Author: kenmay

Anti-forensic mobile OS gets your phone to lie for you

In Android Anti-forensics: Modifying CyanogenMod Karl-Johan Karlsson and William Bradley Glisson present a version of the Cyanogenmod alternate operating system for Android devices, modified so that it generates plausible false data to foil forensic analysis by law enforcement. The idea is to create a mobile phone that “lies” for you so that adversaries who coerce you into letting them take a copy of its data can’t find out where you’ve been, who you’ve been talking to, or what you’ve been talking about. I’m interested in this project but wonder about how to make it practical for daily use. Presently, it maintains a hidden set of true data, and a trick set of false data intended to be fetched by forensic tools. Presumably, this only works until the forensic tools are modified to spot the real data. But you can conceptually imagine a phone that maintains a normal address book and SMS history, etc — all the things that are useful to have in daily use — but that, on a certain signal (say, when an alternate unlock code is entered, or after a certain number of failed unlock attempts) scrubs all that and replaces it with plausible deniability data. Obviously, this kind of thing doesn’t work against state-level actors who can subpoena (or coerce) your location data and call history from your carrier, but those people don’t need to seize your phone in the first place. Read the rest

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Anti-forensic mobile OS gets your phone to lie for you

IRS won’t fix database of nonprofits, so it goes dark

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud writes, “Due to inaction by the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Congress, Public.Resource.Org has been forced to terminate access to 7, 634, 050 filings of nonprofit organizations. The problem is that we have been fixing the database, providing better access mechanisms and finding and redacting huge numbers of Social Security Numbers. Our peers such as GuideStar are also fixing their copies of the database.” Read the rest

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IRS won’t fix database of nonprofits, so it goes dark

EU, South Korea Collaborate On Superfast 5G Standards

jfruh writes The European Commission and the South Korean government announced that they will be harmonizing their radio spectrum policy in an attempt to help bring 5G wireless tech to market by 2020. While the technology is still in an embryonic state, but one South Korean researcher predicts it could be over a thousand times faster than current 4G networks. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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EU, South Korea Collaborate On Superfast 5G Standards

That Foamy Stuff You See World Cup Refs Spraying was Invented by a Fed-Up Journalist

There is a graphic design element to tennis courts, (American) football fields and basketball courts, with highly visible lines indicating boundaries and distances. These are fixed in place, as service lines, end zones and free throw lines aren’t meant to move. Soccer, though, has a unique problem that can’t be solved by fixed lines: When a player is fouled, he’s awarded a free kick from whatever spot on the field the foul occurred. The opposing team is allowed to assemble a defensive wall of players at a distance of ten yards from the kicker. The problem is that people cheat. The ref sets both the spot of the free kick and the site of the wall, and as soon as he’s not looking, the two may surreptitiously creep towards each other to improve their chances. Which is why for this year’s World Cup, you’ll see the referees carrying an aerosol can filled with a white foamy substance, and they’ll spray this on the pitch to clearly mark visual boundaries for the both the kicker and the wall. Seconds later the line mysteriously disappers. (Hardcore footie fans have already seen this spray as it’s been in action for years, but this is the first World Cup where it’s been used.) So what is this stuff, shaving cream? Nope. This “vanishing spray” is called 9.15 Fair Play , patented by an Argentinean journalist named Pablo C. Silva. Silva was playing footie in a local league and had a crucial free kick of his blocked by a defensive wall–one that had rushed him to close the distance to a mere three meters. “The referee didn’t book anyone and didn’t do anything, ” Silva fumed to The Independent. “We lost the game, and driving home later with a mixture of anger and bitterness, I thought that we must invent something to stop this.” (more…)

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That Foamy Stuff You See World Cup Refs Spraying was Invented by a Fed-Up Journalist

Google Fiber Is Officially Making Its Way To Portland

An anonymous reader writes This week the Portland City Council has approved a franchise agreement with Google to bring its fiber service to Portland. “As a result of the unanimous vote, Google will be subject to a five percent ‘franchise fee’ on its video revenues. It won’t have to pay a three percent ‘PEG’ fee that Portland otherwise charges rival Comcast, but it will offer free Internet service for Portland residents for a $300, one-time fee. It’ll also provide free Internet service to some to-be-determined nonprofits, in addition to providing a total of three free Wi-Fi networks in various parts of the city.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Google Fiber Is Officially Making Its Way To Portland

Bypass Pre-Roll Surveys with Your Browser’s Inspect Element Tool

Ever visit web site that won’t let you read the article until you fill out a survey? Many of them are byapssable—you just need to modify the source code a bit. Read more…

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Bypass Pre-Roll Surveys with Your Browser’s Inspect Element Tool

