Department of Defense tries to court hackers

Las Vegas, Nevada (CNN) -- Dear hackers: The U.S. government wants you. Or, at the very least, the Department of Defense's research wing wants to pay you to help it block cyber threats, a project manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency said Thursday. Former hacker Peiter Zatko announced the start of a fund-the-hackers program, called Cyber Fast Track, in a keynote talk at the Black Hat conference, which is aimed at hackers and computer security experts. The program began officially late Wednesday, he said. Experts say the government has done a lousy job in the past of getting money to security researchers quickly enough for...

Read More

'Shady RAT' hacking claims overblown, say security firms

Computerworld - Two security companies are questioning claims that a cyber espionage campaign uncovered by a rival firm was sophisticated or even extraordinary. On Tuesday, antivirus vendor McAfee described a five-year hacker operation that infiltrated more than 70 U.S. and foreign government agencies, defense contractors and international organizations to plant malware that in some cases hid on networks for years. In its report, McAfee said it was "surprised by the enormous diversity of the victim organizations" and "taken aback by the audacity of the perpetrators." News stories about the report seized on the word "unprecedented" in the...

Read More

DIY Spy Drone Sniffs Wi-Fi, Intercepts Phone Calls

LAS VEGAS — What do you do when the target you’re spying on slips behind his home-security gates and beyond your reach? Launch your personal, specially equipped WASP drone — short for Wireless Aerial Surveillance Platform — to fly overhead and sniff his Wi-Fi network, intercept his cellphone calls, or launch denial-of-service attacks with jamming signals. These are just a few of the uses of the unmanned aerial vehicle that security researchers Mike Tassey and Richard Perkins demonstrated at the Black Hat security conference here Wednesday. At a cost of about $6,000, the two converted a surplus FMQ-117B U.S. Army target drone into their...

Read More

Honda recalls 2.5m cars over auto bearing bust-up

Honda has been forced to recall several of the models in its range, including the 2005-2010 Accord, across US, China and elsewhere after issues with the automatic transmission that could see the engine cut out unexpectedly. Although Honda says neither injuries nor deaths have been caused by the issue, it will nonetheless be forced to bring 2.49m vehicles in and reprogram the transmission control module so as to be more gentle with the gears. The issue, Honda says, can occur when drivers quickly shift between reverse, neutral and drive, something that could take place if the car is stuck in grass or mud as the owner attempts to rock themselves...

Read More

Your face -- and the Web -- can tell everything about you

By Bob Sullivan Imagine being able to sit down in a bar, snap a few photos of people and quickly learn who they are, who their friends are, where they live, what kind of music they like ... even predict their Social Security number. Now, imagine you could visit one of those anonymous online dating sites and quickly identify nearly every person there, just from their photos, despite efforts to keep their online romance search a secret. Such technology is so creepy that it was developed, and withheld, by Google — the one initiative that Google deemed too dangerous to release to the world, according to former CEO Eric Schmidt. Too late, says...

Read More