Top news on 6 October 2009 | News That Matter

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Top news on 6 October 2009

72% of Banks Say Their Employees Committed Fraud
yahoi writes "The financial crisis appears to be exacerbating fraud by bank employees: a new survey found that 72 percent of financial institutions say that in the last 12 months they have experienced a case of data theft by one of their workers. Meanwhile, most banks don't want to talk about the insider threat problem and remain in denial, says a former Wachovia Bank executive who handled insider fraud incidents at the bank and has co-authored a new book called Insidious — How Trusted Employees Steal Millions and Why It's So Hard for Banks to Stop Them that investigates several real-world insider fraud cases at banks." The article dispels one assumption that might commonly be made about such insider fraud: "Interestingly, it's not the stereotypical offshore or outsourced employee who's most risky to their organizations. Nearly 70 percent of financial institutions say their full-time employees are most likely to pose an insider fraud threat..." Technology workers placed third in the roster of the job categories most abused.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The First High-Definition TV, Circa 1958
An anonymous reader sends us to Gizmag for a look at a recent auction of a large collection of antique TVs. The star of the show was the Teleavia type P111, one of the earliest examples of high-definition TV. This rare 1958 console-stand television was designed by Flaminio Bertroni, who was also responsible for the iconic Citroen DS. The TV featured dual resolution capability, with the higher setting offering better resolution than 720p — 819 lines. This early attempt at a high-def standard, originating in France in 1949, didn't catch on in the marketplace.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Netgear WNR3500L Open Source Router Announced
MyOpenRouter writes "Netgear has announced the WNR3500L, a brand new, open source, wireless-N gigabit router is customizable with third party firmwares. MyOpenRouter is the dedicated source for Netgear open source routers, with the full scoop including a review with screenshots, how-to's, tutorials, firmware downloads, etc. Here's a review and the downloads page." The router can run popular open source firmware including DD-WRT, OpenWRT. and Tomato. It will list for $140.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Top news on 5 October 2009

Sloppy Linux Admins Enable Slow Bruteforce Attacks
badger.foo passes on the report of Peter N. M. Hansteen that a third round of low-intensity, distributed bruteforce attacks is now in progress — we earlier discussed the first and second rounds — and that sloppy admin practice on Linux systems is the main enabler. As before, the article links to log data (this time 770 apparently already compromised Linux hosts are involved), and further references. "The fact that your rig runs Linux does not mean you're home free. You need to keep paying attention. When your spam washer has been hijacked and tries to break into other people's systems, you urgently need to get your act together, right now."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Verizon Refuses To Provide Complete IPv6
Glendale2x writes "I'm a progressive sort of guy and I want to go full dual-stack, IPv6 for the future, etc. However I recently tried to turn up a new Verizon circuit with IPv6 (after a 6-month fiber install process), and to my chagrin the order they accepted back in May they're now saying is against their policy to provide. They're missing around 29% of the IPv6 internet and refuse to carry it. Tell me again how we're supposed to encourage IPv6 adoption in the face of a huge black hole like this?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tourists To ISS Two At a Time Starting In 2012
Matt_dk writes "The US firm Space Adventures said on Friday it will be able to send two space tourists into orbit at once from 2012 onwards, on Soyuz spacecraft. 'We have been working on this project for a number of years,' said Sergey Kostenko, the head of the company's office in Russia. Each Soyuz will carry two tourists and a professional astronaut. One of the tourists will have to pass a year-and-a-half training course as a flight engineer. Space Adventures has been authorized by the Russian Federal Space Agency Roscosmos to select and contract candidates for space tourist trips." Meanwhile, the AP has a look back at the delays and disappointments in the commercial spaceflight industry since Burt Rutan captured the Ansari X Prize 5 years ago — no space company has yet announced a date for commercial availability.Read more of this story at Slashdot.