Windows 8.1: What a difference a year makes

Windows 8 was an ambitious operating system. Microsoft’s goal was, and still is, to have a single operating system that can span the traditional PC, the tablet, and everything in between . To do this, the company introduced a new kind of application —the “Modern” or “Metro” style application. It created a new style of interaction—an edge-based UI for touch users, a hot-corner based one for mouse users. And it developed a new application launcher—the Start screen. Microsoft retained the familiar Windows desktop for running traditional mouse and keyboard driven Windows software. Windows 8 worked. It was a viable operating system, and in broad strokes, it fulfilled Microsoft’s dream of one operating system for tablets and PCs. But Windows 8 was far from perfect. Its problems were in three main areas. Read 91 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

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Windows 8.1: What a difference a year makes

To pay off webcam spies, Detroit kid pawns $100k in family jewels for $1,500

Yesterday, I gave a one-hour talk at the University of Michigan on remote administration tools (RATs) and the surprising ways they allow hackers, corporations, schools, and police to spy on computer users by activating microphones and webcams. The talk contains some pretty wild stories—but a woman approached me afterward to let me know that the craziest single RATing story she had ever heard just took place up the road in Detroit. And she was right. The actual RAT attack in question doesn’t sound particularly novel, except that in this case the target was not a young woman (the more typical victim, especially when it comes to voyeurism/sextortion) but a young man named Hector Hernandez. The 17-year old high school student’s computer was infected with a RAT, which the software’s owner used to spy on Hernandez and eventually record an “embarrassing” video of him. The RAT owner then approached Hernandez through his Facebook account and demanded money—$300, then $1,100—or the video would be released to the world. The blackmail demand sent to Hernandez’s Facebook account. Hernandez offers no clues to the content of the video—a long list of scenarios is not difficult to imagine—but in an on-camera interview with Detroit’s FOX affiliate , he makes clear that he simply couldn’t bring himself to tell his parents about the situation. The video was so shameful to Hernandez that instead of going to police or parents, he instead took an estimated $100,000 of family heirlooms and jewelry down the street to a pawn shop. He showed them his ID, which made clear he was only 17, but the pawn shop took the jewelry anyway—and gave Hernandez a mere $1,500 for the lot. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

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To pay off webcam spies, Detroit kid pawns $100k in family jewels for $1,500

New York City is getting wireless EV chargers disguised as manholes

Hevo Power Imagine an electric Pepsi delivery truck in Manhattan. It makes dozens of stops at the same locations, day in and day out. Now what if at each stop—or every other stop—it could wirelessly top up its battery pack as the driver drops off another case of sugar water. That’s what Hevo Power is aiming to do with a new wireless charging system that blends into its surroundings by aping a manhole. “I was walking down the street, pondering how wireless charging could be deployed,” Hevo’s CEO and founder Jeremy McCool told WIRED. “I was standing at 116th and Broadway, and I was looking down and saw a manhole cover and thought, that’s the ticket. There are no cords, no hazards. Everything can be underneath the manhole cover.” The result is a new system of wireless charging stations that Hevo plans to deploy in New York’s Washington Square Park in early 2014, beginning with two Smart ForTwo electric vehicles operated by NYU. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

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New York City is getting wireless EV chargers disguised as manholes

Square drastically simplifies Internet cash transfers

The screen where users enter their debit card information. Financial startup Square launched a new arm of its business Tuesday that allows two parties to transfer cash between themselves using only their debit card numbers and e-mail. Square Cash may trump similar services like PayPal in ease of use in that it doesn’t require extra bank info, and transactions can happen directly via e-mail. Competitors like PayPal have been able to handle direct debit transactions for some time, though setup is a bit more of a hassle. Users have to enter their checking account numbers and routing numbers and then verify their accounts with two small deposits, so the process can take a few days. With Square Cash, the process begins in e-mail : users send an e-mail to the person they want to pay, cc cash@square.com, and enter the amount in the subject line. If it’s their first transaction, Square sends a second e-mail that leads the user to a screen where they enter their debit card number, expiration date, and ZIP code. Once the person on the other end gets the e-mail and fills out the same form, the transaction is completed in 1-2 days. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

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Square drastically simplifies Internet cash transfers

New effort to fully audit TrueCrypt raises over $16,000 in a few short weeks

For nearly a decade now, TrueCrypt has been one of the trusty tools in a security-minded user’s toolkit. There’s just one problem, though. No one knows who created the software, and worse still, no one has ever conducted a full security audit on it—until now. Since last month, a handful of cryptographers have newly discussed problems and alternatives to the popular application, which lead on Monday to a public call to perform a full security audit on TrueCrypt. As of Tuesday afternoon, that fundraiser reached over $16,000, making a proper check more likely. Much of those funds came from a single $10,000 donation from an Atlanta-based security firm. “We’re now in a place where we have nearly—but not quite enough—to get a serious audit done,” wrote Matthew Green , a  well-known cryptography professor at Johns Hopkins University, on Twitter. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

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New effort to fully audit TrueCrypt raises over $16,000 in a few short weeks

