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Submission + - Air-Gapped computer hacked (again) (wired.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers from Ben Gurion University managed to extract GSM signals from air gapped computers, they demonstrates password extraction using this technique.

Submission + - 950 million Android phones can be hijacked by malicious text messages (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by techtech
techtech writes: Booby-trapped MMS messages and websites exploit flaw in heart of Android.

Almost all Android mobile devices available today are susceptible to hacks that can execute malicious code when they are sent a malformed text message or the user is lured to a malicious website, a security researcher reported Monday.

The vulnerability affects about 950 million Android phones and tablets, according to Joshua Drake, vice president of platform research and exploitation at security firm Zimperium. It resides in "Stagefright," an Android code library that processes several widely used media formats. The most serious exploit scenario is the use of a specially modified text message using the multimedia message (MMS) format. All an attacker needs is the phone number of the vulnerable Android phone. From there, the malicious message will surreptitiously execute malicious code on the vulnerable device with no action required by the end user and no indication that anything is amiss.

In a blog post
  published Monday, Zimperium researchers wrote: "A fully weaponized successful attack could even delete the message before you see it. You will only see the notification. These vulnerabilities are extremely dangerous because they do not require that the victim take any action to be exploited. Unlike spear-phishing, where the victim needs to open a PDF file or a link sent by the attacker, this vulnerability can be triggered while you sleep. Before you wake up, the attacker will remove any signs of the device being compromised and you will continue your day as usual—with a trojaned phone."

Submission + - Honeywell Home Controllers Open to Any Hacker Who Can Find Them Online

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: The accumulation of automation and Internet-connected devices in many homes these days has led observers to coin the term smart homes. But as researchers take a closer look at the security of these devices, they’re finding that what these homes really are is naive.

The latest batch vulnerabilities to hit home automation equipment are in the Tuxedo Touch controller made by Honeywell, a device that’s designed to allow users to control home systems such as security, climate control, lighting, and others. The controller, of course, is accessible from the Internet and researcher Maxim Rupp discovered that there are two vulnerabilities in the Tuxedo Touch that could allow an attacker to take arbitrary actions, including unlocking doors or modifying the climate controls in the house.

Submission + - Project IceStorm passes another milestone: building a CPU (excamera.com) 2

Submitted by beckman101
beckman101 writes: FPGAs — specialized, high speed chips with large arrays of configurable logic — are usually highly proprietary. Anyone who has used one is familiar with the buggy and node-locked accompanying tools that FPGA manufacturers provide.
Project IceStorm http://www.clifford.at/icestor... aims to change that by reverse-engineering some Lattice FPGAs to produce an open-source toolchain, and today it passed a milestone. The J1 open-source CPU is building under IceStorm, and running on real hardware. The result is a fairly puny microcontroller, but possibly the world's most open one.

Submission + - Stretchable Conducting Fiber Provides Super Hero Capabilities (ieee.org)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The list of potential applications for a new electrically conducting fiber-artificial muscles, exoskeletons and morphing aircraft-sounds like something out of science fiction or a comic book. With a list like that, it's got to be a pretty special fiber... and it is. The fiber, made from sheets of carbon nanotubes wrapped around a rubber core, can be stretched to 14 times its original length and actually increase its electrical conductivity while being stretched, without losing any of its resistance.

Submission + - HardenedBSD Completes Strong ASLR Implementation (hardenedbsd.org)

Submitted by HardenedBSD
HardenedBSD writes: A relatively new fork of FreeBSD, HardenedBSD, completed their Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) feature. Without ASLR, applications are loaded into memory in a deterministic manner. An attacker who knows where a vulnerability lies in memory can reliably exploit that vulnerability to manipulate the application to doing the attacker's bidding. ASLR removes the determinism, making it so that an attacker knows that a vulnerability exists, but doesn't know where that vulnerability lies in memory. HardenedBSD's particular implementation of ASLR is the strongest form ever implemented in any of the BSDs.

With HardenedBSD having completed their ASLR implementation, the next step is to update documentation and submit update the patches they have already submitted upstream to FreeBSD. ASLR is the first step in a long list of exploit mitigation technologies HardenedBSD plans to implement. HardenedBSD has also implemented other exploit mitigation, security, and general hardening features, providing great security for FreeBSD.

