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Used Cars Can Still Be Controlled By Their Previous Owners’ Apps

An IBM security researcher recently discovered something interesting about smart cars. An anonymous reader quotes CNN: Charles Henderson sold his car several years ago, but he still knows exactly where it is, and can control it from his phone… “The car is really smart, but it’s not smart enough to know who its owner is, so it’s not smart enough to know it’s been resold, ” Henderson told CNNTech. “There’s nothing on the dashboard that tells you ‘the following people have access to the car.'” This isn’t an isolated problem. Henderson tested four major auto manufacturers, and found they all have apps that allow previous owners to access them from a mobile device. At the RSA security conference in San Francisco on Friday, Henderson explained how people can still retain control of connected cars even after they resell them. Manufacturers create apps to control smart cars — you can use your phone to unlock the car, honk the horn and find out the exact location of your vehicle. Henderson removed his personal information from services in the car before selling it back to the dealership, but he was still able to control the car through a mobile app for years. That’s because only the dealership that originally sold the car can see who has access and manually remove someone from the app. It’s also something to consider when buying used IoT devices — or a smart home equipped with internet-enabled devices. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Used Cars Can Still Be Controlled By Their Previous Owners’ Apps

Alaska Gets ‘Artificial Aurora’ As HAARP Antenna Array Listens Again

Freshly Exhumed quotes Hackaday: The famous HAARP antenna array is to be brought back into service for experiments by the University of Alaska. Built in the 1990s for the US Air Force’s High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, the array is a 40-acre site containing a phased array of 180 high-frequency antennas and their associated high-power transmitters. Its purpose is to conduct research on charged particles in the upper atmosphere, but that hasn’t stopped an array of bizarre conspiracy theories. A university space physics researcher will actually create an artificial aurora starting Sunday (and continuing through Wednesday) to study how yjr atmosphere affects satellite-to-ground communications, and “observers throughout Alaska will have an opportunity to photograph the phenomenon, ” according to the University. “Under the right conditions, people can also listen to HAARP radio transmissions from virtually anywhere in the world using an inexpensive shortwave radio.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Alaska Gets ‘Artificial Aurora’ As HAARP Antenna Array Listens Again

RSA Conference Attendees Get Hacked

The RSA Conference “is perhaps the world’s largest security event, but that doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily a secure event, ” reports eSecurityPlanet. Scanning the conference floor revealed rogue access points posing as known and trusted networks, according to security testing vendor Pwnie Express. storagedude writes: What’s worse, several attendees fell for these dummy Wi-Fi services that spoof well-known brands like Starbucks. The company also found a number of access points using outdated WEP encryption. So much for security pros… At least two people stayed connected to a rogue network for more than a day, according to the article, and Pownie Express is reminding these security pros that connecting to a rogue network means “the attacker has full control of all information going into and out of the device, and can deploy various tools to modify or monitor the victim’s communication.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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RSA Conference Attendees Get Hacked

Internet Backbone Provider Cogent Blocks Pirate Bay and Other ‘Pirate’ Sites

Several Pirate Bay users from ISPs all over the world have been unable to access their favorite torrent site for more than a week. Their requests are being stopped in the Internet backbone network of Cogent Communications, which has blackholed the CloudFlare IP-address of The Pirate Bay and many other torrent and streaming sites, reports TorrentFreak. From the article: When the average Internet user types in a domain name, a request is sent through a series of networks before it finally reaches the server of the website. This also applies to The Pirate Bay and other pirate sites such as Primewire, Movie4k, TorrentProject and TorrentButler. However, for more than a week now the US-based backbone provider Cogent has stopped passing on traffic to these sites. The sites in question all use CloudFlare, which assigned them the public IP-addresses 104.31.18.30 and 104.31.19.30. While this can be reached just fine by most people, users attempting to pass requests through Cogent’s network are unable to access them. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Internet Backbone Provider Cogent Blocks Pirate Bay and Other ‘Pirate’ Sites

