Tag: database

The 32-Bit Dog Ate 16 Million Kids’ CS Homework

“Any student progress from 9:19 to 10:33 a.m. on Friday was not saved…” explained the embarrassed CTO of the educational non-profit Code.org, “and unfortunately cannot be recovered.” Slashdot reader theodp writes: Code.org CTO Jeremy Stone gave the kids an impromptu lesson on the powers of two with his explanation of why The Cloud ate their homework. “The way we store student coding activity is in a table that until today had a 32-bit index… The database table could only store 4 billion rows of coding activity information [and] we didn’t realize we were running up to the limit, and the table got full. We have now made a new student activity table that is storing progress by students. With the new table, we are switching to a 64-bit index which will hold up to 18 quintillion rows of information. The issue also took the site offline, temporarily making the work of 16 million K-12 students who have used the nonprofit’s Code Studio disappear. “On the plus side, this new table will be able to store student coding information for millions of years, ” explains the site’s CTO. But besides Friday’s missing saves, “On the down side, until we’ve moved everything over to the new table, some students’ code from before today may temporarily not appear, so please be patient with us as we fix it.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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The 32-Bit Dog Ate 16 Million Kids’ CS Homework

Hacker Steals 900 GB of Cellebrite Data

An anonymous reader shares a Motherboard report: Motherboard has obtained 900 GB of data related to Cellebrite, one of the most popular companies in the mobile phone hacking industry. The cache includes customer information, databases, and a vast amount of technical data regarding Cellebrite’s products. The breach is the latest chapter in a growing trend of hackers taking matters into their own hands, and stealing information from companies that specialize in surveillance or hacking technologies. Cellebrite is an Israeli company whose main product, a typically laptop-sized device called the Universal Forensic Extraction Device (UFED), can rip data from thousands of different models of mobile phones. That data can include SMS messages, emails, call logs, and much more, as long as the UFED user is in physical possession of the phone. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Hacker Steals 900 GB of Cellebrite Data

Apple’s Share of PC Users Drops To A Five-Year Low

Windows 10 is installed on 24.5% of devices — but that’s only half the story. “Apple’s Mac share of personal computers worldwide fell to a five-year low in December, ” reports Computerworld, adding that Linux and Windows “both benefited, with increases of around a half percentage point during 2016.” An anonymous reader quotes their report: According to web analytics vendor Net Applications, Apple’s desktop and notebook operating system — formerly OS X, now macOS — powered just 6.1% of all personal computers last month, down from 7% a year ago and a peak of 9.6% as recently as April 2016… The Mac’s 6.1% user share in December was the lowest mark recorded by Net Applications since August 2011, more than five years ago… In October, the company reported sales of 4.9 million Macs for the September quarter, a 14% year-over-year decline and the fourth straight quarterly downturn. Apple’s sales slide during the past 12 months has been steeper than for the personal computer industry as a whole, according to industry researchers from IDC and Gartner, a 180-degree shift from the prior 30 or so quarters, when the Mac’s growth rate repeatedly beat the business average. Apple’s success through 2016 was “fueled by Microsoft’s stumbles with Windows 8 and a race-to-the-bottom mentality among rival OEMs, ” according to the article, which also notes that the user share for Linux exceeded 2% in June, and reached 2.3% by November. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Apple’s Share of PC Users Drops To A Five-Year Low

Over 1,800 MongoDB Databases Held For Ransom By Mysterious Attacker

An anonymous reader writes: “An attacker going by the name of Harak1r1 is hijacking unprotected MongoDB databases, stealing and replacing their content, and asking for a 0.2 Bitcoin ($200) ransom to return the data, ” reports Bleeping Computer. According to John Matherly, Shodan founder, over 1, 800 MongoDB databases have had their content replaced with a table called WARNING that contains the ransom note. Spotted by security researcher Victor Gevers, these databases are MongoDB instances that feature no administrator password and are exposed to external connections from the internet. Database owners in China have been hit, while Bleeping Computer and MacKeeper have confirmed other infections, one which hit a prominent U.S. healthcare organization and blocked access to over 200, 000 user records. These attacks are somewhat similar to attacks on Redis servers in 2016, when an unknown attacker had hijacked and installed the Fairware ransomware on hundreds of Linux servers running Redis DB. The two series of attacks don’t appear to be related. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Over 1,800 MongoDB Databases Held For Ransom By Mysterious Attacker

Library Creates Fake Patron Records To Avoid Book-Purging

An anonymous reader writes: Chuck Finley checked out 2, 361 books from a Florida library in just nine months, increasing their total circulation by 3.9%. But he doesn’t exist. “The fictional character was concocted by two employees at the library, complete with a false address and driver’s license number, ” according to the Orlando Sentinel. The department overseeing the library acknowledges their general rule is “if something isn’t circulated in one to two years, it’s typically weeded out of circulation.” So the fake patron scheme was concocted by a library assistant working with the library’s branch supervisor, who “said he wanted to avoid having to later repurchase books purged from the shelf.” But according to the newspaper the branch supervisor “said the same thing is being done at other libraries, too.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Library Creates Fake Patron Records To Avoid Book-Purging

Firefox 52 Borrows One More Privacy Feature From the Tor Browser

An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla engineers have added a mechanism to Firefox 52 that prevents websites from fingerprinting users using system fonts. The user privacy protection system was borrowed from the Tor Browser, where a similar mechanism blocks websites from identifying users based on the fonts installed on their computers, only returning a list of “default fonts” per each OS. While sabotaging system font queries won’t stop user fingerprinting as a whole, this is just one of the latest privacy-related updates Mozilla has added to Firefox, taken from Tor. Back in July 2016, Mozilla engineers started the Tor Uplift project, which aims to improve Firefox’s privacy features with the ones present in the Tor Browser. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Firefox 52 Borrows One More Privacy Feature From the Tor Browser

Hacking Group Hits Buzzfeed: ‘We Have Your Database’ 

OurMine , the hacking group that has previously taken credit for hacking into the social media accounts for Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey , has apparently gained access to BuzzFeed’s systems and published on its website. Read more…

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Hacking Group Hits Buzzfeed: ‘We Have Your Database’ 

California Launches Mandatory Data Collection For Police Use-of-Force

An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes the AP: All 800 police departments in California must begin using a new online tool launched Thursday to report and help track every time officers use force that causes serious injuries… The tool, named URSUS for the bear on California’s flag, includes fields for the race of those injured and the officers involved, how their interaction began and why force was deemed necessary. “It’s sort of like TurboTax for use-of-force incidents, ” said Justin Erlich, a special assistant attorney general overseeing the data collection and analysis. Departments must report the data under a new state law passed last November. Though some departments already tracked such data on their own, many did not… “As a country, we must engage in an honest, transparent, and data-driven conversation about police use of force, ” California Attorney General Kamala Harris said in a news release. It’s an open source tool developed by Bayes Impact, and California plans to share the code with other interested law enforcement agencies across the country. Only three other states currently require their police departments to track data about use-of-force incidents, “but their systems aren’t digital, and in Colorado’s case, only capture shootings.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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California Launches Mandatory Data Collection For Police Use-of-Force