computer

Tablet, e-reader ownership almost double over holidays: survey | Reuters

January 23, 2012 By Global EDD Group Leave a Comment

The number of Americans owning a tablet computer or e-reader nearly doubled over the holiday period as Kindles, Nooks and iPads proved to be popular gifts, a new study found.

In early January, 19 percent of Americans surveyed by Pew owned an e-reader, up from 10 percent in December, with identical results for tablets, according to a report released on Monday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

As a result, the percentage of Americans owning at least one digital reading device rose to 29 percent in January from 18 percent, according to the survey.

via Tablet, e-reader ownership almost double over holidays: survey | Reuters.

Filed Under: Tech Bytes Tagged With: computer, holidays, Nooks, percent, Pew, pew internet, Reuters, study, tablet computer

Carmel Valley eDiscovery Retreat (CVEDR) Announces Craig Ball as a 2012 Keynote Speaker

January 12, 2012 By Global EDD Group Leave a Comment

Mr. Ball, an Austin, Texas-based trial law technologist and computer forensics expert, is a world-renowned thought leader in eDiscovery. He will address one of the most critical issues facing today’s legal profession: Persuading attorneys to learn information technology skills to uphold standards of advocacy and better serve their clients.

“Effective, affordable eDiscovery is no harder than learning to try a lawsuit … and no easier,” said Mr. Ball. Attorneys know it takes years of effort to learn courtroom skills, yet many expect to master eDiscovery in a few hours. Mr. Ball hopes to encourage them to “get their hands dirty with data,” noting that events like the Carmel Valley eDiscovery Retreat (CVEDR) are needed to allow the exchange of ideas amongst eDiscovery professionals. He adds, “I’m looking forward to seeing old friends and making new ones in a setting that is one of America’s loveliest places.”

Mr. Ball is one of the most sought-after presenters in the eDiscovery industry. He is a prolific writer and the recipient of numerous awards. Mr. Ball’s work has been featured in national media outlets such as The New York Times. His passion is educating legal professionals about the powerful tools they can use to offer cost-effective discovery solutions for their clients.

via Carmel Valley eDiscovery Retreat (CVEDR) Announces Craig Ball as a 2012 Keynote Speaker.

Filed Under: From The News Tagged With: Ball, computer, Craig Ball, ediscovery, expert, information, Keynote Speaker, law

Report: Intel Ready to Make Thunderbolt Widely Available | PCMag.com (Damon Poeter)

December 27, 2011 By Global EDD Group Leave a Comment

Intel will make its Thunderbolt rapid data transfer technology available to its full contingent of PC partners in April, according to DigiTimes. Several top computer makers and components suppliers are already preparing desktops, notebooks, and motherboards with Thunderbolt, the Taiwanese tech journal reported Tuesday.

Thunderbolt, which Intel developed in collaboration with Apple, is currently only available in products like Apple’s 27-inch Thunderbolt Display, the MacBook Air, and the Little Big Disk from LaCie.

Thunderbolt chips are relatively expensive at more than $20 per module and serve much the same purpose as USB 3.0-standard data transmission technology, but prices are expected to drop in the second half of 2012, the tech journal reported. Apple’s adoption of the technology across its desktop and notebook product lines has also accelerated the timeline for Thunderbolt’s wide spread adoption, DigiTimes reported, citing unnamed sources from computer makers.

via Report: Intel Ready to Make Thunderbolt Widely Available | News & Opinion | PCMag.com.

Filed Under: Tech Bytes Tagged With: adoption, Apple, com, computer, Damon Poeter, DigiTimes, Intel, Technology, Thunderbolt

Chinese Hackers Hit U.S. Chamber – WSJ.com

December 21, 2011 By Global EDD Group Leave a Comment

A group of hackers in China breached the computer defenses of America’s top business-lobbying group and gained access to everything stored on its systems, including information about its three million members, according to several people familiar with the matter.

WSJ Washington bureau chief Jerry Seib has details of a cyber attack against the U.S. Chamber of Commerce by Chinese hackers in which more than 300 Internet addresses were breached. AP Photo.

The break-in at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is one of the boldest known infiltrations in what has become a regular confrontation between U.S. companies and Chinese hackers. The complex operation, which involved at least 300 Internet addresses, was discovered and quietly shut down in May 2010.

View Interactive

It isn’t clear how much of the compromised data was viewed by the hackers. Chamber officials say internal investigators found evidence that hackers had focused on four Chamber employees who worked on Asia policy, and that six weeks of their email had been stolen.

It is possible the hackers had access to the network for more than a year before the breach was uncovered, according to two people familiar with the Chamber’s internal investigation.

via Chinese Hackers Hit U.S. Chamber – WSJ.com.

