FCD1 - Slashdot User

Breaking CAPTCHA with automated humans-> 0

Submitted by

troyhunt

on Monday January 23, @04:36AM

troyhunt writes "We’ve all become accustomed to dealing with CAPTCHAs during the signup process for all sorts of different online accounts where the service owner wants protection from automation via bots. The basis of CAPTCHA is that it takes a human to solve; but what if we automate the humans? And then multithreaded them to work in parallel? Turns out the entire process can be implemented very easily and very cheaply such that CAPTCHAs can be circumvented for a fraction of a cent each."
Link to Original Source

Attack Breaks Confidentiality Model of SSL-> 0

Submitted by Gunkerty Jeb on Tuesday September 20 2011, @11:00AM

Gunkerty Jeb writes "Two researchers have developed a new attack on TLS 1.0/SSL 3.0 that enables them to decrypt client requests on the fly and hijack supposedly confidential sessions with sensitive sites such as online banking, e-commerce and payment sites. The attack breaks the confidentiality model of the protocol and is the first known exploitation of a long-known flaw in TLS, potentially affecting the security of transactions on millions of sites.

The attack, developed by Juliano Rizzo and Thai Duong, will be presented at the Ekoparty conference in Argentina on Friday, and, unlike many other attacks on TLS and SSL, it has nothing to do with the certificate trust model in the protocol. Instead, the researchers have developed a tool called BEAST that enables them to grab and decrypt HTTPS cookies from active user sessions. The attack can even decrypt cookies that are marked HTTPS only from sites that use HTTP Strict Transport Security, which forces browsers to communicate over TLS/SSL when it's available."
Link to Original Source

FreeBSD Running On PS3 0

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 09 2011, @06:41PM

An anonymous reader writes "One week after Sony's PlayStation 3 private cryptography key was obtained, FreeBSD is up and running on the PS3. There are still a few problems and rough edges, but they should be ironed out when FreeBSD 9.0 is released:

Nathan Whitehorn writes:
"Yesterday, I imported support for the Sony Playstation 3 into our 64-bit PowerPC port, expanding our game console support into the current generation.
There are still a few rough edges due to missing hardware support, but the machine boots and runs FreeBSD stably. These rough edges should be
smoothed out in time for the 9.0 release."

Mailing List Announce- http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=559737+0+archive/2011/freebsd-current/20110109.freebsd-current"

Gulf Bacteria Quickly Digested Spilled Methane-> 0

Submitted by masterwit on Sunday January 09 2011, @06:07PM

masterwit writes "From an AAAS news release: "Bacteria made quick work of the methane released by the Deepwater Horizon blowout, digesting most of the gas within the four months after its release, according to a new study published online at ScienceExpress." This study however did not deal with other chemicals (oil) from the disaster's fallout. A glimpse of good news from the disaster's fallout..."
Link to Original Source

black holes may mature early in galaxy evolution-> 0

Submitted by masterwit on Sunday January 09 2011, @05:52PM

masterwit writes "From Scientific American: "An accidental find in a star-forming dwarf galaxy shows that black holes may mature early in galaxy evolution" also "if giant black holes in star-forming dwarf galaxies prove to be common—that is, if Henize 2-10 is not an outlier but a representative of a larger population—they may have much to tell about the formation of primordial black holes and galaxies in the early universe" I personally do not come from a large point of knowledge here, but I found this read very interesting and thought someone else would share my sentiment."
Link to Original Source

Russia Uses Microsoft to Suppress Dissent-> 0

Submitted by

Omniscientist

on Sunday September 12 2010, @06:17AM

Omniscientist writes "The New York Times reports of a growing trend in Russia where authorities are silencing the opposition through the confiscation of computers under the pretext of searching for pirated Microsoft software. Although these raids would seem to be a tactic for squashing dissent, lawyers retained by Microsoft have been fully supporting the police throughout the course of these events. Microsoft has submitted numerous statements supporting these actions, going so far as to make an accusation that one of the advocacy groups 'purchased and installed legal Microsoft software specifically to deny the authorities an excuse to raid them'."
Link to Original Source

Microsoft helps Russia pursue opposition-> 0

Submitted by asaz989 on Sunday September 12 2010, @05:00AM

asaz989 writes "The New York Times reports that Russia selectively pursues software piracy complaints from Microsoft in order to suppress the opposition — confiscating computers for evidence, searching offices, and the like. Microsoft lawyers usually back the authorities in such cases, even when cases such as that of the environmentalist group Baikal Waves, which went out of its way to buy licenses to prevent police harassment and nevertheless had its offices raided, and its computers confiscated. Microsoft participated in this legal process. Published alongside this story, under the same byline, is a related piece on the collusion of Microsoft lawyers with corrupt Russian police in extorting money from the targets of software piracy investigations. In a responding press release, the company states, 'Microsoft antipiracy efforts are designed to honor both [antipiracy concerns and human rights], but we are open to feedback on what we can do to improve in that regard.'"
Link to Original Source

Microsoft aids persecution of Russian activists 0

Submitted by jmcbain on Sunday September 12 2010, @04:59AM

jmcbain writes "The NY Times is reporting that Microsoft directly aided the arrest of Russian evenvironmental activists. The Baikal Environmental Wave was organizing protests against Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin's decision to reopen a paper factory that had polluted nearby Lake Baikal. Instead, the group fell victim to one of the authorities' newest tactics for quelling dissent: confiscating computers under the pretext of searching for pirated Microsoft software. As the ploy grows common, the authorities are receiving key assistance from an unexpected partner: Microsoft itself. Baikal Wave, in fact, said it had purchased and installed legal Microsoft software specifically to deny the authorities an excuse to raid them. The group later asked Microsoft for help in fending off the police. "Microsoft did not want to help us, which would have been the right thing to do," said Marina Rikhvanova, a Baikal Environmental Wave co-chairwoman."

Archbishop Bans Pop Music at Funerals-> 0

Submitted by pickens on Friday September 10 2010, @12:44PM

pickens writes "The NY Times reports that the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne has announced a ban on the playing of pop music at funerals, which, he said, are not to be described as “a celebration of the life of” the deceased. According to new guidelines published on Archbishop Denis Hart’s Web site: "Secular items are never to be sung or played at a Catholic funeral, such as romantic ballads, pop or rock music, political songs, football club songs." According to a cemetery contacted by Melbourne's Herald Sun, a list of more unusual songs played at Australian funerals includes: “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” by Monty Python, “Another One Bites the Dust” by Queen, “Highway to Hell,” by AC/DC and “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead” from “The Wizard of Oz.”"
Link to Original Source

The Chipophone — an 8-Bit Chiptune Organ 84

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday July 24 2010, @11:20AM
from the tones-of-childhood dept.

adunk writes "Linus Åkesson has built an 8-bit synthesizer inside an old electric organ case. 'All the original tone-generating parts have been disconnected, and the keys, pedals, knobs and switches rerouted to a microcontroller which transforms them into MIDI signals. Those are then parsed by a second microcontroller, which acts as a synthesizer.' The Chipophone is perfect for playing classics such as the Super Mario Bros in-game music or Rob Hubbard's Spellbound. A description of the build process, with photos, is available."