63903857
submission
Daniel_Stuckey writes:
A group of hackers took down the website of Syria's only stock exchange this afternoon and are threatening to leak the exchange's database unless president Bashar al-Assad takes military action against the Islamic State.
The group, called Project Viridium, says that over the last several weeks, they've infected several Islamic State operatives' computers and have provided the Assad government with information about their whereabouts.
63729213
submission
Daniel_Stuckey writes:
On July 27, a brave robot named hitchBOT bid goodbye to its creators on the shoulder of a highway in Halifax, Nova Scotia. With limbs made from pool noodles, a beer-cooler body, and legs clad in Wellington rain boots, this adorable hodgepodge of a robot was ready to embark on the adventure of a lifetime. It raised its best hitchhiker’s thumb, and waited to be picked up by its first benefactor in its 6,000-kilometer road trip across Canada.
When hitchBot set off, we at Motherboard worried that the trooper might meet a tragic end (and we weren't the only ones). But fortunately, our fears were groundless. Over the weekend, hitchBOT arrived at its final destination in Victoria, BC, intact and thriving after meeting dozens of new friends across the country.
63610539
submission
Daniel_Stuckey writes:
But it's here, tucked away on the third floor, that you'll find precisely that: the Center for Game Science, a research lab that makes educational video games for children, and that received the bulk of its funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the wing of the US Department of Defense that supports research into experimental military technology. Why is DARPA the original primary funder of the CGS? According to written and recorded statements from current and former DARPA program managers, as well as other government documents, the DARPA-funded educational video games developed at the CGS have a purpose beyond the pretense of teaching elementary school children STEM skills.
63585671
submission
Daniel_Stuckey writes:
As military police forces gather around Ferguson, trying to quell an angry, frustrated, and betrayed population, some people are taking their fight online. 'OpFerguson', being spear-headed by members of the hacktivism collective Anonymous, launched a couple of days ago. One site popped up that gave those wishing to voice their discontent a helping hand. Opferguson.com allows a user to select a target, including the Ferguson police force and the FBI, and participate in a DDoS attack: a technique that attempts to overwhelm a server by flooding it with traffic. Opferguson.com, however, is not what it seems. Instead of directing a user's traffic to the intended target, it instead collects the IP addresses of whoever logs on. This information, according to the creator, a self-avowed Anonymous opponent, is then open for law enforcement to act upon.
63580485
submission
hypnosec writes:
Modding isn’t a new thing in the world of gaming, but the latest one in Grand Theft Auto Online is one of the worst mods we have seen so far as it allows users to not only select naked characters but also rape other players. The mod allows users to do ‘naughty stuff’ and ‘very naughty stuff’ among other things which includes actions such as kidnapping, prostitution, make players attach to others and even ‘f*** the air’. First reported by a redditor, videos of such shenanigans have emerged only whereby these so-called ‘trolls’ are performing these acts. Using the mod, players can change their character to a fully naked man, grab their opponents, and lock them into a sexual animation. The character is shown thrust his or her pelvis into their rear of the other player’s character as if they were raping them. If you think the worst was over – well it’s not as the player being ‘raped’ can’t escape until the modder chooses to release him / her.
63519931
submission
Daniel_Stuckey writes:
From an abandoned McDonald's in the backyard of NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, a dozen or so volunteer scientists and engineers have taken control of a decommissioned, still running, 70s-era space satellite, currently some 20,000 kilometers away, by using discarded vintage space computers and a few sweet eBay finds. The so-named "McMoon's" Control Center is some sort of bizarre testament to human ingenuity and what a bunch of very smart people with virtually no budget or proper authorization can pull off. A bit of context: The International Sun-Earth Explorer (ISEE-3) satellite was launched on August 12, 1978, and was originally meant to study the Earth’s magnetosphere from the L1 Lagrangian point between the Sun and the Earth, where the gravity of both bodies cancel each other out.
63421133
submission
Daniel_Stuckey writes:
You've maybe heard a bit about Stingray. Over the past couple of years, it has emerged that police forces in the US have been using the powerful surveillance tool, which tricks phones into connecting to a dragnet, to track mobile devices, and intercept calls and text messages.
Meanwhile, the London Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) continue to remain tight lipped about their use of the technology, leaving citizens in the dark on what privacy protections, if any, are in place for those who may get swept up by the broad surveillance techniques.
