Daily Archives: November 25, 2015

Hilton hotels hit by cyber attack

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US hotel chain Hilton revealed Tuesday that hackers infected some of its point-of-sale computer systems with malware crafted to steal credit card information.

Hilton would not disclose whether data was taken, but advised anyone who used payment cards at Hilton Worldwide hotels between November 18 and December 5 of last year or April 21 and July 27 of this year to watch for irregular activity on credit or debit card accounts.

Malicious code that infected registers at hotels had the potential to take cardholders’ names along with card numbers, security codes and expiration dates, Hilton said in an online post.

Source: Hilton hotels hit by cyber attack

samyk/magspoof · GitHub

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Allows you to store all of your credit cards and magstripes in one device Works on traditional magstripe readers wirelessly (no NFC/RFID required) Can disable Chip-and-PIN (code not included) Correctly predicts Amex credit card numbers + expirations from previous card number (code not included) Supports all three magnetic stripe tracks, and even supports Track 1+2 simultaneously Easy to build using Arduino or other common parts MagSpoof is a device that can spoof/emulate any

Source: samyk/magspoof · GitHub

New IBM tech lets apps authenticate you without personal data

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Identity Mixer is designed to protect users’ privacy by focusing just on the essentials of the proof. Thanks to a set of algorithms based on cryptography work done at IBM Research, the tool allows developers to build apps that can authenticate users’ identities using what’s known as a “zero-knowledge proof” that collects no personal data.

Specifically, Identity Mixer authenticates users by asking them to provide a public key. Each user has a single secret key, and it corresponds with multiple public keys, or identities. Each transaction a user makes receives a different public key and leaves no privacy “breadcrumbs.”

So, in the streaming service example, users would have both identity and subscription credentials stored in a personal Credential Wallet. To access a movie, they could use that electronic wallet to prove that they’re entitled to watch the selected content without having to expose any other details.

The result, according to IBM, is that users’ privacy is better preserved, and the service provider is spared the need to protect and secure all that extraneous data.

Source: New IBM tech lets apps authenticate you without personal data

Satellite wars – an analysis of the arms race in space

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Satellites are being weaponised, with the anti-satellite missles, manoevering satellites that can hit other objects and satellites that hack into feeds, giving false information to the receiver. Countriies have been holding on to a balance for ages, but in the last 10 or so years, countries have been gradually upping their game.

Source: Satellite wars – FT.com