Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - Simple Rogue WiFi Hotspot Captures High Profile Data (thelocal.se)

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: Gustav Nipe, president of Sweden's Pirate Party's youth wing, was successful with somewhat trivial social engineering experiment in the area of the Sälen security conference. He set up a WiFi hotspot named "Öppen Gäst" ("Open Guest") without any kind of encryption. What do you know, a large amount of unsuspecting high profile guests associate with the network. Nipe says he was able to track which sites people visited as well as the emails and text messages of around 100 delegates, including politicians and journalists as well as security experts. He says that he won't be revealing which sites were visited by specific experts, as the point was just to draw attention to the issue of rogue network monitoring. The stunt has already sparked criticism in Swedish newspapers and on social media, with some angry comments saying that Nipe breached Sweden's Personal Data Act.

Submission + - The Seahawks have started using beacons at Centurylink Field (fiercemobileit.com)

Submitted by backabeyond
backabeyond writes: The Seahawks are using beacons that push information to people as they walk by certain spots, like main entrances or features inside the park. They hope to do a lot more with beacons, like use them to be able to show people where the shortest line is at the bathroom or the least crowded route out.

Comment Re:Virtualisation dates from the 1960's ! (Score 1) 180

by ripvlan (#48812429) Attached to: The Legacy of CPU Features Since 1980s

Ah man - you beat me to it. All of this Virtualization and Vector CPU stuff is pretty old. What is old is new again?!

VAX/VMS, IBM/360, and most mainframes of yesteryear all had the concept of virtualization. When I learned what an OS was - it was in this context. This new fangled Unix thing was a switch to multi-program over multi-OS. Cheaper smaller CPUs without these extra features allowed for high-compute applications to exist on the desktop for personal use. And this enable lots of researchers to do their own thing - at a reduced cost.

The balance of processing has moved back and forth over the years. 100% Server Mainframe (terminals) - to 100% Desktop (PCs) - to Network distributed sharing (X/Unix) - to Workstations on a Network - to the Web (looks like X) - and then back to the Server (Virtual Desktop VDI). There have been varying power of clients, full blown Workstations to Mobile devices. I remember watching the demo of Doom running on a mobile phone - which was really running on a Server with a vGPU outputting a video stream to the mobile device. And I've seen 3D rendering apps work the same way (vCPU/vGPU).

My wayback machine memory is getting a tour of the local DEC plant when I was a kid. They showed us this thing called the CPU - it was as big as an IBM PC (probably the PDP/11 inside of a 8400). What a CPU was back then isn't what we consider it today. I remember thinking (as a kid) - man these things are huge and my home PC is so small... what the heck...that'll be gone soon ;-)

The more things change - the more they stay the same. What the OP knew in 1980 is relevant - only the technical details have changed.

Submission + - GE Industrial Ethernet switches revealed to have hard-coded SSL key (thestack.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A range of industrial-level Ethernet switches in use at industrial facilities, transportation environments, waste-management plants and substations has been found to have a hard-coded SSL key that can be retrieved from the firmware. U.S. company GE’s Multilink ML800 series of managed switches contain the vulnerability, one of three identified by researcher Eireann Leverett, who passed his research on to the Department of Homeland Security in early January. Two other vulnerabilities have been identified, though the third has not yet been disclosed.

Submission + - Man Saves Wife's Sight by 3D Printing Her Tumor (makezine.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Michael Balzer, a former software engineer and Air Force technical instructor, found himself unsatisfied with a doctor's diagnosis of a small tumor behind his wife's left eye. Balzer had recently become proficient at creating 3D models, so he asked the doctor for the raw medical imaging data and took a look himself. In addition to correcting a later misdiagnosis, Balzer 3D printed models of his wife's cranium and helped neurosurgeons plan a procedure to remove the tumor, instead of waiting to see how it developed, like previous doctors had recommended. During the procedure, surgeons found the tumor was beginning to entangle her optic nerve, and even a six-month wait would have had dire consequences for her eyesight.

Medical researchers like Dr. Michael Patton believe this sort of prototyping will become "the new normal" in a very short time. "What you can now do through 3D printing is like what you’re able to do in the software world: Rapid iteration, fail fast, get something to market quickly. You can print the prototypes, and then you can print out model organs on which to test the products. You can potentially obviate the need for some animal studies, and you can do this proof of concept before extensive patient trials are conducted.

Submission + - Attackers Increasingly Focusing On Travel Websites (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: More than 20 travel-related websites have experienced data breaches in the past two months, according to a security expert who tracks the trade in stolen data, with United Airlines reporting that some customers' frequent flier mileage accounts were compromised as recently as this past Sunday. The reason they're such tempting targets: frequent flier points, and the airline tickets they can be redeemed for, are easy to sell for quick profits.

Comment Re:Huey Long's Philosophy applies here.... (Score 1) 177

by ripvlan (#48804365) Attached to: The Importance of Deleting Old Stuff

hah. I worked at a place where that actually was the policy.

When dealing with lawsuits...
Talk in person - in closed rooms
If you do Phone - never leave voicemail messages.
Do not use email - if you must....
Email should not hint at the topic of conversation.
Email should stick to the facts and not contain strategy or speculation.

