Hiding Genome Data Won't Protect Us, Experts Say
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Making the genetic codes of  dangerous pathogens a secret will not save anyone from  bioterrorism and may make the population vulnerable to attacks  from Mother Nature, scientists said on Thursday.
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Cutting-edge data mining and other intelligence tools could redefine privacy as we know it. A News.com special report.
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Researcher finds two flaws that under unusual circumstances could let a malicious program read private data or render a phone unusable.
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New national standards for driver's licenses worry some privacy advocates.
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Traditional antivirus technology may be too slow to protect users, researchers say.
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An intrusion into a university research computer housing information on 1.4 million people leads to a proposed law that would cut researchers off from sensitive data. Opponents say important work would be hobbled in the process.
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Researchers expose privacy problems with the iPod Nano and Nike running aid.
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Scientists are warning would-be slimmers to be careful about using 'DNA-diets' on the internet.
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A vulnerability in radio-frequency ID chips could put millions of users of wireless car key tags or speed pass payment devices at risk, according to a recent study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University and RSA Laboratories.
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9. (Guardian News Service):The genetic profiles held by police for criminal investigations are not sophisticated enough to prevent false identifications, according to the father of DNA fingerprinting.
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The genetic profiles held by police for criminal investigations are not sophisticated enough to prevent false identifications, according to the father of DNA fingerprinting.
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Controls are needed to ensure genetic information for research is not used by outside parties, British warn experts.
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The scientist who pioneered DNA fingerprinting has warned of the increasing danger of false positives as the use of the technique becomes more widespread.
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(InfoWorld) - Security researcher Joanna Rutkowska has demonstrated several methods that sophisticated rootkits can use to hide from even the most reliable detection method currently available -- hardware-based products that read a system's RAM. Rutkowska is a researcher with security firm Coseinc Advanced Malware Labs. She recently outlined several ways of getting around the UAC (User Account Control) feature introduced in Windows Vista. Several researchers have identified problems with UAC. The demonstration, given at the Black Hat security conference in Arlington, Va., indicates that if a rootkit is advanced enough, there currently is no way it can be reliably detected, Rutkowska said. Rootkits are designed to hide some activity from observers and have recently been used to conceal the presence of Trojans and hacker backdoors -- not to mention Sony BMG's copy-protection software. Several hardware-based systems exist for acquiring an image of a computer's RAM, the most reliable way to detect the presence of certain kinds of rootkits, Rutkowska said. Those include Tribble, Komoku's CoPilot, and RAM Capture Tool from BBN Technologies, but she said none are particularly easy to find. Rutkowska's findings mean system designers may need to come up with a system architecture better suited to forensic analysis, such as an interface dedicated to memory acquisition. "We live in the 21st century, but apparently can't reliably read the memory of our computers," she said at the presentation. "Maybe we should rethink the design of our computer systems, so that they were somehow verifiable." Rutkowska's presentation outlined three types of attacks, one that crashes the machine when RAM acquisition is attempted, a "covering attack" that allows the acquisition tool to see only garbage when it inspects certain parts of physical memory, and a "full replacing attack" that allows the tool to see false information when it scans parts of physical memory. The denial-of-service attack could leave investigators legally liable for crashing the system, Rutkowska said. The "covering attack" might allow investigators to see the malware's "hooks" in some cases, but would make it impossible for investigators to analyze the malware. And the "full replacing attack" could simply mean that the malware is never detected at all, she said.
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TAMPA, Fla., June 19  /PRNewswire/ -- Computers may have sensitive data that identity thieves would love to get their hands on. Magnets, degaussers, and other x-ray or magnetic techniques do not work, even the large bulk eraser magnets are not effective.
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Refusal to hand over secret payments evidence could endanger sharing of intelligence.
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Lawmakers may soon pass a bill that would set up a huge network of databases that law enforcement officials could tap to find terrorists. But that kind of unfettered access to data about Americans raises eyebrows. By Ryan Singel.