cryptogon.com

It issued the update on Thursday to fix a bug that let hackers gain access and user rights to computers.

Microsoft ended support for Windows XP earlier this month, ceasing to issue bug fixes or security updates for it.

But the firm said it decided to make an exception as the flaw was discovered just days after the support ended.

“Even though Windows XP is no longer supported by Microsoft and is past the time we normally provide security updates, we’ve decided to provide an update for all versions of Windows XP,” Adrienne Hall, general manager of Trustworthy Computing at Microsoft, said in a blog post.

“We made this exception based on the proximity to the end of support for Windows XP.”

Buried in an intelligence report published Wednesday, the government said that the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications (CSCC), established in 2011, last year produced more than 10,000 online postings globally, some of which included one of 138 government-produced videos.

“CSCC’s programs draw on a full range of intelligence information and analysis for context and feedback. CSCC counters terrorist propaganda in the social media environment on a daily basis, contesting space where AQ and its supporters formerly had free rein. CSCC communications have provoked defensive responses from violent extremists on many of the 249 most popular extremist websites and forums as well as on social media,” said the document, Country Reports on Terrorism 2013 (PDF).

In one lawsuit, centered on events in Chula Vista, Calif., a Border Patrol agent is accused of leaping on the hood of a car driven by a mother of five and shooting her dead. She was unarmed. The agent had been fired from his previous job as a sheriff’s deputy for a variety of misconduct.

In a second case, a Customs officer in Brownsville, Texas, violently pushed a disabled woman to the ground. She had a miscarriage the next day. Border officers also had to call firefighters to remove handcuffs that allegedly had bound her wrists too tightly.

For a third woman, her return to the United States was intrusive and painful. She was pulled from a line at an El Paso, Texas, border crossing, apparently on the suspicion that she was carrying drugs. She was handcuffed. Over the next six hours, agents escorted her to a hospital, where they oversaw the probing of her anus and vagina, forced her to take a laxative and then watched as she moved her bowels. When no drugs were found, they ordered her to submit to an X-ray and a CT scan.

According to one researcher, parts of the vehicle traffic control system installed at major arteries in U.S. cities and the nation’s capital are so poorly secured they can be manipulated to snarl traffic or force cars onto different streets.

The hack doesn’t target the traffic lights directly but rather sensors embedded in streets that feed data to traffic control systems, says Cesar Cerrudo, an Argentinian security researcher with IoActive who examined the systems and plans to present his findings at the upcoming Infiltrate conference in Florida.

The vulnerable controllers–Sensys Networks VDS240 wireless vehicle detection systems–are installed in 40 U.S. cities, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City, Washington, DC, as well as in nine other countries.

The system is comprised of magnetic sensors embedded in roadways that wirelessly feed data about traffic flow to nearby access points and repeaters, which in turn pass the information to traffic signal controllers.

Sixty-nine-year-old Gloria Gates has multiple sclerosis. She can no longer walk and is often in severe pain.

“One thing that is just intolerable for me are these excruciating leg cramps,” she says.

Powerful muscle relaxants didn’t help. She now has a medical marijuana permit and uses an extract specifically made for her.

“I tried it as a last resort, and it’s been an absolute blessing for me,” she says.

On Monday, for the first time, the American Academy of Neurology said medical marijuana is an effective treatment for some symptoms of multiple sclerosis. It concluded spasm, muscle tightness and pain can all be helped.

In hiding for more than a year, and in serious trouble with the courts, he nonetheless recently decided to break his silence and start speaking to the press to explain his vision and how he went about achieving it. Speaking to RT Spanish by Skype from an undisclosed location, he talks of the ingenious and simple tactic he used to cheat dozens of banks out of a half-million euros.

“I realized that loans below 6,000 euro don’t show up in Spain’s bank database,” he says, revealing the first step on the way to accumulating the fortune that later earned him his moniker.

It’s impossible to know what portion of the arsenal slated for destruction — valued at $1.2 billion by the Pentagon — remains viable because the Defense Department’s inventory systems can’t share data effectively, according to a Government Accountability Office report obtained by USA TODAY.