submeta writes "Researchers in Munich have successfully performed a quantum key exchange between a moving aircraft and a ground station. Quantum key distribution, which exploits the phenomenon of entanglement, offers theoretically perfect encryption (although it can be vulnerable in practice). This advance is an important step on the way to key exchange with a satellite, which could enable practical usage of the technology."

wiredmikey writes "The co-founder of The Pirate Bay filesharing website was detained in Sweden on Friday, days after his deportation from Cambodia, officials said. Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, 27, faces a one-year prison sentence for promoting copyright infringement in his home country. His current detention is for an investigation into his involvement in the hacking of a Swedish IT firm named Logica. He was arrested in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh on August 30 at Stockholm's behest and expelled late on Monday."

New submitter inotrollyou writes "Drones are getting more sophisticated, and will soon carry 'soft' biometrics and facial recognition software. In other news, sales of hats, tinfoil, and laser pointers go up 150%. Obviously there are major privacy concerns and not everyone is down for this." It's not just drones, either: In my old neighborhood in Philadelphia the Orwellian police cameras were everywhere, and they're being touted as a solution for crime in my Texas neighborhood, too. The report itself is more predictive than proscriptive; under U.S. law, as the Register points out, you can expect less legal as well as practical privacy protection the further you are on the continuum between home and public space.

Lucas123 writes "Intel for the first time demonstrated the Wireless Gigabit (WiGig) docking specification using an Ultrabook, which was able to achieve 7Gbps performance, ten times the fastest Wi-Fi networks based on the IEEE 802.11n standard. The WiGig medium access control (MAC) and physical (PHY) control specification operates in the unlicensed 60GHz frequency band, which has more spectrum available than the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands used by existing Wi-Fi products. According to Ali Sadri, chairman of the WiGig Alliance, the specification also supports wireless implementations of HDMI and DisplayPort interfaces, as well as the High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) scheme used to protect digital content transmitted over those interfaces. It scales to allow transmission of both compressed and uncompressed video."

An anonymous reader writes "Google today [Friday] announced it is discontinuing support for Internet Explorer 8 in Google Apps, including its Business, Education, and Government editions. The kill date is November 15, 2012. After that, IE8 users accessing Google Apps will see a message recommending that they upgrade their browser."

An anonymous reader writes "I'm starting my Ph.D in psychology this year and plan to finance this period with IT freelance work, mostly building websites with Drupal and setting up Linux networks, servers, etc.. Now I have a little problem: Since I never studied ICT nor followed a course that resulted in a certificate, I can only prove my knowledge by actually doing stuff or showing what I've done so far. Unfortunately that isn't always sufficient to convince potential customers. So I was wondering what other slashdotters do. Are there any free or cheap alternatives to get certificates or other more convincing ways to prove your IT knowledge?"

Cornwallis writes in with a story reminding cameras everywhere that just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't watching you. "Many people find speed cameras frustrating, and some in the region are taking their rage out on the cameras themselves. But now there's a new solution: cameras to watch the cameras. One is already in place, and Prince George's County Police Maj. Robert V. Liberati hopes to have up to a dozen more before the end of the year. 'It's not worth going to jail over a $40 ticket or an arson or destruction of property charge,' says Liberati."

Sparrowvsrevolution writes "Wired has published an excerpt of the new WikiLeaks-related book This Machine Kills Secrets, which delves into the launch of the WikiLeaks spinoff OpenLeaks at the Chaos Communication Camp in Berlin last year. The detailed account of the site's debut, with German ex-WikiLeaker Daniel Domscheit-Berg at the helm, reveals that even before the dispute between WikiLeaks and OpenLeaks led to the controversial destruction of the decryption keys for 3,000 of WikiLeaks' encrypted leaks taken by Domscheit-Berg, OpenLeaks was already facing significant problems: Rumors that the group had been infiltrated by the German government, a lack of code open for public auditing and even a failure to get the site online in time for the penetration test it had invited the CCC hackers to perform. The book passage gives a peek into the infighting, bad luck, disorganization and personality problems that has left the world without a real sequel to WikiLeaks despite the dozens of leak-focused sites that have launched in the last two years."