The City Of Munich Now Wants To Abandon Linux And Switch Back to Windows

“The prestigious FOSS project replacing the entire city’s administration IT with FOSS based systems, is about to be cancelled and decommissioned, ” writes long-time Slashdot reader Qbertino. TechRepublic reports: Politicians at open-source champion Munich will next week vote on whether to abandon Linux and return to Windows by 2021. The city authority, which made headlines for ditching Windows, will discuss proposals to replace the Linux-based OS used across the council with a Windows 10-based client. If the city leaders back the proposition it would be a notable U-turn by the council, which spent years migrating about 15, 000 staff from Windows to LiMux, a custom version of the Ubuntu desktop OS, and only completed the move in 2013… The use of the open-source Thunderbird email client and LibreOffice suite across the council would also be phased out, in favor of using “market standard products” that offer the “highest possible compatibility” with external and internal software… The full council will vote on whether to back the plan next Wednesday. If all SPD and CSU councillors back the proposal put forward by their party officials, then this new proposal will pass, because the two parties hold the majority. The leader of the Munich Green Party says the city will lose “many millions of euros” if the change is implemented. The article also reports that Microsoft moved its German headquarters to Munich last year. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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The City Of Munich Now Wants To Abandon Linux And Switch Back to Windows

Microsoft Teases Windows 10’s Upcoming ‘Project Neon’ Design Language

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Windows Central: Microsoft just gave developers a sneak peek at Project Neon, Microsoft’s upcoming design language for Windows 10 that aims to add fluidity, animation and blur to apps and the operating system. We exclusively revealed that this was in the works in late 2016, and today Microsoft has given us a first peak at what Project Neon will look like. During the Windows Developer Day livestream, an image of Project Neon was seen the background of one of the PowerPoint slides being shown off on stage. Although not much, it’s further confirmation that this is the end goal for Windows 10’s UI, and Project Neon will be bringing a fresh coat of paint to apps. Project Neon should benefit all types of Windows 10 devices, including Windows 10 Mobile, HoloLens and even Xbox. We’re still several months away from Project Neon being everywhere in Windows 10, and we’re expecting to see more at BUILD this coming May. In fact, a lot of the Project Neon APIs are available in the latest Insider Preview builds of Windows 10, meaning developers can already begin taking advantage of these new user interfaces and design language! Animations and transitions are a big deal with Project Neon, with the goal of making the operating system and apps feel like they work together. Peter Bright does a good job summarizing the looks of the screenshot via Ars Technica: “The picture shows a refreshed version of the Groove music app on a Windows desktop. The fundamentals of the app and its layout aren’t changed, underscoring that Neon is very much an iteration of the current Metro/Microsoft Design Language (MDL). The window has shed its discrete title bar and one pixel border, with the application content now extending to the very edge of the window. The search text field no longer has a box around it, and the left hand pane has a hint of translucency to it.” You can view the screenshot here and judge it for yourself. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Microsoft Teases Windows 10’s Upcoming ‘Project Neon’ Design Language

Attacks On WordPress Sites Intensify As Hackers Deface Over 1.5 Million Pages

An anonymous reader writes: “Attacks on WordPress sites using a vulnerability in the REST API, patched in WordPress version 4.7.2, have intensified over the past two days, as attackers have now defaced over 1.5 million pages, spread across 39, 000 unique domains, ” reports BleepingComputer. “Initial attacks using the WordPress REST API flaw were reported on Monday by web security firm Sucuri, who said four groups of attackers defaced over 67, 000 pages. The number grew to over 100, 000 pages the next day, but according to a report from fellow web security firm WordFence, these numbers have skyrocketed today to over 1.5 million pages, as there are now 20 hacking groups involved in a defacement turf war.” Making matters worse, over the weekend Google’s Search Console service, formerly known as Google Webmaster, was sending out security alerts to people it shouldn’t. Google attempted to send security alerts to all WordPress 4.7.0 and 4.7.1 website owners (vulnerable to the REST API flaw), but some emails reached WordPress 4.7.2 owners. Some of which misinterpreted the email and panicked, fearing their site might lose search engine ranking. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Attacks On WordPress Sites Intensify As Hackers Deface Over 1.5 Million Pages

