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Monday, October 28, 2013

Boston Marathon suspect may pin blame on brother

FILE - This file photo released Friday, April 19, 2013 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation shows Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings. Lawyers for Tsarnaev will ask a judge to address the death penalty protocol during a status conference in federal court Monday, Sept. 23, 2013, in Boston. Tsarnaev is accused in two bombings that killed three people and injured more than 260 others near the finish line of the April 15 marathon. (AP Photo/Federal Bureau of Investigation, File)

This May 4, 2013 police mugshot provided by the Orange County Corrections Department in Orlando, Fla., shows Ibragim Todashev after his arrest for aggravated battery in Orlando. Todashev, who was being questioned in Orlando by authorities in the Boston bombing probe, was fatally shot Wednesday, May 22, 2013 when he initiated a violent confrontation, FBI officials said. According to a filing made Monday, Oct. 23, 2013, Ibragim Todashev told investigators that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the slain Boston Marathon bombing suspect, participated in a triple killing in Waltham, Mass. on Sept. 11, 2011. (AP Photo/Orange County Corrections Department)

BOSTON (AP) — Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's lawyers may try to save him from the death penalty in the Boston Marathon bombing by arguing he fell under the murderous influence of his older brother, legal experts say.

The outlines of a possible defense came into focus this week when it was learned that Tsarnaev's attorneys are trying to get access to investigative records implicating the now-dead brother in a grisly triple slaying committed in 2011.

In court papers Monday, federal prosecutors acknowledged publicly for the first time that a friend of Tamerlan Tsarnaev told investigators that Tamerlan participated in the unsolved killings of three men who were found in a Waltham apartment with their throats slit, marijuana sprinkled over their bodies.

The younger Tsarnaev's lawyers argued in court papers that any evidence of Tamerlan's involvement is "mitigating information" that is critical as they prepare Dzhokhar's defense. They asked a judge to force prosecutors to turn over the records.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 20, faces 30 federal charges, including using a weapon of mass destruction, in the twin bombings April 15 that killed three people and injured more than 260. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, died in a gunbattle with police days later.

The government is still deciding whether to pursue the death penalty for the attack, which investigators say was retaliation for the U.S. wars in Muslim lands.

Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said the defense may be trying to show that the older brother was the guiding force.

"If I was a defense attorney and was seeking perhaps to draw attention to the influence the older brother had in planning the bombing, I would use his involvement in other crimes to show that he was likely the main perpetrator in the Boston bombing," Dieter said.

"I would take the position that my client, the younger brother, was strongly influenced by his older brother, and even if he is culpable, the death penalty is too extreme in this case."

Similarly, Aitan D. Goelman, who was part of the legal team that prosecuted Oklahoma City bombing figures Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, said the defense may be looking to minimize the younger brother's role in the bombing.

"I think the most likely reason is that if they are arguing some kind of mitigation theory, that the older brother was a monster and the younger brother was under his sway or intimidated or dominated by him," he said.

Miriam Conrad, Tsarnaev's public defender, had no comment.

Investigators have given no motive for the 2011 slayings. One victim was a boxer and friend of Tamerlan Tsarnaev's.

Friends of those killed have said they gave Tsarnaev's name to investigators at the time. That has raised questions of whether authorities missed an opportunity to prevent a bigger tragedy.

Federal prosecutors said in court papers that Ibragim Todashev, another friend of Tamerlan's, told authorities that Tamerlan took part in the killings. Todashev was shot to death in Florida in May by authorities while being questioned.

Prosecutors argued that turning over the records would damage the investigation into the killings.

___

Smith reported from Providence, R.I. Associated Press writer Pete Yost in Washington contributed to this report.

