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How hard is it to hack the average DVR? Sadly, not hard at all

A major battle is underway for control over hundreds of millions of network-connected digital video recorders, cameras, and other so-called Internet of Things devices. As Ars has chronicled over the past two weeks, hackers are corralling them into networks that are menacing the security news site KrebsOnSecurity and other Web destinations with some of the biggest distributed denial-of-service attacks ever recorded. Johannes B. Ullrich, a researcher and chief technology officer for the SANS Internet Storm Center, wanted to know just how vulnerable these devices are to remote takeover, so he connected an older DVR to a cable modem Internet connection. What he saw next—a barrage of telnet connection attempts so dizzying it crashed his device—was depressing. “The sad part is, that I didn’t have to wait long,” he wrote in a blog post published Monday . “The IP address is hit by telnet attempts pretty much every minute. Instead of having to wait for a long time to see an attack, my problem was that the DVR was often overwhelmed by the attacks, and the telnet server stopped responding. I had to reboot it every few minutes.” Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Linus Torvalds Officially Announces the Release of Linux Kernel 4.8

Slashdot reader prisoninmate brings news from Softpedia: Today, Linus Torvalds proudly announced the release and availability for download of the Linux 4.8 kernel branch, which is now the latest stable and most advanced one. Linux kernel 4.8 has been in development for the past two months, during which it received no less than eight Release Candidate testing versions that early adopters were able to compile and install on their GNU/Linux operating system to test various hardware components or simply report bugs… A lot of things have been fixed since last week’s RC8 milestone, among which we can mention lots of updated drivers, in particular for GPU, networking, and Non-Volatile Dual In-line Memory Module (NVDIMM), a bunch of improvements to the ARM, MIPS, SPARC, and x86 hardware architectures, updates to the networking stack, as well as to a few filesystem, and some minor changes to cgroup and vm. The kernel now supports the Raspberry Pi 3 SoC as well as the Microsoft Surface 3 touchscreen. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Linus Torvalds Officially Announces the Release of Linux Kernel 4.8

Death is Coming in the First Trailer for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales

Jack Sparrow is a no-show in the first trailer for P irates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales , but he casts a large shadow. Read more…

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Death is Coming in the First Trailer for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales

Mausr Helps You Identify Unknown Symbols

If you come across a symbol you’ve never seen before, or you want to look up the unicode for a certain symbol, it may be a small challenge to search for it if you’re not entirely sure of its name. Mausr lets you draw the symbol instead, then identifies it based on your drawing. Read more…

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Mausr Helps You Identify Unknown Symbols

USB-C’s new audio spec could get rid of your headphone jack

Like it or not, the effort to get rid of the headphone jack is well underway. The USB Implementers Forum has published its long-expected Audio Device Class 3.0 specification, giving device makers the standard they need to pipe sound through USB-C ports on everything from phones to PCs. And the organization isn’t shy about its goals, either — this is mainly about letting companies removing the ages-old 3.5mm port, according to the Forum. In theory, that means slimmer devices, better water resistance and opening the “door to innovation” through room for other features. We’re not sure everyone will buy that last argument, but there are some advantages to the spec that are worthwhile even if the headphone jack is here to stay. Aside from offering better digital audio support (such as headphones with custom audio processing), the USB-C sound spec improves on earlier USB approaches with power-saving measures and keyword detection. In other words: a company could take advantage of USB audio without hurting your battery life as much as before, and it should be easier to implement voice recognition. This doesn’t mean that every company will embrace 3.5mm-free hardware with the same enthusiasm as Apple or Motorola . After all, Samsung used its Galaxy Note 7 introduction to make a not-so-subtle dig at Apple’s then-rumored decision to drop the headphone jack on the iPhone 7. However, the USB-C spec may nudge vendors who were thinking about ditching the conventional audio socket and were just waiting for official support to make their move. Via: AnandTech Source: USB Implementers Forum (PDF)

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USB-C’s new audio spec could get rid of your headphone jack

Revolutionary Ion Thruster To Be Tested On International Space Station

Three Australian researchers have developed “an ion thruster that could replace the current chemical-based rocket propulsion technology, which requires huge volumes of fuel to be loaded onto a spacecraft.” Slashdot reader theweatherelectric shares this article from the ABC News: An Australian-designed rocket propulsion system is heading to the International Space Station for a year-long experiment that ultimately could revolutionize space travel. The technology could be used to power a return trip to Mars without refuelling, and use recycled space junk for the fuel… It will be placed in a module outside the ISS, powered, as Dr Neumann describes, by an extension cord from the station. “What we’ll be doing with our system is running it for as long as we can, hopefully for the entire year on the space station to measure how much force it’s producing for how long.” In the early 2000s “it was basically a machine the size of a fist that spat ions from a very hot plasma ball through a magnetic nozzle at a very high velocity, ” and the researchers are now hoping to achieve the same effect by recycling the magnesium in space junk. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Major Netflix outage interrupts your weekend viewing plans

