• Chinese hacking threatens U.S. critical infrastructure

    U.S. government networks, and the computer systems of U.S. and Western European companies, are under broad and systemic Chinese hacking campaign; in the case of private Western companies, China steals industrial secrets and patent information in order to hasten its rise to a position of global economic hegemony; in the case of U.S. critical infrastructure — for example, control of electric power stations, several of which Chinese hackers have managed to disable — China may be preparing for more sinister contingencies

  • Cheap carbon trap cleans up power station emissions

    Sequestering CO2 is a good way to fight global warming, but only about 10 percent of the gas produced in the process of burning fossil fuels is CO2; most of the rest is nitrogen, which is not a greenhouse gas; there is a new, inexpensive way to separate the two

  • Glaring gaps in network security, I

    Specialists in penetration testing take six hours to hack the FBI; hacking the networks of Fortune 500 companies takes much less time; even companies which have been Sarbanes-Oxley compliant for several years have been hacked within twenty minutes, with the hackers taking control of the business; these hackers proved they could actively change general ledgers and do other critical tasks

  • Is the Internet "Critical Infrastructure"?

    The Internet’s architecture is optimized to be cheap and ubiquitous; such a network is never going to be perfectly secure or reliable; transactions that absolutely have to be done correctly and on time need to be done on a dedicated network

  • Nigerian group threatens attacks

    Today is the one-year anniversary since Umaru Yar’Adua was inaugurated as president of Nigeria; MEND, the leading rebel group in the Niger Delta, said yesterday that it would launch a series of bombings against oil installations to mark the day

  • Torrefaction treatment for biomass

    Torrefaction is increasingly seen as a desirable treatment for biomass because it creates a solid product which is easier to store, transport, and mill than raw biomass

  • Megawatt tidal turbine completed

    U.K. maritime energy specialist completes installation of 1.2 MW tidal energy system off the shore of Northern Ireland; system to provide clean electricity equivalent to that used by 1,000 homes

  • Nanotechnology-based biosensor

    NASA develops nanotechnology-based biosensor that can detect trace amounts of specific bacteria, viruses, and parasites; New York-based Early Warning, Inc. will initially market the sensor to water treatment facilities, food and beverage companies, industrial plants, hospitals, and airlines

  • "Fibrous" steel withstands extremely cold temperatures

    Steel is very strong, except that in cold temperatures it becomes brittle; new method of making steel withstand cold temperatures could make steel structures in Arctic areas, like ships or oil rigs, cheaper to construct

  • Grasshopper robot breaks high-jump record

    Researchers develop small - very small: it is 5 centimeters tall and weighs just 7 grams — hopping robot; swarms of such hopping robots could spread out to explore disaster areas, or even the surfaces of other planets

  • New London mayor approves desalination plant

    Boris Johnson has just been elected mayor of London, and one of his first acts in office was to withdraw of the legal challenge launched by his predecessor, Ken Livingstone, against a desalination plant to be built on the banks of the Thames; the plant will be the first in London to take water from the tidal stretch of the Thames, removing salt from the water

  • DHS to keep an eye on access to IT systems

    DHS to create a database of employees, contractors, and consultants with access to DHS computer systems; database will contain names, business affiliations, positions, phone numbers, citizenship, home addresses, e-mail addresses, access records, date and time of access, logs of Internet activity, and Internet protocol address of access

  • UAE upgrades security of energy infrastructure

    UAE is the third-largest oil exporter in OPEC; emirate wants to protect its oil and gas infrastructure

  • IT chiefs warn of cyber-terrorism threat to critical infrastructure

    UN expert dismissed as a dangerous myth the idea that events in the virtual world have only a limited impact on the physical world, saying that technology has “changed the dynamics of terrorism”

  • Hackers to concentrate on moving targets

    Security maven Howard Schmidt says more must be done to bolster mobile defenses