Iranian computers are being targeted by malware that wipes entire disk partitions clean, according to an advisory issued by that country's Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center.

And this:

Risk Assessment / Security & Hacktivism
Developer warns of critical vulnerability in many Samsung smartphones
Hole in Android kernel gives full read-write permissions to all physical memory.

by Dan Goodin - Dec 17 2012, 1:53pm MST

    Android
    Privacy

24

A software developer says he has identified a critical vulnerability in many Samsung smartphone models that can open up end users to malware attacks and expose bank account credentials and other sensitive data to attackers.

The security hole, according to a post published Saturday on the XDA Developer Forum, resides in the Android kernel of Samsung handsets running an Exynos 4210 or 4412 processor. While it creates a new and easier method for end users to root their devices, it also gives installed apps full read-write permissions to all physical memory. That, in turn, allows apps to gain unfettered control of a handset, opening the door to malware with rootkit-like capabilities. It also allows one app to monitor data processed by a second app or the operating system.

We learned back in the BBS days allowing external access to program memory would inevitably lead to security breaches.  

Ever since I learnt about confirmation bias I've started seeing it everywhere

An 11-year-old Utah boy who said he brought a gun to school to protect himself from a Newtown-style attack, then brandished the pistol at three classmates during recess, has been detained on assault and weapons charges, a school spokesman said on Tuesday.

How fun.


Ever since I learnt about confirmation bias I've started seeing it everywhere

If you've ever been arrested on a drug charge, if you've ever spent even a day in jail for having a stem of marijuana in your pocket or "drug paraphernalia" in your gym bag, Assistant Attorney General and longtime Bill Clinton pal Lanny Breuer has a message for you: Bite me.

Breuer this week signed off on a settlement deal with the British banking giant HSBC that is the ultimate insult to every ordinary person who's ever had his life altered by a narcotics charge. Despite the fact that HSBC admitted to laundering billions of dollars for Colombian and Mexican drug cartels (among others) and violating a host of important banking laws (from the Bank Secrecy Act to the Trading With the Enemy Act), Breuer and his Justice Department elected not to pursue criminal prosecutions of the bank, opting instead for a "record" financial settlement of $1.9 billion, which as one analyst noted is about five weeks of income for the bank.

The banks' laundering transactions were so brazen that the NSA probably could have spotted them from space. Breuer admitted that drug dealers would sometimes come to HSBC's Mexican branches and "deposit hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, in a single day, into a single account, using boxes designed to fit the precise dimensions of the teller windows."

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

It may sound like overkill, but companies selling bulletproof backpacks and body armor are seeing a surge in sales this week.

One Utah-based company called "Amendment 2" has had so many requests for information about its line of Kevlar-lined backpacks that its website is locking up.

Amendment2.com is one of several companies selling bulletproof clothing that also includes backpacks a school child could use to protect themselves during a school shooting.

Others are BulletBlocker.com and AcmeApproved.com.   Most of the backpacks sell for between $100 and $300. 

Some are reinforced versions of existing backpacks, including Disney Princess packs.

On the cold ocean near the North Pole, a team of researchers encountered beautiful flower-like objects that begin growing right before your eyes.

Read the story behind these salty ocean blossoms: http://n.pr/VPVOgO

Photo: Courtesy of Matthias Wietz

h/t NPR

It's a fine line between homage, parody, and consumer opportunism. Jess Walter

This woman's sister has a restraining order against her, mostly because, contrary to what has been reported in the media, Asperger sufferers DO have a problem with anger and violence, but this abates quite a bit as they get older and are better able to deal with their frustrations.  I know she is not violent, but from what she has told me, she used to be.  

Interestingly, she looks awfully like Adam Lanza, the shooter from Newton, Conn. even though she is female and older.  

Her father also wants to gain custody over her, so he can get benefits and treatment for her.  Her reaction has been to hide across the border, in Strasbourg in France.

UBS was ordered to pay a total of about $1.5 billion to U.S., U.K. and Swiss regulators for trying to rig global interest rates, including Libor, over a six-year period. Regulators found that traders at the Zurich-based bank made more than 2,000 requests to its own rate submitters, traders at other banks and brokers to manipulate rate submissions through 2010.

UBS Japan agreed to plead guilty in connection with the rate-rigging investigation, while UBS AG (UBSN), the parent company, entered a non-prosecution agreement with the Justice Department. `Robust' Resolution

The U.S. Justice Department weighed the consequences to market confidence among the bank's trading counter-parties before entering a non-prosecution agreement with the UBS parent company, Breuer said at the news conference. "Our goal here is not to destroy a major financial institution," he said. "By any fair criteria this is a very real, very robust and very forceful resolution."

the bin laden effect still resonates.

It's a fine line between homage, parody, and consumer opportunism. Jess Walter

The deal (it was cash) paid $15.50 a share (a 54 percent premium on the closing price of the stock) and gave Starbucks (which already owns Tazo, a new-agey tea subsidiary) a "two-tiered" position in the domestic tea market. To read the document, one might think this was a move to define the hot beverage industry for years to come.

In an interview after the announcement Shultz offered the kicker, "We can create very unique brewed teas," he said, "customized hot and cold beverages analogous to the espresso bars we introduced in the mid-'80s--and do for tea what we did for coffee."

Let us, for a moment, gloss over the fact that Shultz modified the absolute (remember, always, Strunk and White's "unique eggbeater"), and take the second proclamation. What has Starbucks done for coffee, after all, but burn the crap out of it, drown it in syrups, and make it synonymous world over with free wireless, acceptable seating, and a dearth of electrical outlets?

Lots.

today it was the story of a evangelical preacher, ex oral roberts uni, who became immensely rich, popular and successful, then had an epiphany about the nature of hell.
he could no longer conceive of a lovable or respectable god who would make send an unbaptised baby to hell just because it had never had the gospel preached to it.

so he tried to teach his followers about a universally inclusive religion that paid attention to the hells man creates for his own life here on earth, and drop the use of a supposed afterlife state of everlasting wailing and gnashing and fire and brimstone.

he pointed out that the bible was a collection of tales deemed worthy of inclusion in the compendium long ago, and there was no way it could be literal and inerrant.

oh boy, did his career crash and burn!

his preaching style is hilariously carny-comedic, contrasting well with the dry humour of ira's approach.
classy podcast...

if you like razor sharp, think on a dime intra-jewish humour (think updated stream of consciousness philip roth-meets-woody allen-on-steroids', there's WTF podcast with marc maron. this is profanity-ridden stuff, belly-laugh funny, with a revealing look inside a comedy subculture, from the inside. fascinating.

i confess an equivocal relationship with 'desert island discs', the intro music makes for oneasy listening, but the people she has on can be marvellous.

for science i love 'little atoms' and 'little atoms road trip', both regularly mindblowing.

for politics 'electric politics', tho he's taking a break now, as is james kunstler.

'the moth' is great story slams, highly recc'd.

motley blues and roots music viewed from an affably demented down-under dj, go 'salty dog blues and roots', and 'the roadhouse' are good romps through good, relatively unheard/up'n'coming blues

anyone else listen to cool podcasts? have some to recommend?

It's a fine line between homage, parody, and consumer opportunism. Jess Walter