Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - Major Vulnerability In Tinder Dating App Allowed User Tracking

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Include Security unveiled new research showing that users of the popular online dating app Tinder were at significant risk due to a vulnerability they discovered in the geo-location feature of the application. This vulnerability allowed Tinder users to track each another's exact location for much of 2013. Anyone with rudimentary programming skills could query the Tinder API directly and pull down the co-ordinates of any user. This resulted in a privacy violation for the users of the application.

Submission + - Exclusive: The Rags-To-Riches Tale Of How Jan Koum Built WhatsApp Into Facebook' (forbes.com)

Submitted by paulbes
paulbes writes: Jan Koum picked a meaningful spot to sign the $19 billion deal to sell his company WhatsApp to Facebook earlier today. Koum, cofounder Brian Acton and venture capitalist Jim Goetz of Sequoia drove a few blocks from WhatsApp’s discreet headquarters in Mountain View to a disused white building across the railroad tracks, the former North County Social Services office where Koum, 37, once stood in line to collect food stamps. That’s where the three of them inked the agreement to sell their messaging phenom –which brought in a miniscule $20 million in revenue last year — to the world’s largest social network.
User Journal

Journal Journal: Danger, Will Robinson! Scary stories within... 2

Journal by stderr_dk

The following submissions are apparently so scary that they can't be posted on Slashdot even though they get a good rating in the firehose.

It seems that /. do have "editors" after all, but their job ain't to edit the summaries like we thought editors were supposed to do. No, their real job is to hide all the scary stories from the /. crowd, who can't handle such things...

Submission + - What is the best music to go with releases?

Submitted by lietux
lietux writes: Releases are often a significant event in organizations, a moment of anticipation and maybe even some tension. I feel these events should really have a good theme song associated with them, to get everyone on the release mood.

Now I ask you, fellow Slashdotters: do you have your own favorite release theme song?

Submission + - WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton was rejected from both Facebook and Twitter (networkworld.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Facebook on Wednesday made waves when it announced a $16 billion deal to acquire the mobile messaging app WhatsApp. Yes, you read that correctly, that's billion with a capital 'B'. That's an absolutely jaw dropping figure, and far exceeds the $1 billion Facebook paid for Instagram and the rumored $3 billion it offered for Snapchat.

WhatsApp was originally founded in 2009 by Brian Acton and Jan Koum, both former Yahoo engineers. What's particularly interesting, if not downright inspirational, is that Acton — himself a former Apple engineer — applied for jobs at both Twitter and Facebook way before WhatsApp became a wildly popular mobile app. Both times he was rejected.

Submission + - Sony's Favorite Gadget is Kinect

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Gary Marshall writes that.Microsoft's marvellous motion-sensing device is doing really good work for Sony, helping the PS4 outsell the Xbox One in the US and rocketing it to the top of the world's console sales charts. With the Xbox One $100 more expensive than the PlayStation 4, the Kinect is the explanation for the huge difference in price between the rival platforms says Marshall. "That kind of money makes a huge difference, and I wonder: if Microsoft had kept the Kinect as an optional add-on, which we all know it should be, would the Xbox One be much more attractive?" Ben Kuchera describes the peripheral as one of the most hated pieces of equipment in current use. "The system is still new, but every Xbox One owner now has a peripheral that has little reason to exist, aids their gaming in very few real ways and costs them a significant amount of money." The common defense of the Kinect is that developers wouldn't support it unless it was forced on consumers but accoding to Kuchera pushing a product on the public with the hope that it will be useful once we have it is a cruel inversion of how product adoption should be handled. "The forced pack-in proves something we already knew at the beginning of this generation: Almost no one would want to buy the Kinect separately if they were given the choice," writes Kuchera. "It's time to make the Kinect a peripheral, not a pack-in."

Submission + - Facebook Buying WhatsApp - $19B In Cash And Stock (likesfast.com)

Submitted by Kreshnik Qungeli
Kreshnik Qungeli writes: Certainly the news of the week and a huge acquisition but one which is important for Facebook to both continue its growth but also continue to gather the valuable data it needs to deliver monetizable services to its customers. The deal is pending regulatory approval and should it not get across the line Facebook will pay WhatsApp $1B in cash and $1B in shares.