Bitcoin security guarantee shattered by anonymous miner with 51% network power

Cornering the Bitcoin market may be easier than cornering orange juice futures. Paramount Pictures / Aurich Lawson For the first time in Bitcoin’s five-year history, a single entity has repeatedly provided more than half of the total computational power required to mine new digital coins, in some cases for sustained periods of time. It’s an event that, if it persists, signals the end of crypto currency’s decentralized structure. Researchers from Cornell University say that on multiple occasions, a single mining pool repeatedly contributed more than 51 percent of Bitcoin’s total cryptographic hashing output for spans as long as 12 hours. The contributor was GHash , which bills itself as the “#1 Crypto & Bitcoin Mining Pool.” During these periods, the GHash operators had unprecedented powers that circumvented the decentralization that is often held up as a salient advantage Bitcoin has over traditional currencies. So-called 51 percenters, for instance, have the ability to spend the same coins twice, reject competing miners’ transactions, or extort higher fees from people with large holdings. Even worse, a malicious player with a majority holding could wage a denial-of-service attack against the entire Bitcoin network. Like tremblers before a major earthquake, most of GHash’s 51-percent spans were relatively short. Few people paid much attention, since shortly after a miner loses the majority position, it also loses its extraordinary control. Then, on June 12, GHash produced a majority of the power for 12 hours straight, a sustained status that enables precisely the type of doomsday scenario some researchers have warned was possible. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Bitcoin security guarantee shattered by anonymous miner with 51% network power

Civilians Try to Lure an Abandoned NASA Spacecraft Back to Earth

A New York Time piece (as carried by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) outlines a fascinating project operating in unlikely circumstances for a quixotic goal. They want to control, and return to earth, the International Sun-Earth Explorer-3, launched in 1978 but which “appears to be in good working order.” Engineer Dennis Wingo, along with like minded folks (of whom he says “We call ourselves techno-archaeologists”) has established a business called Skycorp that “has its offices in the McDonald’s that used to serve the Navy’s Moffett air station, 15 minutes northwest of San Jose, Calif. After the base closed, NASA converted it to a research campus for small technology companies, academia and nonprofits. … The race to revive the craft, ISEE-3, began in earnest in April. At the end of May, using the Arecibo Observatory radio telescope in Puerto Rico, the team succeeded in talking to the spacecraft, a moment Mr. Wingo described as “way cool.” This made Skycorp the first private organization to command a spacecraft outside Earth orbit, he said. The most disheartening part: “No one has the full operating manual anymore, and the fragments are sometimes contradictory.” The most exciting? “Despite the obstacles, progress has been steady, and Mr. Wingo said the team should be ready to fire the engines within weeks.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Civilians Try to Lure an Abandoned NASA Spacecraft Back to Earth

Someone is making a handheld Steam game system

Every Steam Machine shown so far has amounted to a small desktop PC. But what if you want to take that gaming experience on the road? Well, you might get your wish — meet Steamboy , a handheld take on Valve’s platform. On the outside, it’s pretty much what you’d expect; it looks like an Steam Controller prototype (including the signature touchpads) with a 5-inch display slotted in between. Its creator (Steamboy Machine) isn’t giving out many other details right now, but it tells The Escapist that the device’s quad-core processor (likely either an Intel Atom or AMD A4) and 4GB of RAM “won’t be as powerful” as other Steam Machines. That’s not surprising given the size, however, and it should play the “majority” of titles. There are also promises of 3G mobile data and 32GB of built-in storage. It sounds promising, even if the device is likely going to be limited to low-intensity games. However, that’s also assuming that this mini Steam Machine makes its 2015 release window. Right now, Steamboy exists as little more than a slick teaser video and a set of specifications — there’s no prototype to prove that this will be a real product. We’ve reached out to the team for more details, but you might not want to cancel that 3DS or PS Vita purchase until it’s clear that Steamboy will ship. Filed under: Gaming , Handhelds Comments Via: The Escapist , Engadget Spanish (translated) Source: Steamboy Machine

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Someone is making a handheld Steam game system

Former Microsoft employee gets 3 months in jail for leaking Windows 8 secrets

Earlier this week, a man accused of stealing trade secrets from Microsoft and handing them to a French blogger was sentenced to three months in jail and a $100 fine in the Western District of Washington. Alex Kibkalo worked for Microsoft in the company’s Russia and Lebanon offices. According to an FBI complaint filed earlier this year, Kibkalo leaked pre-release updates for Windows RT and a Microsoft-internal Activation Server SDK to a French blogger in retaliation for a poor performance review. The blogger allegedly asked a third party to verify the stolen SDK, but that third party, who connected with the blogger via Hotmail, alerted Microsoft of the theft instead. At that point, Microsoft launched its own internal investigation and searched the Hotmail account to find the blogger and his source. The company’s investigation team was soon able to trace back to Kibkalo and then discovered that he had created a virtual machine on Microsoft’s corporate network from which he uploaded the stolen goods to SkyDrive. When confronted, Kibkalo admitted to handing over software, company memos, and other documents. He was fired and later arrested. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Former Microsoft employee gets 3 months in jail for leaking Windows 8 secrets