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Submission + - 1.8TB of Police Helicopter Surveillance Footage Leaks Online (wired.com)

Submitted by puddingebola
puddingebola writes: Ddosecrets has leaked 1.8 TB of data of police helicopters, primarily in Dallas, Texas, conducting surveillance on citizens. "The transparency activist group Distributed Denial of Secrets, or DDoSecrets, posted a 1.8-terabyte trove of police helicopter footage to its website on Friday. DDoSecrets cofounder Emma Best says that her group doesnâ(TM)t know the identity of the source who shared the data and that no affiliation or motivation for leaking the files was given. The source simply said that the two police departments were storing the data in unsecured cloud infrastructure."

Submission + - A 'Pacemaker for the Brain' (nytimes.com)

Submitted by puddingebola
puddingebola writes: Researchers at the University of California have surgically implanted a device in a woman's brain to successfully treat her depression. Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco surgically implanted a battery-operated, matchbook-sized device in Sarah’s brain — a “pacemaker for the brain” some call it — calibrated to detect the neural activity pattern that occurs when she is becoming depressed. It then delivers pulses of electrical stimulation to stave off depression.

Twelve days after Sarah’s device was fully operational in August 2020, her score on a standard depression scale dropped to 14 from 33, and several months later, it fell below 10, essentially signaling remission, the researchers reported.

Submission + - Mozilla has defeated Microsoft's default browser protections in Windows (theverge.com)

Submitted by puddingebola
puddingebola writes: Mozilla has quietly made it easier to switch to Firefox on Windows recently. While Microsoft offers a method to switch default browsers on Windows 10, it’s more cumbersome than the simple one-click process to switch to Edge. This one-click process isn’t officially available for anyone other than Microsoft, and Mozilla appears to have grown tired of the situation.

In version 91 of Firefox, released on August 10th, Mozilla has reverse engineered the way Microsoft sets Edge as default in Windows 10, and enabled Firefox to quickly make itself the default. Before this change, Firefox users would be sent to the Settings part of Windows 10 to then have to select Firefox as a default browser and ignore Microsoft’s plea to keep Edge.

Submission + - Global computing's carbon footprint is bigger than previously estimated (upi.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: According to a new study, published Friday in the journal Patterns, information and communications technology, or ICT for short, is responsible for a greater share of greenhouse gas emissions than previously estimated.

When researchers at Lancaster University analyzed earlier attempts to calculate ICT's carbon footprint, they determined scientists had failed to account for the entire life-cycle and supply chain of ICT products and infrastructure.

This would include, for example, the emissions produced by makers of ICT components, or the emissions linked with the disposal of ICT products.

Scientists have previously pegged ICT's share of greenhouse gas emissions at between 1.8% and 2.8%. But the latest findings suggest global computing is more likely responsible for between 2.1% and 3.9% of greenhouse gas emissions.

If the latest estimates are accurate, ICT would have a larger carbon footprint than the aviation industry, which is responsible for 2 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.

Submission + - Texas abortion snitch website is getting booted off its domain (rawstory.com) 2

Submitted by nickwinlund77
nickwinlund77 writes: On Friday, The Verge reported that the website set up by Texas Right to Life to allow concerned citizens anywhere to snitch on anyone who helps a woman procure an abortion is having its registration revoked by GoDaddy.

"'We have informed prolifewhistleblower.com they have 24 hours to move to another provider for violating our terms of service,' a spokesperson told The New York Times," reported Sean Hollister. "GoDaddy didn't immediately respond to a request for comment about whether that applies to the group's other domains, or which terms of service the site violated — but it's probably the part where the company doesn't let anyone 'collect or harvest' any personal information 'about another User or any other person or entity without their express prior written consent.'"

The website — set up to enforce Texas' new draconian abortion ban that allows $10,000 civil bounties on people who "intend to procure" abortions for women past the sixth week of pregnancy — has been flooded with Shrek memes and other content designed to drown out its purpose for days.

But a tech journalist for Gizmodo speculated this week the site could be taken down more effectively by lodging complaints with GoDaddy, pointing out that abortion snitching amounts to non-consensual data collection.

Submission + - SPAM: Researchers Develop An Engineered 'Mini' CRISPR Genome Editing System

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In a paper published Sept. 3 in Molecular Cell, [Stanley Qi, assistant professor of bioengineering at Stanford University] and his collaborators announce what they believe is a major step forward for CRISPR: An efficient, multi-purpose, mini CRISPR system. Whereas the commonly used CRISPR systems—with names like Cas9 and Cas12a denoting various versions of CRISPR-associated (Cas) proteins—are made of about 1000 to 1500 amino acids, their "CasMINI" has 529. The researchers confirmed in experiments that CasMINI could delete, activate and edit genetic code just like its beefier counterparts. Its smaller size means it should be easier to deliver into human cells and the human body, making it a potential tool for treating diverse ailments, including eye disease, organ degeneration and genetic diseases generally.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - SPAM: Largest Study of Its Kind Finds Face Masks Reduce COVID-19

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Wearing face masks, particularly surgical masks, is truly effective in reducing the spread of COVID-19 in community settings, finds a new study led by researchers from Yale University, Stanford Medical School, the University of California, Berkeley, and the nonprofit Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA). The study, which was carried out among more than 340,000 adults living in 600 rural communities in Bangladesh, is the first randomized trial to examine the effectiveness of face masks at reducing COVID-19 in a real-world setting, where mask use may be imperfect and inconsistent.

