Apple, Cisco, Dell unhappy over alleged NSA back doors in their gear

Germany's Der Spiegel newsmagazine reported Monday that the U.S. National Security Agency has for years compromised a wide range of hardware devices, including PCs, iPhones, hard drives, and network routers, as part of its spying activities. The NSA also installed back doors into European telecom networks and into BlackBerry's network operations center to spy on communications, the Der Spiegel report says.

The spy agency's Tailored Access Operations (TAO) unit is alleged to have installed such hidden access methods in a variety of devices from Apple, Cisco Systems, Dell, Huawei, Juniper, Maxtor, Samsung, Seagate, and Western Digital, among others. Although the precise methods are unclear, many seem to involve installation of monitoring software or modified firmware -- some on devices intercepted in transit from vendors to their customers.

+ Also on NetworkWorld: Notable deaths of 2013 in Technology, Science & Inventions +

InfoWorld - Germany's Der Spiegel newsmagazine reported Monday that the U.S. National Security Agency has for years compromised a wide range of hardware devices, including PCs, iPhones, hard drives, and network routers, as part of its spying activities. The NSA also installed back doors into European telecom networks and into BlackBerry's network operations center to spy on communications, the Der Spiegel report says.

The spy agency's Tailored Access Operations (TAO) unit is alleged to have installed such hidden access methods in a variety of devices from Apple, Cisco Systems, Dell, Huawei, Juniper, Maxtor, Samsung, Seagate, and Western Digital, among others. Although the precise methods are unclear, many seem to involve installation of monitoring software or modified firmware -- some on devices intercepted in transit from vendors to their customers.

+ Also on NetworkWorld: Notable deaths of 2013 in Technology, Science & Inventions +

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Apple, Cisco Systems, Dell, and Huawei have all responded publicly expressing concern over the alleged back doors and promising to inform customers of any vulnerabilities found. All said they were unaware of any vulnerabilities or of the TAO program. The Der Spiegel report says the companies did not appear to have cooperated with the NSA to install the back doors, and Apple today said bluntly that it has never worked with the NSA on any such efforts on any products, comparing the NSA to hackers and saying it would "defend our customers from security attacks, regardless of who's behind them."

The purported iPhone back door has gained much attention. The NSA slides that Der Spiegel says it obtained show that in 2008 the NSA figured out how to install spyware in the iPhone, though it required hands-on access to the device. The slides claim the NSA was working on ways to remotely install such spyware. It is unclear whether the NSA succeeded in its remote-installation efforts and if so for what versions of iOS.

It's common for spy agencies to install spyware on specific people's devices; China's agents routinely install spyware on Western business travelers' PCs and mobile devices, for example, and the ongoing revelations by ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden show that the U.S. and other major powers spy on others' citizens as aggressively as the Chinese have long been criticized for doing.

In a statement, the NSA did not deny the spying, and it said any activities it undertakes are limited to foreigners. However, some of Snowden's revelations have shown that the spying extends to U.S. citizens as well.

This article, "Apple, Cisco, Dell unhappy over alleged NSA back doors in their gear," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest developments in business technology news and get a digest of the key stories each day in the InfoWorld Daily newsletter. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.

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Termites' powerful weapon against extermination? Their own poop

By Barbara Liston

ORLANDO | Wed Sep 25, 2013 4:46pm EDT

ORLANDO (Reuters) - Scientists trying to understand why destructive wood-eating termites are so resistant to efforts to exterminate them have come up with an unusually repugnant explanation.

Termites' practice of building nests out of their own feces creates a scatological force field that Florida scientists now believe is the reason biological controls have failed to stop their pestilential march all over the world.

A nine-year study concluded that termite feces act as a natural antibiotic, growing good bacteria in the subterranean nests that attack otherwise deadly pathogens, according to the findings published this month in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

"When they make a poop, it's not like they can throw it away and say forget about this. And over the millions of years of evolution it somehow evolved to take advantage of the poop there," said Nan-Yao Su, a University of Florida entomology professor and lead scientist and co-author of the study, along with Thomas Chouvenc, a University of Florida research associate.

Su also is the inventor of the popular Sentricon termite baiting and control system, which in 1995 became the first major alternative to liquid chemical treatments.

The findings could put an end to 50 years of failed research attempts to find a species of fungi that could kill termites when introduced into nests. Research repeatedly showed that fungi killed termites in a petri dish but not in the wild, Su said.

"Nobody was able to make it work in the field, but nobody would admit it," he said.

Su's goal was to find out why biological control never worked. His research colleagues determined that Streptomyces bacteria that are found in the nests and feed on fecal matter may be producing beneficial antimicrobial compounds that protect the termites from other potentially toxic matter.

