This is kind of cool ... if you're into Macs, anyway ...

Video included

Summerville Police Department officers responded to the El Cheapo gas station and convenience store, located in the 600 block of Boonehill Road, around 9 p.m., just after the robbery occurred.[live5news.com]

I mainly included this one because I like the name of the store ...

Video included

The argument escalated with the suspect walking over and picking up an empty beer mug, then walking back. The suspect then slammed the beer mug into the victim's face, knocking him to the ground.[waff.com]

It should have been obvious to the vic that the perp intended to apply to empty mug to his brain-housing group ... either he was completely oblivious or just didn't have a clue what to do to stop the guy ...

The supervisor who spoke with me was not sure how this software ended up in the new laptop thus put me on hold. He confirmed that yes, Samsung did knowingly put this software on the laptop to, as he put it, "monitor the performance of the machine and to find out how it is being used."[networkworld.com]

It's amazing that Samsung, or anyone, would take this kind of risk with their own reputation ...

(H/T Instapundit)

Update: Fortunately the answer appears to be no.[nakedsecurity.sophos.com]

The creators of the deeply unpleasant GPCode Trojan have released a new version of the malware that encrypts victims' data files and tries to extort money for the unlock key.[idg.no]

Video included

The surveillance video shows the young men shooting the clerk – over and over again. Luckily, the weapons were BB guns and clerk Vishnu Patel lived to talk about it.[myfoxtampabay.com]

Looks like he started to throw a phoenix kick as he was coming through the door ... I guess there isn't much else you can do if you don't have any real guns handy ...

A basic understanding of the practical realities of privacy technologies should include an understanding of why encryption that doesn't trust the user isn't trustworthy. There are times, however, that we must make do with less than ideal choices for security software.[zdnetasia.com]

Interesting ...

It's no secret hackers have made an art of sneaking in through companies’ virtual doors and making off with intellectual property. But while a new McAfee report highlights security challenges, it also reveals that companies are looking hard at secure data storage, creating an opportunity for vendors and service providers alike.[crn.com]

NASA's inspector general warned Monday that computer servers used by the US space agency to control spacecraft were vulnerable to cyber attack through the Internet.[AFP]

I'm kind of surprised that they aren't completely isolated from the regular web ...

Today's Hero - video included

The two men wrestle down one of the aisles. The next time the two are on camera, it is the clerk who has the gun and escorts the suspects out the door.[nbc17.com]

I'm surprised he can jump that well sporting wallendas that big ...

The latest version of Mozilla's Firefox web browser, version 4, was released this week with a number of new security features, including a mechanism for preventing web-based attacks.[scmagazineuk.com

According to a recent survey commissioned by the ISRA, legislation permitting qualified citizens to carry defensive firearms enjoys strong support in key Democrat-controlled districts of the Illinois Senate.[prnewswire.com]

A hacker is somebody who doesn't realize that what he’s attempting is impossible. You see that in the ComodoHacker’s text. He just followed breadcrumbs, solving one clue at a time. Only after he was done does he realize the enormity of the problem, and how clever (and lucky) he was to solve it.[erratasec.blogspot.com]

Most Mexican newspapers, newsmagazines and broadcasters have signed on to follow guidelines that  will help to prevent reporters from glorifying drug traffickers or relaying the propaganda of organized crime gangs.[examiner.com]

Israel deployed a long-anticipated rocket shield outside the Gaza Strip Sunday, shortly after an Israeli airstrike killed two Palestinians, but stressed the initial deployment was experimental.[dailystar.com]

Gaza militant groups signalled on Saturday they would halt rocket fire at Israel if the Jewish state stopped shootings as well, after a surge in cross-border violence prompted fears of a possible escalation into war.[reuters.com]

That's awfully  generous of them, isn't it ...

There's good news: E-filing through the IRS or New York state is safe — in fact, many computer security experts recommend it. There's also bad news: You should be very careful with everything else, including leaving personal information in your mailbox.[recordonline.com]

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I thought the guy that came clear out of the lower left corner was going to help the vic, but the scumbag was apparently waiting until he felt safe enough (after the vic was unconscious) to run up and get in a couple of stomps before running away ...

