GERMANY: US Plans To Intervene In Europe Are "Stupid" Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/germany-us-plans-to-intervene-in-europe-are-stupid-2011-9#ixzz1ZGJttU70

German finance minister Wolfgang Schauble has hit out against plans to boost the EFSF bailout fund, reports Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in The Telegraph.

Schauble said:

"I don't understand how anyone in the European Commission can have such a stupid idea. The result would be to endanger the AAA sovereign debt ratings of other member states. It makes no sense."

Worse still, Schauble hit out against American intervention, days after Barack Obama criticized the European leaders' handling of the debt crisis.

"It's always much easier to give advice to others than to decide for yourself. I am well prepared to give advice to the US government."

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/germany-us-plans-to-intervene-in-europe-are-stupid-2011-9#ixzz1ZGJl1kRW

E.U. (AKA Germany) Lets World Know: “Greece Is On Its Own”

Well, markets, don’t say Germany – oh, um, I mean the European Union – didn’t warn you.

Greece is set to default and there's not much more the E.U. is looking to do to change that fact.

That’s right.

German Prime Minister Angela Merkel has, essentially, blown the EU’s financial and political load and let the geo-political and financial world (ahem – markets?) know that Greece will soon be on its own to figure out and solve the economic mess it finds itself in now.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/eu-germany-lets-world-know-greece-is-on-its-own-2011-9#ixzz1ZGJTXuFF

iPad lands big in Japan, other foreign markets

The appeal of the Apple iPad is being tested overseas as it launches in nine countries Friday. Japan is one market where it is expected to have a special allure.

Two months after the start of U.S sales, Apple kicked off iPad sales in Japan, Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and Canada early Friday morning.

And in Japan, the world's second largest economy, it was launched with the kind of fanfare typically reserved for a new game machine from Nintendo.

Read the full story at Cnet News by Brooke Crothers



In Tokyo thousands of excited and sleep deprived gadget fans mobbed shops in Japan as Apple's iPad launches. Video courtesy of AFP.


Once again Apple fans lined up from the early hours, this time in Sydney to get their hands on the first iPads to be released Down Under. Video courtesy of The Daily Telegraph.


Early adopters like to show off and share their glossy new iPads, but one thing is rubbing people the wrong way: The 9.7" touchscreen is smudge-prone -- and no one likes a greasy gadget. WSJ's Nick Burns reports.

German government warns citizens off IE!

"Don't use IE 6, 7 or 8 and switch browser," says Federal Office

"The German government's Federal Office for Information Security is warning computer users in the country NOT to use Microsoft Internet Explorer due to recent security scares.

The state organisation has issued the warning following Microsoft's admission that IE was a 'vector' in the recent attacks on Google in China.

The German government is thus advising its citizens to use alternative browsers such as Mozilla's Firefox, Google Chrome, Apple Safari or Opera."

Read the full story

Battered, but not broken: understanding the WPA crack

Glenn Fleishman writes that WiFi security takes a hit with the disclosure of an effective exploit for small packets encrypted with the TKIP flavor of WiFi Protected Access. The technique is fiendishly clever; the security solution, simple: switch to AES-only in WPA2.

Academic researchers have found an exploitable hole in a popular form of wireless networking encryption. The hole is in a part of 802.11i that forms the basis of WiFi Protected Access (WPA), so it could affect routers worldwide. German graduate student Erik Tews will present a paper at next week's PacSec in Tokyo coauthored with fellow student and aircrack-ng team member Martin Beck that reveals how remnants of WPA's predecessor allow them to slip a knife into a crack in the encryption scheme and send bogus data to an unsuspecting WiFi client.

In an interview from Germany, where he is a PhD candidate studying encryption at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Tews explained that an existing attack on Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) was modified to provide a slim vector for sending arbitrary data to networks that use the Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP). (Tews' collaborator Beck is a student at the Technical University of Dresden; Tews credits Beck with the discovery, after which they jointly developed the paper that Tews will present at PacSec.)

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TSA violating privacy with its body scanning machines?

While the USA seems to have no problem with scanners the Virtual Strip Search’ At Airports Debated in Europe.

(All Photos Courtesy Der Spiegel)

"Virtual strip searches" are currently being done using full-body scanners at Los Angeles International, JFK, Baltimore-Washington International, Miami, and many other airports. But late last week, Germany decided that it would not allow its airports to use full-body scanners.
Passengers are randomly selected to step into the machines. The scanning process takes about 40 seconds. You make two quick poses. One with your arms up and the other with them down.
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