Daily Archives: February 22, 2019

spacedesk – extend or duplicate your desktop on a smartphone or tablet

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At least 2 machines are needed to operate spacedesk. These machines must be connected via a Local Area Network (e.g. Ethernet or Wireless) supporting TCP/IP network protocol. Each one of the two machines is running a different spacedesk software:

1. The Primary Machine is a Windows PC, laptop or Surface Pro tablet. It runs the spacedesk DRIVER software. It includes network display server software and display device drivers. This allows to extend or duplicate the Windows Desktop to the screen of another machine over the network.

2. The Secondary Machine runs spacedesk VIEWER program which acts as the secondary display. It can be one (or multiple) of the following:

  • Android tablet or phone (Android VIEWER)
  • Windows PC, laptop or Surface Pro tablet (Windows Desktop application)
  • Apple Mac, iPad or iPhone (iOS VIEWER)
  • Linux PC and a variety of other machines (HTML5 VIEWER)

The network connection between the two machines can be via cable or wireless. If available, a cable is preferred. Cables usually achieve better performance than wireless connections. It can be one (or multiple) of the following:

  • Ethernet cable connecting to a hub
  • Crossover Ethernet cable between two machines
  • USB to Ethernet cable between two machines
  • Phone cable (via USB Tethering)

Source: spacedesk | User Manual

A bit like the Synergy software KVM

Some American Airlines In-Flight TVs Have Cameras In Them watching you, just like Singapore Airlines and Google Nest

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A viral photo showing a camera in a Singapore Airlines in-flight TV display recently caused an uproar online. The image was retweeted hundreds of times, with many people expressing concern about the privacy implications. As it turns out, some seat-back screens in American Airlines’ premium economy class have them, too.

Sri Ray was aboard an American Airlines Boeing 777-200 flight to Tokyo in September 2018 when he noticed something strange: a camera embedded in the seat back of his entertainment system.

Courtesy of Sri Ray

“I am what one would call security paranoid,” said Ray, who was formerly a site reliability engineer at BuzzFeed. “I observe tech in day-to-day life and wonder how a malicious person can use it in bad ways. When I looked at the shiny new screens in the new premium economy cabin of AA, I noticed a small circle at the bottom. Upon closer inspection, it was definitely a camera.”

The cameras are also visible in this June 2017 review of the airline’s premium economy offering by the Points Guy, as well as this YouTube video by Business Traveller magazine.

American Airlines spokesperson Ross Feinstein confirmed to BuzzFeed News that cameras are present on some of the airlines’ in-flight entertainment systems, but said “they have never been activated, and American is not considering using them.” Feinstein added, “Cameras are a standard feature on many in-flight entertainment systems used by multiple airlines. Manufacturers of those systems have included cameras for possible future uses, such as hand gestures to control in-flight entertainment.”

Source: Some American Airlines In-Flight TVs Have Cameras In Them

Experts Find Serious Problems With Switzerland’s Online Voting System

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Switzerland made headlines this month for the transparency of its internet voting system when it launched a public penetration test and bug bounty program to test the resiliency of the system to attack.

But after source code for the software and technical documentation describing its architecture were leaked online last week, critics are already expressing concern about the system’s design and about the transparency around the public test.

Cryptography experts who spent just a few hours examining the leaked code say the system is a poorly constructed and convoluted maze that makes it difficult to follow what’s going on and effectively evaluate whether the cryptography and other security measures deployed in the system are done properly.

“It is simply not the standard we would expect.”

“Most of the system is split across hundreds of different files, each configured at various levels,” Sarah Jamie Lewis, a former security engineer for Amazon as well as a former computer scientist for England’s GCHQ intelligence agency, told Motherboard. “I’m used to dealing with Java code that runs across different packages and different teams, and this code somewhat defeats even my understanding.”

She said the system uses cryptographic solutions that are fairly new to the field and that have to be implemented in very specific ways to make the system auditable, but the design the programmers chose thwarts this.

“It is simply not the standard we would expect,” she told Motherboard.

Even if the system is designed securely in principle, for it to operate securely in practice, each of its many parts has to be configured correctly or risk creating vulnerabilities that would let an attacker subvert the system and alter votes.

Source: Experts Find Serious Problems With Switzerland’s Online Voting System