Intel To Invest $7 Billion in Factory in Arizona, Employ 3,000 People

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich met with President Donald Trump on Wednesday, where the company announced it will invest $7 billion in a factory employing up to 3, 000 people. From a report: The factory will be in Chandler, Arizona, the company said, and over 10, 000 people in the Arizona area will support the factory. Krzanich confirmed to CNBC that the investment over the next three to four years would be to complete a previous plant, Fab 42, that was started and then left vacant. The 7-nanometer chips will be produced there will be “the most powerful computer chips on the planet, ” Krzanich said in the Oval Office with the Trump administration. Most Intel manufacturing happens in the U.S., Krzanich said. “America has a unique combination of talent, a vibrant business environment and access to global markets, which has enabled U.S. companies like Intel to foster economic growth and innovation, ” Krzanich said in a statement. “Our factories support jobs — high-wage, high-tech manufacturing jobs that are the economic engines of the states where they are located.”Farhad Manjoo, columnist at The New York Times, tweeted; “As far as I can tell the decision had nothing to do with Trump, but they decided to announce with Trump. Why? There was no federal subsidy or any other credit. So it’s just a marketing decision to give Trump credit.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Intel To Invest $7 Billion in Factory in Arizona, Employ 3,000 People

Western Digital Unveils First-Ever 512Gb 64-Layer 3D NAND Chip

BrianFagioli quotes a report from BetaNews: As great as these solid state drives are now, they are only getting better. For example, SATA-based SSDs were once viewed as miraculous, but they are now looked at as slow — PCIe-based NVMe drives are all the rage. To highlight the steady evolution of flash storage, Western Digital today unveiled the first-ever 512 gigabit 64-layer 3D NAND chip. “The launch of the industry’s first 512Gb 64-layer 3D NAND chip is another important stride forward in the advancement of our 3D NAND technology, doubling the density from when we introduced the world’s first 64-layer architecture in July 2016. This is a great addition to our rapidly broadening 3D NAND technology portfolio. It positions us well to continue addressing the increasing demand for storage due to rapid data growth across a wide range of customer retail, mobile and data center applications, ” says Dr. Siva Sivaram, executive vice president, memory technology, Western Digital. Western Digital further explains that it did not develop this new technology on its own. The company shares, “The 512Gb 64-layer chip was developed jointly with the company’s technology and manufacturing partner Toshiba. Western Digital first introduced initial capacities of the world’s first 64-layer 3D NAND technology in July 2016 and the world’s first 48-layer 3D NAND technology in 2015; product shipments with both technologies continue to retail and OEM customers.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Western Digital Unveils First-Ever 512Gb 64-Layer 3D NAND Chip

Mozilla To Drop Support For All NPAPI Plugins In Firefox 52 Except Flash

The Netscape Plugins API is “an ancient plugins infrastructure inherited from the old Netscape browser on which Mozilla built Firefox, ” according to Bleeping Computer. But now an anonymous reader writes: Starting March 7, when Mozilla is scheduled to release Firefox 52, all plugins built on the old NPAPI technology will stop working in Firefox, except for Flash, which Mozilla plans to support for a few more versions. This means technologies such as Java, Silverlight, and various audio and video codecs won’t work on Firefox. These plugins once helped the web move forward, but as time advanced, the Internet’s standards groups developed standalone Web APIs and alternative technologies to support most of these features without the need of special plugins. The old NPAPI plugins will continue to work in the Firefox ESR (Extended Support Release) 52, but will eventually be deprecated in ESR 53. A series of hacks are available that will allow Firefox users to continue using old NPAPI plugins past Firefox 52, by switching the update channel from Firefox Stable to Firefox ESR. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Mozilla To Drop Support For All NPAPI Plugins In Firefox 52 Except Flash