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-10-23-US-Boston-Marathon-Bombing/id-68a69619519c4562b33983dbc7660bc0
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Israeli tunnel hit by cyberattack, experts say

In this Tuesday Oct. 20, 2013 photo, an electric power station is seen near the coastal city of Hadera. When Israel's military chief delivered a high-profile speech this month outlining the greatest threats his country will face in the future, he listed computer sabotage as a top concern, warning a sophisticated cyberattack could one day bring the nation to a standstill. (AP Photo/Dan Balilty)

In this Tuesday Oct. 20, 2013 photo, Israel's Electric Corp vice president, Yasha Hain, second left, and Ofir Hason, watch a cyber team work at the 'CyberGym' school in the coastal city of Hadera. When Israel's military chief delivered a high-profile speech this month outlining the greatest threats his country will face in the future, he listed computer sabotage as a top concern, warning a sophisticated cyberattack could one day bring the nation to a standstill. (AP Photo/Dan Balilty)

In this Tuesday Oct. 20, 2013 photo, Israelis work on computers at the 'CyberGym' school in the coastal city of Hadera. When Israel's military chief delivered a high-profile speech this month outlining the greatest threats his country will face in the future, he listed computer sabotage as a top concern, warning a sophisticated cyber attack could one day bring the nation to a standstill. (AP Photo/Dan Balilty)

In this Tuesday Oct. 20, 2013 photo, Israel's electric corp vice president, Yasha Hain, works on a computer at the 'CyberGym' school in the coastal city of Hadera. When Israel's military chief delivered a high-profile speech this month outlining the greatest threats his country will face in the future, he listed computer sabotage as a top concern, warning a sophisticated cyber attack could one day bring the nation to a standstill. (AP Photo/Dan Balilty)

In this Tuesday Oct. 20, 2013 photo, an Israeli works on a computer at the 'CyberGym' school in the coastal city of Hadera. When Israel's military chief delivered a high-profile speech this month outlining the greatest threats his country will face in the future, he listed computer sabotage as a top concern, warning a sophisticated cyber attack could one day bring the nation to a standstill. (AP Photo/Dan Balilty)

HADERA, Israel (AP) — When Israel's military chief delivered a high-profile speech this month outlining the greatest threats his country might face in the future, he listed computer sabotage as a top concern, warning a sophisticated cyberattack could one day bring the nation to a standstill.

Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz was not speaking empty words. Exactly one month before his address, a major artery in Israel's national road network in the northern city of Haifa was shut down because of a cyberattack, cybersecurity experts tell The Associated Press, knocking key operations out of commission two days in a row and causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage.

One expert, speaking on condition of anonymity because the breach of security was a classified matter, said a Trojan horse attack targeted the security camera system in the Carmel Tunnels toll road on Sept. 8. A Trojan horse is a malicious computer program that users unknowingly install that can give hackers complete control over their systems.

The attack caused an immediate 20-minute lockdown of the roadway. The next day, the expert said, it shut down the roadway again during morning rush hour. It remained shut for eight hours, causing massive congestion.

The expert said investigators believe the attack was the work of unknown, sophisticated hackers, similar to the Anonymous hacking group that led attacks on Israeli websites in April. He said investigators determined it was not sophisticated enough to be the work of an enemy government like Iran.

The expert said Israel's National Cyber Bureau, a two-year-old classified body that reports to the prime minister, was aware of the incident. The bureau declined comment, while Carmelton, the company that oversees the toll road, denied being hacked, blaming only a "communication glitch" for the mishap.

While Israel is a frequent target of hackers, the tunnel is the most high-profile landmark known to have been attacked. It is a major thoroughfare for Israel's third-largest city, and the city is looking to turn the tunnel into a public shelter in case of emergency, highlighting its importance.

The incident is exactly the type of scenario that Gantz described in his recent address. He said Israel's future battles might begin with "a cyberattack on websites which provide daily services to the citizens of Israel. Traffic lights could stop working, the banks could be shut down," he said.

There have been cases of traffic tampering before. In 2005, the United States outlawed the unauthorized use of traffic override devices installed in many police cars and ambulances after unscrupulous drivers started using them to turn lights from red to green. In 2008, two Los Angeles traffic engineers pleaded guilty to breaking into the city's signal system and deliberately snarling traffic as part of a labor dispute.