On one level this is insane – it’s a significant amount of Facebook’s total valuation, but looked at a macro level it allows Facebook to extend its franchise far beyond its primary site, and also gives it an interesting play into developing markets.

WhatsApp has grown massively since its inception – in the calendar year 2013 its users sent 18 billion messages and received 36 billion in return – a massive number that is fully three times the previous year’s metrics. But massive growth and a defensible position are two different things – WhatsApp had rivals, from Apple AAPL -1.56%, Facebook and, to a lesser extent, Twitter. It also had the lofty ambition (if difficult form a revenue perspective) of not pushing advertising onto its users.

Facebook hasn’t yet commented about what this means for WhatsApp and, more importantly, how they’re leverage those massive numbers to deliver value back to the company. One assumes that CEO Mark Zuckerberg believes WhatsApp has the scale to have created a real degree of stickiness and hence be somewhat insulated from any potential customer revolt that might come from a move towards advertising on the platform. Then again users won’t exactly like their conversations being mined to deliver advertising to their Facebook profiles either.

Submission + - Abney Technology News: Bitcoin cyber attack a big warning to users

Submitted by akitayamagin
akitayamagin writes: A massive cyber attack from unknown sources that has been spamming bitcoin exchanges is highlighting some of the dangers people can encounter when they exchange cash for digital currencies like the bitcoin, experts said on Wednesday.

The attack, which is technically known as a distributed denial of service attack, involved thousands of phantom transactions, forcing at least three of the online platforms that store bitcoins and trade them for traditional currencies to halt withdrawals of bitcoins until they can determine which transactions were real.

It showed that bitcoin, which exists solely in cyberspace and operates on a software code written by an unknown programmer or group of programmers, is as vulnerable to such an assault as any other internet-based business. It exposes the higher risks involved in owning and trading the instrument compared with the dollar and other traditional currencies. Bitcoins slumped in value as a result of the disruptions.

"Bitcoin is still an experimental protocol in its infancy," said Micky Malka, a venture capitalist who is on the board of Bitcoin's trade group, the Bitcoin Foundation.

"It will grow and mature over time," he added. "No one should be investing an amount they cannot afford to lose."

This week's attack was not the first, said Andreas Antonopoulos, chief security officer for blockchain.info, a website that tracks bitcoin activity and provides online storage services for bitcoin users.

Antonopoulos is also a member of a group of core bitcoin programmers and is part of an emergency response team of programmers who have been working to fix the flaws in the code governing some bitcoin transactions that the attackers were exploiting. He said that work that should be completed by the middle of next week, echoing an estimate provided by a spokeswoman for the Bitcoin Foundation who said its core developers were all participating in the effort to fix the code.

Bitcoin is a decentralised digital system of value transfers that is not governed by any central bank, company or government. No assets back the bitcoin, whose value has fluctuated widely as its visibility has increased. Last September, a bitcoin was worth around US$150. By late December the value was near the US$1000 mark.

Regulators around the world are struggling how to categorise the bitcoin. Some want to call it an asset class, others a commodity. Bitcoin users call it a currency and many advocate for its mass adoption, claiming it can help solve problems created by expensive and time-consuming bank transactions.

Early adopters also liked the anonymity bitcoin has offered, since it can be transferred between users without any exchange of personal identification information. However, moves by various authorities to pursue bitcoin users who they say have laundered money using the currency and attempts to regulate bitcoin exchanges could soon lower the level of anonymity in transactions.

On Tuesday, Slovenia-based Bitstamp became the second major bitcoin exchange to halt customer withdrawals in the past several days, citing "inconsistent results" and blaming a denial-of-service attack.

That was a day after Mt Gox, based in Tokyo and the best-known digital marketplace operator, said a halt on withdrawals would continue indefinitely. Traders reacted to the halt by sending the bitcoin value to its lowest level in nearly two months.

A Bulgaria-based bitcoin exchange also had to halt withdrawals, Antonopoulos said.

The price of bitcoins, which have gained wider acceptance in recent months, dropped in the wake of the attacks from around US$850 late last month. On Wednesday, they were quoted down nearly 2 percent for the day at US$656 per coin on the bitcoin tracking website CoinDesk.