Comment Re:Or just pick better sources ... (Score 1) 324

by ripvlan (#48804079) Attached to: How To Hijack Your Own Windows System With Bundled Downloads

I agree. I search for products or utilities looking for the official download page and included in the results is the CNET page. I always have to ask...why is it on some other website.

Then I remember years ago the discussion of bundleware and how it was placed right into the installer toolkit. And that people were making a small beer money by taking shareware/freeware and repackaging it for a few bucks on the side. Like those who copy YouTube videos and place their own ad accounts into it - hoping you'll view their copy over the original.

I always avoid downloads.com. Which makes you wonder if CNET is culpable with infecting others with scammy (at best) software. They must know this happens - and probably make a buck off it too. However I tell everyone I know to stay away - so this dilutes (or strengthens?) the brand.

It isn't exactly the Apple App store ;-)

Comment I know - right?! (Score 1) 324

by ripvlan (#48804021) Attached to: How To Hijack Your Own Windows System With Bundled Downloads

A rather interesting Adobe Flash Pro installer is making the rounds through ad hacking. It contains a webpage that looks and smells like a Real Adobe web page and an installer .EXE starts to download automatically in Chrome (without any clicks required). The web page suggests it is Adobe Flash Pro.

It has the most honest small print. "This is not Adobe, rather an improved video streaming software that is better than Flash...this also installs ad viewing software to help pay for this free improved video experience...software will track what you're doing..."

However the first webpage is a total Adobe knockoff - including graphics and fonts. But the EULA tells the true story.

And it is signed. Yes...signed. By "BEST APP."

Submission + - The Strange Story Of The First Quantum Art Exhibition in Space

Submitted by KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: When Samantha Cristoforetti blasted towards the International Space Station in November last year, she was carrying an unusual cargo in the form of a tiny telescope just 4 centimetres long and 1 centimetre in diameter attached to an unpowered CCD array from a smartphone camera. The telescope is part of an art project designed by the Dutch artist Diemut Strebe in which he intends to invoke quantum mechanics to generate all of the art ever made. Now MIT physicist Seth Lloyd has stepped forward to provide a scientific rationale for the project. He says the interaction of the CCD with the cosmic background radiation ought to generate energy fluctuations that are equivalent to the array containing all possible images in quantum superposition. Most of these will be entirely random but a tiny fraction will be equivalent to the great works of art. All of them! What's more, people on Earth can interact with these images via a second miniature telescope on Earth that can become correlated with the first. Lloyd says this is possible when correlated light enters both telescopes at the same time. Strebe plans to make his quantum space art exhibition available in several places before attaching the second telescope to the James Webb Space telescope and blasting that off into space too. Whatever your view on the art, it's hard not to admire Strebe's powers of persuasion in co-opting the European Space Agency, NASA and MIT into his project.

Submission + - Phony USB Charger Masquerades as Wireless Keylogger (threatpost.com) 3

Submitted by msm1267
msm1267 writes: Hardware hacker and security researcher Samy Kamkar has released a slick new device that masquerades as a typical USB wall charger but in fact houses a keylogger capable of recording keystrokes from nearby wireless keyboards.

The device is known as KeySweeper and Kamkar has released the source code and instructions for building one of your own. The components are inexpensive and easily available, and include an Arduino microcontroller, the charger itself and a handful of other bits. When it’s plugged into a wall socket, the KeySweeper will connect to a nearby Microsoft wireless keyboard and passively sniff, decrypt and record all of the keystrokes and send them back to the operator over the Web.

Comment I await the flood of mail (Score 1) 125

by ripvlan (#48797049) Attached to: Obama Proposes 30-Day Deadline For Disclosing Security Breaches

I have a pessimistic view of this and suspect that many companies are hacked and just silently sit on it because - well - they don't need to tell anyone.

This sounds like a plan to bolster the US Mail system by causing 10 pounds of mail weekly to each constituent alerting them to a recent data breach. Or we'll all need fax machines with an endless spool of paper. Oh wait - it was called a ticker. "...today your account at ACME XYZ was hacked at 9:43 AM...."

If I notice that my twitter account was hacked - so that mean twitter needs to send me a letter?

Submission + - Your computer knows you better than your friends do (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Are you a shy person with a snarky sense of humor who secretly craves hugs? You might be able to conceal that from your friends, but not from your computer. A new study of Facebook data shows that machines are now better at sussing out our true personalities than even our closest acquaintances.

Submission + - The Mystery Of Glenn Seaborg's Missing Plutonium: Solved

Submitted by KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: In the early 1940s, Glenn Seaborg made the first lump of plutonium by bombarding uranium-238 with neutrons in two different cyclotrons for over a year, The resulting plutonium, chemically separated and allowed to react with oxygen, weighed 2.77 micrograms. It was the first macroscopic sample ever created and helped win Seaborg a Nobel prize ten years later. The sample was displayed at the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley until the early naughties, when it somehow disappeared. Now nuclear detectives say they've found Seaborg's plutonium and have been able to distinguish it from almost all other plutonium on the planet using a special set of non-destructive tests. The team say sample is now expected to go back on display at Seaborg's old office at Berkeley.

Slashdot Top Deals

To save a single life is better than to build a seven story pagoda.

Close