More than two months after release, it’s still not possible to pirate Just Cause 3. The same is true for Rise of the Tomb Raider, released for PC in late January. Cracking computer games used to be measured in hours or days, but now, it’s turning into weeks and months. The nature of piracy is changing in a big way.
Source: The Anti-Piracy Tech That’s Giving Hackers Fits
Using nanostructured glass, scientists from the University’s Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) have developed the recording and retrieval processes of five dimensional (5D) digital data by femtosecond laser writing.
The storage allows unprecedented properties including 360 TB/disc data capacity, thermal stability up to 1,000°C and virtually unlimited lifetime at room temperature (13.8 billion years at 190°C ) opening a new era of eternal data archiving
Source: Eternal 5D data storage could record the history of humankind
The following map is a gridded cartogram visualisation of global flight tracks taken from the OpenFlights database. The map distorts the land area by the number of flights that pass a certain space
Source: Air Spaces: Where the Planes Fly – Views of the World
Fraudsters, armed with stolen social security numbers and other personal information on nearly half a million people, used malware to systematically request PINs corresponding to those taxpayers, allowing the crooks to potentially file paperwork on their behalf. The swindlers could put their own bank account details on the tax returns, thus channelling people’s rebates into the thieves’ pockets.
“Using personal data stolen elsewhere outside the IRS, identity thieves used malware in an attempt to generate E-file PINs for stolen social security numbers. An E-file PIN is used in some instances to electronically file a tax return,” the IRS said in a statement today.
“Based on our review, we identified unauthorized attempts involving approximately 464,000 unique SSNs, of which 101,000 SSNs were used to successfully access an E-file PIN.”
Source: Crims unleashed IRS-stabbing malware in bid to rob 464,000 people
Using a combination of ultrafast chemical fixation and cryogenic storage, it is the first demonstration that near perfect, long-term structural preservation of an intact mammalian brain is achievable.
Source: The Brain Preservation Foundation – Small Mammal BPF Prize Winning Announcement
Renewal of cryogenics?
As of March 15, 2016, we will no longer be supporting the Picasa desktop application. For those who have already downloaded this—or choose to do so before this date—it will continue to work as it does today, but we will not be developing it further, and there will be no future updates. If you choose to switch to Google Photos, you can continue to upload photos and videos using the desktop uploader at photos.google.com/apps.
Source: Picasa Blog
So download and keep the installer somewhere safe!
How about this for bizarre bug of the week: the latest version of Adobe Creative Cloud deletes the first hidden directory in root directories on Macs.
That’s bad news for users of BackBlaze: the backup software stores a .bzvol folder in the top level of every drive it backs up, and uses these folders to store information about the drives. Adobe’s Creative Cloud app wipes away these directories, leaving BackBlaze’s users faced with “your drive is no longer backed up” errors.
Source: ‘Adobe Creative Cloud update ate my backup!’
Computer, smartphone and network hacking by UK intelligence agency GCHQ is legal, a security tribunal has said.
The Investigatory Powers Tribunal ruled on Friday that computer network exploitation (CNE) – which can include remotely activating microphones and cameras on electronic devices such as iPhones without the owner’s knowledge – is legal.
The case, which was heard in 2015, was the first time that GCHQ admitted to carrying out hacking in the UK and overseas. Previously, their policy had been to “neither confirm nor deny”.
[…]
During proceedings, GCHQ admitted that it carries out CNE outside the UK, and that in 2013 about a fifth of its intelligence reports contained information derived from hacking.
Source: GCHQ hacking phones and computers is legal, says top UK court
So is there any kind of warrant procedure at all before they start hacking private individual or business computers?
This has been done in the past, but the computing power required has made it impractical. A new algorithm makes it possible to do this with much less computational grunt.
The Vodafone network does not generate random TMSI numbers, which allows you to copy them and thereby listen in to other ongoing conversations. The network won’t throw off duplicates. If you have an IMSI catcher you can exploit this. It does, however, put the phone into conference call mode, which shows up on the screen. Considering your screen is mostly next to your ear, most people won’t notice.
Source: Kwetsbaarheid in Vodafone-netwerk maakt gesprekken kopieerbaar | PCM
We present an integrated tissue–organ printer (ITOP)
It can print an ear with enough structural integrity to be transplanted
It looks nice 🙂 Better than a todo list, better than a scrum board, software kept simple.
Download it here
We present a new human-computer interface that is based on decoding of attention through pupillometry. Our method builds on the recent finding that covert visual attention affects the pupillary light response: Your pupil constricts when you covertly (without looking at it) attend to a bright, compared to a dark, stimulus. In our method, participants covertly attend to one of several letters with oscillating brightness. Pupil size reflects the brightness of the selected letter, which allows us–with high accuracy and in real time–to determine which letter the participant intends to select. The performance of our method is comparable to the best covert-attention brain-computer interfaces to date, and has several advantages: no movement other than pupil-size change is required; no physical contact is required (i.e. no electrodes); it is easy to use; and it is reliable. Potential applications include: communication with totally locked-in patients, training of sustained attention, and ultra-secure password input.
