Russian shipyards are refusing to build submarines for the Russian Navy. This is the result of the government trying to rein in rapidly rising prices charged for military equipment. Actually, this is part of a larger battle against corruption, or suspected corruption, in Russian defense procurement. The situation has put the Defense Ministry in a difficult position.[strategypage.com]

Hmmm ... things are tight all over ...

The warning stems from an incident Thursday night. Police say a middle-aged woman was assaulted and robbed near a south Minneapolis Cub Foods. A witness, with a permit to carry, saw the incident, chased the attacker, and fired off at least one shot killing the suspect.[kare11.com]

Video included

This is an example of a robbery that would have gone a whole new direction if the vic had been minimally armed and ready to go. The perp had his back completely turned to the vic for a very long time ...

The United States dismantled the oldest nuclear bomb in its Cold War arsenal -- and one of the most powerful it ever built -- on Tuesday as part of President Barack Obama's nuclear security policy.[reuters.com]

As of today, Startpage, by Ixquick, the "world's most private search engine," automatically encrypts ALL searches. Startpage was the first search engine to offer SSL encryption in 2009, and today it again breaks new ground by making SSL encryption the default.[marketwatch.com]

Cool pics included

Now the conflict is over we can reveal British nuclear-powered submarine HMS Triumph had been stationed beneath the waves off Libya – and firing missiles.[mirror.co.uk]

Police took the gun from Martinez-Rodriguez and later interviewed him. He told police he worked as a securiity guard during the party at the Oasis Banquet Hall with five other security officers. He told police he fired his handgun in the air after hearing several gunshots from the parking lot.[ktvn.com]

Shooting over people's heads is a really bad idea ...

"When the People's Daily conducted an online poll on whether people would help a senior citizen who had fallen in the street, more than 80 per cent of those tallied said that they would not help out of fear they would be blamed and saddled with damages."[cbc.ca]

You know your judicial system is a mess when this happens ...

After discontinuing a security feature that let cardholders generate a one-time use number for transactions last month, Discover Financial Services did an about-face and reinstated its Secure Online Account Numbers program.[moneyland.time.com]

I'm surprised that all the CC issuers aren't embracing this ...

Google is rolling out default end-to-end encryption to people who use the site to seek for images, news and general webpages, a change that will better protect search queries and results from eavesdroppers.[theregister.co.uk]

Seems unlikely to protect you from Google's eavesdropping ...

China says the Dalai Lama’s support for Buddhist clerics who set themselves on fire to protest Chinese rule is a type of terrorism in disguise.[washingtonpost.com]

That's credible ...

A new study from McCann-Erickson has found that people around the globe are more worried about loss of personal privacy than they are about most other issues, including rising terrorism, climate change and the growing number of pandemics. The only thing that worries them more is the possibility of another global financial crisis.[mediapost.com]

Security researchers on Tuesday issued a warning about a virus, dubbed Duqu, that's similar in nature to the Stuxnet worm that targeted Iranian critical infrastructure last year.[pcmag.com]

IT security experts have long loved totroll through hacker forums to gather intelligence on emergingthreats and even (as in the ill-fated case of HBGaryFederalCEO Aaron Barr) try to profile the hackers themselves. Butas a report from IT security firm Imperva shows, many of theso-called hacker portals out there are more hangouts for newbie hackers(and possibly a few budding FBI informants) looking at how to getstarted in the game.[arstechnica.com]

Travelers say the questions typically focus on where they are headed, for how long and the purpose of the trip. More probing questions include whether carry-on bags have liquids or why the traveler is holding so much cash.

If a traveler doesn't have the wherewithal to interfere with a flight, where they're going, for how long and their purpose are totally irrelevant as are there intentions or any other consideration.

Video included - but you may wish you hadn't watched

This is really, really messed up ...