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BP demands massive forensic examination of Halliburton computer systems – ComputerworldUK.com

December 8, 2011 By Global EDD Group Leave a Comment

BP has accused Halliburton of deleting from computers the key cement modelling data used to analyse the slurry mix needed at the Macondo well. Halliburton denies the claims and has said the motion is “without merit”.

BP asked a judge to penalise Halliburton for the issue, and to appoint a team of forensic experts to trawl through Halliburton’s systems.

Such an investigation would likely even assess Halliburton’s more basic IT systems, including standard PCs, and involve a vast email trawl.

Halliburton cement expert Rickey Morgan has already said in court depositions that he “didn’t want to put anything on an email that could be twisted, and turned”, and that as a result he had limited what he wrote to bosses.

A similar trawl by US authorities on BP computers produced revealing emails that showed BP engineers taking a time-saving decision on the amount of safety cement supports used for the well drilling at the disaster site, before the accident happened.

US government investigations established that BP failed to fully adhere to the results of the OptiCem software, which demanded 21 centralisers be used. BP initially adhered to the software tests and ordered 15 extra centralisers, in addition to the six in place. But when technicians on the rig received the extra centralisers they mistakenly decided they were the incorrect type. At this point BP proceeded with the drilling anyway, with the six centralisers, in order to avoid millions of pounds being spent on unused drilling days.

via BP demands massive forensic examination of Halliburton computer systems – ComputerworldUK.com.

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BP has accused Halliburton of destroying damaging evidence relating to last year’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill | guardian.co.uk

December 6, 2011 By Global EDD Group Leave a Comment

BP has accused Halliburton of destroying damaging evidence relating to last year’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

In a court filing, BP has alleged that the US oil services firm of intentionally destroying evidence about possible problems with its cement slurry poured into the deep-sea Macondo well about 100 miles (160 km) off the Louisiana coast. An oil well must be cemented properly to avoid blowouts.

Also in the documents filed in a New Orleans federal court, BP accuses Halliburton of failing to produce incriminating computer modelling evidence.

BP asked a US judge to penalise Halliburton and order a court-sponsored computer forensic team to recover the modelling results.

Halliburton has told media outlets that the accusations are untrue.

The allegations in the 310-page motion add to a showdown among BP and the contractors Halliburton and Transocean over blame in the Deepwater Horizon blast in April 2010, which killed 11 workers and led to 206m US gallons (780m litres) of crude oil escaping into the Gulf of Mexico. So far, BP, the majority owner of the Macondo well, has footed the bill for the emergency response and cleanup.

Also involved are Anadarko Petroleum and Cameron International.

via BP accuses Halliburton over Gulf of Mexico oil spill | Environment | guardian.co.uk.

Filed Under: From The News Tagged With: computer, evidence, firm, guardian, Gulf of Mexico, gulf of mexico oil spill, Halliburton

Lie-Detection Software Is a Research Quest – NYTimes.com

December 4, 2011 By Global EDD Group Leave a Comment

SHE looks as innocuous as Miss Marple, Agatha Christie’s famous detective.

But also like Miss Marple, Julia Hirschberg, a professor of computer science at Columbia University, may spell trouble for a lot of liars.

That’s because Dr. Hirschberg is teaching computers how to spot deception — programming them to parse people’s speech for patterns that gauge whether they are being honest.

For this sort of lie detection, there’s no need to strap anyone into a machine. The person’s speech provides all the cues — loudness, changes in pitch, pauses between words, ums and ahs, nervous laughs and dozens of other tiny signs that can suggest a lie.

Dr. Hirschberg is not the only researcher using algorithms to trawl our utterances for evidence of our inner lives. A small band of linguists, engineers and computer scientists, among others, are busy training computers to recognize hallmarks of what they call emotional speech — talk that reflects deception, anger, friendliness and even flirtation.

Programs that succeed at spotting these submerged emotions may someday have many practical uses: software that suggests when chief executives at public conferences may be straying from the truth; programs at call centers that alert operators to irate customers on the line; or software at computerized matchmaking services that adds descriptives like “friendly” to usual ones like “single” and “female.”

The technology is becoming more accurate as labs share new building blocks, said Dan Jurafsky, a professor at Stanford whose research focuses on the understanding of language by both machines and humans. Recently, Dr. Jurafsky has been studying the language that people use in four-minute speed-dating sessions, analyzing it for qualities like friendliness and flirtatiousness. He is a winner of a MacArthur Foundation fellowship commonly called a “genius” award, and a co-author of the textbook “Speech and Language Processing.”

via Lie-Detection Software Is a Research Quest – NYTimes.com.

Filed Under: From The News Tagged With: Columbia University, com, computer, Julia Hirschberg, Lie, Lie-Detection Software, Miss Marple, Quest, Research Quest, software

Millions of printers open to devastating hack attack, researchers say | msnbc

December 1, 2011 By Global EDD Group Leave a Comment

Could a hacker from half-way around the planet control your printer and give it instructions so frantic that it could eventually catch fire? Or use a hijacked printer as a copy machine for criminals, making it easy to commit identity theft or even take control of entire networks that would otherwise be secure?

