founder of location-based networking service Gowalla, the lack of wireless service at the conference had ramifications for many tech companies. Gowalla, like other social networking services, relies heavily on cell phone and wireless use.

"It rained on the parade of many mobile application companies launching products at SXSW [last year]," Williams said. "It was difficult to go to a SXSW-related event in 2009 where the poor network quality was not a constant topic of discussion."

This year, AT&T hopes to change that.

CNN will have complete coverage of the 2010 South by Southwest Interactive Conference at www.cnn.com/TECH and @cnntech on Twitter.

The top 10 geek anthems of all time

By cnn.com technology on March 10, 2010

(CNN) — Geeks rock.

When Buddy Holly jerked onstage as a bespectacled counterpoint to the pelvis-swiveling cool of Elvis, it carved out a spot in rock and pop music for the kids more inclined to admire Stephen Hawking than Steven Tyler or Bill Gates than Billy Idol.

The South by Southwest Interactive conference kicks off Friday in Austin, Texas, offering up as pure a convergence of geek and rock sensibilities as youre apt to find.

Started in 1987 to showcase Austins burgeoning alt-rock scene, South by Southwest added interactive and film gatherings in 1994.

Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday Party Gets Troublesome Surprise

By technewsworld.com on March 10, 2010

This month’s Patch Tuesday arrived with a rather unwelcome security surprise. Microsoft had expected things to be somewhat sedate; however, instead of two vulnerabilities that it expected needed patching, it got hit with four, including a new zero-day Internet Explorer exploit.

Google Maps Out Happy Trails for Bicycle Riders

By technewsworld.com on March 10, 2010

In a move sure to make the grade with cyclists across the United States, Google on Wednesday added bicycle routes to its Google Maps service. Biking directions and extensive bike trail data are now available for the United States through Google Maps, giving cyclists nationwide a way to customize their trips, figure out the most efficient routes, make use of bike lanes and avoid big hills.

Google adds bike routes to online maps

By cnn.com technology on March 10, 2010

(CNN) — Peter Smith was riding his bike down a particularly busy road in Austin, Texas, when, amid a frightening blur of big-truck traffic, a thought hit him:

Why wasnt there a way to find safe bike routes online?

"It was kind of terrible, because theres a lot of big trucks down there in Austin, and I was getting passed by these big Ford F-150s or whatever," he recalled. "And I was like, this is crazy! "

So, like any good rabble-rouser, Smith, now 36, started a petition prodding Google to add biking directions to Google Maps.

More than 50,000 signatures later, Smith got his wish Wednesday as the Mountain View, California, company debuted biking directions alongside existing mapping features for drivers, pedestrians and people who use public transit.

Smith, who started the petition in February 2008, got an e-mail from Google on Tuesday about the addition of biking directions.

"I wanted to give you a heads up because your blog and petition was such an inspiration to the team that developed [the bike-route feature]," a Google employee wrote in the message, which Smith showed to CNN.

In the same way drivers search for the quickest car routes to their destinations, bikers now can find cycling directions that are relatively speedy and aim to be safer and less challenging for riders.

In a blog post, Google says it developed an algorithm to help its computers draw bike-appropriate routes between two locations. The computers select paths along existing bike trails, streets with bike lanes, streets with slow speeds and those with light traffic. The biking directions also try to avoid steep hills and busy intersections.

"Lets say you want to bike to work, or maybe you want to drive less and spend more time outdoors," Shannon Guymon, a Google product manager, wrote on the Official Google Blog. "Biking directions can help you find a convenient and efficient route that makes use of dedicated bike trails or lanes and avoids hills whenever possible."

The directions also tell riders how long it might take them to make a trip. That estimate "is based on a complex set of variables accounting for the type of road, terrain and turns over the course of [a] ride," Guymon writes.

Google says it has added data about bike lanes for 150 U.S. cities, and, with the help of an advocacy group called the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, the company beefed up its maps with 12,000 miles of bike trails, which are both rural and urban.

Jennifer Kaleba, a spokeswoman for Rails-to-Trails, which turns abandoned rail lines into bike paths, said the new biking feature for Google Maps may put more bike commuters on the road.

"If it increases the number of people who commute by bike, thats great, but even better … if this increases the number of people who are getting on a bike for the first time or maybe for the first time since they were a kid," she said.

Google isnt the first to try to put custom biking directions and routes online. Other sites, like Ride the City in New York, have made similar attempts, usually on a local level.

