By timothy from
Slashdot's no-soup-for-you department:
An anonymous reader writes
"Is there a device to automatically disconnect network or otherwise time limit a physical connection to a network? The why? We are dealing with a production outage of large industrial equipment. The cause? The supplier, with no notice, remotely connected to the process control system and completely botched an update to their system. We are down and the vendor is inept and not likely to have us back to 100% for a few days. Obviously the main issue is that they were able to do this at all, but reality is that IT gets overridden by the Process Control department in a manufacturing business. They were warned about this and told it was a horrible idea to allow remote access all the time. They were warned many times to leave the equipment disconnected from remote access except when they were actively working with the supplier. Either they forgot to disconnect it or they ignored our warnings. The question is, is there a device that will physically disconnect a network connection after a set time? Yes, we could use a Christmas tree light timer hooked up to a switch or something like that but I want something more elegant. Something with two network jacks on it that disconnects the port after a set time, or even something IT would have to login to and enable the connection and set a disconnect timer would be better than nothing. As we know, process control workers and vendors are woefully inept/uneducated about IT systems and risks and repeatedly make blunders like connecting process control systems directly to the internet, use stock passwords for everything, don't install antivirus on windows based control computers, etc. How do others deal with controlling remote access to industrial systems?"Read Replies (0)
By samzenpus from
Slashdot's read-all-about-it department:
benrothke writes
"In Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws who Hacked Ma Bell, author Phil Lapsley calls his book 'the untold story of the teenagers and outlaws who hacked Ma Bell.' The story is an old one, going back to the early 1960's. Lapsley was able to track down many of the original phone phreaks and get their story. Many of them, even though the years have passed, asked Lapsley not to use their real names." Read below for the rest of Ben's review. Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws who Hacked Ma Bell
author Phil Lapsley. Forward by Steve Wozniak
pages 416
publisher Grove Press
rating 9/10
reviewer Ben Rothke
ISBN 978-0802120618
summary Fascinating story of the early phone phreaks
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By Soulskill from
Slashdot's good-news-for-meteor-watchers department:
An anonymous reader writes
"The next time a bear hits a car on a Russian highway, the video might be in high definition. A new wave of dashcams, on show at this week's Computex expo in Taipei, feature multiple enhancements on first-generation models that will probably be welcomed by law enforcement, insurance companies and the millions of people who browse YouTube looking at some of the amazing scenes captured from the front of a car. One of the current popular videos is of a May 2013 collision between a bear and a car (video). The accident, reportedly in Russia, sees the bear hit the front of the car and bounce off the car's windscreen before rolling several times to the side of the road. The video, and thousands of others like it, are typically shot in 480-line 'standard resolution,' but most of the new dashcams on show in Taipei this week offer 720 and 1080-line high definition."It's also becoming more common to repurpose old smartphones as dashcams using software like
DailyRoads Voyager. If you've done so, what's your setup?
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By Soulskill from
Slashdot's if-you-have-nothing-to-hide department:
Bennett Haselton writes with his take on a case going
back and
forth in U.S. courts right now about whether a defendant can be ordered to decrypt his own hard drives when they may incriminate him.
"A Wisconsin defendant in a criminal child-pornography case recently invoked his Fifth Amendment right to avoid giving the FBI the password to decrypt his hard drive. At the risk of alienating fellow civil-libertarians, I admit I've never seen the particular value of the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. So I pose this logical puzzle: come up with a specific, precisely defined scenario, where the Fifth Amendment makes a positive difference."Read on for the rest of Bennett's thoughts.
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