55897765
submission
hypnosec writes:
A recent report from two Princeton researchers claimed that Facebook is like an infectious disease currently experiencing a spike before its decline and will lose 80 percent of its user base by 2017, which caught attention of Facebook and in its reply the social networking giant claimed that ‘Princeton may be in danger of disappearing entirely’. Facebook data scientists Mike Develin, Lada Adamic, and Sean Taylor used some of the same techniques used by Princeton researchers to arrive at their conclusion. The trio used parameters such as Facebook Likes, Percentage of Princeton papers in journals, student enrolment, and Google Trends.
55887753
submission
hypnosec writes:
Snapchat's security troubles continue as a security researcher has managed to hack its account registration CAPTCHA system with a program of less than 100 lines that took 30 minutes to develop. Steve Hickson, a computer engineer by education, wrote a small computer program with very little effort that identifies Snapchat’s ghost from the given set of images. Hickson equates Snapchat’s ghost very particular and calls it a template that can be matched easily using a computer program. Hickson used a combination of Open Source Computer Vision Library (OpenCV), SURF points and FLANN matching “with a uniqueness test to determine that multiple keypoints in the training image weren't being singularly matched in the testing image.”
55786503
submission
hypnosec writes:
Hortonworks has announced general availability of Hadoop 2.0 for Windows – three months after it did for the Linux operating system. Hadoop 2.0 for Windows is dubbed as a true multi-use data platform as it brings with it Apache Hadoop YARN enabling users to interact with all data in both real time as well as batch processing. Hadoop 2.0 for Windows brings with it high availability support for Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) NameNode; phase II of Stringer initiative; and Apache HBase NoSQL database release 0.96. Developers who are new to Hadoop or HDP for windows could start off with single-node version of HDP 2.0 for Windows that includes a Microsoft Installer based setup.
55689265
submission
hypnosec writes:
FreeBSD 10.0 is finally available for download after a series of delays and an additional rc build. From the looks of it FreeBSD 10.0 is currently available for all the four architectures, but the official release announcement is missing. Most of the ISOs have been either signed off on January 16 or 17 meaning that the builds have been ready since three days now.
55620723
submission
hypnosec writes:
Security researchers over at the Ben Gurion University (BGU), Israel claim to have discovered a vulnerability in Android that allows for interception of encrypted data travelling over a VPN in plain text. The researchers note that the vulnerability allows a malicious app to "bypass active VPN configuration" without requiring any ROOT permissions. The vulnerability, if exploited, allows for capture of data in clear text thereby leaving the information completely exposed. The researchers claim that they have tested multiple smartphones from different vendors before posting their claims. They have reported the vulnerability to Google and are awaiting the Android maker’s verdict on this.
55576225
submission
hypnosec writes:
China has revealed its own government-backed mobile operating system dubbed China Operating System (COS) to rival the mobile OS from Google and Apple. Developed jointly by China's Institute of Software at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (ISCAS) and Shanghai Liantong Network Communications Technology, the COS is based on Linux and resembles Android to a great extent. The COS is said to support smartphones, tablets, desktop PCs as well as set-top boxes and comes with support for HTML5 apps. Unsurprisingly, the COS is not open source because of ‘safety concerns’.
55246037
submission
hypnosec writes:
Anonymous is at it again and has defaced the Cogeneration project page of MIT on the anniversary of Aaron Swartz suicide. The project’s webpage is still defaced as of this writing and carries the title “THE DAY WE FIGHT BACK”. This day exactly a year ago Aaron Swartz committed suicide in New York city, which his family believes was because of MIT and an overzealous Department of Justice prosecution. Anonymous defaced the website as a part of Operation Last Resort, which is in retaliation for the suicide. “We decided to hack MIT again in 2014 on the anniversary with a second tribute to Aaron Swartz http://cogen.mit.edu/ #TheDayWefightback”, read a tweet from OpLastResort.
55125023
submission
hypnosec writes:
The Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA) will now have a say in standards review process at the W3C – specifically the one that seeks to protect interests of copyright holders on the web — as it has joined the standards organization as its member. The membership was first announced by W3C through a tweet that read “Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. joined W3C”. Membership to the W3C will give MPAA early access to all W3C material it is made public. MPAA will be able to appoint a representative for the advisory committee and be a part of the standards review process.
55091283
submission
hypnosec writes:
Sony has sold a whopping 4.2 million PlayStation 4 units as of December 28, 2013 – outselling Microsoft Xbox One by over 1.2 million units. Andrew House, SCEA CEO, took the stage during Kaz Hirai’s CES 2014 keynote to announce the PlayStation 4 sales numbers. Microsoft on the other hand sold over 3 million units of Xbox One in just 40 days after the console was launched.
55071099
submission
hypnosec writes:
China has lifted the 13 year old gaming console ban, which it imposed back in 2000 as a way to protecting nation’s youth from unhealthy content that may adversely affect their mental health. The temporary lift of the ban, which was pronounced on Monday by the State Council of PCR, will make way for international console vendors including Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo to setup production facilities in the newly created Shanghai Free Trade Zone and sell their consoles throughout the country. The vendors will still have to go through local checks including the ones from the Cultural authorities to ensure that they don’t violate any of the rules set by them.
55048577
submission
hypnosec writes:
The Pirate Bay had a difficult domain hopping 2013, but team behind the torrent indexing site is steadily progressing towards its goals of beating censorship by circumventing IP and domain name blockades through a tool that will be based on p2p network. An insider has shed further light on the Pirate Bay’s plans revealing that TPB is working to create a standalone tool – a browser like client – that will make use of site’s indexed data available locally on users’ systems. The index data will be made available in the form of downloadable packages which users of the tool can download. The data will be shared locally on users’ systems thereby eliminating the need of a central server. Webkit will be used to render the pages while BitTorrent will be used to download the files.
55021201
submission
hypnosec writes:
Researchers have developed a ‘narrative authentication’ system that could put an end to the need of remembering complex passwords to logging onto computer systems. The new system has been developed by Carson Brown and his colleagues over at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. The main idea behind the system is to log a user’s activities on the system or any other device that he / she may be using and then ask questions about them as and when a user wants to logon to the system next time. Users can interact with the logging software and add their own events in the real world like wedding dates, holidays, travel dates, etc.
54912103
submission
hypnosec writes:
Eric S. Raymond, the co-founder of Open Source Initiative, has recommended that Emacs should move to another version control system like GitHub as bzr is dying. In a mailer, Raymond highlighted the key reasons why he believes that Emacs should move. Raymond said that bzr is moribund; its dev list has flatlined; and most of Canonical’s in-house projects have already abandoned bzr and moved to GitHub. Open Source Initiative co-founder believes that bzr’s codebase is sufficiently mature to be used as a production tool, but he does mention that continuing to use the revision control system will have "social and signaling effects damaging to Emacs’s prospects."
