Protecting the ATM's: confessions of a hacker

Penitent Romanian hacker aims to protect world's ATMs

By Radu Marinas | Reuters – Fri, 17 May, 2013

 

By Radu Marinas

VASLUI, Romania (Reuters) - Valentin Boanta, sitting in his jail cell, proudly explains the device he has invented which, he says, could make the world's ATMs impregnable even to tech-savvy criminals like himself.
Boanta, 33, is six months into a five-year sentence for supplying gadgets an organized crime gang used to conceal ATM skimmers, which can copy data from an unsuspecting ATM user's card so a clone can be created.
He said he had started to make the devices for the sheer excitement of it and denies ever planning to use them himself, saying he only sold them to others.
Boanta says his arrest in 2009 and trial brought contrition, as he realized the impact of his actions and felt an urge to make amends. It also brought the former industrial design student a flash of technical inspiration.
"When I got caught I became happy. This liberation opened the way to working for the good side," Boanta said.
"Crime was like a drug for me. After I was caught, I was happy I escaped from this adrenaline addiction," he said. "So that the other part, in which I started to develop security solutions, started to emerge."
It was during his trial that he got down to work. The stage for Boanta's product pitch these days is the book-lined cell in the northeastern Romanian town of Vaslui he shares with five pickpockets and burglars.
"All ATMs have ageing designs so they are prone to vulnerability, they are a very weak side of the banking industry," he said.
"Every ATM can be penetrated through a skimming crime. My security solution, SRS, makes an ATM unbreachable."

Quality and affordable jewelry

Boanta says his "Secure Revolving System-SRS" can be installed in any ATM. It allows the bank card to be inserted longer side first and then rotates it to prevent skimmers being able to lock on to the magnetic data strip. The system returns the card to its user with a reverse rotation.
Outwardly it is a trapezoidal metallic box around 6 inches long with the card slot in the middle.
The SRS, funded and developed by a technology firm near Bucharest called MB Telecom, is patented and won an award this year at the International Exhibition of Inventions in Geneva. The inventor and company are not yet saying how much it will cost, but insist it will be available soon.
"He fully deserves such recognition," said SRS co-inventor and MB Telecom president Mircea Tudor. "He's taking part in improving Romania's image abroad and he'll surely join our team when released."
Romania has a deep well of technical expertise stemming from the time of communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who backed computer research and technical education.
Digital piracy flourished after his violent overthrow in 1989, as people who could not afford proprietary products bought cheap copies instead.
Romanian hackers stole about $1 billion from U.S. accounts in 2012, according to the U.S. embassy in Bucharest. A report by Verizon said Romania was the world's second-biggest hacking centre after China. The FBI has even set up an office in Romania and helped to train specialist police agents.
(Additional reporting by Ioana Patran in Bucharest; Editing by Andrew Roche and Louise Ireland)
 

Is it true that jewelry enhances a woman's charm?

Quality jewelry for men and women

Wearing jewelry is as old as humanity. For centuries, women have always believed in the power (magic?) of Jewelry. For some, it is a way to express themselves silently while for others it is a way to attract the opposite sex. In some cultures, the wearing of jewelery is a rationale for one's financial resources. For example, in India, the greater amount of jewelry a woman wears the more she is respected by her peers. The ability of a man to care for his wife is measured by the amount of jewelry that he can offer her before he marries her. Anyway, it is better than a woman is well dressed and wear jewelry because it reassures her. Regarding men, the trends arebeing reversed. Today, men feel more comfortable to wear jewelry. A variety of jewelry are offered to men. Women are less likely to judge a man who wears a chain or a

bracelet. Gold jewelry is still popular with the majority of women but some also wear jewelry in stainless steel, silver and even copper or bronze.

The richest economies by 2050

Asian economies 'to top richest list by 2050'

Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea are projected to be the world's richest economies on a per capita basis by 2050 as the region's rapid growth boosts wealth creation.

