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Submission + - Why Snapchat and Its Ilk Face a Revenue Conundrum (slashdot.org)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: Snapchat managed to attract a lot of buzz in 2013—perhaps more than any other app on the market—and it’s easy to see why: in these paranoid times, with the NSA allegedly sniffing around the world’s collective inbox, and lots of software on the market designed to snoop into people’s lives, it’s comforting to have an app that’ll vaporize your messages within seconds of their opening. Snapchat’s executives see the startup’s future as so bright, in fact, that they reportedly turned down a $3 billion buyout from Facebook. But whether Snapchat eventually accepts a buyout offer, or tries to parlay its popularity into some sort of IPO, it faces a rather unique problem: how do you make money off a free app that near-instantly vaporizes all content? Snapchat could emulate enterprise-centric vaporizing-message firms such as Silent Circle and start charging for subscriptions, but that would probably kill the service; a multitude of free rivals would likely spring up, with the express purpose of stealing irate customers away. More likely, Snapchat will probably launch some sort of display ad system, similar to what Facebook and Twitter have now—but given how it doesn’t store user information on its servers, it’ll probably be hard to monetize its users as extensively as those social networks. With that in mind, Snapchat might be left with two options going forward—either expand its services in a radical new (and more profitable) direction, or sell to a Tech Big Fish for a whole lot of money.

Submission + - The Mysterious Malware that Jumps Airgaps

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Dan Goodwin writes at Ars Technica about a rootkit that seems straight out of a science-fiction thriller. According to security consultant Dragos Ruiu one day his MacBook Air, on which he had just installed a fresh copy of OS X, spontaneously updated the firmware that helps it boot. Stranger still, when Ruiu then tried to boot the machine off a CD ROM, it refused and he also found that the machine could delete data and undo configuration changes with no prompting. Next a computer running the Open BSD operating system also began to modify its settings and delete its data without explanation or prompting and further investigation showed that multiple variants of Windows and Linux were also affected. But the story gets stranger still. Ruiu began observing encrypted data packets being sent to and from an infected laptop that had no obvious network connection with—but was in close proximity to—another badBIOS-infected computer. The packets were transmitted even when the laptop had its Wi-Fi and Bluetooth cards removed. Ruiu also disconnected the machine's power cord so it ran only on battery to rule out the possibility it was receiving signals over the electrical connection. Even then, forensic tools showed the packets continued to flow over the airgapped machine. Then, when Ruiu removed internal speaker and microphone connected to the airgapped machine, the packets suddenly stopped. With the speakers and mic intact, Ruiu said, the isolated computer seemed to be using the high-frequency connection to maintain the integrity of the badBIOS infection as he worked to dismantle software components the malware relied on. It's too early to say with confidence that what Ruiu has been observing is a USB-transmitted rootkit that can burrow into a computer's lowest levels and use it as a jumping off point to infect a variety of operating systems with malware that can't be detected. It's even harder to know for sure that infected systems are using high-frequency sounds to communicate with isolated machines. But after almost two weeks of online discussion, no one has been able to rule out these troubling scenarios, either. "It looks like the state of the art in intrusion stuff is a lot more advanced than we assumed it was," says Ruiu. "The take-away from this is a lot of our forensic procedures are weak when faced with challenges like this. A lot of companies have to take a lot more care when they use forensic data if they're faced with sophisticated attackers."

Submission + - New MIT paper reveals encryption is less secure than everyone thought

Submitted by rjmarvin
rjmarvin writes: Researchers from MIT and the National University of Ireland have discovered http://sdt.bz/63006 a flaw to disprove the Shannon Theory, the 1948 standard assumption for information entropy. According to the paper, Shannon's theory of averages does not account for the improbable correlations of cryptography. Bottom line: hackers and code breakers can crack encryptions significantly faster than anyone thought. How does this affect email encryption? SIM cards? Embedded chips in credit cards? We'll see...

Submission + - 9 Wearable Technologies That Will Give You Real-Life Superpowers (ecouterre.com)

Submitted by fangmcgee
fangmcgee writes: Take a page from Tony "Iron Man" Stark. You don't need radioactive spiders or cosmic rays to develop superpowers of your own. From T-shirts that repel bullets to a bodysuit that gives you brain-tingling "Spidey sense," here are nine wearable technologies to help you emulate your favorite caped crusader.

Comment Re:My question (Score 1) 63

by edanto (#44495703) Attached to: Zimbabweans Hit By Cyber Attacks During Election
If only things were so simple. Hey, I'm sure if Africans had a nice stable democracy, with a ludicrously powerful dollar to return to, then they would go home to. The poster before me had simply asked why people in Zimbabwe didn't leave, and we've both given him part of the answer.

Comment Re:My question (Score 1) 63

by edanto (#44495541) Attached to: Zimbabweans Hit By Cyber Attacks During Election
One thing that I discovered on my visits to Africa is that it can be extremely difficult for Africans to get visas to enter other counties. They don't have the freedom of movement that we enjoy. On top of that, many will have responsibilities to support relatives (social security in Zim is very limited), so leaving ain't as easy as it might first appear.