The results show that increased mask-wearing –– the result of a community-level mask distribution and in-person promotion campaign –– led to a significant reduction in the percentage of people with COVID-19, based on symptom reporting and SARS-CoV-2 antibody testing. The team tested both cloth and surgical masks and found especially strong evidence that surgical masks are effective in preventing COVID-19. In the study, surgical masks prevented one in three symptomatic infections among community members 60 years and older. The findings come at a crucial time in the U.S., when many in-person events have resumed and children –– including those who are under 12 and do not yet qualify for vaccination –– are returning to in-person school.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - SPAM: Take-Two Sues Enthusiasts Behind GTA Fan Projects re3, reVC

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Take-Two Interactive has sued several programmers and enthusiasts said to be behind the popular re3 and reVC Grand Theft Auto fan projects. The lawsuit says that after the company filed a DMCA takedown notice to remove the projects from Github, the defendants filed a bad faith counter notice to have the content reinstated, thus triggering this copyright infringement lawsuit. “Defendants’ source code projects, known as re3 and reVC, purport to have created a set of software files (which Defendants claim they ‘reverse engineered’ from the original Game software) that allow members of the public to play the Games on various hardware devices, but with so-called ‘enhancements’ and ‘modifications’ added by Defendants,” the complaint reads. “Perhaps most notably, Defendants claim that their derivative GTA source code enables players to install and run the Games on multiple game platforms, including those on which the Games never have been released, such as the PlayStation Vita and Nintendo Switch.” According to Take-Two, the defendants’ conduct is willful and deliberate since they are well aware that they do not have the necessary rights to copy, adapt or distribute derivative GTA source code or the audiovisual elements of the games. The gaming giant adds that [defendant Angelo Papenhoff] publicly expressed concern that Take-Two would find out about the ‘re3’ and ‘reVC’ projects.
[...]
Take-Two says that by willfully and maliciously copying, adapting and distributing its source code and other content, all of the defendants have infringed its exclusive rights under copyright law. As a result, the company is entitled to damages in amounts to be determined at trial or, alternatively, a maximum statutory damages award of $150,000 for each infringed work. Additionally, the gaming company says that by submitting bad faith DMCA counternotices to have the projects restored to Github, three of the defendants made misrepresentations under U.S.C. 512(f). Finally, Take-Two is seeking temporary, preliminary, and permanent injunctive relief to restrain the defendants from continuing their allegedly infringing activities. The company wants all infringing source code and games removed from the Internet and wants the defendants to hand over all materials that infringe its rights. Take-Two also wants a full accounting of “any and all sales or downloads of products or services” that infringe its rights.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - In Novel Attack Technique, Salesforce Email Service Used for Phishing Campaign (esecurityplanet.com)

Submitted by storagedude
storagedude writes: In a novel attack technique, Israeli security researchers discovered that cybercriminals were subscribing to Salesforce in order to use its email service to launch a phishing campaign and thus bypass corporate security defenses like whitelisting.

The researchers, from email security service provider Perception Point, said bad actors are sending phishing emails via the Salesforce email service by impersonating the Israel Postal Service in a campaign that has targeted multiple Israeli organizations.

In a blog post, security analysts Miri Slavoutsky and Shai Golderman wrote that this is the first time they had seen attackers abuse Salesforce services for malicious purposes.

“Mass Email gives users the option to send an individual, personalized email to each recipient, thus creating the perception of receiving a unique email, created especially for you,” Slavoutsky and Golderman wrote. “Spoofing attempts of Salesforce are nothing new to us. Attackers spoof emails from Salesforce for credential theft, is a typical example. In this case, the attackers actually purchased and abused the service; knowing that most companies use this service as part of their business, and therefore have it whitelisted and even allowed in their SPF records.”

Shlomi Levin, Perception Point’s co-founder and CTO, told eSecurity Planet that given how whitelisting a trusted source can result in security breaches, “it is essential to employ a zero-trust attitude combined with a strong filtering mechanism to any content that enters the organization no matter the source: email, collaboration tools or Instant Messaging.”

Stephen Banda, senior manager of security solutions at cybersecurity vendor Lookout, agreed with the researchers that it's a new approach by malicious actors.

“The practice of legitimately signing up for an email service with the full intention of using it for malice is an innovative strategy,” Banda said. “This breach should be a warning to all service providers to conduct extensive due diligence into who is requesting access to their services so that this type of scam can be avoided in the future.”

“There are ways to detect spoofing but in this case the emails look authentic and are also coming from where they say they are coming from,” said Saumitra Das, CTO of cybersecurity firm Blue Hexagon. "This means that attackers have got through the first email firewall both from a threat intelligence signature perspective of blocking known bad sources and also in some sense the instinct of the user themselves to be suspicious of what something is. It is common for attacks to get through email security solutions, but then well-trained or savvy users are the next line of defense. This [use of a legitimate email service] increases the chances of those users also clicking on links or downloading attachments.”

Submission + - Reddit changes tune and bans anti-vax subreddit (twitter.com)

Submitted by redmid17
redmid17 writes: A week after allowing anti-vaccine subreddits to remain and a day after hundreds of large subreddits went silence in protest of the decision, Reddit banned the largest anti-vaccine subreddit , /NoNewNormal, for brigading, which is sending forum members to other subs to push agendas.

Comment AOL died (Score 3, Informative) 134

by puddingebola (#61743825) Attached to: Is Facebook the AOL of 2021?
AOL died when dial up died. Their greatest growth occurred when they were selling internet access for $20 a month over a 14.4K-56K modem. When the shift to broadband happened, they were done. Previous commenters have pointed out that new services with new features get instacopied by Facebook, or outright bought out. The public is largely ignorant of privacy issues online.

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