August 31, 2007 (Computerworld) -- The identity thieves who ransacked Monster.com's database also made off with the personal information of 146,000 people who use USAJobs, the federal government's official job search site, federal officials said today.

Monster Worldwide Inc. operates the USAJobs.gov Web site for the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the independent agency that manages the federal civil service. Like Monster's commercial sites, USAJobs lets job seekers post resumes and federal agencies post job openings.

Of the 2 million subscribers to the federal job site, about 146,000 were affected by the heist engineered by Infostealer.Monstres, a Trojan horse that used legitimate log-on credentials stolen from recruiters to sift through the Monster database. According to Monster executives, the Trojan absconded with the names, addresses, e-mail addresses and phone numbers of some 1.3 million people. Although stored in the Monster databases, some of those people were USAJobs users. No Social Security numbers were stolen, the OPM stressed in an alert posted to USAJobs.

Personal info on 150,000 job seekers at USAJobs stolen

Aerogel is nicknamed “frozen smoke” and is made by extracting water from a silica gel, then replacing it with gas such as carbon dioxide. The result is a substance that is capable of insulating against extreme temperatures and of absorbing pollutants such as crude oil.

It was invented by an American chemist for a bet in 1931, but early versions were so brittle and costly that it was largely consigned to laboratories. It was not until a decade ago that NASA started taking an interest in the substance and putting it to a more practical use.

I read something about this a few years ago, but it seems to be making headlines again.

Scientists hail ‘frozen smoke’ as material that will change world.

Hoping to break a political impasse, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has submitted a ballot measure asking voters whether they support blanketing the city with a wireless Wi-Fi system that would enable free Web surfing subsidized by ads from Google Inc.

The project, one of hundreds of municipal Wi-Fi systems being built or proposed across the country, has bogged down amid concerns about privacy protection, surfing speeds, and the terms of the proposed contract.

San Francisco Wi-Fi Issue Goes to Ballot

“There really isn’t anything new in security,” said Bill Hoffman, lead researcher at SPI Dynamics. “Anyone who says there is, is lying.”

As always, functionality has outstripped security, but the situation is not hopeless, Hoffman said. As Web applications mature, “we’re starting to see minimum standards for security as vendors start to realize the importance of Web security.”

Not sure whether this has already been posted...

AJAX security: Everything old is new again

The National Security Agency, whose initials once seemed to stand for No Such Agency, is moving from being a proprietary to an open-source organization. Sort of.

When he [Tony Sager] began working at NSA in 1977, "it was a dramatically different security problem," he said. IT security was a government monopoly. "The government owned the problem" and could control the technology. "Those days are over.".

"The government owned the problem." - I love that quote.

NSA: We're from the government. Help us.

Certainly you'd expect that the anti-spyware software you buy will shield your computer from snooping programs planted by the malicious and the opportunistic. But should the anti-spyware program providers also shield you from the implanted machinations of multinational corporations or even law enforcement agencies? Does the owner of the computer being scanned have sole authority over that machine? Or can the security software company protecting that machine make other alliances?

Is anti-spyware always on your side?

Welcome to the year 2007, in which my Playstation 3 gaming console is more technologically advanced than the state-of-the-art International Space Station.

Obsolete Chips In Space