Termites, mostly the voracious Formosans, cause $40 billion worth of damage a year worldwide, eating through wood structures particularly in Japan, China and the United States, Su said.

By the time a house is infested, the underground termite nest typically is 300 feet in diameter, hosting several million termites with a biomass weight of approximately 30 pounds, the weight of a medium-sized dog.

In one example, termites took nine months to bring down a new house in Hawaii built in the 1970s inadvertently on top of an untreated termite colony, Su said.

Further research will attempt to discover a way to bypass the protective compounds to destroy the termites, and to determine whether the findings can lead to new antibiotics for humans to replace those which have become ineffective.

(Editing by David Adams and Leslie Adler)

View the original article here

Termites' powerful weapon against extermination? Their own poop

By Barbara Liston

ORLANDO | Wed Sep 25, 2013 4:46pm EDT

ORLANDO (Reuters) - Scientists trying to understand why destructive wood-eating termites are so resistant to efforts to exterminate them have come up with an unusually repugnant explanation.

Termites' practice of building nests out of their own feces creates a scatological force field that Florida scientists now believe is the reason biological controls have failed to stop their pestilential march all over the world.

A nine-year study concluded that termite feces act as a natural antibiotic, growing good bacteria in the subterranean nests that attack otherwise deadly pathogens, according to the findings published this month in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

"When they make a poop, it's not like they can throw it away and say forget about this. And over the millions of years of evolution it somehow evolved to take advantage of the poop there," said Nan-Yao Su, a University of Florida entomology professor and lead scientist and co-author of the study, along with Thomas Chouvenc, a University of Florida research associate.

Su also is the inventor of the popular Sentricon termite baiting and control system, which in 1995 became the first major alternative to liquid chemical treatments.

The findings could put an end to 50 years of failed research attempts to find a species of fungi that could kill termites when introduced into nests. Research repeatedly showed that fungi killed termites in a petri dish but not in the wild, Su said.

"Nobody was able to make it work in the field, but nobody would admit it," he said.

Su's goal was to find out why biological control never worked. His research colleagues determined that Streptomyces bacteria that are found in the nests and feed on fecal matter may be producing beneficial antimicrobial compounds that protect the termites from other potentially toxic matter.

Termites, mostly the voracious Formosans, cause $40 billion worth of damage a year worldwide, eating through wood structures particularly in Japan, China and the United States, Su said.

By the time a house is infested, the underground termite nest typically is 300 feet in diameter, hosting several million termites with a biomass weight of approximately 30 pounds, the weight of a medium-sized dog.

In one example, termites took nine months to bring down a new house in Hawaii built in the 1970s inadvertently on top of an untreated termite colony, Su said.

Further research will attempt to discover a way to bypass the protective compounds to destroy the termites, and to determine whether the findings can lead to new antibiotics for humans to replace those which have become ineffective.

(Editing by David Adams and Leslie Adler)

View the original article here

Termites' powerful weapon against extermination? Their own poop

By Barbara Liston

ORLANDO | Wed Sep 25, 2013 4:46pm EDT

ORLANDO (Reuters) - Scientists trying to understand why destructive wood-eating termites are so resistant to efforts to exterminate them have come up with an unusually repugnant explanation.

Termites' practice of building nests out of their own feces creates a scatological force field that Florida scientists now believe is the reason biological controls have failed to stop their pestilential march all over the world.

A nine-year study concluded that termite feces act as a natural antibiotic, growing good bacteria in the subterranean nests that attack otherwise deadly pathogens, according to the findings published this month in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

"When they make a poop, it's not like they can throw it away and say forget about this. And over the millions of years of evolution it somehow evolved to take advantage of the poop there," said Nan-Yao Su, a University of Florida entomology professor and lead scientist and co-author of the study, along with Thomas Chouvenc, a University of Florida research associate.

Su also is the inventor of the popular Sentricon termite baiting and control system, which in 1995 became the first major alternative to liquid chemical treatments.

The findings could put an end to 50 years of failed research attempts to find a species of fungi that could kill termites when introduced into nests. Research repeatedly showed that fungi killed termites in a petri dish but not in the wild, Su said.

"Nobody was able to make it work in the field, but nobody would admit it," he said.

Su's goal was to find out why biological control never worked. His research colleagues determined that Streptomyces bacteria that are found in the nests and feed on fecal matter may be producing beneficial antimicrobial compounds that protect the termites from other potentially toxic matter.

Termites, mostly the voracious Formosans, cause $40 billion worth of damage a year worldwide, eating through wood structures particularly in Japan, China and the United States, Su said.