Obamacare site hits reset button on passwords as contractors scramble

Getting to this page on the Healthcare.gov site is just the start of the battle for would-be insurance customers. Sean Gallagher Amid all the attention, bugs, and work happening at Healthcare.gov in light of the Affordable Care Act, potential registrants talking to phone support today have been told that all user passwords are being reset to help address the site’s login woes. And the tech supports behind Healthcare.gov will be asking more users to act in the name of fixing the site, too. According to registrants speaking with Ars, individuals whose logins never made it to the site’s database will have to re-register using a different username, as their previously chosen names are now stuck in authentication limbo. The website for the Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”) launched just last week. With all the scrutiny and debate happening, if ever there was a website launch that was “too big to fail, ” this was it.  So, of course, it did—depending on how you define “failure.” The inability of Obamacare portals to keep up with the traffic demands initially put upon them has been seized by politicians and conservative pundits as evidence that Obamacare “is not ready for prime time” in the words of Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). Now, a week later, the site appears to be stabilizing, with waiting times dropping dramatically for those who haven’t been able to register before. A test of the site this morning had me waiting four minutes to get to the signup page; others got on instantly. But problems persist beyond the front door. The contractors responsible for the exchange—CGI Federal for the website itself, Quality Software Systems Inc. (QSSI) for the information “hub” that determines eligibility for programs and provides the data on qualified insurance plans, and Booz Allen for enrollment and eligibility technical support—are scrambling to deploy more fixes. Technical support call center operators continue to handle an onslaught of calls from users who can’t get back into the system after registering. Read 13 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

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Obamacare site hits reset button on passwords as contractors scramble

Meltdowns at NSA spy data center destroy equipment, delay opening

The NSA’s Utah Data Center. Swilsonmc A massive data center being built by the National Security Agency to aid its surveillance operations has been hit by “10 meltdowns in the past 13 months” that “destroyed hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of machinery and delayed the center’s opening for a year, ” the  Wall Street Journal reported last night . The first of four facilities at the  Utah Data Center  was originally scheduled to become operational in October 2012, according to project documents described by the  Journal . But the electrical problems—described as arc fault failures or “a flash of lightning inside a 2-foot box”—led to explosions, failed circuits, and melted metal, the report states: The first arc fault failure at the Utah plant was on Aug. 9, 2012, according to project documents. Since then, the center has had nine more failures, most recently on Sept. 25. Each incident caused as much as $100, 000 in damage, according to a project official. It took six months for investigators to determine the causes of two of the failures. In the months that followed, the contractors employed more than 30 independent experts that conducted 160 tests over 50, 000 man-hours, according to project documents. The 1 million square foot data center is slated to cost $1.4 billion to construct. One project official told the  Journal that the NSA planned to start turning on some of the computers at the facility this week. “But without a reliable electrical system to run computers and keep them cool, the NSA’s global surveillance data systems can’t function, ” the newspaper wrote. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

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Meltdowns at NSA spy data center destroy equipment, delay opening

Ban on most robocalls and text message spam gets stronger this month

New Federal Communications Commission restrictions on telemarketing calls and text messages go into effect Wednesday, October 16. Adopted by the commission last year, the amendment to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) “will require businesses to obtain ‘prior express written consent’ before placing telemarketing calls to mobile phones using an automatic telephone dialing system (ATDS) or an artificial or prerecorded voice, ” a Bloomberg Law summary explains. “The same regulations will now also require businesses to obtain ‘prior express written consent’ before placing telemarketing calls to residential lines using an artificial or prerecorded voice. As a result, effective Oct. 16, oral consent is not enough.” This new restriction applies to text messages as well. The FCC’s order notes that “text messaging is a form of communication used primarily between telephones and is therefore consistent with the definition of a ‘call.'” Thus, the commission said it “concluded that text messages would be subject to the TCPA.” Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

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Ban on most robocalls and text message spam gets stronger this month

US indicts suspected Anonymous members for leading 2010 “Operation Payback”

Back in 2010, “Operation Payback” involved a series of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against anti-piracy websites as a way to protest what some members of Anonymous viewed as an overly greedy intellectual property industry. The attack was later revived in early 2011. On Thursday, 13 men were indicted (PDF) in federal court in Virginia on one count of Conspiracy to Intentionally Cause Damage to a Protected Computer. They are accused of using the well-known Low-Orbit Ion Cannon application to conduct DDoS attacks on the Recording Industry Association of America, the Motion Picture Association of America, the United States Copyright Office of the Library of Congress, Visa, MasterCard, and Bank of America. According to the indictment, the victims suffered “significant damage, ” noting specifically that MasterCard suffered at least $5, 000 in losses during a one-year period. (For the record, MasterCard profited $415 million in 2010.) Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

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US indicts suspected Anonymous members for leading 2010 “Operation Payback”

How the FBI found Miss Teen USA’s webcam spy

RATer’s moniker was “cutefuzzypuppy.” Aurich Lawson / Thinkstock The sextortionist who snapped nude pictures of Miss Teen USA Cassidy Wolf through her laptop’s webcam has been found and arrested, the FBI revealed yesterday. 19-year old Jared James Abrahams, a California computer science student who went by the online handle “cutefuzzypuppy, ” had as many as 150 “slave” computers under his control during the height of his webcam spying in 2012. Watching all of those webcams to see when a young woman changes her clothes takes a serious time commitment, and Abrahams made one; he “was always at his computer, ” according the FBI complaint against him. Abrahams yesterday turned himself in after the complaint was unsealed, and a federal judge released him on a $50, 000 bond. Anatomy of a RATer How did Abrahams get his start learning the intricacies of remote administration tools (RATs), the malware used to spy on his victims? Not surprisingly, he was a regular user of hackforums.net, which features a large RAT forum that I profiled earlier this year . As cutefuzzypuppy, Abrahams asked for plenty of help distributing software like DarkComet to victims, since he “suck[ed] at social engineering” and needed to find better ways to spread his spyware. Read 14 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

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How the FBI found Miss Teen USA’s webcam spy