March 2017 – Page 11 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

How The FBI Used Geek Squad To Increase Secret Public Surveillance

In 2011 a gynecology doctor took his computer for repairs at Best Buy’s Geek Squad. But the repair technician was a paid FBI informant — one of several working at Geek Squad — and the doctor was ultimately charged with possessing child pornography, according to OC Weekly. An anonymous reader quotes their new report: Recently unsealed records reveal a much more extensive secret relationship than previously known between the FBI and Best Buy’s Geek Squad, including evidence the agency trained company technicians on law-enforcement operational tactics, shared lists of targeted citizens and, to covertly increase surveillance of the public, encouraged searches of computers even when unrelated to a customer’s request for repairs. Assistant United States Attorney M. Anthony Brown last year labeled allegations of a hidden partnership as “wild speculation.” But more than a dozen summaries of FBI memoranda filed inside Orange County’s Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse this month in USA v. Mark Rettenmaier contradict the official line… Other records show how [Geek Squad supervisor Justin] Meade’s job gave him “excellent and frequent” access for “several years” to computers belonging to unwitting Best Buy customers, though agents considered him “underutilized” and wanted him “tasked” to search devices “on a more consistent basis”… evidence demonstrates company employees routinely snooped for the agency, contemplated “writing a software program” specifically to aid the FBI in rifling through its customers’ computers without probable cause for any crime that had been committed, and were “under the direction and control of the FBI.” The doctor’s lawyer argues Best Buy became an unofficial wing of the FBI by offering $500 for every time they found evidence leading to criminal charges. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read the article:
How The FBI Used Geek Squad To Increase Secret Public Surveillance

Proof Daylight Saving Time Is Dumb, Dangerous, and Costly

From a report on Bloomberg: The case for daylight saving time has been shaky for a while. The biannual time change was originally implemented to save energy. Yet dozens of studies around the world have found that changing the clocks has either minuscule or non-existent effects on energy use. The latest research suggests the time change can be harmful to our health and cost us money. The suffering of the spring time change begins with the loss of an hour of sleep. That might not seem like a big deal, but researchers have found it can be dangerous to mess with sleep schedules. Car accidents, strokes, and heart attacks spike in the days after the March time change. It turns out that judges, sleep deprived by daylight saving, impose harsher sentences. Some of the last defenders of daylight saving time have been a cluster of business groups who assume the change helps stimulate consumer spending. That’s not true either, according to recent analysis of 380 million bank and credit-card transactions by the JPMorgan Chase Institute. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

View original post here:
Proof Daylight Saving Time Is Dumb, Dangerous, and Costly

Mumps Outbreak Spreads Across the Nation

Back in January , the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that it was getting involved with a large outbreak of mumps in Washington state. At the time, it was uncertain if the problem was isolated to the region. It’s now becoming clear that the uptick of infections is occurring across the United… Read more…

Google Has Finally Killed the CAPTCHA

CAPTCHA’s are an irritating but necessary evil. The system that is used to verify whether or not a user is human has been around a while and it had to evolve because machines were getting better at reading the text than humans. With its latest iteration, Google says you’ll no longer have to input anything at all. Read more…

View article:
Google Has Finally Killed the CAPTCHA

PlayStation VR horror title lets friends mess with your game

Most solo virtual reality games don’t make for great entertainment at parties… not unless your definition of fun involves making everyone wait their turn. Firesprite, however, has a way for your friends to join in. Its upcoming PlayStation VR sci-fi horror title The Persistence will include a mobile companion app that lets nearby friends see the game map. Your pals can make your life easier by steering you toward items, or create havoc by running you toward threats — this is one of the few horror games where the people on your couch may be as much of a hazard as the virtual enemies. There are a few other twists that could help The Persistence stand out. The ill-fated ship is procedurally generated with each new life, so you can’t play the game by memory. And there are accommodations for VR beyond the phone app, too, such as teleportation. If there’s a problem at this early stage, it’s that there’s no known release date. You could be waiting quite a while to see whether the promising concept works well in practice. Source: PlayStation Blog