Video included

Not a very professional op ...

"It is time for the political games to stop for fear of insulting the government of Mexico." said Moran. "U.S. citizens are being kidnapped and killed while our Border Patrol agents fight a war at home that no one will allow them to win. Not one more Border Patrol agent should fall or citizen be victimized because our government fails to act. Mexico is hemorrhaging violence and we are being hit with the splatter."[azreporter.com]

You can have peaceful, quite communities or you can have a war on drugs, but you can't have both ...

The internet security firm Comodo Group said it had been victim to a hacker attack that appeared to have been part of a larger scheme to eavesdrop on encrypted e-mail and chat communications that may have been sponsored by Iran.[nytimes.com]

Today's Hero

Laura Barnes never thought she would be stabbed and punched in the face while making a phone call in her car around 3:30 in the afternoon in a Target parking lot off of Jefferson Avenue.[wtkr.com]

As typical XSS attacks inject JavaScript into a web page, CSP ignores inline JavaScript — ie JavaScript embedded in HTML code. In addition, CSP only loads web page external assets from a set of whitelisted sites, said Twitter.[zdnet.com]

Video included

It looks like he let someone he didn't know or didn't like get way up on him ...

When Anonymous attacked HBGary Federal back in January, it set off a chain of events that has spawned widespread fascination, fear, anger and some paranoia among the security industry, government, law firms, Congress and even Anonymous itself.[pcworld.com]

Also ...

Recently at Ars we've had a couple of discussions about the use of HTTPS—that is, HTTP secured using SSL or TLS—for every website, as a way of keeping sensitive information out of reach of eavesdroppers and ensuring privacy. That's definitely a good thing, but it has a flaw: it requires HTTPS to actually be effective at protecting privacy. Recent goings on at Certificate Authority (CA) Comodo provide compelling evidence that such trust is misplaced.[arstechnica.com]

Interesting ...

Some cool sub pics ...

A security officer at the McNamara Federal Building stored a suspicious package that turned out to contain a bomb for three weeks before alerting authorities, said a spokesman for a union that represents guards at the site, who called the incident "a total embarrassment."[detnews.com]

Like no other release before it, Firefox 4 includes a number of significant security features. These features are addressing attacks that are in particularly hard to avoid by developers and in which the browser is more so the victim then the server.[sans.com]

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Deputies said Martinez stole $400. However, leaving the parking lot was not easy. Security cameras capture Martinez running out of the shop and running right behind him is the shop owner. The video shows the owner shooting several times at the car Martinez hopped in. “He just stated that he was in fear for his and his wife's life,” Fisher said.[krqe.com]

Geeeez ...

Video included

Newly-released mall security video reveals the terror at the Tacoma Mall when a man went on a rampage, sending shoppers running.[komonews.com]

They appear to be totally misrepresenting what actually happened. Whatever it was that sent the crowd running, I can just about guarantee that it wasn't because some guy was throwing stuff around. Most likely, it was some kind of panicked, and ultimately erroneous,  announcement on the loud speaker by Mall representatives ("RUN for GAWD SAKE ...RUN!!!). Otherwise, your average mall shopper would stand there and watch the guy in the "rampage" walk up and hit them in their face ...

There seems to be no end in sight to the violence across the border.[ktsm.com]

Several security certificates used to authenticate and encrypt Web sessions have been found to be fraudulent, and could be deployed to trick users out of personal information on high-profile websites including Google, Yahoo and Skype.[msnbc.msn.com]

With more than 47 million domain names under management, GoDaddy has a huge DNS infrastructure that it has upgraded to support the emerging Internet security standard known as DNSSEC for DNS Security Extensions.[pcworld.com]

"Our company policy is that we (security) respond to any robbery site in person," Grover continues. "We provide trauma support for employees as well as assisting law enforcement with resolving the case. We determine cause and initiate security solutions to prevent another incident. The first year on the job I spent my life in hotels. I had no time or other resources to do other things."[securityinfowatch.com]

