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Effects of Microplastics on Marine Environment Focus of International Workshop

Experts from the United States, Australia, Japan, Netherlands and the United Kingdom will gather at the University of Washington (UW) Tacoma for the first-ever international workshop on the pervasive problem of microplastics in the marine environment.

Full Disclosure and the Boston Farecard Hack

In eerily similar cases in the Netherlands and the United States, courts have recently grappled with the computer-security norm of "full disclosure," asking whether researchers should be permitted to disclose details of a fare-card vulnerability that allows people to ride the subway for free. The "Oyster card" used on the London Tube was at issue in the Dutch case, and...

Stenson sets up chance of win before Ryder Cup

ZANDVOORT, Netherlands (Reuters) - Henrik Stenson charged into contention in the Dutch Open on Friday with a five-under 65 that took the Swede to within a stroke of the early second round lead.

Boston Court's Meddling With 'Full Disclosure' Is Unwelcome

In eerily similar cases in the Netherlands and the United States, courts have recently grappled with the computer-security norm of "full disclosure," asking whether researchers should be permitted to disclose details of a fare-card vulnerability that allows people to ride the subway for free. The "Oyster card" used on the London Tube was at issue in the Dutch case, and a similar fare card used on the Boston "T" was the center of the U.S. case. The Dutch court got it right, and the American court, in Boston, got it wrong from the start -- despite facing an open-and-shut case of First Amendment prior restraint. The U.S. court has since seen the error of its ways -- but the damage is done. The MIT security researchers who were prepared to discuss their Boston findings at the DefCon security conference were prevented from giving their talk. The ethics of full disclosure are intimately familiar to those of us in the computer-security field. Before full disclosure became the norm, researchers would quietly disclose vulnerabilities to the vendors -- who would routinely ignore them. Sometimes vendors would even threaten researchers with legal action if they disclosed the vulnerabilities. Later on, researchers started disclosing the existence of a vulnerability but not the details. Vendors responded by denying the security holes' existence, or calling them just theoretical. It wasn't until full disclosure became the norm that vendors began consistently fixing vulnerabilities quickly. Now that vendors routinely patch vulnerabilities, researchers generally give them advance notice to allow them to patch their systems before the vulnerability is published. But even with this "responsible disclosure" protocol, it's the threat of disclosure that motivates them to patch their systems. Full disclosure is the mechanism (.pdf) by which computer security improves. Outside of computer security, secrecy is much more the norm. Some security communities, like locksmiths, behave much like medieval guilds, divulging the secrets of their profession only to those within it. These communities hate open research, and have responded with surprising vitriol to researchers who have found serious vulnerabilities in bicycle locks, combination safes (.pdf), master-key systems and many other security devices. Researchers have received a similar reaction from other communities more used to secrecy than openness. Researchers -- sometimes young students -- who discovered and published flaws in copyright-protection schemes, voting-machine security and now wireless access cards have all suffered recriminations and sometimes lawsuits for not keeping the vulnerabilities secret. When Christopher Soghoian created a website allowing people to print fake airline boarding passes, he got several unpleasant visits from the FBI. This preference for secrecy comes from confusing a vulnerability with information about that vulnerability. Using secrecy as a security measure is fundamentally fragile. It assumes that the bad guys don't do their own security research. It assumes that no one else will find the same vulnerability. It assumes that information won't leak out even if the research results are suppressed. These assumptions are all incorrect. The problem isn't the researchers; it's the products themselves. Companies will only design security as good as what their customers know to ask for. Full disclosure helps customers evaluate the security of the products they buy, and educates them in how to ask for better security. The Dutch court got it exactly right when it wrote: "Damage to NXP is not the result of the publication of the article but of the production and sale of a chip that appears to have shortcomings." In a world of forced secrecy, vendors make inflated claims about their products, vulnerabilities don't get fixed, and customers are no wiser. Security research is stifled, and security technology doesn't improve. The only beneficiaries are the bad guys. If you'll forgive the analogy, the ethics of full disclosure parallel the ethics of not paying kidnapping ransoms. We all know why we don't pay kidnappers: It encourages more kidnappings. Yet in every kidnapping case, there's someone -- a spouse, a parent, an employer -- with a good reason why, in this one case, we should make an exception. The reason we want researchers to publish vulnerabilities is because that's how security improves. But in every case there's someone -- the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority, the locksmiths, an election machine manufacturer -- who argues that, in this one case, we should make an exception. We shouldn't. The benefits of responsibly publishing attacks greatly outweigh the potential harm. Disclosure encourages companies to build security properly rather than relying on shoddy design and secrecy, and discourages them from promising security based on their ability to threaten researchers. It's how we learn about security, and how we improve future security. --- Bruce Schneier is Chief Security Technology Officer of BT Global Services and author of Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World. You can read more of his writings on his website.

A New Neighborhood From Scratch in the Netherlands

A new district rises on the decommissioned Ypenburg Nato airfield in the Netherlands. Master planners Rapp & Rapp worked with other architects and developers to create a cohesive whole with slight variations, a ?conditioning of difference." read more

Friday Funny: More Fun With Google Maps

An obviously Photoshopped cluster of trees appears in the Netherlands. What is someone hiding, and how are they hacking Google Earth? read more

Photoshop cloned trees in Google Maps

From Google Maps, here's an obviously manipulated photo of some trees next to a golf course in the Netherlands. Is it common for the company that licenses its satellite photos to Google to alter images this way? The discussion in Photoshop Disasters offers up some theories. Google Maps: Unusually Similar Trees = Black Helicopters (Photoshop Disasters)...

T-Mobile Netherlands puts reception issues on Apple

In a corporate blog posting, T-Mobile has told iPhone 3G users in the Netherlands that a hardware or software issue is to blame for the reception problems they have experienced.

Paving slabs 'clear the air'

Prosperous city streets may be "paved with gold" but researchers in the Netherlands have developed a far more environmentally friendly alternative.

Dutch women take freestyle win

The Netherlands women's swimming relay team win gold in the women's 4x100m freestyle, setting a new Olympic record.