Blog: Medicine on Verge of Software Revolution

Medicine on Verge of Software Revolution
Stuff (NZ) (08/11/08) Pullar-Strecker, Tom

The health care industry will soon be revolutionized by computerized clinical decision support tools capable of advising doctors and patients on diagnoses and treatments, predicts a new Datamonitor report. Datamonitor says the culture of the medical profession is the largest hurdle hindering the adoption of new technology, and the concept that a computer could be more accurate than a physician is difficult for providers to accept, despite numerous studies that have shown that algorithms and computers outperform most doctors on some tasks. "Critics of clinical decision support maintain a computer cannot understand the nuances of medicine even when the technologies have been shown to improve efficiencies and outcomes," says Datamonitor's Christine Chang. "While a fundamental shift in culture is not impossible, it will take time as well as an increase in provider education and pressure from patients, payers, and 'C-level' hospital executives." Datamonitor says such tools are being included as add-ons to electronic health record software, which has gained widespread adoption. However, Chang says that without clinical decision support, electronic health records are little more than a compilation of paper records in an electronic format. The software can include tools used to make reference materials available online, programs that uses data-mining tools and artificial intelligence to analyze patient information, and tools that recommend particular treatments or issue alerts.
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Blog: A Photo That Can Steal Your Online Credentials

A Photo That Can Steal Your Online Credentials
IDG News Service (08/01/08) McMillan, Robert

Researchers at the Black Hat computer security conference in Las Vegas next week will demonstrate an attack that could steal online credentials from users of popular Web sites. The attack uses a new type of hybrid software file the researchers have dubbed a GIFAR. By placing the file on Web sites that allow users to upload images, the researchers can circumvent security precautions and take over the Web page users' accounts. NGS Software's John Heasman says the GIFAR is a Java applet in the form of an image. GIFAR is a contraction of the graphics interchange format (GIF) and Java Archive (JAR), the two file types that make up the applet. The researchers will demonstrate how to create the GIFAR, while omitting a few details to prevent it from being used for a widespread attack. To a Web server, the file looks exactly like a GIF file, but a browser's Java virtual machine will open the file like a JAR file and run it as an applet, giving the attacker an opportunity to run Java code on the victim's browser, which treats the applet as though it was written by the Web site's developers. The researchers say the attack could work on any site that allows users to upload files, possibly even sites that are used to upload banking card photos or sites such as Amazon.com. The GIFAR attack can be prevented by improving filtering tools so Web sites can detect the hybrid files, and Sun could also improve the Java runtime environment.
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