December 2016 – Page 2 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Nevada site bug leaks medical marijuana applicant data

Nevada residents applying to sell medical marijuana got just got an unpleasant surprise. The state’s Department of Health and Human Services has confirmed that a vulnerability in a website portal leaked the data of more than 11, 700 applicants, including their driver’s license and social security numbers. Officials have taken down the relevant site until they fix the flaw, but there’s a concern that fraudsters might have seen the info and used it for malicious purposes. The scale of the leak might be modest. A spokesperson tells ZDNet that the data represented just a “portion” of one data base among several. And when Nevada voted to legalize medical marijuana in 2000, it’s possible that some of the information is outdated. Even so, this underscores a common problem with government data: frequently, agencies are their own worst enemies thanks to avoidable security holes and imperfect policies. Source: ZDNet

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Nevada site bug leaks medical marijuana applicant data

Windows 10 Getting a Game Mode That Would Improve Game Performance – Report

Microsoft may have plans to improve gaming experience on Windows 10. The speculation comes after long time watcher @h0x0d found a new “gamemode.dll” in the latest Windows 10 developer build, reports GameSpot. The feature appears to allow Windows 10 to adjust CPU and GPU resources when running a game to allocate more power for the game that’s running instead of toward any background apps. From the article: The feature will reportedly launch as part of the Creators update and will be enabled for Windows Insider users soon. What’s unclear is exactly which games this is compatible with. It’s possible it could be limited to only to those downloaded from the Windows Store, or it might be much more far-reaching. We should know more once Windows Insiders testers get their hands on the feature. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Windows 10 Getting a Game Mode That Would Improve Game Performance – Report

Takata expected to settle deadly airbag scandal for $1 billion

For their part in the largest US auto recall ever , the Takata Corporation is expected to pay up to a $1 billion financial penalty and plead guilty to criminal misconduct, the Wall Street Journal reports today . The National Highway Highway Traffic Safety Administration recalled some 42 million vehicles in the US alone after discovering Takata’s faulty airbag systems could deteriorate over time and risk causing an explosion of hot metal shrapnel upon inflation. The Takata systems were responsible for 11 deaths and over 100 injuries worldwide. In addition to the criminal misconduct charges, prosecutors at the US Justice Department may also try to hit the company with wire fraud, claiming Takata faked test information and intentionally hid information about the dangerous airbags. While the settlement is not finalized yet, the Journal notes that Takata will like be allowed to pay part of the penalty up front and spread the rest out over time. The final cost could range anywhere from the “high hundreds of millions” up to a billion and the Justice Department is eager to wrap up the case in January before the new administration takes over.

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Takata expected to settle deadly airbag scandal for $1 billion

Android Ransomware Infects LG Smart TV, Company ‘Refuses’ To Help

Security firms have been warning us for more than a year about the possibility of Android malware jumping from phones and tablets to other Android-powered devices, such smart TVs. The latest incident involving ransomware on a smart TV involves software engineer Darren Cauthon, who revealed that the LG smart TV of one of his family members was infected with ransomware right on Christmas day. What’s worse? He claims LG wouldn’t help him with perform factory reset of the device. From a report: Based on a screenshot Cauthon posted online, the smart TV appears to be infected with a version of the Cyber. Police ransomware, also known as FLocker, Frantic Locker, or Dogspectus. The infected TV is one of the last generations of LG smart TVs that ran Google TV, a smart TV platform developed by Google together with Intel, Sony, and Logitech. Google TV launched in 2010, but Google discontinued the project in June 2014. In the meantime, LG has moved on from Google TV, and the company’s TVs now run WebOS. Cauthon says he tried to reset the TV to factory settings, but the reset procedure available online didn’t work. When the software engineer contacted LG, the company told him to visit one of their service centers, where one of its employees could reset his TV. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Android Ransomware Infects LG Smart TV, Company ‘Refuses’ To Help

Bigger Than Mirai: Leet Botnet Delivers 650 Gbps DDoS Attack

Reader Mark Wilson writes: Earlier in the year, a huge DDoS attack was launched on Krebs on Security. Analysis showed that the attack pelted servers with 620 Gbps, and there were fears that the release of the Mirai source code used to launch the assault would lead to a rise in large-scale DDoS attacks. Welcome Leet Botnet. In the run-up to Christmas, security firm Imperva managed to fend off a 650 Gbps DDoS attack. But this was nothing to do with Mirai; it is a completely new form of malware, but is described as “just as powerful as the most dangerous one to date”. The concern for 2017 is that “it’s about to get a lot worse”. Clearly proud of the work put into the malware, the creator or creators saw fit to sign it. Analysis of the attack showed that the TCP Options header of the SYN packets used spelled out l33t, hence the Leet Botnet name. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Bigger Than Mirai: Leet Botnet Delivers 650 Gbps DDoS Attack

