Heist

Wow.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Individuals employed around the world by a sophisticated cyber crime ring stole $45 million from thousands of bank automated teller machines within a matter of hours, using hacked debit-card data, U.S. prosecutors said on Thursday.

Members of the global criminal organization hacked into two credit card processors and used stolen data to make more than 40,500 withdrawals in 27 countries, during two separate coordinated incidents in December 2012 and February 2013, the Justice Department said.

The government charged eight individuals in New York with participating in the larger scheme by withdrawing $2.8 million in thousands of ATM transactions, in what U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch said was the second-biggest bank robbery in the history of New York City.

First Website Return

Pretty cool.

(CNN)—Twenty years ago, a team of researchers shared the Web with the world. Now they want to show a generation that grew up online what it was like in its earliest days.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the date it released, for free, the technology and software needed to run a Web server.

In honor of the anniversary, a team has been assembled to recreate a working version of the first website, a how-to guide hosted by the project’s creators.

CISPA Passes House

Let’s hope this dies in the Senate.

CISPA, the controversial bill intended to let Internet companies share information about users more freely with the government, has been passed by the House of Representatives. The bill has been touched up since its first appearance last year, but many remain suspicious after what they view as years of misguided tech legislation. Both outside critics and the White House have said CISPA is fundamentally unsound.

Lawmakers are seen as being out of touch with the realities of technology and the Internet, as widespread protest last year of bills like SOPA and PIPA attests. It comes as no surprise, then, that a bill derided by privacy advocates last year should face similar opposition when it is brought back now with only minor changes.

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act is meant to let Internet companies share information with the government for cybersecurity purposes. A company like Facebook or Twitter, for instance, may have info the government wants, like when a user logged in or where they were at a certain time.

The bill would facilitate sharing that data, but many believe it throws privacy protections out the window in the process. Critics say it amounts to the government deputizing private companies to do their surveillance for them.

Bill Proposed to Ban Asking for Login Information From Applicants

I don’t know that I support this.

A proposal at the state Capitol would ban Wisconsin employers from asking workers or job applicants to hand over their usernames and passwords for social media and personal e-mail accounts.

State Representatives Gary Bies (R-Sister Bay) and Melissa Sargent (D-Madison) are offering the bill, which Sargent says is in response to concerns raised to her by students currently looking for jobs. The Madison Democrat says such requests go too far and the measure would offer a “reasonable protection” of personal privacy.

Don’t get me wrong… I think a business asking for that kind of information is intrusive, stupid, and a ridiculous practice. Frankly, if I saw that on a job application, I’d throw it away. I don’t want to work for a company that would even ask. But passing a law to forbid it? I don’t think it’s a good idea. Not every bad practice needs a law forbidding it and in this case, it’s a practice that doesn’t harm anybody.

Proof of Insurance on Smart Phone

Huh. I didn’t know this was not approved. In fact, I had an occasion where I had to show proof of insurance and used my smart phone. The officer didn’t mention a thing and accepted it.

Madison - Drivers could use their smartphone to show police they have auto insurance, under a bill passed by the state Senate Wednesday.

The Senate passed the bipartisan bill without debate on a voice vote. It now heads to the Assembly.

IRS Doesn’t Need a Warrant to Read Electronic Communications

Wonderful.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has claimed that agents do not need warrants to read people’s emails, text messages and other private electronic communications, according to internal agency documents.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which obtained the documents through a Freedom of Information Act request, released the information on Wednesday.

In a 2009 handbook, the IRS said the Fourth Amendment does not protect emails because Internet users “do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in such communications.” A 2010 presentation by the IRS Office of General Counsel reiterated the policy.

Using Pay Phones to Teach History

That’s a neat idea.

“You can go to any Manhattan pay phone, dial a special toll-free number and, based on the corner you’re standing on, it will deliver a piece of audio content to you,” Chin said. “Many are oral histories of New Yorkers about that time, geo-located with the facts of the neighborhood you’re in.

“They’re like time machines: You step into that gnarly-feeling booth, and it transports you to 1993. You can stand and look around the block you’re on and listen to what they’re saying and look around you to see what’s changed,” he said.