Oren David, a manager at international security firm RSA's anti-fraud unit, said that although he didn't have information about the tunnel incident, this kind of attack "is the hallmark of a new era."

"Most of these systems are automated, especially as far as security is concerned. They're automated and they're remotely controlled, either over the Internet or otherwise, so they're vulnerable to cyberattack," he said. Israel, he added, is "among the top-targeted countries."

In June, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Iran and its proxies Hezbollah and Hamas have targeted Israel's "essential systems," including its water system, electric grid, trains and banks.

"Every sphere of civilian economic life, let's not even talk about our security, is a potential or actual cyberattack target," Netanyahu said at the time.

Israeli government websites receive hundreds and sometimes thousands of cyberattacks each day, said Ofir Ben Avi, head of the government's website division.

During Israel's military offensive on the Gaza Strip last year, tens of millions of website attacks took place, from denial of service attacks, which cripple websites by overloading them with traffic, to more sophisticated attempts to steal passwords, Ben Avi said.

Under constant threat, Israel has emerged as a world leader in cybersecurity, with murky military units developing much of the technology. Last year, the military formed its first cyberdefense unit.

Israeli cybersecurity experts say Iran and other hostile entities have successfully hacked into Israeli servers this year, and that Israel has quietly permitted those attacks to occur in order to track the hackers and feed them false intelligence.

Israel is also widely believed to have launched its own sophisticated computer attacks on its enemies, including the Stuxnet worm that caused significant damage to Iran's nuclear program.

Bracing for serious attacks on Israeli civilian infrastructure, Israel's national electric company launched a training program this month to teach engineers and power plant supervisors how to detect system infiltrations.

The Israel Electric Corp. says its servers register about 6,000 unique computer attacks every second.

"Big organizations and even countries are preparing for D-Day," said Yasha Hain, a senior executive vice president at the company. "We decided to prepare ourselves to be first in line."

The training program is run jointly with CyberGym, a cyberdefense company founded by ex-Israeli intelligence operatives that consults for Israeli oil, gas, transportation and financial companies.

On a manicured campus of eucalyptus trees across from a power plant in Israel's north, groups are divided into teams in a role-playing game of hackers and power plant engineers.

The "hackers," code-named the Red Team, sit in a dimly lit room decorated with cartoon villains on the walls. Darth Vader hovers over binary code. Kermit the Frog flashes his middle finger.

In another room, a miniature model of a power station overflows with water and the boiler's thermometer shoots up as the role-playing hackers run a "Kill All" code. The exercise teaches employees how to detect a possible cyberattack even if their computer systems don't register it.

About 25 middle-aged employees attended the first day of training last week. The course will eventually train thousands of workers, the electric company said.

CyberGym co-founder Ofir Hason declined to comment on the toll road shutdown, but said the company has seen a number of cyberattacks on infrastructures in recent years.

The country is especially susceptible because Israel has no electricity-sharing agreements with neighboring states, and all of the country's essential infrastructure depends on the company for power.

"We're an isolated island," he said.

Associated Press writer Raphael Satter in London contributed to this report.

___

Follow Daniel Estrin on Twitter at www.twitter.com/danielestrin.

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-10-28-Israel-Cyberdefense/id-9ec085e07668432bb34868eddba41bd9
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EU environment ministers call for action on climate policy

LONDON (Reuters) - Thirteen European environment ministers and dozens of business leaders urged the European Union on Monday to adopt "ambitious" energy and climate goals for 2030 to create a low-carbon economy in Europe to spur investment.

In a 40-page document released at a green growth conference in Brussels, they also said the 28-nation bloc should reform the structure of the EU's Emissions Trading System (ETS) and offer a strict emissions cut pledge at a climate summit next autumn.

Going against the tide of officials keen to blame green energy subsidies for higher energy bills, environment ministers from 13 EU countries and businesses including Coca Cola Enterprises and Shell called for action.