The encryption level prevents even government entities from accessing the information. “RIM cannot accommodate any request for a copy of a customer's encryption key, since at no time does RIM, or any wireless network operator or any third party, ever possess a copy of the key.”[greeleygazette.com]

I sure would have felt a lot better about this statement if they had made it loud and often while they were 'in talks' with these governments over the last few years ...

Video included

While Rayon McIntosh, the McDonald's cashier who was arrested after beating two unruly customers with a metal rod at the West 3rd Street joint, was charged with felony assault and criminal possession of a weapon, many people seemed to support his reaction.[gothamist.com]

Unfortunately, in most states the fact that they provoked you doesn't grant you permission to pound them into paste ...

The U.S. is abandoning plans to keep U.S. troops in Iraq past a year-end withdrawal deadline, The Associated Press has learned. The decision to pull out fully by January will effectively end more than eight years of U.S. involvement in the Iraq war, despite ongoing concerns about its security forces and the potential for instability.[usatoday.com]

If we actually do this, I believe it will go a long ways toward convincing the 'good' folks over there (if there are any, and it stands to reason that there are) that we really do intend to liberate and then leave ...

The recriminations spread into the cabinet of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, who faced warnings that he had only emboldened Hamas by giving so much for so little.[telegraph.co.uk]

Sounds like a rather heinous slap to Hamas, if you asked me ...

More than 10 hours later, they had pulled off one of Brazil's biggest bank heists -- emptying out more than 100 safe-deposit boxes for a multimillion-dollar bounty of rubies, Colombian emeralds, antique Rolex watches and cash.[reuters.com]

Hackers successfully broke into 93,000 accounts at Sony over the last few days, once again impacting users of the Sony Entertainment Network, PlayStation Network (PSN) and Sony Online Entertainment services.[nakedsecurity.sophos.com]

Under the proposed legislation, a court must presume a person (the property owner or lawful occupant) was justified in killing an intruder, regardless of whether the property owner reasonably believed the force was necessary to defend against imminent death or substantial harm.[wisbar.com]

"Good Dynamics is a platform that allows application developers to easily secure their apps on mobile devices without having to become security experts."[pcworld.com]

Video included

Thieves pretending to sell gold are caught on camera as they quietly switch out a bag of real gold worth thousands of dollars for a bag of fake gold worth nothing.[thedenverchannel.com]

There are lessons here, the main one being that people are planning to exploit every mistake you make ...

Many large-scale entertainment venues and other places that drawlarge crowds in Las Vegas and beyond use armed security guards. But the DGE and state Attorney General's Office must study the issue before taking the next step, Gilbert said.

What's to study. Vegas had pervasive armed Security, moved away from it, realized that it wasn't cost effective, and then move back. Apparently, it's okay for the scumbags to have guns in AC ...

The attack, developed by researchers at Germany's Ruhr University, takes about seven hours to recover the secret key protecting the Mifare DESFire MF3ICD40. The hack leaves no trace that the card has been compromised, and requires equipment costing $3,000.[theregister.co.uk]

Cool pics included

The latest state-of-the-art hunter-killer submarine set to join the Royal Navy, HMS Ambush, has successfully completed her first dive.[dailymail.co.uk]

Video included

The clerk that went to the right has some astonishingly large wallendas ...

If you follow the news, you probably know what happened to Sony PlayStation Network. In which case you also know why companies need to implement solid encryption solutions.[tmcnet.com]

The storage device connects to your computer via USB 3.0 port and has a data rate of up to 5 Gbps making it perfect for lots of photos and video backups. The drive inside the unit uses 256-bit AES full disk encryption as well.[slashgear.com]

Pics included

The 600-ton Fateh is among semi-heavy submarines belonging to Iran's Army which will probably been used to carry out coastal missions along with other submarines, including Ghadir, Fars news agency reported on Wednesday.[presstv.com]

They're probably OK as long as you don't have any western subs hunting you ...

