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Domain: itworldcanada.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to itworldcanada.com.
Stories · 17
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Searchable Database of 1.4 Billion Stolen Credentials Found On Dark Web (itworldcanada.com)
YVRGeek shares a report from IT World Canada: A security vendor has discovered a huge list of easily searchable stolen credentials in cleartext on the dark web, which it fears could lead to a new wave of cyber attacks. Julio Casal, co-founder of identity threat intelligence provider 4iQ, which has offices in California and Spain, said in a Dec. 8 blog his firm found the database of 1.4 billion username and password pairs while scanning the dark web for stolen, leaked or lost data. He said the company has verified at least a group of credentials are legitimate. What is alarming is the file is what he calls "an aggregated, interactive database that allows for fast (one second response) searches and new breach imports." For example, searching for "admin," "administrator" and "root" returned 226,631 passwords of admin users in a few seconds. As a result, the database can help attackers automate account hijacking or account takeover. The dump file was 41GB in size and was found on December 5th in an underground community forum. The total amount of credentials is 1,400,553,869. -
Ransomware Thieves Cost Canada University C$20,000 In Bitcoin (itworldcanada.com)
dkatana writes: The University of Calgary paid C$20,000 ransom this week after an attack on May 28 targeted computers used by staff and faculty members, crippling multiple systems and encrypting data files and email accounts. After determining that they were unable to recover the data the ransom was paid to "protect the quality and nature of the information we generate at the university," said an official in a press release.
The fact that higher education institutions are now being targeted by ransomware is raising serious questions about their ability to protect their data and critical information systems.
IT World Canada has more details, noting that the university has reported the incident to the police, and that Trend Micro "has seen a 20% uptick in malicious requests to command and control infrastructure from infected machines over the last three months" -- several thousand requests a day. -
Android Gathers Steam Among Open Source Developers
svonkie writes "Despite launching on the T-Mobile G1 with little mainstream fanfare, Google Inc.'s Android OS appears to have gained strong interest in the open source development community. According to a survey of Black Duck Software's Knowledge Base, Apple Inc.'s iPhone led the industry with 266 open source project releases during 2008, while Android followed in second place with 191 releases. Black Duck compiled the data after scouring through over 185,000 of open source projects across 4,000 Internet sites." -
Mozilla Dev Team On Firefox's Success
Titus Germanicus writes "If you're thinking about open sourcing a project in the near future, Mozilla might be the perfect blueprint to follow. At last week's Mesh 2008 conference in Canada, Mike Shaver, chief technology evangelist and founding member at Mozilla, and John Resig, a JavaScript evangelist at Mozilla — two of the key figures behind the success of Mozilla's Firefox Web browser — listed inclusivity and transparency as two of the top cornerstones of any community-built project. Shaver said in this interview that because the Web is intended for everybody, the level same openness should be shared with Firefox's open source contributors." -
Bell Canada's Misinformation About Throttling
rsax writes "Bell Canada's chief of regulatory affairs Mirko Bibic has been attempting to justify the throttling of the last-mile connection to independent ISPs. As is typical, Bell Canada is abusing people's confusion between issues around Network Neutrality and the last mile natural monopoly. If people continue to confuse these two related but separate issues, Bell Canada and other incumbent phone and cable companies will win this critical debate." -
QR Codes - Internet to Cell Phone via Camera
An anonymous reader writes "From ITWorldCanada comes an article about a technology that might change the way people use their cell phones in North America: 'A Toronto-based software developer wants to bring Quick Response (QR) codes to Canada, and an industry analyst says this may appeal to companies offering products and services to youth.' McDonald's restaurants in Japan having been using the codes for over a year to present nutritional information on the cell phones of their customers. QR codes were originally developed by Tokyo-based Denso Wave Inc. and are common in Japan. When published in print form — on billboards, transit ads, vehicles or other media — consumers can then take pictures of the images and have them converted to links, phone numbers or other advertising messages." -
Microsoft Getting Paid for Patents in Linux?
kripkenstein noted an Interview with Jeremy Allison where the interviewer asks 'One of the persistent rumors that's going around is that certain large IT customers have already been paying Microsoft for patent licensing to cover their use of Linux, Samba and other free software projects.' and Jeremy responds "Yes, that's true, actually. I mean I have had people come up to me and essentially off the record admit that they had been threatened by Microsoft and had got patent cross license and had essentially taken out a license for Microsoft patents on the free software that they were using [...] But they're not telling anyone about it. They're completely doing it off the record." -
Robotic Telesurgery by Remote Surgeons
Roland Piquepaille writes "In a few years, telesurgery performed by multi-armed robots remotely controlled by real surgeons located hundreds or thousands of kilometers away will become commonplace. Today, Canadian doctors from the Centre for Minimal Access Surgery (CMAS) are developing the technology for NASA. Their goal is to build a portable robotic unit that would be used in space missions, war zones and remote areas within five years. So far, the experiments already done in Canada and for NASA are extremely encouraging. But read more for additional details and pictures of a real surgeon controlling such a robot." -
RFID Tags to Track Your Food
Angry_Admin writes "According to the article at IT World Canada, 'Recent food security scares have triggered public outcries and intense concern. People want to know exactly what is in their food, and what is done to it by whom. In response, Canada and many other countries are introducing traceability requirements - records that track all links in the food supply chain, from farmers to processors to retailers to consumers. The Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada agency recently released a policy framework, stating the goal is to make 80 per cent of all food products traceable by 2008.'" -
VOIP, The Traditional Telephony Killer?