AFP – Wed, 15 Aug, 2012 8:40 AM EDT

Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea are projected to be the world's richest economies on a per capita basis by 2050 as the region's rapid growth boosts wealth creation, a study showed.
The survey by property giant Knight Frank and Citi Private Bank, reported in Singapore media Wednesday, also showed multi-millionaires in Asia will continue to outnumber those in North America and Western Europe by 2050.
Singapore topped the list in 2010 and is expected to keep the top spot in 2050, when the city-state's gross domestic product (GDP) per capita would reach $137,710.
It will be trailed by Hong Kong ($116,639), Taiwan ($114,093) and South Korea ($107,752) with the United States coming in fifth place, falling from third place in 2010.
Singapore's 2010 GDP per capita stood at $56,532, while Hong Kong ($45,301) -- the only other Asian economy in the top 10 that year -- was in fourth place.

Jewelry sales. Ends soon!

Taiwan and South Korea were not even in the top 10 in 2010.
"While rapid GDP growth does not in itself guarantee a sharp rise in high networth individuals, rapidly growing economies do provide key opportunities for large-scale wealth creation," Grainne Gilmore, head of UK Residential Research at Knight Frank, wrote in the study.
Gilmore said there are now around 18,000 "centa-millionaires" -- those with $100 million or more in assets -- in the region covering Southeast Asia, China and Japan, more than the 17,000 in North America and 14,000 in Western Europe.
By 2016, Southeast Asia, China and Japan are expected to have 26,000 centa-millionaires, compared with 21,000 in North America and 15,000 in Western Europe, she wrote, citing data from Ledbury Research.
On a country basis, the United States will lead in 2016 with 17,100 centa millionaires but China is expected to double its numbers to 14,000.
"Southeast Asian deca-millionaires -- those with $10 million or more in assets -- already outnumber those in Europe and are expected to overtake those in the US in the coming decade," she said.

Balancing work and family - Men an women's point of view

Work-family balance in the United States refers to the specific issues that arise when men and women in the United States attempt to balance their occupational lives with their family lives. This differs from work-life balance: while work-life balance may refer to the health and living issues that arise from work, work-family balance refers specifically to how work and families intersect and influence each other. Work-family balance in the U.S. differs significantly for families of different social class. Middle-class family issues center around dual-earner spouses and parents while lower class issues center around problems that arise due to single parenting. Work-family balance issues also differ by class, since middle class occupations provide more benefits and family support while low-wage jobs are less flexible with benefits. Solutions for helping individuals manage work-family balance in the U.S. include legislation, workplace policies, and the marketization of care work.

Help us end domestic violence

Family structure (how the family is organized) historically has been influenced by social-level forces, many of them economic. According to family historian Stephanie Coontz, marriage and family formation in the 17th century was heavily influenced by desires to form economic and political alliances. Children were seen as a method of ensuring the passage of political and economic power to future generations.
Influenced by the Englightenment, several changes to marriage occurred: the move toward individualism and the loosening of church influence over families after the Protestant Reformation resulted in the flourishing of the two-parent farm family. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the two-parent farm family was the dominant family model, in which both parents working side by side on family farms^. The two-parent farm family ceased to be the dominant family model after the Industrial Revolution occurred. The 1920s was the first time that the majority of children lived in two-parent breadwinner-homemaker families (one where the father supported the family financially and the mother supported the family domestically).
In 19th century farm settings, children were an important part of their families' agricultural livelihoods. As industrialization occurred and families shifted from rural agricultural settings to urban ones, the number of children per household also declined. Children became less of an economic benefit and more of a cost: urban life necessitated educating children which was costly.
During the 1910s and 1920s, women delayed childbirth for economic opportunities that were present in urban areas. However, this trend reversed during the Great Depression because of the lower number of economic opportunities available for women. As a result, Depression Era women were more likely to marry and have children earlier. In 1900, roughly 40 percent of single women were employed versus only five percent of married women (Preston, 2003). This 35 percent gap persisted for many years. Goldin (1992), in a study of women college graduates in the twentieth century, concluded that those graduating between 1900 and 1920 had to make “a distinct choice between family and career”^.
The breadwinner-homemaker model flourished during the twenty-year period immediately after World War II^. The economy relied upon the male breadwinner to earn the income to support his family financially, while women were relied upon to do the care work and other forms of domestic work to support her husband's earnings.
As the economy went into recession during the 1970s, women entered the workforce in large droves. Families could no longer survive on the single income of the male breadwinner and both sexes were relied upon for financial support. The dominant family model starting in the 1970s was the dual-earner family where both parents worked Women also entered college in higher percentages.  However, the economy was still assumed to run on an outdated breadwinner-homemaker model as evidence by the following things: women made significantly less income than men, they were still expected to do the majority of domestic work, and the nine-to-three o'clock school schedule of children still existed. The recession of the 1970s also further pushed the correlation between income and family structure. As more and more previously lucrative manufacturing jobs were sent overseas, men without college educations could no longer support their families on a single wage. Women's labor force participation rates have steadily increased since the 1940s Since the 1970s, the relationship between marriage and college education has also been positive. Read more...

