Reflex arc

Facebook’s Open Compute Project to give the world an “open” top-of-rack switch.

I can’t wait to see these come to market.

Account compromise comes after AP targeted by malware and phishing e-mails.

If you use a computer these cases should interest you with how easy it is for prosecutors to file charges for “unauthorized” access. The Drew, Swartz and Auernheimer cases seem like examples of over reaching the law to punish perceived “bad people”.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/01/aaron-swartz-fix-draconian-computer-crime-law

http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/21/ipad-hack-statement-of-responsibility/

infoneer-pulse:

Kidnappers used to make ransom notes with letters cut out of magazines. Now, notes simply pop up on your computer screen, except the hostage is your PC.

In the past year, hundreds of thousands of people across the world have switched on their computers to find distressing messages alerting them that they no longer have access to their PCs or any of the files on them.

The messages claim to be from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, some 20 other law enforcement agencies across the globe or, most recently, Anonymous, a shadowy group of hackers. The computer users are told that the only way to get their machines back is to pay a steep fine.

And, curiously, it’s working. The scheme is making more than $5 million a year, according to computer security experts who are tracking them.

» via The New York Times (Subscription may be required for some content)

infoneer-pulse:

A researcher has devised a method that reduces the time and resources required to crack passwords that are protected by the SHA1 cryptographic algorithm.

The optimization, presented on Tuesday at the Passwords^12 conference in Oslo, Norway, can speed up password cracking by 21 percent. The optimization works by reducing the number of steps required to calculate SHA1 hashes, which are used to cryptographically represent strings of text so passwords aren’t stored as plain text.

» via ars technica