FrenchyinOntario writes "According to an article on IT World Canada's web site, an Ontario-based technology research firm says that 23% of small-to-medium-sized businesses have already implemented VOIP technology, and that traditional telephony companies need to adapt or die (big surprise there!) in order to remain viable. I don't necessarily agree with research analyst's George Goodall's claim that "It may be too late," since VOIP still suffers from troubling security issues as well as the possibility of SPITstorms. It's still too early to tell whether it will be a rehash of ten years ago when the telephone companies (even before the rise of the ILECS after the 1996 Telecom Reform Act) pishposhed the rising popularity of the Internet until they jumped onboard at the last minute." -
Young Women Encouraged to Go For IT
An anonymous reader writes "Wednesday Microsoft Canada's vice president of developer and platform evangelism encouraged 9th grade girls to head for an IT career with a presentation that debunked key myths. Apparently IT isn't geeky or socially isolating. From the article: "Some issues (the girls) brought up included fears that their friends will think (working in IT) is a geeky thing to do, and that IT work is not very social...They were concerned that there were limitations for women in this area of technology, and they felt there is a stigma associated with IT in terms of it not being a very exciting place to work." -
New Robots and the Ten Ethical Laws Of Robotics
Roland Piquepaille writes "The robotics actuality is pretty rich these days. Besides the fighting robots of Robo-One and the flying microrobots from Epson (the best picture is at Ananova), here are some the latest intriguing news in robotics. In Japan, Yoshiyuki Sankai has built a robot suit, called Hybrid Assistive Limb-3 (or HAL-3), designed to help disabled or elderly people. In the U.S., Ohio State University is developing a robotic tomato harvester for the J.F. Kennedy Space Center while Northrop Grumman received $1 billion from the Pentagon to build a new robotic fighter. I kept the best for the end. A Californian counselor has just patented the ten ethical laws of robotics. A good read for a Sunday, if you can understand what he means. This summary only focuses on HAL-3 and one of the most incredible patents I've ever seen, so please read the above articles for more information about the other subjects." -
Sun Opens First Linux Competency Center
McGarnacle writes "Looks like our friends at Sun have opened the first Linux training centers at the headquarters of a Belleville, Ontario firm: beONix Technology. Now there's a worthwhile summer activity for the kids :)" -
Playing With IT, And Why It Matters
agallagh42 writes "Check out this article at ComputerWorld Canada by Peter de Jager, about how the best IT workers are really just "kids with big toys". How many of you have come across IT workers that obviously have no real interest in technology, and how much does it affect the quality of their work?" (Read more for another article on the more serious side.)Code_Poet writes: "For anyone that has tried explaining to management the importance of well structured IT in a corporation, here is an excellent article over at The Economist on-line edition that explains the need quite well. Many companies when in a crisis situation just want the problems fixed and want to move on. Few understand it's an integral function of a corporation these days..."
Upshot? Toys are fun, fun is important.
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Playing With IT, And Why It Matters
agallagh42 writes "Check out this article at ComputerWorld Canada by Peter de Jager, about how the best IT workers are really just "kids with big toys". How many of you have come across IT workers that obviously have no real interest in technology, and how much does it affect the quality of their work?" (Read more for another article on the more serious side.)Code_Poet writes: "For anyone that has tried explaining to management the importance of well structured IT in a corporation, here is an excellent article over at The Economist on-line edition that explains the need quite well. Many companies when in a crisis situation just want the problems fixed and want to move on. Few understand it's an integral function of a corporation these days..."
Upshot? Toys are fun, fun is important.
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Canadian Copyright Board Quadruples Levies on Blank Media
agallagh42 writes: "Computer World Canada has a piece on increased levies for blank media. Basically, the levy was increased from 5.2 cents to 21 cents (canadian) on CD-R and CD-RW media. They seem to be using the "presumed guilty" idea, and punishing everyone who uses this technology for whatever purpose, legal or otherwise. Does this mean that, since I'm already paying the music industry for my potential pirating, that I can feel free to pirate all I want?" -
Canadian Copyright Board Quadruples Levies on Blank Media
agallagh42 writes: "Computer World Canada has a piece on increased levies for blank media. Basically, the levy was increased from 5.2 cents to 21 cents (canadian) on CD-R and CD-RW media. They seem to be using the "presumed guilty" idea, and punishing everyone who uses this technology for whatever purpose, legal or otherwise. Does this mean that, since I'm already paying the music industry for my potential pirating, that I can feel free to pirate all I want?"