Submission + - Senate Passes 'No Microsoft National Talent Strategy Goal Left Behind Act'

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Microsoft is applauding the Senate's passage of the Every Child Achieves Act, a rewrite of the No Child Left Behind Act, saying the move will improve access to K-12 STEM learning nationwide. The legislation elevates Computer Science to a "core academic subject", opening the door to a number of funding opportunities. The major overhaul of the U.S. K-12 education system, adds Microsoft on the Issues, also "advances some of the goals outlined in Microsoft’s National Talent Strategy," its "two-pronged" plan to increase K-12 CS education and tech immigration. Perhaps Microsoft is tackling the latter goal in under-the-radar White House visits with the leaders of Mark Zuckerberg's FWD.us PAC, like this one, attended by Microsoft's William "It's Our Way Or the Canadian Highway" Kamela and FWD.us President Joe "Save Us From Just-Sort-of-OK US Workers" Green.

Submission + - HP conversion to corporate hell complete as R&D dress code enforced. 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: HP was once known as a research ant technology giant, a company founded in a garage by a pair of engineers and dominated by researchers. Whilst a part of that lives on in Agilent any hope for the rest of the company has now died with the announcement that HP R&D will have to dress in business "smart casual" with T-shirts, baseball caps, short skirts, low cut dresses and sportsware all being banned.

Submission + - Slashdot Poll: I pronounce "GIF" (Graphics Interchange Format) as...

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Slashdot Poll: I pronounce "GIF" (Graphics Interchange Format) as...

Giff, like gift
Jiff, like the peanut butter
Either of the two above choices
Never had to say it out loud
CowboyNeal

Submission + - Apple Yanks Nest From Stores in Favor of Fussy HomeKit (programmableweb.com)

Submitted by linkchaos
linkchaos writes: Late Thursday, news broke that Apple had fully removed Nest products from its retail stores and website. Nest, now owned by Google, includes the Nest camera, thermostat and smoke detector. All three are connected devices for the home that can be controlled via smartphone apps. We're talking about the Internet of Things here, folks, and Nest's products have been popular as long as they've been in the market.

Submission + - Augmented Reality: Hard Problems of Law and Policy (ssrn.com)

Submitted by UWLawWeb
UWLawWeb writes: An interdisciplinary team of technologists and legal experts examined Augmented Reality (AR) to understand the unique problems presented by AR. In particular they looked at AR’s ability to sense information (input) as well as overlay (output) and how it relates to legal issues surrounding First Amendment issues and the rights to privacy and public information.

“Particular implementations of AR strain prevailing conceptions of privacy and free speech, and
have the potential to compromise the user by overlaying information on the world that is erroneous,
dangerous, or legally problematic.”

Comment Re:Not that Useful (Score 0) 151

It's usually a problem when you open several tabs at once and one of them starts playing. And you have no idea which one.

So this is more bloat in FF isn't it? It doesn't even solve what's a niche problem for those few people who insist on having so many tabs open they cannot read them. If you can't read them, you can't see which one to mute.

Submission + - FCC Approves AT&T-DirecTV Purchase (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has granted approval to AT&T to purchase DirecTV for $48.5 billion. AT&T will become the largest provider of cable or satellite TV in the U.S., with 26.4 million subscribers. "Adding TV customers gives AT&T more power to negotiate with big media companies over prices for those channels. The deal also combines a nationwide satellite TV service, the country’s largest, with the No. 2 nationwide wireless network as time spent on mobile devices increases." The FCC did put conditions on the deal: AT&T must make fiber internet service available to 12.5 million people, offer cheaper internet plans to low-income customers, and not mess with the internet traffic of online video competitors.

Submission + - Cool new material could make fuel cells cheaper (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: It’s not enough for a new alternative energy technology to work. It also has to be cheap enough to compete with traditional fossil fuels. That’s been a high hurdle for devices called solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) that convert fuels—such as methane and hydrogen—directly to electricity without burning them. But now researchers report that they’ve come up with a new recipe for making key components in one type of SOFC more cheaply, which could sharply lower its overall cost.

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