By the time a house is infested, the underground termite nest typically is 300 feet in diameter, hosting several million termites with a biomass weight of approximately 30 pounds, the weight of a medium-sized dog.

In one example, termites took nine months to bring down a new house in Hawaii built in the 1970s inadvertently on top of an untreated termite colony, Su said.

Further research will attempt to discover a way to bypass the protective compounds to destroy the termites, and to determine whether the findings can lead to new antibiotics for humans to replace those which have become ineffective.

(Editing by David Adams and Leslie Adler)

View the original article here

Children seem to gain extra weight after having their tonsils removed

THE QUESTION Tonsils often are removed to eliminate infections that cause sore throats and trouble swallowing and to help a child breathe better while sleeping. Might a tonsillectomy also affect the child's weight?

THIS STUDY analyzed data from nine studies, involving 795 children who had a tonsillectomy, with or without adenoid removal, before they turned 18. Their weights ranged from normal to extremely obese. In the first few years after their surgery, most of the children gained weight beyond what was expected as they grew taller. In more than half of the children, weight increased 46 to 100 percent. Most of the others gained as well, but in lesser amounts, although youths who were the most obese at the start neither gained nor lost weight after a tonsillectomy.

WHO MAY BE AFFECTED? Children with inflamed tonsils, and parents who must decide whether to have the tonsils removed. Although tonsillectomies are not done as often as they were a few decades ago, about a half-million children still have the operation each year in the United States.

CAVEATS The study suggested a link between tonsillectomy and subsequent weight gain, but it was not designed to prove cause and effect. It also did not determine the exact mechanism that may cause weight gain after a tonsillectomy. Citing the increasing number of obese children, the authors urged parents to add potential weight gain to the list of factors they consider when deciding whether to have a child's tonsils removed.

FIND THIS STUDY February issue of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery (oto.sagepub.com/content/144/2/154.abstract).

LEARN MORE ABOUT tonsils at www.entnet.org/healthinformation (click on "throat") and www.mayoclinic.com.

- Linda Searing

The research described in Quick Study comes from credible, peer-reviewed journals. Nonetheless, conclusive evidence about a treatment's effectiveness is rarely found in a single study. Anyone considering changing or beginning treatment of any kind should consult with a physician.

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AnyBody: Parents are ignoring their children for their BlackBerry

Okay, I admit it: Sometimes I ignore my children for my BlackBerry - mostly for work-related reasons, although, to be totally honest, there's the occasional personal e-mail or text in there, too. It's just so hard to disregard that bright red flash, signaling a new message. I mean, what if there's a problem with my next column? Maybe an editor is writing with a plum new freelance assignment. . . . What if my babysitter can't make it tomorrow, or there's some pressing missive from a friend?

Before you start throwing stones, dear readers, I've seen YOU out there ignoring your kids, too: Typing furiously on your smartphone at Starbucks or, while your offspring sit across the table, equally engrossed in handheld video games; checking Facebook or playing online Scrabble in the carpool line; texting away during soccer practice; and staring at your cell - instead of your charges - at the playground. And I won't even mention those of you who sneak peeks at red lights, with the kids in the back seat, since that's now illegal in many places and dangerous everywhere.

Forget stressing about young people's texting, Twitter and gaming habits. Increasingly, it is adults' constant, obsessive use of these technologies that's coming under fire.

"It's now children who are complaining about their parents' habits," says clinical psychologist and MIT professor Sherry Turkle, who interviewed more than 300 young people and 150 adults for her new book, "Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other."

What she found, over and over again, was children who feel that their parents often pay less attention to them than to their smartphones, particularly at mealtime, in the car at school pickup and during games or sport events - but even, on occasion, during bedtime stories.

"These are not people who are dysfunctional, who are out of control, who are addicted - they've just kind of let things get away from us," says Turkle. "It starts with the reality that people are expected to be online 24-7 - we're on all the time for our jobs - and it ends in the fantasy of 'there's something new just around the corner, waiting in your in box.' "

While there are many upsides to technology and constant connectivity, experts say there's also a cost for not paying as much attention to one another, especially within families. For one thing, parents who are easily distracted by their phones or iPads are modeling potentially harmful behavior for their impressionable children, says Patrick Kelly, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center.

He adds that putting these devices first can create discipline issues, too - as with my friend Hannah's 2-year-old son, who has taken to shouting "no, no, no!" and throwing Hannah's BlackBerry on the floor whenever she picks it up to check e-mail.

"If you're taking [parental attention] away from the child, for what looks like it is not a good reason, kids might think, 'What am I doing wrong that my parents don't like me?' and may start acting out to get their parents' attention because they have a hard time distinguishing positive from negative attention," says Kelly.

