By Brandon Keim
(WIRED) — Scientists are one step closer to knowing what you’ve seen by reading your mind.
Having modeled how images are represented in the brain, the researchers translated recorded patterns of neural activity into pictures of what test subjects had seen.
Though practical applications are decades away, the research could someday lead to dream-readers and thought-controlled computers.
“It’s what you would actually use if you were going to build a functional brain-reading device,” said Jack Gallant, a University of California, Berkeley neuroscientist.
The research, led by Gallant and Berkeley postdoctoral researcher …

When is a cyber-attack a real one?
AMERICA and other countries still have to fine-tune their cyber-defences to distinguish mere nuisances from real menaces. That, rather than any revelations about fiendish North Korean cyber-warfare, seems to be the upshot of the latest reported cyber-attack on South Korean and American websites.
Initially, it was reported that this was the first series of attacks to hit government websites in several countries simultaneously. Officials in both Seoul and Washington, DC, said they were suffering “distributed denial of service” overload (known as DDOS in geekspeak). In …

ISLAMABAD: Despite the fact that dumping old computers in developing countries has been declared as violation of international law, Pakistan was being used as dumping ground for over 50,000 tons of e-waste that hurts local industry and also creates environmental and health hazards.
Despite being a signatory to the Basel Convention that restricted importing used/old computers, more than 500,000 used computers are finding ways into Pakistani computer market each year.
These concerns were voiced at a discussion ‘Cost effective or technology defective’ held here on Tuesday.
The speakers from both public and private …

By Maggie Shiels
Twelve million computers have been hijacked by cyber-criminals and detected by security vendor McAfee since January, the firm has said.
It reports there has been a 50% increase in the number of detected so-called “zombie” computers since 2008.
The true number of newly hijacked PCs is likely to be higher than those detected by McAfee alone.
The figures come as a report from Deloitte said a global approach to cyber-security was needed.
“Doing nothing is not an option,” said Deloitte’s Greg Pellegrino.
Everything that depended on cyberspace face unprecedented risks, said Deloitte Touche …

The only way to stop fraudsters stealing information from old computer hard drives is by destroying them completely, a study has found.
Which? Computing magazine recovered 22,000 “deleted” files from eight computers purchased on eBay.
Freely available software can be used to recover files that users think they have permanently deleted.
While Which? recommends smashing hard drives with a hammer, experts say for most consumers that’s a step too far.
Criminals source old computers from internet auction sites or in rubbish tips, to find users’ valuable details, and a number of recent cases have …

By Dominic Casciani
BBC News home affairs reporter
Communications firms are being asked to record all internet contacts between people as part of a modernisation in UK police surveillance tactics.
The home secretary scrapped plans for a database but wants details to be held and organised for security services.
The new system would track all e-mails, phone calls and internet use, including visits to social network sites.
The Tories said the Home Office had “buckled under Conservative pressure” in deciding against a giant database.
Announcing a consultation on a new strategy for communications …

Nikolay Grebennikov
In February 2005, Joe Lopez, a businessman from Florida, filed a suit against Bank of America after unknown hackers stole $90,000 from his Bank of America account. The money had been transferred to Latvia.
An investigation showed that Mr. Lopez’s computer was infected with a malicious program, Backdoor.Coreflood, which records every keystroke and sends this information to malicious users via the Internet. This is how the hackers got hold of Joe Lopez’s user name and password, since Mr. Lopez often used the Internet to manage his Bank of America account.
However …

A behind-the-scenes conflict appears to be under way—but not the sort you might think
Illustration by Claudio Munoz
IT IS the new frontier for military and intelligence activity: cyberspace. For years military experts and computer scientists have speculated about the possibility of a nation’s infrastructure being attacked using computers, rather than bombs. There have been dark warnings of the danger of a “digital Pearl Harbour”—an unexpected strike in which digital attackers shut down America’s electrical grid or air-traffic control systems, or hack into nuclear-power stations and cause them to overheat. In recent …

Internet television moves from the computer to the living room
IN THE land of free enterprise and the home of discount shopping, there can sometimes be an appalling lack of competition. High-speed access to the internet is one. Cable television is another. The reason is that in America cable-television companies, which provide a lot of the high-speed access, do not want their customers to cancel their contracts and watch television over the internet instead. Yet a growing number of people are poised to do just that.
At your correspondent’s home-from-home in Japan, …

UK copyright laws “needlessly criminalise” music fans and need to be updated, a consumer watchdog says.
UK laws that make it a copyright violation to copy a CD that you own onto a computer or iPod should be changed, says Consumer Focus.
The call came after global umbrella group Consumers International put the UK in last place in a survey of 16 countries’ copyright laws.
Consumer Focus said the UK had to catch up with the rest of the world.
“UK copyright law is the oldest, but also the most out of date,” said …