Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - BrowserStack compromised? (lastbuild.com) 3

Submitted by algofoogle
algofoogle writes: While not yet confirmed to be a security breach, customers of BrowserStack have apparently received a facetious email claiming the service is shutting down. The language hints at a disgruntled employee or nefarious user, alleging that aspects of the Terms of Service are false, while also revealing apparently-sensitive internal information. Whether coincidental or in response to the email, BrowserStack.com is currently offline, stating that "we're performing some maintenance at the moment".

Comment Advanced? Requires a Jailbreak & manual instal (Score 5, Informative) 72

by mTor (#48039717) Attached to: iOS Trojan Targets Hong Kong Protestors

Here's the actual analysis of malware:

https://www.lacoon.com/lacoon-...

The iOS device needs to be jailbroken in order to be infected. Then with Cydia installed, the repository would be need to be added and then the package could be installed. All thatâ(TM)s known is that both the iOS and Android attacks share a CnC server.

Submission + - Steve Jobs' office at Apple remains exactly how he left it (networkworld.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Steve Jobs' office at Apple remains intact, and looks exactly the way it did when he passed away in October of 2012. This tidbit first came to the surface when a video clip of Tim Cook's interview with Charlie Rose was released earlier this week.

"I literally think about him every day," Cook explained. "His office is still left as it was. His name is still on the door.”

Submission + - Snowden's Leaks Didn't Help Terrorists 1

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: The Interecept reports that contrary to lurid claims made by U.S. officials, a new independent analysis of Edward Snowden’s revelations on NSA surveillance that examined the frequency of releases and updates of encryption software by jihadi groups has found no correlation in either measure to Snowden’s leaks about the NSA’s surveillance techniques. According to the report "well prior to Edward Snowden, online jihadists were already aware that law enforcement and intelligence agencies were attempting to monitor them (PDF).” In fact, concerns about terrorists' use of sophisticated encryption technology predates even 9/11.

Earlier this month former NSA head Michael Hayden stated, “The changed communications practices and patterns of terrorist groups following the Snowden revelations have impacted our ability to track and monitor these groups”, while Matthew Olsen of the National Counterterrorism Centre would add “Following the disclosure of the stolen NSA documents, terrorists are changing how they communicate to avoid surveillance.” Snowden’s critics have previously accused his actions of contributing from everything from the rise of ISIS to Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine. "This most recent study is the most comprehensive repudiation of these charges to date," says Murtaza Hussain. "Contrary to lurid claims to the contrary, the facts demonstrate that terrorist organizations have not benefited from the NSA revelations, nor have they substantially altered their behavior in response to them."

Comment Re:Is 4chan really unprofitable? Sounds like a myt (Score 3) 79

by mTor (#46942647) Attached to: 4chan Launches '$20 Bug Bounty' After Hackers Ruin moot's Day

Good points on pricing! But like I mentioned, advertising is bringing in a lot of funds as well. Bandwidth is cheaper than ever these days and a lot of it is "subsidized" by Cloudflare which don't charge for bandwidth. 4chan also doesn't run on AWS/VMs (you can find pics of 4chan servers on 4chan blog). And we can tell how much Cloudflare costs: http://www.cloudflare.com/plan...

So I still don't see why, after all this revenue, the site would be unprofitable. It's not like moot has a large dev team behind it.

Comment Is 4chan really unprofitable? Sounds like a myth (Score 1) 79

by mTor (#46941659) Attached to: 4chan Launches '$20 Bug Bounty' After Hackers Ruin moot's Day

Recent hack, the one that has prompted this change in policy and security issues reward process, revealed that 4chan sold about 12740 passes this year. At the price of $20 per pass, that's about $254,800 so far. And there's also a lot of revenue coming in from advertising.

If 4chan was truly unprofitable, it would have closed years ago. Seems to me that this is just an image that the owner is trying to project.

Comment iWatch is not about telling time (Score 1) 399

by mTor (#46860081) Attached to: Japanese and Swiss Watchmakers Scoff At Smartwatches

iWatch is not really a timepiece. It's a collection of highly sophisticated sensors that "watch" your vitals. All these other companies (Samsung etc) assumed that iWatch was just another smart watch: a watch with few apps on it. But from all the leaks and reports weâ(TM)ve seen so far (if they were to believed), iWatch is none of those things.

Yes, it will probably tell time as well but iWatch will be much more than that.

Submission + - James Lovelock reflects on Gaia's legacy (nature.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: "A lot of investment in green technology has been a giant scam, if well intentioned."

The quote, and entire interview, are significant for two reasons. First, the interview is seeped with many skeptical opinions about human caused global warming, is very critical of that movement's effort to politicize science, and the person being interviewed is James Lovelock, the founder of of the concept of Gaia, a former strong advocate of global warming but now a skeptic.

Most significant however is where the interview is published. It is in Nature, one of the most important and influential science journals, which previously has been aggressively pushing global warming politics for years. That they allowed these politically incorrect opinions within their walls and then broadcast them to their readers signals a major cultural shift within the science community. It is beginning to be acceptable to be a skeptic again!

