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Submission + - Cyber Ninjas is shuttering operations (cnn.com)

Submitted by mmell
mmell writes:

The Cyber Ninjas firm that oversaw the problem-plagued review of the 2020 results in Arizona's Maricopa County is shuttering. Rod Thomson, a representative for the Cyber Ninjas, confirmed to CNN that company is shutting down. Thomson said, "$2 million debt from the Arizona audit and endless legal and character attacks on the company by those who opposed the audit make it untenable moving forward."

So . . . I guess Arizona can't get their money back for the audit?

Submission + - 'Quite OK Image Format' (QOI) coming to a graphics program near you? 1

Submitted by Tesseractic
Tesseractic writes: Simon Sharwood, of The Register (Biting the hand that feeds IT) writes to tell us of a new image format that is lossless, gives much faster encodes, faster decodes and roughly comparable compression compared to what's in use today.

https://www.theregister.com/20...

https://qoiformat.org/

Notably, the specification for the QOI format fits on a single (2-column) page:

https://qoiformat.org/qoi-spec...

There is an active GitHub project for QOI:

https://github.com/phoboslab/q...

Submission + - Google Scans Gmail And Drive For Cartoons Of Child Sexual Abuse (forbes.com)

Submitted by Jigsy
Jigsy writes: Over the last two decades, tech giants have had to deal with an ever-growing deluge of videos and images of child sexual abuse on their platforms. As Apple recently found out, it’s a difficult problem to solve, where scanning people’s devices and online accounts for illegal content can lead to concerns about privacy.

But it isn’t just explicit photos and videos of underage children that Silicon Valley’s biggest companies are trying to find and erase from their servers. They’re also looking for cartoons depicting graphic acts involving children, as revealed by a recent search warrant asking Google to provide information on a suspect who allegedly owned such animations.

Submission + - Star System With Right-Angled Planets Surprises Astronomers (nytimes.com)

Submitted by fahrbot-bot
fahrbot-bot writes: Star systems come in all shapes and sizes. Some have lots of planets, some have larger planets and others have no planets at all. But a particularly unusual system about 150 light-years from our own has scientists scratching their heads.

In 2016, astronomers discovered two planets orbiting the star HD 3167. They were thought to be super-Earths — between Earth and Neptune in size — and circled the star every one and 30 days. A third planet was found in the system in 2017, orbiting in about eight days.

What’s unusual is the inclinations of the outer two planets, HD 3167 c and d. Whereas in our solar system all the planets orbit in the same flat plane around the sun, these two are in polar orbits. That is, they go above and below their star’s poles, rather than around the equator as Earth and the other planets in our system do.

Now scientists have discovered the system is even weirder than they thought. Researchers measured the orbit of the innermost planet, HD 3167 b, for the first time — and it doesn’t match the other two. It instead orbits in the star’s flat plane, like planets in our solar system, and perpendicular to HD 3167 c and d. This star system is the first one known to act like this.

Submission + - I just read through all 173 pages of the unredacted Google antitrust filing 3

Submitted by serviscope_minor
serviscope_minor writes: Twitter user @fasterthanlime has posted (with permission) a now locked read through of the 173 pages of the unredacted Google antitrust filing and added some more findings .

Ok so, I just read through all 173 pages of the unredacted Google antitrust filing and I have to say that either Google is screwed or society is screwed, we'll find out which. Unordered list of fun things I learned:

  • google has a secret deal with facebook called "Jedi Blue" that they knew was so illegal that it has a whole section describing how they'll cover for each other if anyone finds out — google appears to have a team called gTrade that is wholly dedicated to ad market manipulation
  • - Google is willing to do almost everything to prevent people from circumventing their ad exchanges — This is what AMP is about — Google habitually insider trades on their ad exchanges in every way you can think of and every way you can't. Too many ways to list here.
  • [the list continues]

Twitter user @PatrickMcGee_ also provides further analysis.

The complete, unredacted filing is here.

Submission + - OpenBSD 7.0 released (openbsd.org)

Submitted by ArchieBunker
ArchieBunker writes: Everyone's favorite security focused operating system OpenBSD released version 7.0 today. In addition to the usual bug fixes and performance enhancements support for RISC-V processors has been added.

Submission + - Carrier backdoor pathway activates auto install of app with 152 permissions

Submitted by jago25_98
jago25_98 writes: The pathway to the (Google approved?) attack is thus:

1) Manufacturer pre-installs bloatware, creating a pathway for approved apps to install without user permission at any stage of phone ownership.

2) Carriers may install bloatware but this can even be activated by a single simcard (eSIM?) insert.

2) An advert requests unattended app install. This is typically from DSP Digital Turbine who recently bought Fyber). A link to the patent:
https://www.freepatentsonline....
And the backdoor:
https://www.digitalturbine.com...
Advert for the backdoor:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

To confirm that you have the backdoor or not:
https://play.google.com/store/...

App is installed. For example, Weather Home, an app with:

20 trackers
and
152 permissions.

