A hacking group accused of being operated by the Chinese army now seems to be going after industrial control systems.

A Chinese hacking group accused this February of being tied to the Chinese army was caught last December infiltrating a decoy water control system for a U.S. municipality, a researcher revealed on Wednesday.

Academic advances suggest that the encryption systems that secure online communications could be undermined in just a few years.

The encryption systems used to secure online bank accounts and keep critical communications private could be undone in just a few years, security researchers warned at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas yesterday. Breakthroughs in math research made in the past six months could underpin practical, fast ways to decode encrypted data that’s considered unbreakable today.

A roundup of the most interesting stories from other sites, collected by the staff at MIT Technology Review.

The Billionaire Prince Who Says Saudi Arabia Is in Far Bigger Trouble than the Other Royals Admit
In contrast to Saudi Arabia’s official position, some influential Saudis are worrying about America’s oil boom and attempts to reduce oil consumption.
—Kevin Bullis, energy editor

If the Pentagon eases its grip on wireless frequencies used for radar, wider use of 4G networks could become possible.

While commercial wireless networks are congested, frequencies set aside for military purposes are lightly used. Now wireless researchers and the U.S. Navy will get a chance to see whether some of those airwaves can be shared, which could lead to innovative new services.

The third Mid-Atlantic Student Colloquium on Speech, Language and Learning will be held at UMBC on Fri. 11 Oct 3013, bringing together students, postdocs, faculty and researchers from universities in the Mid-Atlantic area doing research on speech, language or machine learning. It is an opportunity for students and postdocs to present preliminary, ongoing or completed work and to network with other researchers working in related fields.

The first MASC-SLL was held in 2011 at Johns Hopkins University and the second in 2012 at the University of Maryland, College Park. This year the event will be held at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) in Baltimore, MD from 9:30 to 5:00 on Friday, 11 October 2013. There will be no registration charge and lunch and refreshments will be provided.

Students and postdocs are encouraged to submit abstracts describing ongoing, planned, or completed research projects, including previously published results and negative results. Research in any field applying computational methods to any aspect of human language, including speech and learning, from all areas of computer science, linguistics, engineering, neuroscience, information science, and related fields, is welcome. All accepted submissions will be presented as posters and some will also be invited for short oral presentations. Student-led breakout sessions will also be held to discuss papers or topics of interest and stimulate interaction and discussion. Suggest breakout session topics via easychair.