Tag: doctorow

Unprecedented: Japan’s population has declined by 1 million in 5 years

Rich countries have low birthrates (in part because they have more rights for women, and women who can control their bodies and fates choose to have fewer children on average than women who live in poor countries with fewer rights for women); Japan, one of the most xenophobic of all the rich countries, has the killer combination of a near-total ban on immigration from poor countries (where all the young people are) and a high standard of living. (more…)

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Unprecedented: Japan’s population has declined by 1 million in 5 years

Autonomous bat bot weighs 93g, flies like a bat

A team of roboticists from Caltech and Urbana-Champaign have built a biomimetic “bat bot” that uses nine joints to deform a foot-wide wing membrane to achieve breathtaking aerial maneuvers. (more…)

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Autonomous bat bot weighs 93g, flies like a bat

You can install ransomware on a Samsung Galaxy by sending it an SMS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=hL3gA8IMO-w Researchers from Context Security have identified a vulnerability in Samsung Galaxy phones: by embedding commands in the obsolete, 17-year-old WAP proptocol in an SMS message, attackers can put them into endless reboot loops, or encrypt their storage and charge the phone’s owners for a decryption key. (more…)

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You can install ransomware on a Samsung Galaxy by sending it an SMS

Company retaliates for negative review by tricking customer into bricking his copy of their software

After N2SUB posted a thoughtful, negative review of Ham Radio Deluxe, the company responded to his open trouble ticket with instructions that tricked him into bricking his software, in the guise of fixing his problem, then told him they’d done it on purpose, and wouldn’t let him use their software anymore unless he deleted his review, and threatened to sue him. (more…)

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Company retaliates for negative review by tricking customer into bricking his copy of their software

Virginia State cops have blown a fortune on useless cellphone spying gear

Muckrock has been sending Freedom of Information requests to state police forces to find out how they’re using “cell-site simulators” (AKA IMSI catchers / Stingrays ), and they hit the motherlode with the Virginia State Police. (more…)

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Virginia State cops have blown a fortune on useless cellphone spying gear

Crooks can guess Visa card details in six seconds by querying lots of websites at once

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwvjZGKwKvY In Does The Online Card Payment Landscape Unwittingly Facilitate Fraud? , a new paper in IEEE Security & Privacy , researchers from the University of Newcastle demonstrate a technique for guessing secruity details for credit-card numbers in six seconds — attackers spread their guesses out across many websites at once, so no website gets enough bad guesses to lock the card or trigger a fraud detection system. (more…)

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Crooks can guess Visa card details in six seconds by querying lots of websites at once

Two hackers are selling DDoS attacks from 400,000 IoT devices infected with the Mirai worm

The Mirai worm — first seen attacking security journalist Brian Krebs with 620gbps floods, then taking down Level 3, Dyn and other hardened, well-provisioned internet giants , then spreading to every developed nation on Earth (and being used to take down some of those less-developed nations ) despite being revealed as clumsy and amateurish (a situation remedied shortly after by hybridizing it with another IoT worm ) — is now bigger than ever, and you can rent time on it to punish journalists, knock countries offline, or take down chunks of the core internet. (more…)

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Two hackers are selling DDoS attacks from 400,000 IoT devices infected with the Mirai worm

Electric cars must now emit engine-tones at low speeds

My friend Gilbert was the first Prius owner I knew; a hacker, Gilbert was accustomed to eating at a drive-through at 3AM, but the first time he took his silent car through the lane, the order-taker curtly said that they didn’t serve people on foot; when he insisted that he was in a car, she demanded to know why she couldn’t hear the engine idling? (more…)

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Electric cars must now emit engine-tones at low speeds