Lucas123 writes "Western Digital subsidiary HGST today announced that after 10 years of development it is preparing to release 3.5-in data center-class HDDs that are hermetically sealed with helium inside. The helium reduces drag and wind turbulence created by the spinning platters, all but eliminating track misregistration that has become a major issue to increasing drive density in recent years. Because of that, HGST will be able to add two more platters along with increasing the tracks per inch, which results in a 40% capacity increase. The drives will also use 23% less power because of the reduction of friction on the spindle. HGST said the new seven-platter helium drives will weigh 29% less per terabyte of capacity that today's five-platter drives. In other words, a seven-platter helium disk will weigh 690 grams, the same as today's five-platter drives."

hypnosec writes "Having procured permission from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit managed to disrupt more than 500 different strains of malware in a bid to slow down the threats posed by the Nitol botnet. Microsoft, through an operation codenamed b70 (PDF), discovered Chinese retailers were involved in selling computers with a pirated version of Windows loaded with malware. Microsoft believes the malware could have entered the supply chain at any point, for the simple reason that a computer travels among companies that transport and resell the computer. The Windows 8 maker carried out a study focused on the Nitol botnet, through which it found nearly 20 percent of all the PCs that were purchased through insecure Chinese supply chains were infected with malware."

Techmeology writes "Thieves have discovered how to steal BMW cars produced since 2006 by using the onboard computer that is able to program blank keys. The device used — originally intended for use by garages — is able to reprogram the key to start the engine in around three minutes. The blank keys, and reprogramming devices, have made their way onto the black market and are available for purchase over the Internet."

New submitter planetzuda writes "Invisible nano QR codes have been proposed as a way to stop forgery of U.S. currency by students of the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. Unfortunately QR codes are easy to forge and can send you to a site that infects your system. Banks would most likely need to scan currency that have QR codes to ensure the authenticity of the bill. If the QR code was forged it could infect the bank with a virus."

another random user writes "A vulnerability in the widely used chip and pin payment system has been exposed by Cambridge University researchers. Cards were found to be open to a form of cloning, despite past assurances from banks that chip and pin could not be compromised. In a statement given to the BBC, a spokeswoman for the UK's Financial Fraud Action group said: 'We've never claimed that chip and pin is 100% secure and the industry has successfully adopted a multi-layered approach to detecting any newly-identified types of fraud.'"

MojoKid writes "During the Day Two keynote address at Intel Developer's Forum, Renee James, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Intel's Software & Services Group, talked about software development, security and services in an 'age of transparent computing.' During the security-centric portion of the keynote, James brought out a rep from Intel's McAfee division to show off a beta release of their McAfee Social Protection app. If you're unfamiliar, McAfee Social Protection is a soon to be released app and browser plug-in for Facebook that gives users the ability to securely share their photos. As it stands today, if you upload a photo to Facebook, anyone viewing that photo can simply download it or take a screen capture and alter or share it wherever they want, however they want. With McAfee Social Protection installed though, users viewing your images will not be able to copy or capture them. In quick testing, various attempts with utilities like Hypersnap, Snagit or a simple print screen operation to circumvent the technology only resulted in a black screen appearing in the grab. Poking around at browser image caches resulted in finding stored images that were watermarked with the McAfee Security logo."

An anonymous reader writes "A Wired article discusses the relative decline of Dell, HP, and IBM in the server market over the past few years. Whereas those three companies once provided 75% of Intel's server chip revenue, those revenues are now split between the big three and five other companies as well. Google is fifth on the list. 'It's the big web players that are moving away from the HPs and the Dells, and most of these same companies offer large "cloud" services that let other businesses run their operations without purchasing servers in the first place. To be sure, as the market shifts, HP, Dell, and IBM are working to reinvent themselves. Dell, for instance, launched a new business unit dedicated to building custom gear for the big web players — Dell Data Center Services — and all these outfits are now offering their own cloud services. But the tide is against them.'"