Understanding the Obama healthcare reform

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The supreme court upholds the Obama health care reform

Chief Justice John Roberts

According to CNN, Chief Justice John Roberts led the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision upholding President Obama’s sweeping health care law. The court decided that the individual mandate that requires all Americans to have health insurance will stand and is considered a tax by the court, making it constitutional.


Chief Justice John Roberts wrote about the individual mandate, citing the taxing clause: “It is reasonable to construe what Congress has done as increasing taxes on those who have a certain amount of income, but choose to go without insurance. Such legislation is within Congress’ power to tax."


The court also ruled that the federal government may not remove Medicaid funding from states that refuse to take part.


Voting to uphold the Affordable Care Act were R oberts and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. The dissenters were Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

15 Telling Facts About the Next College Freshman Class

Source: Onlinecolleges.net
Even with tuition rates as high as they are, it’s still preferable to be entering college right now than exiting. The Class of 2012 is faced with an unemployment rate of 50%, making the payback of their $25,000 in debt on average tough to pay back. Still, the studies and surveys make it clear that if current trends hold, the Class of 2016 will have a hard go of it as well. Whether they reveal high competition, high cost, or some other issue, these 15 facts have a lot to tell us about this year’s frosh.

1. Freshmen are facing some of the lowest acceptance rates in history:

   The huge pool of applicants, coupled with international students who still consider higher education in America the standard for excellence, have caused many schools to report their 2012 acceptance rates will be the lowest in their history. Stanford, Tufts, six of the eight Ivy league schools, MIT, Duke, and more set records for how few they are letting in, either in early admission or regular decision.

2. Students have requested $167 million in federal grants and loans:

   In a sure sign college is getting no less difficult to pay for, the government has had $22 million worth of additional requests for financial aid from students, according to the Department of Education. By the time the Class of 2016 is graduating, the Department projects $204 million will be requested, as the cost of public higher education will have doubled since 2001.

3. They may be stuck with interest rates on their loans twice as high as the Class of 2015:

   Congress’ inability to agree that making college affordable is important and a necessary use of government resources is threatening (as of this writing) to saddle incoming freshmen with 6.8% interest rates on their federal student loans. This squabbling says volumes about the two-party system and politicians’ efficacy on everyday Americans’ lives.

4. Many will be part of their school’s most diverse freshman class in history:

   Reflecting the country’s increasingly diverse population, many colleges and universities are reporting this year’s freshman class will be its most ethnically and geographically diverse ever. At the University of Chicago, it’s a 42% rate for students of color; at Centre College in Kentucky, it’s 20%. Examples of other record or near-record levels include those at William & Mary, Colgate, Case Western Reserve, Skidmore, and Northwestern.