Saturn V Engines Recovered from Ocean Floor

Very cool.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - A recovery team funded by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has plucked two rocket engines from the floor of the Atlantic Ocean that were used to send astronauts to the moon more than 40 years ago, he wrote on the project’s website on Wednesday.

Bezos, the chief executive of Amazon, last year announced plans to search the sea floor for rocket motors shed during Saturn 5 launches to the moon during the 1969-1972 Apollo program.

Stolen iPad Still Providing Entertainment

Hehe.

Losing your iPad would be a source of anger and resentment for most people. But one Arkansas man describes his own stolen device as a “continuing fountain of entertainment,” thanks to the often bizarre pictures taken with the iPad that are posted to his iCloud photostream.

“It’s been a continuing fountain of entertainment for me,” Allen Engstram told KTHV. “It’s just like I’ll wake up one day and they’ll be new pictures there and I’m like oh my gosh, she has no idea.”

Engstram says he lost the iPad on a flight from Phoenix to Denver. He assumed that was the end of the story until one day his son asked Engstram’s wife about a strange photo that appeared in the family’s photo stream.

“He said mommy, who’s this? And of course she said, I have no idea who that is. It showed up on my phone too,” Engstram said. “After a while we figured out what was going on. That’s the person that has my iPad.”

EnergyPod

I officially want an EnergyPod

Rather than have their employees snoring under their desks like George Costanza on “Seinfeld,” Nationwide Planning’s New Jersey office has a nap room with a recliner that allows one worker at a time to catch up on sleep. Other companies have purchased “EnergyPods,” made by a company called MetroNaps: chairs specially designed for power naps in the workplace. Priced from $8,900 to $12,900, the chairs have been used by companies in 20 countries across four continents, including Google and Procter & Gamble.

Being Social

Good advice.

Instead of using social media, Chaplin explains, you should give yourself “several hours or 15 minutes of time during Lent to not read curses on social networks, but serious texts, serious art, prayer, unhurried conversation with close ones.

Higgs Boson

Found?

GENEVA (AP) — The search is all but over for a subatomic particle that is a crucial building block of the universe.

Physicists announced Thursday they believe they have discovered the subatomic particle predicted nearly a half-century ago, which will go a long way toward explaining what gives electrons and all matter in the universe size and shape.

The elusive particle, called a Higgs boson, was predicted in 1964 to help fill in our understanding of the creation of the universe, which many theorize occurred in a massive explosion known as the Big Bang. The particle was named for Peter Higgs, one of the physicists who proposed its existence, but it later became popularly known as the “God particle.”

Columbia

It’s hard to believe that it’s been 10 years.

Feb. 1, the anniversary of the Columbia accident, is the day NASA chooses to remember all the astronauts who have died during missions.

Spaceflight is a risky business. Some of the accidents are well known. Others, not really. But they all illustrate just how dangerous it is to leave our planet and venture into orbit.

Teacher Placed on Leave Because of Tweets

Stupid.

A 23-year-old high-school teacher in Aurora, Colo., is on administrative leave pending an investigation after a local news station exposed half-naked pics and pot-smoking boasts posted from her Twitter account.

“Watching a drug bust go down in the parking lot. It’s funny cuz I have weed in my car in the staff parking lot,” read one tweet from the account @crunk_bear, which Denver’s 9NEWS connected to Carly McKinney, a first-year 10th-grade math teacher at Overland Park High School after the station received a tip from a viewer.

“Just got called Ms. McCutie. Points for being clever, however you are still jailbait,” read another of the teacher’s tweets.

It’s one thing for old stupid college tweets or posts to pop up once someone is in their career. It’s quite another for them to be actively doing it.

Outsourcing

That’s one way to do it.

The company’s security team eventually found that someone was logging in from Shenyang, China with the American employee’s credentials—while that employee was staring at a computer monitor in his U.S. office.

In his blog, Valentine described the employee as being in his mid-40s with a “relatively long tenure with the company, family man, inoffensive and quiet. Someone you wouldn’t look at twice in an elevator.”

A search of the employee’s computer found hundreds of PDF invoices from a third party contractor/developer from Shenyang.

Eventually, it was discovered that the employee had outsourced his own job to a Chinese consulting firm, paying about $50,000 to the firm out of his salary of several hundred thousand dollars.