The cyber tool allowed the small Gulf country to monitor hundreds of targets beginning in 2016, from the Emir of Qatar and a senior Turkish official to a Nobel Peace laureate human-rights activist in Yemen, according to five former operatives and program documents reviewed by Reuters. The sources interviewed by Reuters were not Emirati citizens. Read more about UAE used cyber super-weapon to spy on iPhones of foes[…]
Facebook has yet again vowed to “do better” after it was caught secretly bypassing Apple’s privacy rules to pay adults and teenagers to install a data-slurping iOS app on their phones. The increasingly worthless promises of the social media giant have fallen on deaf ears however: on Wednesday, Apple revoked the company’s enterprise certificate for Read more about Furious Apple revokes Facebook’s enty app cert after Zuck’s crew abused it to slurp private data[…]
In mid-January, Qualys, another security firm, released details about three flaws affecting systemd-journald, a systemd component that handles the collection and storage of log data. Patches for the vulnerabilities – CVE-2018-16864, CVE-2018-16865, and CVE-2018-16866 – have been issued by various Linux distributions. Exploitation of these code flaws allows an attacker to alter system memory in Read more about Defanged SystemD exploit code for security holes now out in the wild[…]
Earlier this month, security researcher Troy Hunt identified the first tranche of that mega-dump, named Collection #1 by its anonymous creator, a set of cobbled-together breached databases Hunt said represented 773 million unique usernames and passwords. Now other researchers have obtained and analyzed an additional vast database called Collections #2–5, which amounts to 845 gigabytes Read more about Hackers Are Passing Around a Megaleak of 2.2 Billion Records[…]
Sophisticated hackers have long exploited flaws in SS7, a protocol used by telecom companies to coordinate how they route texts and calls around the world. Those who exploit SS7 can potentially track phones across the other side of the planet, and intercept text messages and phone calls without hacking the phone itself. This activity was Read more about Criminals Are Tapping into the Phone Network Backbone using known insecure SS7 to Empty Bank Accounts[…]
Airbus has admitted that a “cyber incident” resulted in unidentified people getting their hands on “professional contact and IT identification details” of some Europe-based employees. The company said in a brief statement published late last night that the breach is “being thoroughly investigated by Airbus’ experts”. The company has its own infosec business unit, Stormguard. Read more about Personal data slurped in Airbus hack – but firm’s industrial smarts could be what crooks are after[…]
Desperate for data on its competitors, Facebook has been secretly paying people to install a “Facebook Research” VPN that lets the company suck in all of a user’s phone and web activity, similar to Facebook’s Onavo Protect app that Apple banned in June and that was removed in August. Facebook sidesteps the App Store and Read more about Facebook pays teens to install VPN that spies on them[…]
The Remako HD Graphics Mod is a mod that completely revamps the pre-rendered backgrounds of the classic JRPG Final Fantasy VII. All of the backgrounds now have 4 times the resolution of the original. Using state of the art AI neural networks, this upscaling tries to emulate the detail the original renders would have had. This helps Read more about Final Fantasy VII background graphics upscaled 4x by AI[…]
Sonoff B1, lights and shades 12 Replies Six months ago I was reviewing the AiThinker AiLight, a great looking light bulb with an embedded ESP8266EX microcontroller, driven by a MY9291 LED driver. Just before summer IteadStudio released it’s Sonoff B1 [Itead.cc] light bulb, heavily inspired (probably same manufacturer) by the AiLight, at least on the Read more about Custom firmware for lights allows you to control them with Homeassistant and more controllers[…]
As it turns out, giving every gadget you own access to your personal information and Internet connection can lead to unintended consequences. Who knew, right? But if you need yet another example of why trusting your home appliances with your secrets is potentially a bad idea, [Limited Results] is here to make sure you spend Read more about Don’t Toss That Bulb, It Knows Your Password[…]
To advance the state-of-the-art in speech neuroprosthesis, we combined the recent advances in deep learning with the latest innovations in speech synthesis technologies to reconstruct closed-set intelligible speech from the human auditory cortex. We investigated the dependence of reconstruction accuracy on linear and nonlinear (deep neural network) regression methods and the acoustic representation that is Read more about Towards reconstructing intelligible speech from the human auditory cortex[…]
Medical records and contact information belonging to thousands of HIV-positive Singaporeans and foreign visitors to the southeast Asian city state have been leaked online, according to an alert issued by the country’s Ministry of Health (MOH). In a statement on its website, the ministry said the confidential health information of some 14,200 individuals diagnosed with Read more about Data Leak in Singapore Exposes HIV Status of 14,000 Locals and Foreign Visitors[…]
