Tech Thoughts Daily Net News – August 3, 2009

Defcon air traffic control hacker: Excuse me while I change your aircraft’s flight plan – In a scary presentation at the Defcon hacker conference, a security researcher showed how easy it is to compromise the Federal Aviation Administration’s air traffic control system.

DefCon: ‘Credit Hackers’ Win the Credit Card Game … Legally – Hundreds of “credit hackers” are legally gaming financial institutions by taking advantage of loopholes in the U.S. credit-reporting system, a security researcher says — warning that identity thieves could follow suit.

BitTorrent Stands Up for Net Neutrality – In a late submission to the Canadian network management hearings of the CRTC, BitTorrent Inc. debunked some P2P myths and asked the committee to decide in favor of a neutral net. ISPs should look for other methods to deal with network congestion rather than discriminating against BitTorrent users, they say.

Bootkit bypasses hard disk encryption – At the Black Hat security conference, Austrian IT security specialist Peter Kleissner presented a bootkit called Stoned which is capable of bypassing the TrueCrypt partition and system encryption. A bootkit combines a rootkit with the ability to modify a PC’s Master Boot Record, enabling the malware to be activated even before the operating system is started.

Five Best PDF Readers – Adobe’s free PDF reader has long been a standard for handling its extremely popular document format, but you aren’t limited to using it to view your PDF files. Let’s take a look at five of the most popular PDF readers.

Seven (More) Reasons to Ditch Your iPhone – It’s been a nasty week for iPhone users. Apple has buckled to pressure from AT&T and denied Google’s Voice application from the App Store: a nifty service that helps you consolidate phones and manage your voicemail online. The app lives on at the BlackBerry App World and Android Market, making some of the technorati so angry they’ve vowed to ditch AT&T in protest–and their beloved iPhone with it. Here are seven reasons why you should make AT&T and Apple suffer for their sins.

10 reasons why Linux will triumph over Windows – Windows 7 may be generating some positive buzz, but Jack Wallen remains sceptical. In fact, he says it’s only a matter of time before Linux takes its rightful spot at the top of the OS heap.

Using an NAS for Centrally Managing Your Media – Utilizing storage devices outside of your computer isn’t just for corporate and business networks anymore. The reality is that many households have more than one computer, many times with different operating systems, and could benefit from easily sharing data between the computers.

Off Topic:

Parasites May Have Had Role In Evolution Of Sex: – What’s so great about sex? From an evolutionary perspective, the answer is not as obvious as one might think. An article published in the July issue of the American Naturalist suggests that sex may have evolved in part as a defense against parasites.

Top 10 Tasteless Ads – Burger King is just the latest company to roll out a questionable ad campaign. Here, TIME examines some of the most tasteless, inappropriate, or downright disturbing commercials.

Scorned Women Seek Revenge on Three-Timer – Police Say Women Attacked Man, Applied Krazy Glue to Sensitive Parts. If you mess with one scorned woman, you’re bound to get burned. If you mess with two, things could really get ugly.

Saudi man ‘faces death’ over TV sex boast – A Saudi Arabian man could face the death penalty for speaking about his sexual adventures on a talk show aired by a Lebanon-based television network, lawyers said.

15 Da Vinci War Machines – The Great Leonardo Da Vinci designed many weapons, including giant crossbows, machine guns, siege towers, cluster bombs and even a precursor to the modern-day tank.

Today’s Free Downloads:

ClamWin Free Antivirus – If you want a clean, mean piece of anti-virus software that does just one thing–protect against viruses–you’ll want this program. It has a small footprint, and doesn’t take up much system resources.

LSN Password Safe – The LSN Password Safe helps you keep track of your plethora of passwords with a free encrypted ‘safe’ on your PC. Once you have it set up, it’s easy to add a new record to your safe, with entries such as login, password, URL or e-mail. LSN Password Safe is likely best suited to power-users who wants strong security features and don’t need much instruction.

Curl Up With a Good Mystery Game – Everybody loves a mystery. Each of these favorite games has something special: a famous author, a slick style, an entertaining puzzle, or just a story well-told. Dust off your magnifying glass and your deerstalker cap, and download these gems.

BHODemon – Internet Explorer has a nasty habit of allowing so-called Browser Helper Objects (or BHOs) to install themselves into IE. Some BHOs are helpful, like the Google Toolbar, but others (especially those planted by viruses or spyware) can be malicious and harmful. BHODemon gives you a quick look at the BHOs installed on your PC, tells you whether a specific BHO is known to be safe or harmful, and gives you the ability to enable or disable individual BHOs with a single mouse click.

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