Parliament hack exposes shoddy passwords

A Romanian hacker wrote on his blog that a vulnerability in the Web site of the UK Parliament appears to be exposing confidential information, including unencrypted login credentials, reports The Register.

By tacking database commands onto the end of the Web address, it's possible to trick the site's back-end server into coughing up data that was never intended to be published.

It appears Parliament's Web site has been coerced into divulging log-in credentials for at least eight accounts.

A major British inventor is calling for a change in the law to strengthen protection against those who try to steal ideas, says the BBC.

Trevor Baylis, who invented the wind-up radio, has written to the business secretary urging him to criminalise the theft of intellectual property.

The move would involve a fundamental change to the law on patents.

Google's nearly two-hour Gmail outage yesterday was the result of a miscalculation regarding the capacity of its system, reports CNet.

The outage affected millions of Gmail customers who depend on the service for everything from fantasy football roster updates, to business-critical information. The problem was caused by a classic cascade in which servers became overwhelmed with traffic in rapid succession.

According to Google, the problem began when it took several Gmail servers offline for maintenance, a routine procedure that normally is transparent to users. However, the twist this time around was that Google had made some changes to the routers that direct Gmail traffic to servers in hopes of improving reliability, and those changes backfired.

A team of British scientists and engineers is developing plans for a spacecraft that could stop large asteroids from hitting the Earth, says the BBC.

The 10-tonne "gravity tractor" would deflect any orbiting rocks years before any potential collision could happen.

The device, which would rely on the force of gravity, is being developed by Stevenage space company EADS Astrium. However, the idea is still in its early stages and the company says a prototype is some way off from being built.