We hope you weren’t dead-set on watching all of Luke Cage this weekend. As we write this, Netflix is recovering from a serious worldwide outage that knocked out its service from around 3PM Eastern to shortly after 5PM. While the streaming video company is no stranger to technical problems lasting for a few hours, the sheer scale and severity is noteworthy — you couldn’t even visit Netflix’s website. We’ve asked Netflix for more details and will let you know if it can explain how and why its service went down. It’s tempting to pin the failure on crushing demand for Luke Cage (which premiered just the day before), but there’s no guarantee that this is the case. Netflix has previously coped with launch day demand for shows like House of Cards and Daredevil , so it’s not as if Reed Hastings and crew are unfamiliar with traffic spikes. Whatever happened, it’s a sore spot in what was supposed to be a banner weekend for Netflix. Hi all – we are aware of streaming issues and we are working quickly to solve them. We will update you when they are resolved. — Netflix CS (@Netflixhelps) October 1, 2016 And we’re back! The streaming issues we reported are now resolved. — Netflix CS (@Netflixhelps) October 1, 2016 Source: Netflix (Twitter 1) , (2)

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Major Netflix outage interrupts your weekend viewing plans

Multiple Linux Distributions Affected By Crippling Bug In Systemd

An anonymous reader writes: System administrator Andrew Ayer has discovered a potentially critical bug in systemd which can bring a vulnerable Linux server to its knees with one command. “After running this command, PID 1 is hung in the pause system call. You can no longer start and stop daemons. inetd-style services no longer accept connections. You cannot cleanly reboot the system.” According to the bug report, Debian, Ubuntu, and CentOS are among the distros susceptible to various levels of resource exhaustion. The bug, which has existed for more than two years, does not require root access to exploit. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Multiple Linux Distributions Affected By Crippling Bug In Systemd

US officially reduces its internet oversight

After lengthy delays and no small amount of political opposition , it’s official: the US has given up a key aspect of internet oversight. As of October 1st , the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (the outfit that manages the domain name system) is no longer under the watch of the US’ National Telecommunications and Information Administration. ICANN is now a private, non-profit organization that will take its input from academics, companies, governments and the public. While the American government didn’t really wield its influence, it no longer has that option. The handover follows an unsuccessful last-minute attempt by four states’ Republican attorneys general to block the transition . A federal judge shot down their temporary injunction request, which centered around the notion that the US was “giving away government property” and required Congressional approval to give up ICANN. The attorneys echoed their party’s worry that reducing US control would open the internet to greater censorship by countries like China and Russia. They were also concerned that the shift could threaten US government domains like .gov and .mil. Proponents of the transition argue that the move is not only harmless, but might avert a far worse outcome. They say that censorship-heavy countries don’t have any more power over the internet than they did before, especially since ICANN will still operate out of Los Angeles. If anything, a privately-managed domain system reduces the pressure to relinquish control to the United Nations, where China and Russia would have some influence. There’s also a fear that continued American oversight would encourage countries to set up their own domain systems and fragment the internet. In practice? Barring surprises, you shouldn’t notice a difference at all. The NTIA did little more than rubber-stamp ICANN’s actions — this is more of a formality than a practical change, at least in the near term. It’s an acknowledgment that the internet has been decentralized for decades, and that no one country has a claim to it. Via: BBC Source: ICANN

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US officially reduces its internet oversight

Federal Prosecutors Actually Prosecute H1-B Fraud

Slashdot reader McGruber reports that federal prosecutors “have filed conspiracy charges against a part-owner of two information technology firms and an employee for fraudulently using the H-1B program”. Both were reportedly recruiting foreign IT workers, according to the AP: Prosecutors said the conspirators falsely represented that the foreign workers had full-time positions and were paid an annual salary [when] the workers were only paid when placed at a third-party client, and the defendants sometimes generated false payroll records… The defendants are charged with conspiracy to commit visa fraud and obstruct justice and conspiracy to harbor aliens. They’re now facing up to 15 years in prison for an “alien-harboring conspiracy” charge — with a maximum penalty of up to 10 years in prison and a $250, 000 fine — and a separate visa fraud and obstruction of justice charge with a maximum 5-year penalty and a $250, 000 fine. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Federal Prosecutors Actually Prosecute H1-B Fraud

Ken May

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