Justice Dept. group studying national security threats of internet-linked devices

The U.S. Justice Department has formed a threat analysis team to study potential national security challenges posed by self-driving cars, medical devices and other Internet-connected tools, a senior official said.The new group’s goal is to secure the so-called “internet of things” from exploitation by “terrorist threats” and by others who might try to hack devices to cause loss of life or achieve political or economic gain, according to Assistant Attorney General John Carlin, head of the Justice Department’s national security division.The impetus for the team, whoch has been informally active for about six months, was an understanding that the internet is vulnerable to cyber attacks partly because it was not designed with security in mind, Carlin told Reuters, after announcing the group on Thursday at the Intelligence and National Security Alliance conference in Washington.Carlin said the group, a small team of about five to 10 people, did “not want to be alarmist” about new technologies such as self-driving cars, but that it wanted to identify and address security challenges presented by the internet of things before they are exploited.

White House names retired Air Force general as first cyber security chief

The White House on Thursday named a retired U.S. Air Force general as the government’s first federal cyber security chief, a position announced eight months ago that is intended to improve defenses against hackers.Gregory Touhill’s job will be to protect government networks and critical infrastructure from cyber threats as federal chief information security officer, according to a statement.The Obama administration has made bolstering federal cyber security a top priority of the president’s last year in office. The issue has gained more attention due to high-profile breaches in recent years against the government and private sector.Most recently U.S. intelligence officials have suspected Russia is responsible for breaches of Democratic political organizations and state election systems. They believe it may be trying to exert influence over the U.S. presidential election, a charge the Kremlin has denied.

iPhone 7 Plus has 3GB RAM, is fastest iOS device ever according to benchmark

Possible benchmarks for the iPhone 7 Plus have materialized, potentially confirming rumors about the device shipping with 3GB of application RAM, as well as dramatically improved performance over the iPhone 6s Plus.An “iPhone 9,4” was discovered in the GeekBench database on Thursday running the Golden Master version of iOS, version 10.0.1. The low-power high-efficiency processors heralded by Apple at the “See You on Sept. 7” event don’t appear to be included by name in the testing, with the processor listed as an ARM dual-core device, running at 2.23 GHz.The “iPhone 9,4” posts a single-core aggregate benchmark of 3233, as compared to the iPhone 6s Plus pulling down a 2508. Multi-core performance on the new device is listed as 5363, with the 6s Plus coming in at 4106.