An American mother and her son were two of four people shot to death in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico on Tuesday.[ibtimes.com]

HTC held true to its promise to look into the security vulnerability that surfaced over the weekend, an apparent glitch that allows any app requesting internet access to take a peek at a user account information, GPS location, system logs, and other potentially private data. While HTC assured us that user data isn't at risk of being harmed by its own software, a third party malware app could exploit the security flaw and cause some trouble. The outfit is already building a patch, and will ship it out in an over the air update after a short testing period with its carrier partners.[engadget.com]

Hmmm, they're being refreshingly up-front about the whole thing ...

Russian software vendor Elcomsoft has released a product that it says can crack BlackBerry smartphone passwords, if the BlackBerry owner has enabled a media-card encryption security setting.[fudzilla.com]

Fans initially were searched with security wands as they entered the stadium Sunday. But with big lines backing up, a team spokesman says the Packers and local police decided 30 minutes before kickoff to go back to their previous system of pat-downs.[boston.com]

In news that will no doubt be of great concern to owners of HTC smartphones, a security team is claiming to have uncovered a "massive security vulnerability" in HTC Android devices that allows any application with Internet access to gain access to private data, including user accounts, email addresses, GPS location, text message data and phone numbers. The vulnerability is said to affect HTC smartphones running the latest version of HTC's software, including the EVO 3D, EVO 4G, Thunderbolt, and others.[gizmag.com]

Mexican schools appear increasingly vulnerable to the country's drug violence, with five human heads dumped outside one school and threats of a grenade attack on another in the past week alone.[AFP]

It's just a matter of time until this is happening in San Diego or Phoenix if we don't knock it off ...

All of the products tested included the ability to remotely wipe personal data from a lost or stolen phone. The report states that "None of the products deleted all of the data irretrievably in the remote wipe test. In all cases it was possible to recover photos, music, documents and so on from the external storage card, even using a free program." Another potential problem occured when the security software accomplished its remote data wipe by resetting the phone's state to factory defaults. Admittedly, doing so wiped out personal data, but it also wiped out all apps, including the security app itself. After this step you could no longer track the phone's location.[pcmag.com]

 Hmmm ... troubling ...

79% of businesses rated as PCI-compliant fell out of compliance over the course of the year. In other words, their information security and risk management practices got worse.[informationweek.com]

State RCW 9A.16.110 – the only law like it anywhere in the country – provides reimbursement for anyone who must defend himself or herself in court after having to defend themselves against a violent crime and winding up facing criminal charges. Simply put, people subjected to prosecution for having acted in self-defense should not be financially penalized.[examiner.com]

You would think that Democrats would be leery about trying to undo this even under the guise of cost-cutting. No one is going to buy that as the reason for it.

Something has gone terribly wrong on the plant floor at ACME Specialty Chemical International Inc.[pcworld.com]

INL is probably a good place for this work to be done. They have a long history of being at the forefront of high-tech matters ...

“The 9- and 5-year-old boys were playing in the driveway when he called them over, while their mother was sitting inside a parked car,” Benton said. “Before Pochervina could speak to them, she asked him what he wanted and he said he ‘was going to ask if they’d seen someone wearing a Michael Myers ‘Halloween’ mask.’”[heraldnews.suntimes.com]

Video included

They prey on the kindness of strangers, creating a diversion that involves a man or woman in trouble and then ripping off the people who come to their aid or get stuck behind them.[myfoxspokane.com]

You should have your valuables in your front pockets or secured inside your bag if you're going to be in crowds ...

