Two computer programmers designed codes to alter thousands of trade blotters and records for swindler Bernard Madoff and took hush money to help keep the massive fraud going, U.S. authorities said. The FBI arrested Jerome O'Hara, 46, and George Perez, 43, at their homes on Friday morning.

China is significantly boosting its capabilities in cyberspace as a way to gather intelligence and, in the event of war, hit the U.S. government in a weak spot, U.S. officials and experts say.

Outgunned and outspent in terms of traditional military hardware, China apparently hopes that by concentrating on holes in the U.S. security architecture, its communications and spy satellites and its vast computer networks, it will collect intelligence that could help it counter the imbalance.

BP (Beyond Petroleum laf!) has been fined a record $87m (£53m) for failing to correct safety hazards at its Texas City refinery in the U.S. The $87m fine is the largest in OSHA’s history. An explosion in 2005 at the Texas plant killed 15 people and injured 180 more. The safety violations found "could lead to another catastrophe", US Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said.

The Homeland Security Department should establish a national standard to encourage companies and individuals to report data breaches to federal authorities, helping them gauge the intensity of cyberattacks and investigate cybercrime, security professionals said on October 28. Federal agencies are required to report data breaches to the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team, which is part of DHS. Reporting requirements for companies, however, vary by state.

The growing ineffectiveness of a popular and widely requested antibiotic has Chattanooga doctors emphasizing the importance of responsible antibiotic use. Chattanooga physicians say between one-half and two-thirds of the most-common bacteria — streptococcus pneumoniae — is showing resistance to azithromycin, the generic name for the antibiotic Zithromax. The antibiotic often is dispensed in a packet called the “Z-pak.”

The Cybersecurity Act of 2009 introduced in the Senate would allow the President to shut down private Internet networks. The legislation also calls for the government to have the authority to demand security data from private networks without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule, or policy restricting such access.

Security experts have made a breakthrough in their five-month battle against the Conficker worm, with the discovery that the malware leaves a fingerprint on infected machines which is easy to detect using a variety of off-the-shelf network scanners. The finding means that, for the first time, administrators around the world have easy-to-use tools to positively identify machines on their networks that are contaminated by the worm.

Before I even get started with this post, I'm going to editorialize with a sub-title:
WTF's Going on with Cheyenne Mountain?
There is just somthing about this news that strikes me as disturbing.

North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), the high-tech facility responsible for monitoring the skies over North America, faces continuing security problems at its new location inside an office building on an air base in Colorado Springs.

Users of Linux-based routers are being warned of a new worm in the wild which attempts to take control and add their device to a growing botnet. As reported over on vnunet.com on March 25, the ‘psyb0t’ worm was first spotted by security research group DroneBL recently, but may have been spreading since the start of the year.

Designed to brute-force the password of routers running Linux compiled for the RISC-based MIPS chip, including ones running custom OpenWRT and DD-WRT firmwares, the worm takes control of poorly secured devices and joins a botnet which the DroneBL group estimates may have grown to as large as 100,000 compromised devices so far.

Government investigators testing the nation’s food tracing system were able to follow only five out of 40 foods all the way through the supply chain, according to a report released. 

An investigation by the Health and Human Services inspector general’s office found that the records many companies keep are not detailed enough. And one-quarter of the company managers were totally unaware of record keeping requirements. The inspector general recommended that the FDA consider seeking stronger legal powers to improve the tracing of food.

An Energy Department investigation has alleviated fears that a significant amount of plutonium was missing from a national laboratory, but it has also heightened concerns about flaws in the system for controlling the U.S. stockpile of weapons materials. The investigation began in February, shortly after a routine inventory at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico found a plutonium shortage estimated at 2.2 pounds, setting off a frantic national effort to determine what happened to the material.

With China’s economy cooling down, some of the country’s IT professionals are turning to cybercrime, according to a Beijing-based security expert. Speaking at the CanSecWest security conference last week, the CEO of Knownsec, a Beijing security company, said that while many Chinese workers may be feeling hard times, business is still booming in the country’s cybercrime industry.

Phishing expeditions business and personal data are rising to record levels, with fake anti-malware campaigns alone increasing by 225 percent in the last six months of 2008. Password-stealing Web sites jumped 827 percent IN 2008. The reason is the phishers are investing in automation. A new report from the Anti-Pjhshing Working Group (APWG) gives a sense of just how aggressive the phishers and malware makers are becoming in search of one’s business (and personal) data.

Dear Senator Cornyn and Senator Hutchison,

Free speech is the most basic element of democracy. Diversity of opinion is the crucible by which ideas are measured. A free press is one protected even when the speech is not agreeable. In the absence of diversity, bad ideas are never challenged. There is no democracy without free speech. 

I am horrified by the repeated attempts of the FCC to lift media ownership limits. It is happening again! The FCC has become an enemy of the people. Our own trustees have betrayed us. Consolidation of media resources dilutes opinion and shouts down diversity.

Proposition 9, S.R.J 29 is a bad bill and I'll tell you why. Below is the relevant section containing the proposed changes to the Texas State Constitution. I have copied it here; however, you are free to go to the source. Texas State Legislature 80R Bill Text S.R.J 29 or you can skip right to read more for the analysis.

Vote No on Proposition 9.

...because it's an insult to iberty and the veterans that sacrificed to insure it.

At a time when raising any child is challenging, educating a special needs child is particularly difficult. The federal government has passed laws governing education without thoughtfully funding the measures. As a consequence local school districts are breaking their backs and banks trying to satisfy these federal mandates.

Why is our federal government not fully funding their mandates?