He has had couples bring a child in for a psychological evaluation and then start texting or e-mailing while their offspring is opening up, answering personal questions. "It's just like [putting a child in] a timeout: If you remove yourself from your child, that's punishment, and when that happens for no reason that a child can comprehend, it sends mixed messages and creates a lot of distress in the child's life, particularly younger children who just don't get that Mommy's working or Daddy has to take this call but will be back in five minutes."

For those who counter that Facebook and text messaging are helping them stay more in touch with their kids than ever before, experts stress that while these technologies can be a positive communication tool, there is simply no substitute for face-to-face contact. "Being able to look your child in the eye, to reflect what they're thinking and to be excited about the big test or disappointed about that breakup, and to really be there with them in a way you can't be in a text, is incredibly valuable, because it teaches kids to reflect on their own mental state and shows they're not alone in the world," says Kelly. "Eye contact is the number-one sign that you're relating to your kid."

As it turns out, we're also hurting ourselves when we juggle work, children and various technology tools at the same time. "Multitasking has been heralded for quite a few years as a skill we needed to master in order to catch up with our children, but research is now showing that the more we multitask, the more we degrade our performance in every one of those tasks," says Turkle. Her book cites a 2009 study from Stanford University, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It found that heavy multitaskers performed much worse on a series of cognitive and memory tests that involved distraction than those who focused on just one thing at a time.

Obviously, there are many parents - and families - who do manage technology responsibly, setting limits and spending tech-free time with their children or partners every day. All of the experts I interviewed recommend this. Some sainted moms and dads even put down their smartphones entirely when the kiddies are around.

But as I sit here writing this article, checking my BlackBerry for e-mails on another looming deadline and paying bills online, while monitoring with one ear a sick child, I particularly appreciate Turkle's sane, practical approach to this problem. "I specifically do not use term 'addiction,' because if you're addicted [to technology use], you have one choice and one choice only - to throw it away - and we're not going to throw this away," she says. "These technologies are with us, but we have to learn to live with them in a healthy way, according to our human values. And our human values are not to put our kids fifth, after texts, e-mail, Twitter and everything else."

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Quarks' spins dictate their location in the proton

In a proton, quarks with spin pointed in the up direction (red and blue) tend to gather in the left half of the proton as seen by the incoming electron, whereas down-spinning quarks (green) tended to gather in the right half of the proton.

A successful measurement of the distribution of quarks that make up protons conducted at DOE's Jefferson Lab has found that a quark's spin can predict its general location inside the proton. Quarks with spin pointed in the up direction will congregate in the left half of the proton, while down-spinning quarks hang out on the right. The research also confirms that scientists are on track to the first-ever three-dimensional inside view of the proton.

The proton lies at the heart of every atom that builds our visible universe, yet scientists are still struggling to obtain a detailed picture of how it is composed of its primary building blocks: quarks and gluons. Too small to see with ordinary microscopes, protons and their quarks and gluons are instead illuminated by particle accelerators. At Jefferson Lab, the CEBAF accelerator directs a stream of electrons into protons, and huge detectors then collect information about how the particles interact.

According to Harut Avakian, a Jefferson Lab staff scientist, these observations have so far revealed important basic information on the proton's structure, such as the number of quarks and their momentum distribution. This information comes from scattering experiments that detect only whether a quark was hit but do not measure the particles produced from interacting quarks.

"If you sum the momenta of those quarks, it can be compared to the momentum of the proton. What scientists were doing these last 40 years, they were investigating the momentum distribution of quarks along the direction in which the electron looks at it – a one-dimensional picture of the proton," he explains.

Now, he and his colleagues have used a new experimental method that can potentially produce a full three-dimensional view of the proton.

The new method measures neutral pions, made of one quark and one antiquark, as they are produced in collisions of fast-moving electrons with protons.

In addition to the momentum distribution, this method allows one to infer the spatial position of the quark as it was hit – how far the quarks are away from the proton's center and if their spins are pointing in the up or down direction. It projects a spatial image of the proton's quark content in the plane transverse to the electron beam.

"It is the transverse space distribution. And so the one-dimensional picture is extended to a three-dimensional image that allows us to understand how those little quarks are distributed in the space. That is, we learn at the same time how far they are from the center and what are their momenta," Avakian says.

To make the measurement, the researchers needed to thwhack a number of quarks with electrons just hard enough for the quarks to absorb energy from the electrons and then give it away again, without ever breaking up the protons.