Submission + - Google Chrome allows websites to spy on nearby conversations (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by AllTheTinfoilHats
AllTheTinfoilHats writes: A security flaw in Google Chrome that allows any website you visit with the browser to listen in on nearby conversations. It doesn't allow sites to access your microphone's audio, but provides them with a transcript of the browser's speech-to-text transcriptions of anything in range.

It was found by a programmer in Israel, who says Google issued a low-priority label to the bug when he reported it, until he wrote about it on his blog and the post started picking up steam on social media.

The website has to keep you clicking for eight seconds to keep the microphone on, and Google says it has no timeline for a fix.

Submission + - Heartbleed bug affects phones and tablets too (digitaltrends.com)

Submitted by Velcroman1
Velcroman1 writes: The Heartbleed bug is bad and affects a huge portion of all websites — as much as 66 percent of all sites around the world. Unfortunately, your smartphone isn't safe either. The bug can be exploited on mobile devices, though the risks aren’t as great as they are on a desktop computer browsing the Web. Mobile security company Lookout downplayed the risks, saying: “The good news is that we have yet to see any attacks targeting a mobile device, and while this is a credible risk, the likelihood of you encountering an exploit is low.” iOS devices are safe, and Windows Phone OS is likely safe. BlackBerry is “investigating.” But Android is vulnerable if you have version 4.1.1, according to Google.

Submission + - Facebook and Google's Race to Zero

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: As Facebook and Google battle to bring the Internet to remote locations, Alicia Levine takes an interesting look at the dual strategy of Zero Rating and Consolidated Use employed by Google's FreeZone and Facebook's 0.facebook.com, websites which offer free access to certain Google and Facebook services via partnerships with mobile operators around the world. By reducing the cost to the user to zero, Levine explains, the tech giants not only get the chance to capture billions of new eyeballs to view ads in emerging markets, they also get the chance to effectively become "The Internet" in those markets. "If I told you that Facebook's strategy was to become the next Prodigy or AOL, you'd take me for crazy," writes Levine. "But, to a certain degree, that's exactly what they're trying to do. In places where zero-rating for Facebook or Google is the key to accessing the Internet, they are the Internet. And people have started to do every normal activity we would do on the Internet through those two portals because it costs them zero. This is consolidated use. If Facebook is my free pass to the Internet, I’m going to try to do every activity possible via Facebook so that it's free." The race to zero presents more than just a business opportunity, adds Levine — it also presents a chance for tech companies to improve lives. And if Google and Facebook fall short on that count, well, at least there's still Wikipedia Zero.

Comment According to Arrington, Google reads it too (Score 5, Interesting) 206

by mTor (#46553195) Attached to: They're Reading Your Mail: Microsoft's ToS, Windows 8 Leak, and Snooping

Here's what Michael Arrington, former editor of TechCrunch, says:

I have first hand knowledge of this. A few years ago, Iâ(TM)m nearly certain that Google accessed my Gmail account after I broke a major story about Google.

A couple of weeks after the story broke my source, a Google employee, approached me at a party in person in a very inebriated state and said that they (Iâ(TM)m being gender neutral here) had been asked by Google if they were the source. The source denied it, but was then shown an email that proved that they were the source.

The source had corresponded with me from a non Google email account, so the only way Google saw it was by accessing my Gmail account.

A little while after that my source was no longer employed by Google.

ABOUT THAT TIME GOOGLE SPIED ON MY GMAIL

Submission + - Amazon's Book "Bucket List" Includes Tolkein, Dune, 1984 (corporate-ir.net)

Submitted by destinyland
destinyland writes: Eight science fiction classics, including Dune and The Lord of the Rings, earned a spot on a list of "100 Books to Read in a Lifetime" as chosen by the book editors at Amazon. "Over many months, the team passionately debated and defended the books we wanted on this list,” explains their editorial director, noting that the "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams was a near miss. Other books included were "A Wrinkle in Time" and "The Hunger Games", as well as at least six free public domain classic books. But one reporter notes that the list also includes both children's classics like "Where the Wild Things Are" and "House at Pooh Corner", as well as Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas". ("We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold...")

Submission + - Bug in the GnuTLS Library leaves many OSs and Apps at risk (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by williamyf
williamyf writes: According to our friends at ArsTechnica:

"The bug in the GnuTLS library makes it trivial for attackers to bypass secure sockets layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) protections available on websites that depend on the open source package. Initial estimates included in Internet discussions such as this one indicate that more than 200 different operating systems or applications rely on GnuTLS to implement crucial SSL and TLS operations, but it wouldn't be surprising if the actual number is much higher. Web applications, e-mail programs, and other code that use the library are vulnerable to exploits that allow attackers monitoring connections to silently decode encrypted traffic passing between end users and servers."

What's even more, the coding error *may* have been present since 2005, so one has to wander, again, where were those "many eyes that render all bugs shallow" one keeps hearing about...

Slashdot Top Deals

"But what we need to know is, do people want nasally-insertable computers?"

Close