Although I’m familiar with the watermarks that are put in DVD’s, I never realized that theater releases are marked as well (see picture for the “dot pattern”).

However, sometimes release groups find a way to remove these watermarks. An example can be found in the NFO of the Mission Impossible III release by SaGa. In the NFO SaGa thanks ORC, for helping them out with “de-dotting” the release. (more…)

Hi-tech crime is quickly becoming an important issue for the world’s law enforcement. This means more and better training is needed for police forces across the globe. A new European initiative is seeking to bridge the existing knowledge gap, identified several years ago, by setting up a new IT training course for police officers. The first courses in this program will be held in Ireland in October and November this year, using the expertise of the Computer Crime Investigation Unit of the Irish Police or Garda. The idea for the course stems from the successful Falcone program that operated between 1998 and 2002, which aimed to increase cooperation and educational exchange between EU law enforcement bodies. (more…)

Data breaches and leaks of sensitive information are becoming a heavy burden on US businesses, according to new research. The annual Ponemon Data Breach Study, carried out by the Ponemon Institute, has shown a significant increase in costs due to such breach incidents. Overall, the price for one compromised data record was set at $182, up from $138 in 2005. (more…)

Online banking, shopping and other transactions will soon have added security with a new dual-factor authentication product called TrustedSignins, which was introduced today by SanDisk Corporation, the world’s largest supplier of flash memory cards. The announcement was made at the RSA Conference, where SanDisk is giving demonstrations at Stand 38 in the Nice Acropolis. (more…)

NVIDIA told all of its partners that it simply won’t allow the overclocking of G80 cards. It doesn’t want another Geforce 7900 GT overclocking fiasco that caused a too high return rate for the cards.

Remember, Nvidia didn’t allow anyone to overclock Geforce 7950 GX2 and they all worked at the same reference 500MHz clocks as this was what Nvidia guaranteed for these cards. (more…)

Ann Cavoukian, Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner in Canada, has gone public with her support for a new universal Internet identity system and offered her take on the 7 laws of identity, first proposed by Microsoft’s Kim Cameron. Dr Cavoukian’s vision for a safer Internet not only incorporates the establishment of a new identity metasystem, along the lines proposed by Microsoft, but also calls for “embedded privacy”. (more…)

Ann Cavoukian, Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner in Canada, has gone public with her support for a new universal Internet identity system and offered her take on the 7 laws of identity, first proposed by Microsoft’s Kim Cameron. Dr Cavoukian’s vision for a safer Internet not only incorporates the establishment of a new identity metasystem, along the lines proposed by Microsoft, but also calls for “embedded privacy”. (more…)

New research by a team of scientists from Indiana University has revealed that the success rate of phishing attacks might be much higher than previously thought. The research was published in a paper titled “Designing Ethical Phishing Experiments: A Study of eBay Query Features” and reported a real-life study of phishing practices using eBay and its users as a test site. Researchers Markus Jakobsson and Jacob Ratkiewicz chose eBay (which for legal reasons they call “rOnl” in the paper) because it is currently one of the largest phishing targets in real life, and has millions of users, representing a huge statistical sample. (more…)

Microsoft will post links to rival security software makers in the welcoming screen for Windows Vista, the company has said, another appeasement to a competitor who has raised questions about the developer’s monopolistic position.

One of the changes to the upcoming new operating system, said Brad Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel, in a question and answer session on Friday, is to the Welcome Center, the first screen that Vista users see after installing the OS or turning on a new PC. (more…)