Gaffney bristled at the ruling in a comment to Newsmax Tuesday, saying, “Any judge who would apply Shariah in an American courtroom — especially against the express wishes of Muslims seeking due process under laws promulgated pursuant to the U.S. Constitution — is certainly ignorant of the true, unconstitutional character of ‘Islamic ecclesiastical law.’[newsmax.com]

It doesn't say what the reason for the ruling is, but if there is an underlying contract that they were all parties to that says disputes will be decided under sharia law, it seems to me no different than  having a contract that says disputes will be decided under Nevada law or French law (which is as kosher as church on Sunday). If  it was in the contract and they signed it, the judge was right in ruling the way he did and that's the only way I can imagine such a ruling occurring.

Video included

We now know the names of the people involved in that assault in the 100 block of East Main Street in Bloomsburg early last Friday morning.[bloomutoday.com]

Update of this story with uncut video ...

However, claims by the prosecution that the coding and encryption systems were the most sophisticated ever seen in use were overstated – by more than 2,000 years.[theregister.co.uk]

Assuming that enough computing power was amassed to test 1 trillion keys per second, testing all possible keys would take 10.79 quintillion years. This is about 785 million times the age of the visible universe (13.75 billion years). On the other hand, you might get lucky in the first 10 minutes.[idg.no]

Russia is creating a new conventional submarine, which will be equipped with a unique engine that will enable the vehicle to compete with nuclear-powered submarines in terms of speed and efficiency.[ruvr.ru]

Mmmm ... surfacing means vulnerability ...

Hundreds of thousands of cryptographic tokens used by Australians who bank online, the Defence Force and other large corporations are vulnerable to a potential hack attack after a supplier revealed secret data it held had been stolen.[smh.com.au]

Video included

Surveillance video shows a fight that took place around 2 a.m. Friday on Main Street in Bloomsburg. The camera captures two men in front of some stores. After a few exchanges one man hits the other. The blow knocks the man to the ground.Then the man who threw the punch took off, leaving victim unconscious on the ground.[wnep.com]

Well, that's all pretty self-explanatory ...

Surveillance cameras are a documented way to fight crime and catch criminals. But a joint investigation between NBC2 and our partners at the Naples Daily News uncovers evidence that a popular Southwest Florida mall has removed its cameras in the wake of an alleged crime.[nbc-2.com]

Hmmm ...

The moral line that separates leaker and informant is thinner than it seems–at least in the mind of Adrian Lamo, the former hacker who outed alleged WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning to federal agents last year and has since become a pariah in the hacker community.

The Second Natural Law of Security: It's cheaper to be invisible than it is to be invincible.

Talk of border violence made an early cameo during a Texas House of Representatives committee hearing Wednesday before its members approved a bill to expand concealed handgun rights on college campuses.[themonitor.com]

If activated, the new option in users' account settings means that whenever a they log on, their browser will connect to Twitter's servers via HTTPS, an encrypted version of the basic web protocol. Virtually anyone trying to spy on the traffic will see only packets of completely unintelligible data.[telegraph.co.uk]

Originally designed for the development and testing of programs, sandboxes have evolved into a security tool capable of separating active programs and processes from the host system or local desktop.[searchsecurity.techtarget.com]

"The code opens the C volume in raw mode, performs a manual read of disk sectors, and then manually parses the disk data in order to understand the file system structure and find where in the disk the infection target .dll file is located (and perform a raw write operation to infect it)", he says in his security blog.[infosecurity-magazine.com]

Video included

A clerk stopped an armed robbery at his store by pulling out a weapon of his own and the entire incident was caught on surveillance video.[newschannel5.com]

Oh man ... he jacks one in and the magazine drops out onto the floor. On the other hand, he realized it immediately, got it back in while maintaining cover and changing position, and then he jacked another one in and made with some serious blam-blams ... never hit anything, but suppression fire is good, too ...

The surveillance video of Michael Jackson's home the day he died has been erased -- lost forever, because the LAPD never knew MJ's death would turn into a criminal case.[tmz.com]

Video is as good for proving nothing happened as it is proving something happened. If I was responsible for MJ's surveillance video at the time of his death, I'd be making copies left and right, unless ...