Brandishing shotguns and semiautomatic pistols, members of the 112th U.S. Congress took a class of visiting schoolchildren hostage today, barricading themselves inside the Capitol rotunda and demanding $12 trillion dollars in cash.[theonion.com]

[H/T to The Agitator]

A 24-year-old engineer was arrested on Friday on suspicion of cracking the EasyCard encryption system and changing the value of cards to make purchases at convenience stores, Taipei EasyCard Corp said yesterday, maintaining that its security system remains sound.[taipeitimes.com]

The problem is that it can take weeks to get a customer's data, assuming they have hundreds of gigabytes (GB) to upload. By sending the customers a portable hard drive, which the customer can then load up with data and send back, the initial image in the cloud is easily and quickly created.[examiner.com]

SEDs are one of the information security industry's best kept secrets. They solve many common data loss problems, are easy to use and manage with minimal impact on system performance. Yet relatively few businesses and governments use SEDs, according to Robert Thibadeau, who assembled the original team at disk-maker Seagate, the company that pioneered SED technology.[computerweekly.com]

Lots of interesting digital stuff today ...

The Software Protection Initiative (SPI) under the direction of the Air Force Research Laboratory and the US Department Of Defense recently created Lightweight Portable Security (LPS). Like the name indicates, this is a small Linux desktop distribution that’s designed for secure use.[zdnet.com]

With the decrypting of a protected PayPal browser cookie at a security conference Friday, it became official: the internet's foundation of trust has suffered yet another serious fracture that will require the attention of the industry's best minds.[theregister.co.uk]

Colombian authorities have seized a submarine which they say belongs to the rebel group the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, with the capacity to carry ten tonnes of cocaine.[itn.co.uk]

The ticker makes it very simple for you to eavesdrop when one of your Facebook friends says something to someone you've never heard of - and even see what the stranger originally wrote too.[nakedsecurity.sophos.com]

The high-tech scanner, bought by TSA at a cost of roughly $150,000, can detect hidden explosives, guns or knives tucked into underwear or ammunition packed into body orifices. But it cannot, the agent told me, see clearly through a shiny shirt.[washingtonpost.com]

A fascinating new example of Mac malware has been discovered, that appears to be adopting an old Windows-style disguise to fool users into running it.[nakedsecurity.sophos.com]

"Most of the friends I know, if they don't have their alarm systems hooked up, they're doing it. If they don't have a gun, they're buying one. If they don't have a dog, they're looking for them," added Smith.[wwltv.com]

Sounds like a solid program ... 

Interesting ... but your mileage may vary ...

The family of a man shot and killed by a North County security guard was awarded nearly $2 million by a jury on Wednesday.[10news.com]

The story says that the Security dude is responsible for paying 60% of the $1.8M. Either he's one highly paid Security Guard or their going to have a really hard time collecting that part of it ...

IronKeyhas sold its USB-based security hardware business to Imation, freeing upresources for IronKey to focus on its cloud-based security services forenterprises.[eweek.com]

If you depend on Ironkey thumb-drives,  it will be necessary to monitor this development ...

A federal judge in New Jersey has sentenced a lead transportation security officer at Newark Liberty Airport to six months of home confinement for stealing money from passengers’ bags as they underwent security screenings.[washingtonpost.com]

Video included

Palmer moves downstairs, still shooting, and then outside. He walks across the lawn. Police arrive and shoot Palmer. He collapses. “He just looked like he was wanting to get shot,” said Couch, “He was asking for somebody to please shoot me.”[ky3.com]

Too bad there wasn't anyone available to accommodate him a little sooner ...

"Last summer I was threatened over and over and over again," he said. "People were threatening my wife, they were threatening my grandchildren."[cnn.com]

As a general rule, if your getting a lot of threats, you may want to consider the possibility that you're being a d-bag ...

Navigation-and-emergency-services company OnStar is notifying its six million account holders that it will keep a complete accounting of the speed and location of OnStar-equipped vehicles, even for drivers who discontinue monthly service.[wired.com]

[H/T to tidyread.com]

Micron Technology, Inc. today introduced a new version of its popular RealSSD(TM) C400, featuring self encryption for unmatched data security.[marketwatch.com]

Work has begun on the first Virginia-class submarine to be built on an accelerated two-submarine-a-year basis, Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc. announced Monday.[hamptonroads.com]