Follow this link:
PlayStation VR horror title lets friends mess with your game

Intel buys self-driving tech firm Mobileye for $15.3 billion

Intel’s recent work with MobilEye on self-driving cars must have gone well, because the chip giant is buying its Jerusalem-based partner for $15.3 billion. The deal was first reported by Israeli business site The Marker but has now been confirmed by the two companies. MobilEye is one of the largest players in autonomous vehicle tech and was in the news recently over a spat with Tesla following a fatal Model S crash in Florida. However, it recently teamed with Intel on BMW’s iNext self-driving platform, which the automaker aims to put into service by 2021. The technology they’re working on isn’t just for BMW vehicles, though. The idea is to build a “scalable architecture” that can be used by any automaker, especially if they don’t want to build their own tech from scratch. As such, it could become a huge business for MobilEye, which may help explain the huge acquisition price. The deal is one of the largest acquisitions of an Israeli-based tech company ever. Despite a recent PC renaissance thanks to Microsoft’s Surface and other devices, desktops are still losing ground to mobile devices. That has affected Intel’s bottom line while benefiting companies like Qualcomm, which makes the chips used in many smartphones and tablets. The situation has forced Intel into other areas like wearables, connected homes and “internet of things” devices, none of which has exactly taken off yet. BREAKING: Intel to acquire Mobileye for $63.54 per share in cash, or about $15.3 billion. $INTC $MBLY — CNBC Now (@CNBCnow) March 13, 2017 Autonomous cars, on the other hand, are one of the hottest things in tech, with virtually every automaker, tech company and even peripheral firms like Uber and Lyft working on (and fighting about ) them. Even if fully autonomous cars don’t work out as planned (some critics think it’s a distant pipe dream ), autopilot tech that aids drivers and prevents accidents is available now on Tesla EVs and other cars. Ironically, MobilEye’s early success was due in large part to Tesla, and that partnership dissolved in a not-very-friendly way. Via: The Marker Source: Intel / Mobileye (.PDF)

Read the article:
Intel buys self-driving tech firm Mobileye for $15.3 billion

The World’s Most Wanted Hacker Sounds Like a Goddamn James Bond Villain

Meet Evgeniy Mikhailovich Bogachev. He enjoys automobiles, boat adventures, money, and aggravated identity theft. He’s also wanted by the FBI with a bounty on his head of $3 million, the highest ever for a cybercriminal. Seriously, this dude is straight out of an Ian Fleming novel. Read more…

See the article here:
The World’s Most Wanted Hacker Sounds Like a Goddamn James Bond Villain

Malware found preinstalled on 38 Android phones used by 2 companies

Enlarge (credit: portal gda ) A commercial malware scanner used by businesses has recently detected an outbreak of malware that came preinstalled on more than three dozen Android devices. An assortment of malware was found on 38 Android devices belonging to two unidentified companies. This is according to a blog post published Friday by Check Point Software Technologies, maker of a mobile threat prevention app. The malicious apps weren’t part of the official ROM firmware supplied by the phone manufacturers but were added later somewhere along the supply chain. In six of the cases, the malware was installed to the ROM using system privileges, a technique that requires the firmware to be completely reinstalled for the phone to be disinfected. “This finding proves that, even if a user is extremely careful, never clicks a malicious link, or downloads a fishy app, he can still be infected by malware without even knowing it,” Check Point Mobile Threat Researcher Daniel Padon told Ars. “This should be a concern for all mobile users.” Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Visit link:
Malware found preinstalled on 38 Android phones used by 2 companies

Intel Security Releases Detection Tool For EFI Rootkits After CIA Leak

After WikiLeaks revealed data exposing information about the CIA’s arsenal of hacking tools, Intel Security has released a tool that allows users to check if their computer’s low-level system firmware has been modified and contains unauthorized code. PCWorld reports: The release comes after CIA documents leaked Tuesday revealed that the agency has developed EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) rootkits for Apple’s Macbooks. The documents from CIA’s Embedded Development Branch (EDB) mention an OS X “implant” called DerStarke that includes a kernel code injection module dubbed Bokor and an EFI persistence module called DarkMatter. In addition to DarkMatter, there is a second project in the CIA EDB documents called QuarkMatter that is also described as a “Mac OS X EFI implant which uses an EFI driver stored on the EFI system partition to provide persistence to an arbitrary kernel implant.” The Advanced Threat Research team at Intel Security has created a new module for its existing CHIPSEC open-source framework to detect rogue EFI binaries. CHIPSEC consists of a set of command-line tools that use low-level interfaces to analyze a system’s hardware, firmware, and platform components. It can be run from Windows, Linux, macOS, and even from an EFI shell. The new CHIPSEC module allows the user to take a clean EFI image from the computer manufacturer, extract its contents and build a whitelist of the binary files inside. It can then compare that list against the system’s current EFI or against an EFI image previously extracted from a system. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chrome 57 Arrives With CSS Grid Layout and API Improvements

Google has launched Chrome 57 for Windows, Mac, and Linux. From a report on VentureBeat: Among the additions is CSS Grid Layout, API improvements, and other new features for developers. You can update to the latest version now using the browser’s built-in silent updater, or download it directly from google.com/chrome. Chrome is arguably more than a browser: With over 1 billion users, it’s a major platform that web developers have to consider. In fact, with Chrome’s regular additions and changes, developers have to keep up to ensure they are taking advantage of everything available. Chrome 57 implements CSS Grid Layout, a two-dimensional grid-based layout system for responsive user interface design. Elements within the grid can be specified to span multiple columns or rows, plus they can also be named so that layout code is easier to understand. The goal is to give developers more granular control, especially as websites are increasingly accessed on various screen sizes, so they can slowly move away from complex code that is difficult to maintain. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

More here:
Chrome 57 Arrives With CSS Grid Layout and API Improvements