The most recent finding from New Horizons show that ice bergs have broken off from the hills surrounding the Sputnik Planum, a glacier of nitrogen ice, and are floating slowly across its surface, eventually to cluster together in places like the Challenger Colles, informally named after the crew of the space shuttle Challenger, which was lost just over 30 years ago. The feature is an especially high concentration of icebergs, measuring 37 by 22 miles. The icebergs float on the nitrogen ice plain because water ice is less dense than nitrogen ice.
Source: NASA announces that Pluto has icebergs floating on glaciers of nitrogen ice
Today at the Security Analyst Summit, researchers from Kaspersky Lab Global Research & Analysis Team unveiled details on two new criminal operations that have borrowed heavily from targeted nation-state attacks, and also shared an update on a resurgent Carbanak gang, which last year, it was reported, had allegedly stolen upwards of $1 billion from more than 100 financial companies.
The heaviest hitter among the newly discovered gangs is an ongoing campaign, mostly confined to Russia, known as Metel. This gang targets machines that have access to money transactions, such as call center and support machines, and once they are compromised, the attackers use that access to automate the rollback of ATM transactions. As the attackers empty ATM after ATM—Metel was found inside 30 organizations—the balances on the stolen accounts remained untouched.
Source: Carbanak 2.0, Metel, GCMAN Borrow from APT Attacks | Threatpost | The first stop for security news
As promised, hacker publishes personal information of 20,000 FBI agents, allegedly stolen from a hacked Department of Justice computer.
Source: Hacker Publishes Personal Info of 20,000 FBI Agents | Motherboard
According to France’s minister of ecology and energy, Ségolène Royal, the tender for this project is already issued under the “Positive Energy” initiative and the test for the solar panels will begin by this spring.The photo voltaic solar panels called “Wattway” which will be used in the project is jointly developed by the French infrastructure firm “Colas” and the National Institute for Solar Energy. The specialty of “Wattway” is that its very sturdy and can let heavy trucks pass through it, also offering a good grip to avoid an accident. Interestingly, this project will not remove road surfaces but instead, the solar panels will be glued to the existing pavement.
Source: France to build 1000km of road with solar panels – Solar Crunch
The tool allows you to browse a lot of the data (and I will be adding even more over time) that is accessible through the Unifi Controller API. The tool currently only supports Unifi Controller versions 4.x.x. and requires a server running an apache2 web server with php and curl installed
Source: Unifi API browser tool: updates and discussion – Ubiquiti Networks Community
When practicing and learning a new skill, making slight changes during repeat practice sessions may help people master the skill faster than practicing the task in precisely the same way, Johns Hopkins researchers report.
Source: Want to Learn a New Skill? Faster? Change Up Your Practice Sessions – 01/28/2016
Winning a competition engenders subsequent unrelated unethical behavior. Five studies reveal that after a competition has taken place winners behave more dishonestly than competition losers. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrate that winning a competition increases the likelihood of winners to steal money from their counterparts in a subsequent unrelated task. Studies 3a and 3b demonstrate that the effect holds only when winning means performing better than others (i.e., determined in reference to others) but not when success is determined by chance or in reference to a personal goal. Finally, study 4 demonstrates that a possible mechanism underlying the effect is an enhanced sense of entitlement among competition winners.
Source: Winning a competition predicts dishonest behavior
Enterprise tech distributor Arrow Inc will take a $13m charge on the chin after a fraudster posing as a company exec transferred money from the corporate bank account to an external one.
[…]
Deloitte has previously highlighted what it reckoned is the growing threat from ‘fake president frauds, “affecting many companies at the moment”.
It involves convincing an employee to make emergency bank transfers to a third party, “in order to obey an alleged order of a leader under the pretext of a debt to pay, a provision in contract or a deposit”.
Organised crims are suspected of perpetrating these scams, “with a complete knowledge regarding the market, structure and customers of the companies they are attacking”.
Source: Arrow: Fraudsters impersonated one of our execs to steal money • The Channel
Benson Leung, an engineer on Google’s Pixel team, was doing God’s work by risking his Chromebook Pixel, which charges via USB-C, to test every single USB-C to USB-A cord available to general consumers. One crappy cord, and his $1500 computer would be fried.
Source: Cheap USB-C Cables Could Kill Your Phone or Laptop
There’s a link to a spreadsheet of all his reviews here
Researchers have successfully demonstrated how it is possible to interface graphene – a two-dimensional form of carbon – with neurons, or nerve cells, while maintaining the integrity of these vital cells. The work may be used to build graphene-based electrodes that can safely be implanted in the brain, offering promise for the restoration of sensory functions for amputee or paralysed patients, or for individuals with motor disorders such as epilepsy or Parkinson’s disease.
Source: Graphene shown to safely interact with neurons in the brain
MERICAN AND BRITISH INTELLIGENCE secretly tapped into live video feeds from Israeli drones and fighter jets, monitoring military operations in Gaza, watching for a potential strike against Iran, and keeping tabs on the drone technology Israel exports around the world.
Under a classified program code-named “Anarchist,” the U.K.’s Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, working with the National Security Agency, systematically targeted Israeli drones from a mountaintop on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. GCHQ files provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden include a series of “Anarchist snapshots” — thumbnail images from videos recorded by drone cameras. The files also show location data mapping the flight paths of the aircraft. In essence, U.S. and British agencies stole a bird’s-eye view from the drones.
Source: Israeli Drone Feeds Hacked By British and American Intelligence