It’s not only possible, but likely, say researchers at Columbia University, who claim they’ve discovered a new class of computer security flaws that could impact millions of businesses, consumers, and even government agencies.

Printers can be remotely controlled by computer criminals over the Internet, with the potential to steal personal information, attack otherwise secure networks and even cause physical damage, the researchers argue in a vulnerability warning first reported by msnbc.com. They say there’s no easy fix for the flaw they’ve identified in some Hewlett-Packard LaserJet printer lines – and perhaps on other firms’ printers, too – and there’s no way to tell if hackers have already exploited it.

The researchers, who have working quietly for months in an electronics lab under a series of government and industry grants, described the flaw in a private briefing for federal agencies two weeks ago. They told Hewlett-Packard about it last week.

HP said Monday that it is still reviewing details of the vulnerability, and is unable to confirm or deny many of the researchers’ claims, but generally disputes the researchers’ characterization of the flaw as widespread. Keith Moore, chief technologist for HP’s printer division, said the firm “takes this very seriously,” but his initial research suggests the likelihood that the vulnerability can be exploited in the real world is low in most cases.

via Red Tape – Exclusive: Millions of printers open to devastating hack attack, researchers say.

Filed Under: Tech Bytes Tagged With: Columbia University, computer, control, flaw, hack attack, Hacker, Machine, Millions of printers, printers

Obtaining Disclosure of ESI From Non-Parties | NY Law Journal

November 30, 2011 By Global EDD Group Leave a Comment

It must be hard to be a computer network professional. You’re responsible to maintain security, you have little or no control over what people send and receive from the computers you maintain, and you may be the only person with the technical knowledge and access to identify the source and availability of electronically stored information. I imagine these folks hate subpoenas, especially if they have nothing to do with their employer’s business.

In Tener v. Cremer,[FOOTNOTE 1] the plaintiff sought to compel a non-party, New York University, to respond to a subpoena that might enable the plaintiff to identify the source of a posting on “Vitals.com,” an internet opinion website that advertises itself as the place “where doctors are examined.” This appears to be one of many internet sites that solicit opinions that others may use in making consumer decisions, and the plaintiff in Tener was a board certified physician who wanted to sue the author of allegedly defamatory remarks.

The Vitals.com posting was anonymous,[FOOTNOTE 2] but the plaintiff had learned of an Internet Protocol (IP) address[FOOTNOTE 3] associated with the offending message. This IP address did not identify the author’s computer, but did lead to the server for the entire computer network maintained by NYU. Relying on this clue, the plaintiff subpoenaed the university, seeking to identify all persons using the NYU server who had accessed the internet on the date of the offensive posting, and to identify which of those computers had connected to the Vitals.com site.

It apparently was not easy for the university to comply with the plaintiff’s requests. Although only NYU personnel could obtain access to the system, the “network address translation portal” used by NYU essentially acted as a switchboard, and through this “portal,” many thousands of persons had access to outside websites. When NYU did not produce information satisfactory to the plaintiff, she moved to hold the university in contempt of court.

The university responded with an affidavit by its chief information security officer, who noted that the date of the allegedly offending comment was nearly a full year prior to the service of the subpoena, and that computers used to visit outside websites are identified in the NYU system only by a ” … text file that is automatically written over every 30 days.”

via Obtaining Disclosure of ESI From Non-Parties.

Filed Under: From The News Tagged With: com, computer, computer network, information, new york university, NYU, Obtaining, plaintiff

Intelligence agencies stymied by full disk encryption – FierceCIO:TechWatch

November 23, 2011 By Global EDD Group Leave a Comment

ExtremeTech ran a report on how full disk encryption (FDE) is stymieing the efforts of federal intelligence agencies to access data stored in them. ExtremeTech highlighted three main problems with FDE, according to a research paper titled “The growing impact of full disk encryption on digital forensics” published earlier this month. They range from switching off a computer containing encrypted data for the purpose of transportation, time wasted in analyzing data volumes that were ultimately unreadable and the triggering of a self-destruction mechanism from hardware-based encryption devices.

A computer protected with FDE is at its most vulnerable when in active use, so specialized hardware such as the WiebeTech HotPlug has been designed to “transfer” a running desktop onto a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) for transportation without the need to power it down. Additional gadgets such as the Mouse Jiggler helps ensure that screensaver never kicks in due to inactivity.

via Intelligence agencies stymied by full disk encryption – FierceCIO:TechWatch.

Filed Under: Tech Bytes Tagged With: computer, disk, FDE, FierceCIO, full disk encryption, paper, purpose