Notable exceptions included coal-dependent Poland which has battled against EU proposals to shift to a low-carbon economy, although two weeks ago, Warsaw said it would lead the call for nations to deepen emissions cuts when it hosts United Nations' climate talks next month.

"Businesses and investors are telling us that the EU needs to get its act together ... only then will investors have the confidence to put the billions into low carbon that we need," Edward Davey, Britain's energy and climate change secretary, said in a statement.

The EU has met a target to cut 1990-level greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020, as a result of lower energy demand following recession and a shift towards green power, such as solar and wind.

It is now debating a 2030 target and is expected to unveil proposals on the goal around the end of this year. EU sources have said the European Commission is looking at a 40 percent cut in domestic emissions versus 1990 levels by 2030.

Last week, Britain said the EU should cut emissions by 50 percent by 2030 to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

A decision on the EU's 2030 target will form the basis of the its potential emissions reduction offer as part of United Nations' climate negotiations on a global climate deal.

Governments are under pressure to offer large cuts by a September summit hosted by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.

The European Commission is also considering ways to reform the structure of the ETS, its main tool to combat climate change.

EU carbon permit prices have lost around 75 percent of their value over the past five years due to the over-supply of permits and dampened demand due to recession.

The Commission is expected to publish structural reforms by the end of this year, but it has yet to confirm details.

Some observers have said the favored reform option would be to set up a mechanism to regulate the supply of EU carbon permits.

(Reporting by Nina Chestney, editing by Elizabeth Piper)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/eu-environment-ministers-call-action-climate-policy-103334053--sector.html
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Qualcomm: Nokia Lumia 2520 “Bigger, Faster, Lower Power” Than Microsoft's Surface 2

If you, like me, took some offline time this weekend, we’re a bit late to the latest slap fight in the world of Windows RT. Until recently, there was only one functional player in the Windows RT space – Microsoft, and its Surface 2 tablet – but Nokia has stepped into the ring, and one of its suppliers is talking a little trash.

No shame in that, of course. Bragging is as old as language. But how Qualcomm – the supplier of the Nokia Lumia 2520 Windows RT tablet’s processor – is taking the Surface 2 to task is interesting.

Both the Nokia 2520 and the Surface 2 run Windows RT, so when it comes to software, they are on parity. Certainly, you could argue that the Surface 2 might behave better with Windows RT than rival devices, given that Microsoft builds both, but that’s edge work.

Qualcomm, as quoted by CNet, thinks that the Lumia 2520 is “bigger, faster, [and] lower power” than Microsoft’s rival Surface 2 tablet. Ok.

The kicker to this is that, for the Surface line of tablet hybrids, the hardware component of the devices has largely not been the point of complaint raised by reviewers and users. Instead, it’s been the software that the Surface devices run on – Windows 8 at first, and now Windows 8. 1- that was the sticking point. Windows 8 was not ready at launch. And Windows 8.1 has yet to be tested against consumer demand.

Why Qualcomm is trumpeting the “speeds and feeds” of the Lumia 2520 is simple: It provides the silicon that powers the device. Microsoft’s Surface 2 runs on Nvidia chips.

Keep in mind, however, that Microsoft is in the process of buying the Nokia assets that built the Lumia 2520, so we could see reconciliation. For now, however, Nokia’s tablet does directly challenge its future brother. Microsoft recently reported that Surface unit volume doubled in its most recent quarter, compared with the sequentially preceding quarter. Surface revenue totaled $400 million for that period.

Here’s the question: Will the Windows 8.1 and Windows RT 8.1 markets become akin to the Android realm, where OEMs race to best the hardware specifications of their rivals in their devices?

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/qp0OxFjc-Io/
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Israeli tunnel hit by cyber attack, experts say

"Most of these systems are automated, especially as far as security is concerned. . They're automated and they're remotely controlled, either over the Internet or otherwise, so they're vulnerable to cyberattack," he said. Israel, he added, is "among the top-targeted countries."