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Security

Submission + - How To Hijack 'Every iPhone In The World' 1

Submitted by mysidia
mysidia writes: A new article from forbes.com reports on an unpatched iPhone vulnerability that researchers Charlie Miller and Collin Mulliner plan to reveal at Black Hat. The bug may allow hackers to remotely seize control of iPhones by using SMS text messages. "If you receive a text message on your iPhone any time after Thursday afternoon containing only a single square character, Charlie Miller would suggest you turn the device off. Quickly."
A similar vulnerability is reported to exist on devices running Windows mobile software.
Biotech

Researchers Use Salmon DNA To Make LED Lightbulbs 66

Posted by Soulskill from the bright-ideas-that-smell-fishy dept.
Al writes "Researchers from the University of Connecticut have created a new light-emitting material by doping spun strands of salmon DNA with fluorescent dyes. The material, which is robust because DNA is such a strong polymer, absorbs energy from ultraviolet light and gives off different colors depending on the amounts of dye it contains. A team led by chemistry professor Gregory Sotzing created the new material by mixing salmon DNA with two types of dye, then pumping the solution from a fine needle while a voltage is applied between the needle tip and a grounded copper plate covered with a glass slide. As the liquid jet comes out, it dries and forms long nanofibers that are deposited on the glass slide as a mat. The researchers then spin this nanofiber mat directly on the surface of an ultraviolet LED to make a white-light emitter. The color-tunable DNA material relies on an energy-transfer mechanism between two different fluorescent dyes, and the DNA keeps the dye molecules separated at a distance of 2 to 10 nanometers from each other."
Security

Submission + - America's 10 most wanted botnets (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
bednarz
bednarz writes: "Network World ranks America's 10 most wanted botnets, based on an estimate by security firm Damballa of botnet size and activity in the United States. The leader is Zeus, with 3.6 million compromised PCs so far. The Zeus Trojan uses key-logging techniques to steal user names, passwords, account numbers and credit card numbers, and it injects fake HTML forms into online banking login pages to steal user data. At the bottom of the list is Conficker, which despite its celebrity status has compromised just 210,000 U.S. computers so far."
Robotics

Submission + - Solar-Powered Moon Rover to Explore Apollo Landing (inhabitat.com)

Submitted by
Mike
Mike writes: "Carnegie Mellon roboticist Dr. William Whittaker has teamed up with Astrobiotic Technology to develop a solar powered moon rover that will explore the Apollo landing site in 2011. The photovoltaic clad robot features two electric motors in the hub of each wheel, and a half cone of solar generators up top that will power the wheels, run computers, and beam stereo HD video back to earth. The project has been entered in the $25 million Google Lunar X Prize competition."
Handhelds

Submission + - Mobile company sends spyware to BlackBerry users (calgaryherald.com)

Submitted by
SpaceAdmiral
SpaceAdmiral writes: "Research in Motion has confirmed that Etisalat, a cellular service company based in the United Arab Emirates, forced a performance update on their Blackberry customers that was actually spyware. The software could covertly record e-mails, text messages, and instant messages. RIM has released a removal tool for those affected."
Patents

Submission + - Touchpad Patent Holder Tsera Sues Everyone (geek.com) 2

Submitted by eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: Okay, well, maybe not everyone but more than twenty companies (including Apple, Qualcomm, Motorola and Microsoft) are being sued for a generic patent that reads: 'Apparatus and methods for controlling a portable electronic device, such as an MP3 player; portable radio, voice recorder, or portable CD player are disclosed. A touchpad is mounted on the housing of the device, and a user enters commands by tracing patterns with his finger on a surface of the touchpad. No immediate visual feedback is provided as a command pattern is traced, and the user does not need to view the device to enter commands.' Sounds like their may be a few companies using that technology. The suit was filed on July 15th in the favoritest place ever to file patent claim lawsuits: Texas Eastern District Court. It's a pretty classic patent troll, they've been holding this patent since 2003 and they JUST noticed now that everyone and their dog are using touchpads to control portable electronic devices.
The Internet

Submission + - Irelands Main ISP under possible DNS attack (softpedia.com)

Submitted by
KingPin27
KingPin27 writes: "According to several articles found on the web — most notably from http://news.softpedia.com/news/Possible-DNS-Hack-at-Ireland-039-s-Largest-ISP-115860.shtml.

Users have EIRCOMs services have had a variety of problems from slow queries for websites, being redirected to advertising sites from known urls, and generally slow service.

EIRCOM officials released the following statement (from http://support.eircom.net/)



(Issued Tue, 14th July 2009) Last night eircom.net customers experienced significant congestion while browsing the web.

While it is too early to confirm, eircom believes that it is related to an unprecedented volume of traffic deliberately directed at our network, which has caused difficulties for customers over recent days.

Service has been restored to our customers since late last night. Our technical specialists have been and will continue to work around the clock to determine the source of the problem.

eircom has been in contact with other operators in the Irish market to collaborate and pool technical expertise in this area. We will keep our customers advised with regular updates.

"
Earth

Submission + - SPAM: MIT electric car may outperform rival gas models

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: Inside a plain-looking garage on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's campus, undergraduate Radu Gogoana and his team of fellow students are working on a project that could rival what major automobile manufacturers are doing. The team's goal is to build an all-electric car with similar performance capabilities of gasoline-only counterparts, which includes a top speed of about 161 kph, a family sedan capacity, a range of about 320 kilometers and the ability to recharge in about 10 minutes. They hope to complete the project, which they chronicle on their blog, [spam URL stripped] by the third quarter of 2010. Each member of MIT's Electric Vehicle Team works almost 100 hours a week on the project they call elEVen. "Right now the thing that differentiates us is that we're exploring rapid recharge," Gogoana said during an interview. He said that many of today's electric vehicles take between two to 12 hours to recharge and he doesn't know of any commercially available, rapidly recharging vehicles.
Link to Original Source
Medicine

Submission + - Possible virus panacea in development. (popsci.com)

Submitted by Trinexx
Trinexx writes: Researchers have developed a drug that targets a part of the flu virus that doesn't mutate. There's also the possibility that this new panacea could even affect other types of viruses, such as HIV. It's currently in the animal testing phase, but its developers are hoping to push it into human trials in the next couple of years.
Games

Submission + - Unix: the next games console? (gameobserver.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: According to the article, Unix is a good games console!? Apart from Linux, I don't know which systems have suitable drivers for decent games. And even then, isn't the wide range of specs of PCs wide enough for it to not be considered a console? So my question: if modern games (not the old Loki ones!) were ported to Linux, would you buy them?
Google

Submission + - Chrome, Safari taking browser share (zdnet.com.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari web browsers have continued to steal market share from their much larger rivals Internet Explorer and Firefox over the past six months, according to internal ZDNet.com.au statistics, based on several million page impressions per month.

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