In his petition, Smith notes that better biking directions would make bicycling safer and would "empower world citizens to better adapt their lifestyles to face the challenges of global climate change."

Google also added a layer to Google Maps that lets cyclists explore bike trails and bike-friendly streets. That feature could be used by bikers who want to ride for recreation instead of transportation.

To turn that layer on, go to Google Maps, put your mouse on top of the white box that says "More" and then select the "Bicycling" layer.

Smith said Googles biking directions are fairly accurate. He noted that Google picked three of the four best cycling routes he uses when he rides 41/2 miles to work.

He now lives in notoriously hilly San Francisco, California, and he said he is fond of the fact that the cycling directions try to avoid large hills.

But improved safety will be the biggest benefit of the new mapping feature, he said.

"If youve ever been honked at from the outside of a car, you can imagine how loud it is, and it can be very scary," he said.

Anti-candidate Web site asks public for dirt

By cnn.com technology on March 10, 2010

(CNN) — Democrats opposed to Meg Whitmans gubernatorial campaign are hoping to get an assist from the public in their latest bid to push voters away from the Republican candidate.

Level The Playing Field 2010, a group run by California Democratic strategists who support Democratic candidate Jerry Brown, this week launched Wikimeg.com, an open-content Web site similar to Wikipedia.

The site encourages users to "help us fully vet Meg Whitmans job application" by posting what they know about the former eBay CEO.

"The tool weve created here — we see as a real laboratory of free speech," said Sean Clegg, campaign manager of Level the Playing Field. "What were asking Californians to do is to help match Megs $200-million campaign with their own information and brainpower and research horsepower."

Wikimeg is marketed as a "bold new experiment in democracy" — but its one that may or may not be accurate. Users are asked to post "factual information," but like Wikipedia, the world is its editor.

The site discloses that "the structure of the project allows anyone with an Internet connection to alter its content," so its creators cant guarantee that what is posted is accurate. Users are asked to cite their sources or identify themselves if they are contributing first-hand information.

Asked about the new Web page, Whitmans campaign deferred to its intern, Marcheta Marshall, who said, "Looks like these guys are pretty worried about Meg.

"Just like Wikipedia, Im sure my professors wont even allow me to use it as a source for my term papers. So why does Jerry Browns silly front group think its good enough for voters? I know reporters wont be fooled into promoting made-up information on a gossip site."

Marshalls e-mail signature described her as the "Director, responses to silly media stunts by underfunded Team Brown front groups."

Darrell West, the vice president and director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution, said society is moving toward greater user control of Web sites, but he predicted Wikimeg would be a "gimmick that becomes the object of partisan wrangling."

"I think people will view this as a partisan attack and not a source of unbiased information and that will limit its ability to have much of an impact on the campaign," said West.

Open-content sites that are successful, like Wikipedia, are ones that are trusted as fair and unbiased, he added.

"The people who will post to this site are going to be people who feel intensely both in favor and in opposition to her so it will fuel the most extreme viewpoints," West said.

Wikimeg is monitored for editorial content, but Clegg said the hope is that as the project moves forward, "the online community thats been created by it will begin to essentially govern itself."

The site launched Monday with several categories available for posting under: eBay Stories, Meg History, Meg Sightings, Megs campaign and Videos.

Two categories added by users — Megs Criminal History and Wikibrown — were removed by Tuesday afternoon.

A handful of visitors were posting on the site, far fewer than the number of people viewing its message board.

But Clegg is optimistic that it will take off with voters. "Rome wasnt built in a day," he said.

"I think this is going to be a trend," he said. "I see this as a logical progression in the Democratic opportunities that the technology innovations of the last two decades have created."

Perceived Security vs. Real Vulnerability: Is Your Data at Risk?

By technewsworld.com on March 10, 2010

With global organizations depending on the sharing of sensitive information to support everything from financial transactions to patient care records, many believe they are relying on secure methods to exchange data with trusted partners. However, there is often a significant and alarming gap between perceived security and real vulnerability.

Atol Delivers Flawless File Management With No Frills

By technewsworld.com on March 10, 2010

Some system utilities do a variety of things well. They come with tools to give users lots of solutions in one package. Other system apps like the Atol File Manager perform a dedicated function flawlessly without adding other specialties. Atol took a while to grow on me, but now this app is one of my most-used Linux tools.

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