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"Truth, Justice, and the American Way," the long-time slogan of Superman, possibly has a new meaning for the heirs of his co-creator, Jerome Siegel. A judge in Los Angeles has found that Siegel's estate is the proper owner of the copyright to the characters created in the first issue of Action Comics, which detailed the debut of Superman. Generally credited with jump-starting the comic book medium in 1938 and with being the first superhero, the Superman copyright has spent its 70-year career under the sole proprietorship of DC Comics, now owned by Time Warner.

In unusually concise … Read more

Breaking things--that's what the very bright and super curious do; they look beyond the obvious to see what's truly lurking beneath the surface. On Wednesday and Thursday, attendees at Black Hat D.C. 2008 got a window into the latest research being done on Web applications, wireless, and embedded technologies.

On Wednesday, researchers David Hulton and "Steve" showed how with about $1,000 with of equipment they can decrypt A5/1 cellular GSM traffic in less than a hour. Following that, Adam Laurie reprised his popular RFIDiots talk from last year's Black Hat briefings with … Read more

Update on February 22, 2008, at 3:20 p.m PST: This blog has been updated to include a response from American Express.

WASHINGTON D.C.--Adam Laurie, an RFID security expert, used the Black Hat DC 2008 conference here, to demonstrate a new Python script he's working on to read the contents of smart-chip-enabled credit cards.

As part of his presentation Wednesday, Laurie asked for someone from the audience to volunteer a smart card. Without taking the card out of the volunteer's wallet, Laurie both read and displayed its contents on the presentation screen--the person's name, … Read more

Washington D.C. -- On Wednesday, in a talk at Black Hat D.C. 2008, two researchers set out to see whether phishing sites were created by the "Einsteinian, ninja hackers that the media makes them out to be."

In a talk titled "Bad Sushi: Beating Phishers at their own game," Nitesh Dhanjani and Billy Rios found not a sophisticated gang of elite coders, but hundreds of bad coders all copying one another, and often stealing from each other.

Dhanjani and Rios expressed disapproval of antiphishing products that use black lists to block known phishing sites. … Read more

Washington D.C. -- Like the Bank of America brand name, the United States Internal Revenue Service is a brand that also needs online protection. On Wednesday, Special Agent Andy Fried with the U.S. Treasury Department gave a second keynote address to start off Black Hat DC 2008. He said as of February 19 this year, there were 1,630 phishing sites using the IRS name or logo, marking a 12 percent to 17 percent increase over last year.

Although the IRS phishing sites may be taken down with an hour or so, that's still long enough for … Read more

WASHINGTON--On Wednesday, Black Hat D.C. 2008 gets under way, after two days of intense training sessions. The D.C. Black Hat security conference is much smaller than the summer Black Hat USA in Las Vegas. But what D.C. lacks in size, it makes up for in sessions and talks.

On tap for Wednesday is a keynote speech from Jerry Dixon, former director of the National Cyber Security Division, Department of Homeland Security. Following the keynote address will be two parallel tracks of programming--Web app and wireless--including presentations from Chuck Willis of Mandiant on forensic challenges of cross site … Read more

Can going back to direct current--favored by Thomas Edison--make data centers more modern and energy-efficient?

Start-up Validus on Monday is scheduled to announce the availability of a DC-based electricity distribution system tailored specifically for data centers.

The company, which raised $10 million in venture funding last December, has an initial Fortune 50 company customer that's looking to reduce energy consumption at its corporate data center, according to CEO Rudy Kraus.

The idea of using direct current, rather than alternating current, to reduce power consumption has been around for a long time. The telecom industry relies primarily on DC power … Read more

If consumers and businesses are going to be convinced to switch to solid-state drives over hard disks, it's going to take something more compelling than 16GB.

On Wednesday, Hewlett-Packard will introduce a new version of its Compaq DC7800 series desktop PC. The product line was initially introduced last September, but now has an option of adding a 16GB solid-state drive (SSD) from SanDisk.

Sure, fewer moving parts when storing data is more reliable and saves power, but when an audience is conditioned to expect 80GB minimum in a desktop, 16GB appears a bit puny. (That's like running your … Read more

Thomas Edison had it right, say the founders of start-up Validus DC Systems. Direct current is the way.

Validus on Tuesday announced that it has raised $10 million from Oak Hill Venture Partners to further develop its data center power supplies that use direct current (DC) to lower power consumption. Products are expected to be released in late January next year.

By using direct current, rather than drawing electricity from outlets that supply alternating current, data center managers can reduce their energy consumption by up to 40 percent, according to the company.

There is a growing awareness of the cost … Read more