At the northwest Houston facility, technicians armor vehicles to keep diplomats, business executives, oil field workers, politicians and others safe in violent areas in the world.[chron.com]

Russia will lease a nuclear powered submarine to India before October, a Russian Navy Staff admiral said on Wednesday.[en.rian.ru]

Caribou is an Android-based application written by security researcher Ian Robertson as a proof-of-concept demonstration of the incredibly poor security controls in use on widely popular cardkey door control systems.[cybersecurityguy.com]

Interesting ...

Video included

Sabra Leavy held on to her handbag, they said, and was dragged about 40 yards before being flung to the pavement and at least partially run over.[myfoxdfw.com]

About 40 police officers combed the complex but had not found any threat Monday night. It wasn't clear whether retailers would reopen today.[roanoke.com]

Gee, whiz ...

"Before, the attack had to get to your premises before you could mitigate it. So you had to have massive pipes sitting there idle with tens of gigabytes of capacity," he says. "You had this large capacity infrastructure that you had to buy and maintain, but you also had to have large opex and personnel expenses. By moving this service into the cloud, the pipes are no longer an issue. You no longer have the capex because it's done as a service with a low monthly fee and no excess bandwidth.''[networkworld.com]

Interesting approach ...

The Arizona Department of Public Safety is warning college students and spring break visitors to Mexico to be careful.[kingmandailyminer.com]

The new chief of the municipal police department in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico’s most violent city, received his first death threat from drug traffickers on his third day in office, a police spokesman said.[laht.com]

These 10 martial arts weapons training safety tips can help protect you and training partners whether using real weapons or those designed specifically for practice.[mademan.com]

"It is totally unacceptable to be bumbling such critical tasks," Chaffetz said. "These people are supposed to be protecting us against terrorists."[usatoday.com]

Video included

A convicted felon is accused of punching an 80-year-old man in the face, knocking off his glasses, as the elderly man waited outside a restroom in a grocery store on the Northwest Side, police say.[chicagotribune.com]

With the vic's face blocked you can't really tell whether he's just standing there or yelling some kind of smack at the locked restroom door leading up to the punching. Yelling at the door, or doing something else that is provocative rather than patiently waiting for his turn at the restroom, certainly wouldn't be justification for the other guy to punch him, but it would indicate that he had significantly reduced his 'resistance to selection for interference' leading up to getting punched, and may actually paint him in the light of interferior if he thought someone vulnerable was in there at the time.

Video included

Well ... this was fairly intense ...

The mayor, police chief and a village trustee in the New Mexico border town of Columbus have been charged along with eight other defendants with buying firearms for illegal export to Mexico, federal authorities said Thursday.[cnn.com]

Welcome to the economics of prohibition ...

Further, BestCrypt allows you to mount a container (on NTFS drives) as a folder, not as a new drive. This means you're not limited to drive letters, and while a new virtual drive might draw attention, a folder buried many levels deep will not be casually noticed.[pcworld.com]

The reactors that power Britain's naval submarines are "potentially vulnerable" to fatal nuclear accidents because they fail to meet modern safety standards, according to a heavily censored report declassified by the Ministry of Defence.[guardian.co.uk]

Sen. Jack Reed expressed guarded optimism Wednesday that the eventual spending compromise to finance the government for the rest of this fiscal year would include the full allocation for purchase of two Virginia-class submarines in 2011.[projo.com]

Following huge amount of criticism for trying to block freedom of information and freedom of speech by restricting people’s ability to donate to Wikileaks, Paypal has done a U-turn. Now all accounts associated with donations have been freed up and returned to regular standing.[topsecretwriters.com]

Interesting ... if true ...