CyanogenMod Is Dead, and Its Successor is Lineage OS

CyanogenMod was the biggest, most widely used custom Android ROM . Now, it has been discontinued, due in part to internal conflicts within Cyanogen Inc . Don’t worry, though: A new fork of CyanogenMod called Lineage OS is taking up the mantle, and it will keep most of what you loved about CyanogenMod. Read more…

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CyanogenMod Is Dead, and Its Successor is Lineage OS

Make Your Own File Uploader to Add Files to a Raspberry Pi From Anywhere

For most modern computers, you can add a file from anywhere using a service like Dropbox or Google Drive. That doesn’t quite exist on a Raspberry Pi, but Instructables user audstanley put together a guide to make your own web uploader. Read more…

Ford’s new self-driving Fusion almost looks like a regular car

Ford has shown the first images of its new self-driving Fusion Hybrid with a more powerful computer and improved, better-integrated sensors. It uses an upgraded version of the Fusion Hybrid platform, bolstered by self-driving hardware, a large new computer and electrical controls that “are close to production-ready, ” the company said in a press release . It also packs lower-profile LIDAR units that appear to be the ” Puck ” models from Velodyne, a company in which it recently invested $150 million . Cameras and other bits are smoothly built into the roof, making the hybrid less “hey, look at me, I’m a self-driving car” than other models. By contrast, the last autonomous Fusion model used since 2013 featured no less than four bulky LIDAR units. Ford was able to cut the number to two, while still giving the vehicle wider and better targeted vision. The hefty computer installed in the trunk (see the video, below) can process a terabyte of data in an hour to do navigation, object recognition, AI and computer vision, among other chores. The new Fusion is a step towards a “high-volume, fully autonomous SAE level 4-capable vehicle by 2021, ” a goal Ford revealed earlier this year. (SAE level-4 cars are fully autonomous in set geographic zones like college campuses, while level 5 means a vehicle can drive anywhere by itself.) The automaker plans to build 90 of the vehicles and test them in Arizona, California and Michigan over the next few years. Source: Ford

Overclocker Pushes Intel Core i7-7700K Past 7GHz Using Liquid Nitrogen

MojoKid writes from a report via HotHardware: If you’ve had any doubts of Intel’s upcoming Kaby Lake processor’s capabilities with respect to overclocking, don’t fret. It’s looking like even the most dedicated overclockers are going to have a blast with this series. Someone recently got a hold of an Intel Core i7-7700K chip and decided to take it for an overclocking spin. Interestingly, the motherboard used is not one of the upcoming series designed for Kaby Lake, but the chip was instead overclocked on a Z170 motherboard from ASRock (Z170M OC Formula). That bodes well for those planning to snag a Kaby Lake CPU and would rather not have to upgrade their motherboard as well. With liquid nitrogen cooling the processor, this particular chip peaked at just over 7GHz, which helped deliver a SuperPi 32M time of 4m 20s, and a wPrime 1024M time of 1m 33s. It’s encouraging to see the chip breaking this clock speed, even with extreme methods, since it’s a potential relative indicator of how much headroom will be available for overclocking with more standard cooling solutions. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Overclocker Pushes Intel Core i7-7700K Past 7GHz Using Liquid Nitrogen

Dashcam Footage of Tesla Predicting Accident Seconds Before it Happens

We’re now starting to see some of the incredible safety gains offered by sensor-equipped Teslas. An over-the-air software upgrade from September allowed first-generation Teslas to have something like X-ray vision; the radar waves can bounce around and underneath the car in front of you, providing the computer with information on what the driver cannot see–i.e., the car in front of the car in front of you. This dashcam video from a Tesla driving down a Dutch highway was uploaded just yesterday. The car’s occupants cannot clearly see that an accident is brewing–but the Tesla does, sounding a chime and automatically applying the brakes to prevent a pile-up: I also love how the father prudently, immediately checks what is going on behind their stopped car before getting out to help. This video is a prime example of both computer and human smarts in action. Transportation website Electrek reports that no one, including the folks involved in the rollover, was injured.