South Korean patrol boats and corvettes are able to detect a mere 30 percent of submarines at a time when North Korea is increasing the frequency of submarine infiltration drills.[chosun.com]

“BEAST is different than most published attacks against HTTPS,” Duong wrote in an email. “While other attacks focus on the authenticity property of SSL, BEAST attacks the confidentiality of the protocol. As far as we know, BEAST implements the first attack that actually decrypts HTTPS requests.”[theregister.co.uk]

Japan's biggest defencecontractor, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd , said onMonday hackers had gained access to its computers, with onenewspaper saying its submarine, missile and nuclear power plantcomponent factories had been the target.[reuters.com]

The airline has cleared the backlog of passengers who had to be re-screened when two people went through an exit the wrong way and bypassed security checks.[abc.net.au]

This certainly lends confidence ...

Mr Dixon, 40, – who uploaded the private security video on to YouTube showing Zara Phillips’s husband kissing and cuddling the unnamed woman in Queenstown last Sunday – has been arrested and charged with accessing a computer system for dishonest purposes.[telegraph.co.uk]

This sounds like one of those things where someone thought they were doing someone a favor without bothering to ask whether it would be construed that way if it were done to them ...

One man was shot to death and a woman was wounded during an apparent carjacking that authorities believe began inside the parking garage of an Atlantic City casino early Sunday. [nbcnewyork.com]

One of the world’s leading Muslim clerics will issue a global declaration against terrorism at a speech in London on Saturday. Dr Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri will make the declaration at the ‘Peace for Humanity Conference 2011’ at Wembley Arena.[independent.co.uk]

On Wednesday, the House overrode Gov. John Lynch’s veto of Senate Bill 88. The Senate had overridden the veto the week before. The bill changes state weapons laws in four important ways.[unionleader.com]

The discovery of a "suspicious vehicle" near an Atlantic City casino caused several street closures and the temporary shutdown of a parking garage earlier tonight, but authorities determined the vehicle to be harmless, according to a casino spokesman and witnesses at the scene.[nj.com]

Cool pic

HMS Anson ...

Dozens of employees at Honolulu’s airport were fired or suspended after an investigation found workers did not screen checked bags for explosives, the Transportation Security Administration said Friday.[washingtonpost.com]

The new terms of service pushed out this week — which are mandatory for all PSN users — include an agreement that waives the right of any individual to sue Sony on a collective basis (i.e., through a class action)[whowatchesthewatchers.wordpress.com]

Instead of having one account number for all of an organization’s charges, the payee receives a unique 16-digit account number for each single payment with purchasing controls embedded in the system.[askbte.com]

At the Defence Security and Equipment International arms fair in London's Excel Centre, there is no shortage of options for dishing out bad days, weeks, months and whole lifetimes.[nzherald.co.nz]

Inside the bag were six assault rifles, a grenade launcher, a rocket launcher, 20 ammunition magazines for various-sized weapons and three packages of what appeared to be C-4 plastic explosives, a Border Patrol news release said.[reuters.com]

It's odd that everyone knows how to stop this but no one is willing to do it.

Also:

Signs left near the bodies declared the pair, both apparently in their early 20s, were killed for posting denouncements of drug cartel activities on a social network. "This is going to happen to all of those posting funny things on the Internet," one sign said. "You better (expletive) pay attention. I'm about to get you."[cnn.com]

Russia's first Graney class nuclear-powered attack submarine set course on Monday for scheduled sea trials, the Sevmash shipyard said.[rian.ru]

A year back, the Government of India warned telecommunication operators to avoid importing mobile network infrastructure components from China. The warning was based on fear of China misusing the equipment to monitor India. Back during the Cold War era, one of the theories presented for the West’s success was Russia using photocopiers by Xerox. It is believed that these photocopiers were fitted with cameras allowing the CIA to monitor Soviet communication.[zdnet.com]