63353167
submission
hypnosec writes:
PayPal’s two-factor authentication can easily be defeated and account accessed without requiring an elaborate set of steps, a security researcher has claimed while publicly disclosing the vulnerability as PayPal has failed to resolve the issue for two months now. Joshua Rogers, an Australian security researcher, discovered the vulnerability on June 5 and reported it to PayPal the same day. However, according to Rogers, PayPal hasn’t patched the vulnerability even after two months and he is disclosing the loop-hole publicly “due to the simplicity of it” and because he believes he gave “Paypal long enough to fix it.”
63336169
submission
hypnosec writes:
Over a hundred and eighty thousand followers of the popular leaker @evleaks, with their insatiable thirst to know what’s coming, will now have to find another source, as Evan Blass has called it quits after just 2 years. Although there have been a few leaks which were not very genuine, most of his leaks about smartphones and tablets have proved to be true which helped him get almost 187,000 followers on Twitter including several big names in the tech world. Blass has announced his retirement through a tweet that read, “All good things must come to an end. Thank you for an amazing two years. [RETIREMENT],” which was re-tweeted by his thousands of followers.
63295035
submission
hypnosec writes:
Lionsgate, the film company in charge of distribution of Expendables 3, has filed a lawsuit against unknown individuals who shared a DVD-level copy of Expendables 3 and six file-sharing sites known to have the links through which copies of the movies are being downloaded illegally. Advanced copy of Expendables 3 was leaked online in July and the pirated copy of the movie saw as many as 180,000 downloads in just 24 hours. The movie, which is releasing on August 15, is said to have crossed two million downloads already.
63273221
submission
hypnosec writes:
Max Schrems, an Austrian law student, on Friday called out billions of Facebook users to support him by joining a class-action lawsuit against Facebook for violating users’ privacy laws. Schrems has filed a law suit at Vienna's commercial court and has also invited others to join the action at www.fbclaim.com using their Facebook login. According to Europe-V-Facebook.org campaign, the Austrian law allows for a group of people to assign their claims to a single person in this case, Schrems, who can sue on their behalf and redistribute any damages awarded. In such a case, legal proceedings are then run as a class action. Schrems is claiming 500 Euros ($670) per user from Facebook in damages for allegedly violating data privacy policies, including its participation in the US National Security Agency’s Prism surveillance programme aimed at accessing the personal data of Facebook and other web services users, its graph search feature, use of “big data” systems for spying on users as well as company’s non-compliance with EU privacy law.
63197007
submission
Daniel_Stuckey writes:
Now the NSA has yet another dilemma on its hands: Investigative journalist Jason Leopold is suing the agency for denying him the release of financial disclosure statements attributable to its former director. According to a report by Bloomberg , prospective clients of Alexander's, namely large banks, will be billed $1 million a month for his cyber-consulting services. Recode.net quipped that for an extra million, Alexander would show them the back door (state-installed spyware mechanisms) that the NSA put in consumer routers.
63060445
submission
hypnosec writes:
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), India has ordered for a preliminary enquiry (PE) against Google for violating Indian laws by mapping sensitive areas and defence installations in the country. As per the PE, registered on the basis of a complaint made by Surveyor General of India’s office to the Union Home Ministry, Google has been accused of organizing a mapping competition dubbed ‘Mapathon’ in February-March 2013 without taking prior permission from Survey of India, country’s official mapping agency. The mapping competition required citizens to map their neighbourhoods, especially details related to hospitals and restaurants. The Survey of India (SoI), alarmed by the event, asked the company to share its event details. While going through the details the watch dog found that there were several coordinates having details of sensitive defence installations which are out of the public domain.
63012857
submission
hypnosec writes:
Linus Torvalds has called GCC 4.9.0 compiler ‘pure and utter sh*t’ and 'terminally broken' after a random panic was discovered in a load balance function in Linux 3.16-rc6. “Ok, so I'm looking at the code generation and your compiler is pure and utter *shit*”, in one of the mails on Linux kernel mailing list. “gcc-4.9.0 seems to be terminally broken”, he added further. The issue that invited such comments from Torvalds is to do with the compiler apparently spilled a constant and incorrect stack red-zoning on x86-64 code generation.
62905319
submission
hypnosec writes:
Government of Russia has announced a 4 million Roubles (~£65,000) bounty to anyone who develops a technology to identify users of TOR – an anonymising network capable of encrypting user data and hiding the identity of its users. The bounty has been announced by Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) in the form of a tender titled “Perform research, code ‘TOR’ (Navy)”. The public description of the project has been removed now and it only reads "cipher 'TOR' (Navy)". The ministry has said in the tender that it is looking for experts and researchers to “study the possibility of obtaining technical information about users and users equipment on the Tor anonymous network.”