Apple is like a building contractor you hire to redo your kitchen, the tech giant has argued in an attempt to explain why it shouldn’t have to pay customers for slowing down their iPhones. Addressing a bunch of people trying to sue it for damages, the iGiant’s lawyers told [PDF] a California court this month: Read more about Apple: You can’t sue us for slowing down your iPhones because we’re like a contractor in your house[…]
There was chaos on the internet late last night after 9to5Mac discovered a bug in Apple’s FaceTime video calling app that let you hear other person’s voice even before they answered your call. According to the report, a user running iOS 12.1 could potentially exploit the vulnerability to eavesdrop on others through a group FaceTime call. Read more about Apple temporarily disables group FaceTime to fix a bug that lets you eavesdrop on your contacts[…]
From one little pill to impersonating a cat-owning site admin Source: I helped catch Silk Road boss Ross Ulbricht: Undercover agent tells all • The Register A great read
Most of the data collected by urban planners is messy, complex, and difficult to represent. It looks nothing like the smooth graphs and clean charts of city life in urban simulator games like “SimCity.” A new initiative from Sidewalk Labs, the city-building subsidiary of Google’s parent company Alphabet, has set out to change that. The Read more about Google’s Sidewalk Labs Plans to Package and Sell Location Data on Millions of Cellphones[…]
The Mozilla Foundation has announced its intent to reduce the ability of websites and other online services to track users of its Firefox browser around the internet. At this stage, Moz’s actions are baby steps. In support of its decision in late 2018 to reduce the amount of tracking it permits, the organisation has now Read more about Firefox cracks down on creepy web trackers, holds supercookies over fire whilst Chrome kills ad blockers[…]
Bescherming van de privacy is een breed gedeelde zorg. Maar liefst 94 procent van de Nederlands maakt zich zorgen over de bescherming van zijn persoonsgegevens. Een op drie mensen maakt zich zelfs veel of zeer veel zorgen. Dat blijkt uit onderzoek dat de Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens (AP) liet doen in het kader van de Dag van Read more about 94% of Dutch worried about their privacy[…]
Smartphone users in South Korea will soon be able to have the option of deleting unnecessary pre-installed bloatware, thanks to new industry guidelines commencing in April. “The move aims to rectify an abnormal practice that causes inconvenience to smartphone users and causes unfair competition among industry players,” said the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Read more about South Korea rules pre-installed phone bloatware must be deletable[…]
A new 3D-printing technique could render a three-dimensional object in minutes instead of hours—at up to 100 times current speeds. The experimental approach uses a vat of resin and some clever tricks with UV and blue LED lights (no lasers needed) to accelerate the printing process. The technique looks almost like a time-reverse film loop of an object Read more about This 3D Printing Technique Is 100 Times Faster Than Standard 3D Printers[…]
Now, we introduce our StarCraft II program AlphaStar, the first Artificial Intelligence to defeat a top professional player. In a series of test matches held on 19 December, AlphaStar decisively beat Team Liquid’s Grzegorz “MaNa” Komincz, one of the world’s strongest professional StarCraft players, 5-0, following a successful benchmark match against his team-mate Dario “TLO” Wünsch. The matches took place Read more about Deepmind AI beats top Starcraft pros[…]
HMRC’s database of Brits’ voiceprints has grown by 2 million since June – but campaign group Big Brother Watch has claimed success as 160,000 people turned the taxman’s requests down. The Voice ID scheme, which requires taxpayers to say a key phrase that is recorded to create a digital signature, was introduced in January 2017. Read more about Just keep slurping: HMRC adds two million taxpayers’ voices to biometric database – but people are starting to opt-out, now that they can[…]
In a demonstration of “computational periscopy” a US team at Boston University showed they could see details of objects hidden from view by analysing shadows they cast on a nearby wall. Vivek Goyal, an electrical engineer at the university, said that while the work had clear implications for surveillance he hoped it would lead to Read more about Program allows ordinary digital camera to see round corners[…]
If you bled when you brushed your teeth this morning, you might want to get that seen to. We may finally have found the long-elusive cause of Alzheimer’s disease: Porphyromonas gingivalis, the key bacteria in chronic gum disease. That’s bad, as gum disease affects around a third of all people. But the good news is Read more about We may finally know what causes Alzheimer’s – and how to stop it[…]
The Victoria Police are the primary law enforcement agency of Victoria, Australia. With over 16,000 vehicles stolen in Victoria this past year — at a cost of about $170 million — the police department is experimenting with a variety of technology-driven solutions to crackdown on car theft. They call this system BlueNet. To help prevent fraudulent sales of stolen Read more about How to replicate an $86 million license plate recognition and stolen check project in 57 lines of code[…]