Hackers Crack Hotel Room Locks With A Tool Disguised As A Dry Erase Marker

By Andy Greenberg – A trio of hackers have built a tool that appears to be an innocent dry erase marker, but when inserted into the port on the bottom of a common form of hotel room keycard lock triggers the lock’s open mechanism in a fraction of a second.

“I guess we wanted to show that this sort of attack can happen with a very small, concealable device,” says Matthew Jakubowski, one of the three hotel lock hackers and a security researcher with the consultancy Trustwave. more> http://tinyurl.com/8vb8oyz

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AT&T to Sell Home Automation and Security Services Nationwide

Associated Press – AT&T Inc. will start selling home automation and security services nationwide, taking on incumbents led by Tyco International Ltd.’s ADT.

Several of AT&T’s competitors, including cable TV company Comcast Corp. and phone company Verizon Communications Inc., have ventured into the home automation and security field. Dallas-based AT&T is showing more ambition with its stated goal of selling nationwide, rather than sticking to its landline service territory, as Verizon does.

The biggest player in the field is ADT, but it has only 25 percent of the market. more> http://tinyurl.com/blh9nab

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Is Cybersecurity a Public Good?

By David Henderson – In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, “Everyone Should Pay for Cyber Defense,” April 22, Harvard University economics professor Martin Feldstein, makes a case for government intervention in the area of cybersecurity.

“The attackers use computer programs to look for openings in the computer systems of companies. They also send seemingly harmless emails to company employees which, when opened, provide entry to the company’s internal networks. The attackers may be foreign governments or the foreign companies that those governments assist …”

But how does this case differ in principle from that of thieves who want to enter a company’s building? When companies feel threatened, they tend to hire security guards and set up security systems. There’s no public good. more> http://tinyurl.com/dyo4cjt

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Hottest IT Skill? Cybersecurity

By Carolyn Duffy Marsan – The need for cybersecurity experts spans all industries, from financial services, manufacturing and utilities to healthcare and retail. Among the major U.S. companies trying to fill cybersecurity-related positions are Boeing, Baylor Health Care System, Verisign and Office Depot.

Cybersecurity jobs also are plentiful in the U.S. federal government market.

Most of these high-paying cybersecurity jobs are not for recent computer science graduates; instead companies are looking to hire IT professionals with five to 15 years of experience with security systems and processes as well as related certifications. more> http://is.gd/IXtATW

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Surveillance Camera System Searches Through 36 Million Faces In One Second

DigInfo TV – Developed by Hitachi Kokusai Electric, the system can automatically detect a face from either surveillance footage or a regular photo, and search for it. This surveillance camera system can search through data on 36 million faces in one second.

With this system, it’s assumed that faces are turning within around 30 degrees in the horizontal and vertical directions from the camera, and the faces are at least 40 x 40 pixels in size. more> http://is.gd/PULgk3

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