That's one hundred and fifty two permissions.

https://play.google.com/store/...

User /r/omniUni comments:

"However, for it to work, the software package must be specifically uploaded to DT's system. To my knowledge, it can't just install any old package. Of course, we're trusting an advertisment company to not have vulnerabilities in their software, so that isn't really all that reassuring.

Digital Turbine just makes the software and services and sells it. It works because some carrier or OEM is willing to add it at the firmware level of the device in exchange for profit." /r/ktMom743 comments on confirmation requests on fresh android installs:

"There is a section of the Google phone setup "wizard" where the user is presented with a request to install other apps (it's been awhile, I don't remember the wording). If you carefully read each screen during the setup process, you'll probably not get the carrier apps. People who blow through confirming everything on the confirmation screens, will likely end up with the carrier apps.

I also have Pixel 3XL and tend to do periodic clean installs when upgrading. I have to slow down to not blow past that confirmation screen." /u/ThisIsAUsername160 comments that this is particularly common on Samsung but actually it's also LG and many other vendors, especially US carriers:

"They use something called a CSC — it stands for country specific code or carrier specific code. When you put your SIM in, it detects what software / configuration should be installed (carrier bloatware ad well as necessary stuff like APN info and band configuration / combos)."

The issue now has a bug here:
https://issuetracker.google.co...

Submission + - Firefox now shows ads as sponsored address bar suggestions (bleepingcomputer.com) 1

Submitted by waspleg
waspleg writes: Mozilla is now showing ads in the form of sponsored Firefox contextual suggestions when U.S. users type in the URL address bar. Mozilla says the feature was introduced with Firefox 92 in September to fund development and optimization.

Mozilla describes Firefox Suggest contextual suggestions as opt-in, in BleepingComputer's tests and from what users have reported, the feature is on by default.

Furthermore, Firefox doesn't tag the ads displayed via Firefox Suggest. There is no clear way to identify what a sponsored suggestion and what a regular unsponsored suggestion should look like.

The only way Firefox users will know whether a sponsored suggestion is an ad would be by looking at the URL, but, in many cases, the URL is not clearly visible.

Submission + - Yellen defends IRS rule requiring banks to report all transactions over $600 (nypost.com) 4

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Under the proposal, banks would be required to turn over aggregate inflow and outflow numbers annually to the IRS and would cover bank accounts with at least $600 or at least $600 worth of transactions

They’ll spend trillions on bills they haven’t read but want details on how you spent $600

Submission + - iPhone 13 A Repair Nightmare (youtube.com)

Submitted by slack_justyb
slack_justyb writes: Following up on Hugh Jeffreys' iPhone 12 tear down from last year, the right to repair advocate returns to examine the ability to repair the iPhone 13 Pro. Having purchased a blue and a gold iPhone 13 Pro, the task at hand was to swap logic boards, cameras, and displays to see what, if anything, would break. Right after simply swapping logic boards between the two identical phones, Jeffreys discovered the iPhone 13's software locks to non-authorized repair.

After powering on, there are several messages from the Settings app. Unlocking the phone displays an important camera and display message, forced to tap Learn More, it says these parts are unable to be verified as genuine Apple components. We also see an unable to activate Face ID message. Tapping Learn More on any of these messages will take you to Apple's website where it recommends to service your phone at Apple. This is what we saw with the iPhone 12, however the 13 takes it a step further. With even more issues arising.

The video then covers the parts of the setting app that are disabled, which features within the device become disabled, and how the camera stops functioning correctly, even going as far as refusing to take any picture even though the camera app shows no problem with the camera attached. The latter is corrected with a software update to the iPhone 13 that simply stops allowing the camera from functioning completely as opposed to showing a working camera and not taking a picture. Showing that the issues still remain, even after factory reset via the iTunes program.

Swapping the parts back into their original devices shows everything working properly once again. Clearly indicating that like the iPhone 12, the components' serial numbers are paired to logic boards, but with even more visible breaking in the software and being outright locked out from some functions in this iteration of iPhone. Instead of Apple attempting to undo the unfriendliness from iPhone 12, it has opted instead to make hostility to user repair-ability even more visible.

I might have spent $3,400 on these two phones but I truly don't believe they belong to me. Even something as common as a display replacement will cause other functions to stop working correctly. I am disappointed that these software locks that I brought to light last year have only gotten worse.

Submission + - The NSA and CIA Use Ad Blockers Because Online Advertising Is So Dangerous (vice.com)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: Lots of people who use ad blockers say they do it to block malicious ads that can sometimes hack their devices or harvest sensitive information on them. It turns out, the NSA, CIA, and other agencies in the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) are also blocking ads potentially for the same sorts of reasons. The IC, which also includes the parts of the FBI, DEA, and DHS, and various DoD elements, has deployed ad-blocking technology on a wide scale. "The IC has implemented network-based ad-blocking technologies and uses information from several layers, including Domain Name System information, to block unwanted and malicious advertising content," the CIO recently told Wyden's office, according to the letter.

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