Rule No. 1: Never bring a beanbag to a gunfight.[washingtontimes.com]

After inducting advance fighter jets from China, Pakistan plans to buy six state-of-the-art submarines from the neighbouring country in a bid to boost its under-sea warfare capabilities.[thehindu.com]

Android has also never before represented such a significant target for hackers and other baddies looking to profit off of the platform's popularity. In other words, now is the time to get smart about Google Android security. The following six tips and tricks will help do just that.[computerworld.com]

At least 18 people were killed in a shootout in the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas, state media reported.[cnn.com]

The drug-related violence in parts of Mexico is making for some great travel deals south of the border — if you’re willing to take the risk.[khou.com]

Most users know better than to click a message from "Bank of Amerika" that tells them "Your account is much suspect of risk, please input number for verify."[pcworld.com]

FreeOTFE has a "no install" mode, though it does require Administrator privileges to load the drivers. Using this mode is a good way to put both FreeOTFE and an encrypted volume on a portable drive, either a flash drive or a small USB drive. If the drive is stolen or lost, its contents will be inaccessible, and you can use it on any computer where you have appropriate privileges--for example, this is ideal for transporting sensitive data between office and home environments, or between multiple work computers.[pcworld.com]

Israa Abdel Fattah, 32, a labor organizer and blogger, shared her file with McClatchy and marveled at the thoroughness of the surveillance. The file included detailed transcripts of e-mails sent from her Gmail account and phone conversations with her ex-husband. The feeling of violation was indescribable, she said.[miamiherald.com]

The home ministry has directed the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to ask service providers for a solution for security agencies to access the services, by the end of this month, according to people privy to the development. Research in Motion (RIM) has maintained that the company cannot provide access to its enterprise services, since it does not hold any key to these.[business-standard.com]

Some cool pics ...

Android handsets infected with malware are getting a cleaning job from Google. On March 2nd, Google removed 21 apps from the Android Marketplace that contained malicious code (the number of infected apps is now 58). Now Google is "remotely removing the malicious applications from affected devices" and "pushing an Android Market security update to all affected devices that undoes the exploits to prevent the attacker(s) from accessing any more information from affected devices," according to a blog post by Rich Cannings, Android security lead.[betanews.com]

Under the new agreement, the two governments will implement long-delayed cross-border trucking provisions of the North American Free Trade Agreement enacted in 1994.[swtimes.com]

It will be interesting to see the effect this has on border security ...

Whoever is sending out the mysterious tweets calling for regular Sunday afternoon "strolls" around China has come up with a highly effective psychological operation against the government, sending a paranoid security apparatus chasing at shadows.[latimes.com]

"As [Wednesday's] attack in Frankfurt revealed, the open area of the airports, whether parking areas, loading/unloading zones, and the terminals themselves, have historically been prime targets [for terrorists],"[foxnews.com]

There will always be places where crowds gather ... maybe you should concentrate on keeping the stuff that leaves the ground from blowing up ...

If you don't want spam-bots or bad guys breaking into your site, make them do calculus.[latimes.com]

It'll probably work for awhile ...

Public-key cryptography allows people across the world to share valuable personal data without a second thought. When you shop online, when you check your bank statement, when you file your taxes online, public-key cryptography is protecting your information. One industry insider estimates that 10 billion devices are using public-key cryptography.[standford.edu]

Some interesting back-story ...

In a surprising blog post that generated a ton of commentary when he wrote it in 2008, Schneier called his policy one of “basic politeness,” providing Internet access for his guests and anyone else that might happen to wander by.[esecurityplanet.com]

Beijng said on Friday that it would boost defence spending by 12.7 percent in 2011, for a total of 601.1 billion yuan ($91.48 billion), marking a return to double-digit growth. China says it needs to upgrade its outmoded forces and that its plans are not a threat to any country, pointing out its defence budget is far lower than the United States.[indiatimes.com]

TrueCrypt is a powerful, free, open source program that allows you to create encrypted volumes on your computer, or to encrypt entire disks, including your system disk. Furthermore, it allows you to create hidden volumes, or even an entire hidden operating system.[pcworld.com]

The show, entitled How To Command A Nuclear Submarine, fits six months of training into eight episodes.[metro.co.uk]

Peraltalajara told authorities that he used the box cutters for work at a Secaucus manufacturing plant and simply forgot that they were in his luggage. He was not charged with any crime.[news.com.au]

To get a sense of how hard it would be to stay focused on screening for 8 minutes, much less 8 hours, try thinking about nothing but driving the next time you get in a car to drive. Before you turn the key your mind will have drifted to some other subject. That said, I bet if the same guy was trying to sneak the box-cutters through, the screener would have noticed them. This is because the passenger's vibe would have focused the screener's attention.