"This is the method of exclusive electron scattering, where you don't destroy the proton, you just touch a single quark," explains JLab Theorist Christian Weiss. "The electron hits the quark, and this quark shakes off a pion. The quark returns to the proton, and the proton remains intact and recoils. You measure the pion and the recoiling proton in addition to the scattered electron. This method gives you much more control than traditional inclusive scattering, where you do not detect the produced particles."

However, the experimental data alone isn't enough. To extract detailed information, the experimenters must plug their data into a complicated theory expressed as a set of mathematical expressions, called generalized parton distributions. The expressions combine to provide detailed information on how both the quarks and gluons, together called partons, behave inside the proton. It's thought that these generalized parton distributions, along with other information, will provide the first-ever three-dimensional view of the proton's structure.

"It's like you have some mosaic. These are parts of your mosaic. To get the picture, you need all these pieces to put together," Avakian says.

The CLAS collaboration conducted the experiment in Jefferson Lab's Experimental Hall B in the spring of 2005. The first result was published last fall in the journal Physical Review Letters.

They found that it was possible to successfully carry out an experiment using this tricky method of probing the proton without destroying it to get the data they need for the generalized parton distributions. They plugged the data into two theoretical models of generalized parton distributions that simulate the spin and location of the quarks and allow one to recover a genuine three-dimensional image of the proton.

"The position of the quark depends on how its spin is pointing or on its momentum. The spin of the quark affects the probability to find the quark in a certain point in space," Avakian explains.

In particular, they found evidence that transversely spinning quarks with their spin pointed in the up direction tended to gather in the left half of the proton as seen by the incoming electron, whereas transversely spinning quarks with their spin pointed in the down direction tended to gather in the right half of the proton. He says the result confirms that protons are complex systems, with a rich internal structure and sophisticated dynamics, referred to as Quantum Chromodynamics.

"The quarks are not just distributed in momentum in one direction. They have momenta, positions, and everything is moving around. As of now, we don't understand very well the dynamics, such as how this spin is correlated with the position and the momentum. That's what we are trying to study - the interplay of the quark's internal motion and their spin with their spatial position in the system," Avakian says.

In the meantime, Avakian and Weiss both agree that this successful experiment has broader implications. It has proven that the exclusive electron scattering method can be used to begin filling in the information needed for generalized parton distributions toward obtaining that three-dimensional view of the proton. Physicists worldwide are working toward that common goal, and the technique pioneered here can also be applied at much higher energies, beginning with Jefferson Lab's CEBAF accelerator at 12 GeV and later with a future Electron-Ion Collider. Similar measurements can also be performed in scattering experiments with proton beams at facilities such as GSI in Germany and at Japan's High Energy Accelerator Research Organization, known as KEK.

"The physics community consider this as a first-priority task: To understand the 3D structure of the nucleon," Avakian says.

More information: prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v109/i11/e112001

Journal reference: Physical Review Letters

Provided by US Department of Energy

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Catalysts' outer coordination spheres take their place in the spotlight

Wendy Shaw wrote a comprehensive review article on outer coordination spheres.

(Phys.org) —Once dismissed as shrubbery, experimental and computational research shows the outer coordination sphere greatly influences a catalyst's effectiveness, according to Dr. Wendy Shaw at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in her invited review article. The outer coordination sphere is the complex structure that wraps around the catalyst's central active site and controls the activity, selectivity and specificity of the catalyst. Shaw's Catalysis Reviews article focuses on bottom-up design research. In this approach, aspects of the outer coordination sphere are added as needed.

"The advantage is that you can add just the features you need to get the effects you want," said Shaw.

In her article, Shaw explores studies of a minimal outer coordination sphere based on amino acids. She goes beyond these simple arrangements to examine structured peptide use. These more complex structures allow scientists to add specific positioning of an amino acid near the active site to change the molecular properties at the metal, controlling the catalyst's behavior. She also examines the newer area of enzyme mimics. She notes several exciting studies are using computers to design enzymes from scratch that catalyze reactions that aren't found in nature.

Looking back at the 61-page review, with 226 references, she notes that many of the catalysts fall into two categories: those that function but have undefined outer coordination spheres and those that do not work but have rigorously defined spheres. Few, such as a PNNL rhodium-based catalyst, perform the task at hand and have defined structures. For her, the takeaway message is the large influence that changes far from the active site can exert over the reactivity of the catalyst, and the power of integrating computational chemistry and experimentation to create functional and structurally characterized catalysts.

More information: Shaw WJ. 2012. The Outer-Coordination Sphere: Incorporating Amino Acids and Peptides as Ligands for Homogeneous Catalysts to Mimic Enzyme Function. Catalysis Reviews 54(4):489-550. DOI: 10.1080/01614940.2012.679453

Provided by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

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