5. Some were recruited by colleges four years ago:

   College shopping used to be an activity for high schoolers and their parents during the fall semester of senior year. But in recent times, the competition for coveted spots at highly ranked schools has led to colleges mailing info to high school sophomores and even freshmen and keeping in touch with them via social media.

6. The number of them entering college immediately after high school graduation will be high:

   Since 1975, the rate of kids leaving for college right after getting their high school diploma has been climbing for all income areas, but it’s grown the fastest since 2001. In 2009 it hit an all-time high of 70%, and in 2010 (the most recent year with data) its 68% rate was considered as having “no measurable difference.” This pattern should hold for the Class of 2016, making theirs one of the most crowded freshmen classes in history.

7. Their degrees will be crucial for finding a job:

   While real earnings are going down, the wage premium for college degree-holders is a sky-high 84%. The demand for workers with degrees is going to remain high, as an estimated two-thirds of American jobs in the next decade will require a college education. This is a telling stat in the debate over whether higher education, with its increasing costs and sinking standards, is worth the investment in today’s market.

8. They will study more and party less:

   According to annual polls by UCLA’s Cooperative Institutional Research Program, today’s students enter college more sober-minded about education than they had been before the recession. Since 2009, the rates of students who said they had studied at least six hours a week in high school has been going up, from 34.7% to 37.3% in 2010 and 39.5% in 2011. Over the same period, there’s been a 4% drop in the number who said they partied at least some each week.

9. Fewer colleges are asking for their standardized test scores:

   While the majority of universities still require SAT and/or ACT scores for admission, a growing number of this freshmen class will get in without submitting their scores. DePaul was the latest to make the scores optional, joining schools like the University of California, Wake Forest, Bowdoin, Smith, and Dickinson. Colorado-Boulder recently dropped its requirement for the scores from international students.

10. They’ll rely heavily on digital texts:

    The predicted takeover of print textbooks by digital media has been slow in getting off the ground. Nevertheless, the numbers indicate the Class of 2016 will be heavy tablet PC users. According to the Pearson Foundation, tablet ownership among high school seniors had quadrupled from Spring 2011 to 2012. With the ease of textbook reading that tablets offer, the popularity of e-books should rise significantly.

11. Most of them will plan to continue past a bachelor’s:

    In a telling bit of data about young students’ confidence in the job market, only one in five freshmen will plan to stop at an undergraduate degree. Compare that with 1972′s rate of over 60% of students who were content to finish school with a bachelor’s degree. No doubt it is a situation where students feel a graduate degree will help them stand out, while delaying entering a tough job market.

12. Three-fourths of them will probably not be adequately prepared for college:

    The last ACT report on incoming college freshmen’s preparedness found that only 25% of them cleared ACT’s academic standards for being able to handle college-level courses. The other three-quarters were predicted to need at least one remedial course in which to brush up on curriculum from high school.

13. Their primary motivation for going to college will be to get a good job:

    Teenagers may not be up-to-speed on some current events, but they’re certainly aware that the job market is rocky. Since 2009, the number one reason college freshmen have given pollsters has been ‘to land a better job.’ In 2011, the rate of this answer appearing hit a 40-year high of 85.9%. As the economy continues to struggle, it’s safe to assume job concerns will also be this freshman class’ top priority.

14. Women will continue to outpace men in college enrollment:

    Since overtaking men in total college enrollment in the late ’70s, women have been steadily taking a bigger share of college attendees and graduates. The National Center for Education Statistics predicts that the gap will widen during this class’ tenure, eventually hitting 59% of total undergrad enrollment. This will have many associated changes in the workplace, as female degree holders begin to strongly outnumber men.

15. This class will have an unusually high number of potheads:

    Apparently the anti-tobacco campaigns have been a success with this year’s incoming freshmen, but at the expense of the anti-drug programs as a whole. A recent survey of almost 50,000 students found nearly 23% of high school seniors had smoked weed in the last month, compared to about 19% who said they had smoked cigarettes.