Chipset manufacturer Intel has finally overcome all anti-competition concerns, obtaining the green light for their acquisition of antivirus developer McAfee. They will now be able to start looking at deploying their hardware security policy in processors.[us.generation-nt.com]

A districtwide policy prohibiting students and staff from opening doors to the outside was recently adopted after a $10,800 security system was installed at the middle school, Southampton High School, Southampton Technical Career Center and Nottoway, Meherrin and Capron elementary schools. Riverdale Elementary had a similar system installed when it was built three years ago.[tidewaternews.com]

I really hate the Z-tol approach to problem solving, but having multiple standards for a single secure access is always a recipe for disaster. As long as the everyone from the District Superintendent to the students have to use the same recognition-for-access routine, penalizing the student, even for a chivalry-based violation, is entirely appropriate.

(H/T boing boing)

Attorneys for Walmart and Wackenhut argued Garrett, 44, never did anything to arouse suspicion or otherwise cause them to compel him to leave before he punched Born and robbed him. Garrett, who is 6-feet 3 inches tall and weighed 250 pounds at the time of the incident, was on store property for about 12 minutes before he attacked Born. Attorneys said he was not loitering or acting erratic.[lasvegasinfonewspaper.com]

It's hard to tell with out studying the transcripts, but based on the story, it's hard to imagine any way they could have forseen or prevented the attack ...

Video included

Quick, efficient criminality ...

Video included

Vietnamese make good Americans ...

A Halifax man is suing the company that runs Casino Nova Scotia and three of its employees for allegedly allowing him to walk into the high-rollers room repeatedly even though he was on a list of people who had asked to be banned from the casino.[thechronicleherald.ca]

The Texas Department of Public Safety warned Tuesday against spring break travel to Mexico because of the region's persistent drug violence.[statesman.com]

The chief of security at the Massey Energy Co. mine where an explosion killed 29 miners last April was charged Monday with lying to investigators and ordering the destruction of thousands of security-related documents.[wsj.com]

Note: once the docs are destroyed, the biggies are free to hypo-vehiculate you (I'm not suggesting it happened here ... just sayin'.)

Video included

Neis reportedly had his son, 15, in the car with him when he sped through the crowd of cyclists. Moments after their car ran through the pack of riders, the pair abandoned the vehicle. On Monday, Neis, who works at a bank, and his son said that cyclists had begun hitting their car, a VW Golf, according to Zero Hora.[npr.org]

I imagine the self-defense defense will be a hard sell but, on the other hand, it's hard to imagine a banker with his son in the car just up and deciding  to toothpaste a bunch of bicyclists. The video doesn't show the lead up, but the event itself is fairly intense.

The fact is that college gun-free zones have failed. Signs warning shooters that their murder weapons weren't welcome didn't stop perpetrators at Virginia Tech, Northern Illinois University or the University of Alabama. Since colleges have no mechanism to enforce gun-free zones, these killers had a government guarantee that their victims would be unarmed and defenseless.[usatoday.com]

The first question that needs to be answered before firing up the wristwatch camcorder is, “why am I shooting this video?” The reason that needs to be answered is because there are different rules governing covert video, depending on whether you are shooting it as a private individual/business, or on behalf of a government agency.[governmentvideo.com]

It’s a scenario that every small online business fears: site security is compromised, hackers steal customer data including credit-card details, and your brand and your reputation are left in ruins. No wonder then, that many small online businesses are looking to insure against hackers and the resulting financial impact of a security breach. But is insurance really the answer and could it even be part of the problem?[pcpro.co.uk]

Undeterred by their inebriation, the men went ahead with the test, and one man donned the body armor while his friend delivered a blow armed with the knife.[myfoxdc.com]