"Anyone who plays in this space, you better have a plan for when an attack happens because it's going to be a when, not an if," said Brian Krebs, a Washington-based cyber security expert who runs the blog KrebsOnSecurity.com.

The lesson for investors was that the bitcoin wasn't as liquid as initially advertised, said Jason Scharfman, a financial due diligence expert and managing partner at consulting firm Corgentum.

"These types of attacks, they're effectively freezing some of the accounts because the exchanges don't want to pay out to the wrong person," he said. "If something's frozen or there's a question about me being able to redeem my bitcoins, the value of them drops."

"Does this spook financial investors?" he added. "The answer is yes."

Scharfman said one way to mitigate the risks of such attacks would be to spread holdings of bitcoins out among several different online storage facilities. That way if one were attacked the other might still have a chance at being safe.

Scharfman said the more regulatory scrutiny that bitcoin exchanges received, the safer they were likely to be.

"Regulation will sort of normalise which exchanges are the most secure. They'll mandate security measures and smaller exchanges just won't be able to afford it," he said.

Submission + - Majority of Android devices vulnerable to new drive-by malware (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Attackers have crafted the E-Z-2-Use malware code that exploits a 14-month-old vulnerability in Android devices. The vulnerability exists in the WebView interface a malicious website can utilize it to gain a remote shell into the system with the permissions of the hijacked application. Vulnerable devices are any device that is running a version earlier than 4.2 (in which the vulnerability was patched) which is a staggeringly large amount of the market. The vulnerability is in Android itself rather than the proprietary GMS application platform that sits atop the base operating system so it is not easily patched by Google.

Submission + - Math Models Predicted Ukraine Uprising (vice.com)

Submitted by retroworks
retroworks writes: Just over a year ago, complex systems theorists at the New England Complex Systems Institute http://necsi.edu/research/soci... warned that if food prices continued to climb, so too would the likelihood that there would be riots across the globe. Sure enough, we're seeing them now. The paper's author, Yaneer Bar-Yam, charted the rise in the FAO food price index—a measure the UN uses to map the cost of food over time—and found that whenever it rose above 210, riots broke out worldwide. It happened in 2008 after the economic collapse, and again in 2011, when a Tunisian street vendor who could no longer feed his family set himself on fire in protest.

Submission + - Deadly Virus Widespread in British Bumblebees (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Honey bees are apparently the Typhoid Marys of the pollinator world. A study suggests that the insects spread two kinds of pathogens to wild bumblebees. And one of these, deformed wing virus, is killing bumblebees across the United Kingdom, perhaps contributing to the decline of the nation’s wild populations.

Submission + - Ants Build Rafts on the Backs of Their Young (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: There's no security in being a young ant. A new study reveals that, when their home floods, Formica selysi ants build a raft with their bodies to save the queen--and they put the youngest ants on the bottom. Flotation tests showed that this is actually a great strategy for survival: The bottom of the raft is not a dangerous place for them after all, the team reports today in PLOS ONE. Young ants that were part of a raft survived and later matured at the same rate as young that stayed on dry land. Further experiments showed that the young are more buoyant than adults, which makes them able to support the raft like pontoons on a boat.

Submission + - Supernova secrets seen in X-rays

Submitted by wjcofkc
wjcofkc writes: CNN reports that astronomers using NASA's NuSTAR telescope have for the first time mapped deep within the radioactive material from a supernova. The light from the originating star, Cassiopeia A, located about 11,000 light-years away and having had about eight time the mass of our sun, first reached Earth about 350 years ago. But that does not mean there still isn't a lot to study. Scientists using the NuSTAR, which stands for Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, launched in June 2012 and consisting of an instrument with two telescopes that focus high energy X-ray light, were able to peer deep within the cataclysmic aftermath. While there is currently no model for how the process of a supernova works, the findings in the study are a big step forward. "Until we had NuSTAR, we couldn't see down to the core of the explosion," Brian Grefenstette, lead author and research scientist at the California Institute of Technology, said at a news conference Wednesday.

There is a fairly good amount of detail in this article, and if your not opposed to flash, a fascinating simulation of their findings about halfway down.

Slashdot Top Deals

Beware of Programmers who carry screwdrivers. -- Leonard Brandwein

Close