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Mars-Bound Probe Serves As Radiation Guinea Pig
sighted writes "This week's huge solar storm will benefit future astronauts, thanks to the rover Curiosity, now on its way to Mars. The rover is equipped with an instrument that measures the radiation exposure that could affect a human astronaut en route to the Red Planet. Scientists are just starting to pore over the data from the blast of particles. Don't worry about the poor robotic geologist, though: 'No harmful effects to the Mars Science Laboratory have been detected from this solar event,' says NASA."
I hope no on tells PETA that NASA is irradiating a guinea pig with a probe.
Spook BackDoors In Cisco Routers
- Older news, but still relevant!!
Please save this story and repost it everywhere
Especially in Security Discussion Forum Sites
- You should use OpenBSD or a hardened Linux distro
For a router, NOT these blackboxes offered with
proprietary hardware & firmware!
http://www.forbes.com/2010/02/03/hackers-networking-equipment-technology-security-cisco.html
"Special Report
Cisco's Backdoor For Hackers
Andy Greenberg, 02.03.10, 01:45 PM EST
The methods networking companies use to let the Feds watch suspects also expose the rest of us.
ARLINGTON, Va. -- Activists have long grumbled about the privacy implications of the legal "backdoors" that networking companies like Cisco build into their equipment--functions that let law enforcement quietly track the Internet activities of criminal suspects. Now an IBM researcher has revealed a more serious problem with those backdoors: They don't have particularly strong locks, and consumers are at risk.
In a presentation at the Black Hat security conference Wednesday, IBM ( IBM - news - people ) Internet Security Systems researcher Tom Cross unveiled research on how easily the "lawful intercept" function in Cisco's ( CSCO - news - people ) IOS operating system can be exploited by cybercriminals or cyberspies to pull data out of the routers belonging to an Internet service provider (ISP) and watch innocent victims' online behavior.
But the result, Cross says, is that any credentialed employee can implement the intercept to watch users, and the ISP has no method of tracking those privacy violations. "An insider who knows the password can use it without an audit trail and send the data to anywhere on the Internet," Cross says.
Cross told Cisco about his findings in December 2008, but with the exception of the patch Cisco released following the revelation of its router bug in 2008, the security flaws he discussed haven't been fixed. In an interview following Cross' talk, Cisco spokeswoman Jennifer Greeson said that the company is "confident in its framework." "We recognize that security is complicated," she said. "We're looking at [Cross'] findings and we'll take them into account."
Cisco isn't actually the primary target of Cross' critique. He points out that all networking companies are legally required to build lawful intercepts into their equipment.
Special Report
Cisco's Backdoor For Hackers
Andy Greenberg, 02.03.10, 01:45 PM EST
The methods networking companies use to let the Feds watch suspects also expose the rest of us.
ARLINGTON, Va. -- Cisco, in fact, is the only networking company that follows the recommendations of the Internet Engineering Task Force standards body and makes its lawful intercept architecture public, exposing it to peer review and security scrutiny. The other companies keep theirs in the dark, and they likely suffer from the same security flaws or worse. "Cisco did the right thing by publishing this," says Cross. "Although I found some weaknesses, at least we know what they are and how to mitigate them."
The exploitation of lawful intercept is more than theoretical. Security and privacy guru Bruce Schneier wrote last month that the Google ( GOOG - news - people ) hackings in China were enabled by Google's procedures for sharing information with U.S. law enforcement officials. And in 2004 and 2005, a group of hackers used intercept vulnerabilities in Ericsson ( ERIC - news - people ) network switches to spy on a wide range of political targets including the cellphone of Greece's prime minister.
All of that, argues IBM's Cross, means that Internet-related companies need to be more transparent about their lawful intercept procedures or risk exposing all of their users. "There are a lot of other technology companies out there that haven't published their architecture
I'm sure Citizen #64226 would be interested in hearing about the failure to stop the latest invader from the blue planet, but he's busy trying to regrow his gelsacs...
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
And when PHOBOS heard this it GRUNTed.
Silence is a state of mime.
This problem could make a manned trip to Mars impossible. The radiation in open space from one solar flare would fry a bunch of astronauts. Sending people to Mars becomes a gamble on the odds of a solar event occurring. Worse yet. There is no technology within reach that can protect astronauts from this type of radiation. A few feet of lead shielding might help some, but the weight would be too much to get into space. Plus, try slowing down all that mass when you arrive at Mars. Perhaps a nuclear powered wire loop ( super conducting??? ) with a circumference of a mile or two? Something with enough kick to deflect super high speed charged particles a few meters - enough to keep them away from the crew?...
I don't see any way to get people to mars with an acceptably high probability of survival.
Newt was not the first to propose an ambitious space project.
Mars, bitches!
And this, my fellow Americans, is why we need to have our first real black president.
You are welcome on my lawn.
It would be interesting as well to know how much of an impact this would have to people on the Martian surface. Mars's magnetic field is pretty weak compared to ours. I guess they would be a little better protected just by the planet surface itself.
Even on the Apollo missions to the moon, they recognized that a solar storm could be a significant threat to the astronauts. Given the infrequence they decided to just take their chances. But the time they spent outside of the LEO was pretty low compared to what a Mars mission would entail.
Every time you post an article on Slashdot, I kill a server. Think of the servers!
If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend watching the Curiosity Launch Video. I don't think the rover has to worry about radiation so much as the landing. I'd like to start a pool on which part of the untested landing sequence will fail and deliver a smoking hole in Mars instead of the rover.
I seriously hope it works - if it does it will be one of humanity's most amazing technological feats. But I fear the worst.
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
Needs a lot of water, if you were to locate the water in between hull layers it acts as quite a nice radiation shield.
And perhaps, though I'm not certain and currently feeling lazy, a micro meteorite shield as well.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
We've an important question: "how to accomplish the fullfilment of the prophecy when the man/woman abandons the Earth?".
Why to put we in risk our lives when few individuals wanted evilnessly to success their own "evil mission" for their own private interests?.
JCPM: Oh! God mine! I'm here because i was assigned no another place than here, on this planet named "La Tierra".
When a junior reporter inquired as to the absence of gleeful wriggling from the general direction of Citizen #64226, K'Breel had only this to say: "...and would that be nuked or fried?"
"pore"?
Do the nerd moderators know even less of their mother tongue than do their spell checkers?
Earth AND Mars are both death-traps.
This isn't about our individual survival.
It is about having our species survive beyond the Sun's lifespan AND beyond a localized event in this part of the galaxy.
Humans need to spread out across the galaxy or we will be killed off. Period.
to a galaxy far, far away?
When we studied manned Mars missions at Boeing, and ate samples of the long term food, we placed the "storm shelter" in the middle of the food storage lockers. Food contains water and carbohydrates which contain hydrogen, which is good shielding. If you have a once-through food system, the waste goes back in the same lockers, and maintains the shielding. If you have a regenerative life support, with a greenhouse, the storm shelter goes in the middle of the growing area/water tanks/food storage. Even with a greenhouse there will be some stored food.
For sustainable development, you want to hijack materials from an asteroid between Earth and Mars, and install a habitat surrounded by rock shielding. Placed in a transfer orbit between the two planets, you ride it most of the way, only exposing the crew at the ends of the trip. The habitat spends most of it's time growing food and extracting materials and fuel, which get forwarded to other locations by electric tugs. A sustainable supply chain is necessary if you ever want much more than a "flags and footprints" mission.
Funny how NASA's probe can withstand a noteworthy coronal mass ejection, while the Phobos Grunt is apparently downed by radar.