New troubles reported with iPod-like e-voting units
With just over a week left before the general election, reports are surfacing of problems with e-voting machines from manufacturers rarely mentioned in the news.
Hart InterCivic isn't the most common e-voting platform out there (that would be the Accuvote TS and TSX line, from Premier / Diebold), and the eSlate doesn't operate like touchscreen units do. Instead, it uses a dial-and-button approach that's a bit like an older iPod -- run your finger around a big dial, then click a button to make your picks.
TSA releases its final 'Secure Flight' watchlist program rules
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) will take over responsibility for the controversial "Secure Flight" passenger screening program in early 2009, according to documentation released by the Department of Homeland Security yesterday. DHS also revealed just how large its watchlist is.
Those responsibilities were previously managed by individual airlines.
E-voting under scrutiny as US election enters the home stretch
As polling places report record numbers of early and absentee votes cast, Fortify has released a report pinpointing where trouble with e-voting could most easily arise in 2008.
Reports from around the nation indicate that turnout for the 2008 elections is on track to set participation records. But after a series of mishaps, meltdowns, and curious coincidences in recent years, voters may not trust the gear with which they're voting.
US Treasury says IRS still hasn't fixed vulnerabilities in tax processing systems
Vulnerabilities in two IRS systems -- including the Customer Account Data Engine (CADE) developed to replace all existing tax processing systems at the agency -- were known and repeatedly raised during the nine-year development process but not addressed, according to an in-house report.
A statement from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), which released the September report publicly on Thursday, says that "Security weaknesses in controls over sensitive data protection, system access, monitoring of system access, and disaster recovery have continued to exist even though key phases of the CADE and the AMS have been deployed. As a result, the IRS is jeopardizing the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of an increasing volume of tax information for millions of taxpayers as these systems are put into operation."
Yahoo usability tests bode ill for OpenID takeup
The OpenID digital identity management standard's long and winding road to general usage hit a pothole in recent tests by Yahoo, one of the program's most prominent identity service providers.
Started in 2005, the service has reported several gains in adoption over the past few months. Most notably, MySpace announced in July that it would be providing OpenID services -- a tremendous increase in potential users of the single-sign-in system.
Those who can't hack (much), write
Since there have been computer intrusions, it seems, there have been crackers (that is, black-hat "hackers") wanting to write books detailing What They Did. But often, the better the hack, the less the urge to write a book about it.
David Kernell, the college student currently accused of "hacking" into VP candidate Sarah Palin's e-mail account, may yet end up taking his lumps from the legal system -- even if he didn't do much more than take an educated guess at Palin's "secret" security question. If Kernell does end up with a conviction, I would humbly ask that repayment of his debt to society consist of haranguing Yahoo about their pitiful secret-question security system. Or maybe he should have to field-dress a Palin-shot moose as punishment. Please, though, kid -- would you spare us the book telling us how clever you were?
E-voting issues stir in advance of November elections
With US elections four weeks away, visions of glitches past and present are dancing in the heads of tech observers bracing for November 4. It may not help that one judge is suppressing the results of an e-voting machines test.
A New Jersey judge has ruled that testing results from Sequoia e-voting machines used in that state are not to be released until further notice.
Verizon study: User error the cause of more IT breaches
Security threats to businesses vary according to what sort of businesses ar targeted, according to a study covering over four years and 230 million compromised records.
Verizon originally issued its general Business Data Breach Investigations report back in June, but drill-down data on four industries -- financial services, technology, retail and food and beverage services, which together composed about 82 percent of the original survey -- merited a supplemental analysis this week. Some of the highlights:
Faronics' latest version of Anti-Executable heads back to the lab
It's popular with police departments, schools and other institutions where users' install rights need to be contained. But the new 3.0 version of Faronics' Anti-Executable doesn't click so well with a common touchpad driver.
Anti-Executable's page on the Faronics Web site proclaims that "PERSISTENCE IS FUTILE" -- meaning that users on Anti-Executable machines can only load programs from a carefully controlled "whitelist," no matter how badly they think they need to play Solitaire or download a file from that nice prince in Nigeria who wants to transfer some money to them. Mainly geared to enterprises, the program also comes in a single-computer version for non-enterprise installations. That's the version we tested, or began to test, at BetaNews this week.
Legislation looks to patch privacy protections at borders
A bill set before Congress would require DHS officials to have a reasonable level of suspicion about you, personally, before they searched or seized your laptop, cell phone, digital camera or other electronic gear at the US border.
Last Friday, Sen. Russell Feingold (D-WI), Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) introduced the Travelers Privacy Protection Act on Friday to, as Cantwell put it, "strike the right balance of keeping Americans safe while protecting their right to privacy."
Gucci tests anti-terrorist satellite tracking for securing clothing designs
Active RFID isn't just for tracking arms shipments any more. BetaNews has learned that luxury consumer goods designer Gucci is working with Xpondr to test an emerging mix of technology for preventing theft aboard ocean ships.
NEW YORK CITY (BetaNews) - How can you keep international freight safe from the hands of terrorists and crooks? A tech start-up called Xpondr is now beta testing ANTS (Autonomous Node Transfer System), a satellite-, active RFID-, and GPS-enabled solution the vendor has developed to quell the security concerns of organizations ranging from national governments to Gucci and other makers of high-end consumer goods.
Surveys: Identity theft more critical than incursion, data loss
Consumers and businesses alike are plenty worried about identity theft, and for very good reasons, as indicated by two separate reports on the subject released today.
With the December holidays quickly nearing, vendors and industry organizations are using the month of November to unleash a pre-winter blizzard of survey results around identity theft and tips for coping with the problem, whether you plan to do your shopping online or in brick-and-mortar stores.
RealNetworks Inks Deal with Vodafone
A day after Napster secured a deal to power the music services on Motorola's new ROKR handsets, RealNetworks has inked a similar agreement with European wireless carrier Vodafone. But Real had to buy into the partnership.
Music offerings on Vodafone are currently powered by Sony NetServices, a joint venture of Sony DADC and Sony Europe, which was acquired Wednesday by Real. Both streaming Internet radio to mobile phones and music downloads are available through the solution.
Microsoft Offers Free Accounting Suite
Upping the ante against Intuit, Microsoft on Monday released a new accounting software package for small and home businesses. The most alluring feature of the offering may not be its Outlook-like interface and Office integration, but rather its price: free.
Office Accounting Express 2007 is largely a basic accounting suite aimed at those who currently use pen and paper or a spreadsheet to manage their finances. Startups and eBay sellers are among the intended audience, Microsoft says.
Secunia Defends its Word Worm Rating
The chief technology officer of security firm Secunia, which issued an "extremely critical" rating for a worm exploiting a previously undiscovered Word 2000 vulnerability, is defending his company's policies in the face of competitors who have rated the severity of the worm as "very low." He told BetaNews the warning was indicative of how severe the worm could be if it infected a user's system.
Secunia's Thomas Kristensen said the risk rating of a worm should not be confused with the critical rating of its vulnerability. Since a worm is not a virus, by design, it cannot propagate itself widely. As a result, he said, when one examines the world's networking environments as a whole, damage assessments from any worm become more limited, "in turn causing anti-virus companies to give it a fairly low rating."
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