The recent attack on the lesser-known certificate authority known as DigiNotar, and previously on Comodo, has security experts pondering the future of certificate-based encryption and authentication. For many people, SSL or what is now generally known as TLS is some arcane security measure that involves certificates and usually results in an ‘s’ being appended to the protocol they are using.[memeburn.com]

Islamic leaders from multiple local organizations and mosques met Sunday morning in Dearborn to publicly recognize the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11, as well as to stand against terrorism.[rochester.patch.com]

Most religions seem to have canonical support for the killing of non-believers (or folks who have the misfortune of being in the way at an inconvenient time) but the difference between churchy neighbors and tangos is that the tangos practice or encourage the practice of harming others without first-order necessity such as self defense or counter-injustice ... of course, as we learned from Reagan - Trust, but verify!

He sneaked into the computer systems of a security firm on the outskirts of Amsterdam. He created fake credentials that could allow someone to snoop on Internet connections that appeared to be secure. He then shared that bounty with people he declines to name.[nytimes.com]

The following are the chronology of the U.S. anti-terrorism campaign over the past 10 years.

It's interesting to see what Xinhua found the key moments to have been ...

Worse, the Pakistani nuclear arsenal now includes an inexpensive, small, mobile, tactical missile with a miniaturized nuclear warhead. These were designed to be deployed on the battlefield against potential invasion by India.[huffingtonpost.com]

I used to be disgusted, now I'm just amused ...

If you want to convince us, don't put up a carefully orchestrated sales job ...

The Mexican navy says it has broken up a sophisticated communications network used by the Zetas drugs cartel in the eastern state of Veracruz.[bbc.co.uk]

IT IS another escalation in the computer security arms race. Software that can uncover all of a person's online activity could, in the hands of the police, put more sex offenders behind bars - but it may also be exploited to develop new ways of avoiding being caught.[newscientist.com]

Some cool abandoned sub pics ...

How many Americans have been killed in terrorist attacks insidethe United States since the September 11, 2001, atrocities?Arguably 16.[reason.com]

Microsoft is rolling out a worldwide patch that deems all DigiNotar SSL certificates to be untrustworthy except for OSes in the Netherlands, as requested by the Dutch government.[pcworld.com]

Video included

This looks to me like the group (or at least the two guys that were all lovey-dovey) became self-conscious of their own behavior because Vic #1 wasn't responding to them in what they considered to be the 'expected' way and walked out, and then after they walked out, someone in the group said something like "Are you going to let him get away with that" and Perp #1, in his intoxicated state, couldn't resist going back and sucker-punching Vic #1.

If they were doing it on a PC, they would have perhaps asked themselves if the PC was secure. With smartphones, people aren't yet conscious about the risks involved. The fact is, smartphones, as they become popular, are also becoming vulnerable to cyber-crimes.[timesofindia.com]

People are just barely starting to think about Security on their PCs ...

Speaking via a video link, Assange told an audience at a Berlin technology trade fair that a Guardian journalist had published the password to the encrypted files in his book, creating a situation where some people got access to the uncensored files while others did not. "We had a case where every intelligence agency has the material and the people who are mentioned do not have the material," he said from a mansion about two hours' drive from London, where he is under virtual house arrest pending extradition proceedings to Sweden on unrelated sexual assault allegations.[AP via google.com]

This should be interesting to watch unfold ...

BAE Systems have tested a new camouflaging system called “Adaptive” that can instantly blend a combat vehicle into its natural surroundings by making it invisible to infrared and other surveillance technology.[zdnet.com]

Some more pics here ...

Video included

Surveillance video shows a victim fighting off two men during an assault in New Hampshire. The suspects tried to get alcohol from a convenience store.[whdh.com]

He's certainly a wiry little dude ...

Here’s ten tips to keep yourself safe from common disasters that I see each year as a university TA.[whatsyourtech.ca]

The [Canadian] navy’s last operational submarine is now sidelined until 2016, leaving the service without an underwater capability and potentially throwing into question the future of the submarine fleet.[vancouversun.com]