Submission + - Civil disobedience against mass surveillance (nzherald.co.nz)

Submitted by nut
nut writes: We're all aware of how much surveillance we are under on the internet thanks to Edward Snowden. Gehan Gunasekara, an associate commercial law professor at Auckland University in New Zealand, wants all to start sending suspicious looking but meaningless data across the internet to overload these automated surveillance systems. Essentially he is advocating a mass distributed Bayesian poisoning attack against our watchers. I'm curious, what do Slashdotters think of the practicality of this?

Submission + - Office for Android: Pretty but woefully incomplete (citeworld.com)

Submitted by mattydread23
mattydread23 writes: The new Office 365 app for Android, launched a week ago, has a super nice UI, but lacks a bunch of basic features and has some really weird oversights — including a classic Microsoft dialog box that offers a choice that makes no sense. Overall, it feels like a half-hearted effort and that the company is still trying to drive users to Windows Phone.

Submission + - The World's First Road-Powered Electric Vehicle Network Is Now Open (vice.com) 1

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey
Daniel_Stuckey writes: South Korea continues to pull out all the stops on the long road to a high-tech utopia. Last year, the city Yeosu hosted the Expo 2012, an international exhibition that highlighted emerging technology and design that attracted 8 million visitors over three months. Today, the nation has finally unveiled the world's first road-powered electric vehicle network for regular use.

Here's how it works. The network runs on newly-built roads that have electric cables and wires embedded below the surface. This allows for the magnetic-resonance transfer of energy to the network's vehicles, which not only already run on small batteries (about a third of the size of a typical electric vehicle, or EV) but also do not require the plug-in-and-recharge process common to other electric cars. Read more: #ixzz2bD7cPKTq Follow us: @motherboard on Twitter | motherboardtv on Facebook

Submission + - The Big Def Con Question: Would You Work for the NSA? (vice.com)

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey
Daniel_Stuckey writes: Premier hacker conference Def Con, which just wrapped up its 21st year, played host to security professionals who all had very different opinions on what the NSA is up to. In fact, the only thing everyone could agree on is that the PRISM revelations came as no surprise.

Even if it isn't news to this crowd, it is still a significant development in the general climate of government surveillance and national security. And at Def Con, where government recruitment was hampered this year by conference founder Jeff Moss's requesting that feds stay away, it seemed like a good idea to walk around asking people if they would still want to work for the NSA.

Submission + - Fukishama Springs Water Leak

Submitted by sl4shd0rk
sl4shd0rk writes: The Japanese Fukishama crisis took a turn for the worse this week as it was found a barrier built to contain contaminated water has been breached; a leak defined by 20 trillion to 40 trillion becquerels of radioactive tritium. This is yet another problem on top of a spate of errors plauging the 2011 nuclear disaster site. Nuclear regulatory official Shinji Kinjo has cited Tokyo Electric Power Company as having a "Weak sense of crisis" as well as hinted at previous bunglings by TEPCO as the reason one cannot "just leave it up to Tepco alone". If Nuclear energy is ever to move forward, these types of disasters need to be eliminated. Is the ongoing saga of Fukishama a problem which can be cured with appropriate technology, or are disasters like this simply the element of cost vs. risk in the business of nuclear energy?

Submission + - Solar Magnetic Field About To Flip (nasa.gov)

Submitted by Freddybear
Freddybear writes: According to measurements from NASA solar observatories, the sun's magnetic field is about to reverse polarity. The event is predicted to occur within the next three to four months and will have effects throughout the solar system. These magnetic reversals happen regularly about every eleven years as part of the solar cycle.

Submission + - TOR Wants You To Stop Using Windows, Disable JavaScript (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: The TOR Project is advising that people stop using Windows after the discovery of a startling vulnerability in Firefox that undermined the main advantages of the privacy-centered network. The zero-day vulnerability allowed as-yet-unknown interlopers to use a malicious piece of JavaScript to collect crucial identifying information on computers visiting some websites using The Onion Router (TOR) network. 'Really, switching away from Windows is probably a good security move for many reasons,' according to a security advisory posted Monday by The TOR Project.

Submission + - Researchers say Tor-targeted malware phoned home to NSA (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Malware planted on the servers of Freedom Hosting—the "hidden service" hosting provider on the Tor anonymized network brought down late last week—may have de-anonymized visitors to the sites running on that service. This issue could send identifying information about site visitors to an Internet Protocol address that was hard-coded into the script the malware injected into browsers. And it appears the IP address in question belongs to the National Security Agency (NSA).

This revelation comes from analysis done collaboratively by Baneki Privacy Labs, a collective of Internet security researchers, and VPN provider Cryptocloud. When the IP address was uncovered in the JavaScript exploit—which specifically targets Firefox Long-Term Support version 17, the version included in Tor Browser Bundle—a source at Baneki told Ars that he and others reached out to the malware and security community to help identify the source.

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