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Bitcoin Is Forking. Again.

Merely weeks after it was announced that Bitcoin was splitting into two separate entities, the initial version of bitcoin and it’s new “bitcoin cash, ” the network is adding a third version, according to a report. From the article: On Wednesday, a group of bitcoiners scheduled yet another split for the network in November, which would create a third version of bitcoin. So, what makes this version different from the others? Right now, the bitcoin network can sometimes take a long time to process transactions due to so many people using it. This is because the “blocks” of transaction data that get added to bitcoin’s public ledger, the blockchain, are getting full. In the weeks preceding the fork, bitcoin coalesced around a solution called “segregated witness, ” which will change how data is stored in blocks to free up some space when it kicks in later in August. But the size of the blocks themselves will stay at one megabyte on the original bitcoin blockchain. Still, some bitcoiners maintained that the only way to speed bitcoin up for the foreseeable future was to increase the size of blocks themselves. So, a group of bitcoin companies and developers got together and launched a fork called bitcoin cash, which does not include segregated witness. It bumped the size of blocks up to a maximum of eight megabytes. That fork was widely anticipated to be a failure before it happened, but at the time of writing, bitcoin cash is trading above $300 USD per coin, which is comparable to cryptocurrencies like ethereum. Sounds like everyone got what they wanted, right? Oh, no. There’s a third group of bitcoin developers, companies, and users who advocate for a “best of both worlds approach.” This group includes Bitmain, the largest bitcoin infrastructure company in the world, and legendary bitcoin developer Jeff Garzik. They got together back in May and signed what is known as the “New York Agreement, ” which bound them to implement a two megabyte block size increase alongside segregated witness via a hard fork within six months of the time of signing. They call the fork Segwit2x. Now, that’s exactly what’s happening. According to an announcement posted to the Segwit2x GitHub repository, a bitcoin block between one and two megabytes will be created at block 494, 784. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Bitcoin Is Forking. Again.

Hacker Claims To Have Decrypted Apple’s Secure Enclave Processor Firmware

According to iClarified, a hacker by name of “xerub” has posted the decryption key for Apple’s Secure Enclave Processor (SEP) firmware. “The security coprocessor was introduced alongside the iPhone 5s and Touch ID, ” reports iClarified. “It performs secure services for the rest of the SOC and prevents the main processor from getting direct access to sensitive data. It runs its own operating system (SEPOS) which includes a kernel, drivers, services, and applications.” From the report: The Secure Enclave is responsible for processing fingerprint data from the Touch ID sensor, determining if there is a match against registered fingerprints, and then enabling access or purchases on behalf of the user. Communication between the processor and the Touch ID sensor takes place over a serial peripheral interface bus. The processor forwards the data to the Secure Enclave but can’t read it. It’s encrypted and authenticated with a session key that is negotiated using the device’s shared key that is provisioned for the Touch ID sensor and the Secure Enclave. The session key exchange uses AES key wrapping with both sides providing a random key that establishes the session key and uses AES-CCM transport encryption. Today, xerub announced the decryption key “is fully grown.” You can use img4lib to decrypt the firmware and xerub’s SEP firmware split tool to process. Decryption of the SEP Firmware will make it easier for hackers and security researchers to comb through the SEP for vulnerabilities. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Hacker Claims To Have Decrypted Apple’s Secure Enclave Processor Firmware

Online Critics Decry Even More Wells Fargo Fraud Scandals

On Saturday author/blogger Cory Doctorow launched a new barrage of criticism towards Wells Fargo: It’s been a whole day since we learned about another example of systematic, widespread fraud by America’s largest bank Wells Fargo (ripping off small merchants with credit card fees), so it’s definitely time to learn about another one: scamming mortgage borrowers out of $43/month for an unrequested and pointless “home warranty service” from American Home Shield, a billion-dollar scam-factory that considers you a customer if you throw away its junk-mail instead of ticking the “no” box and sending it back. $43/month gets you pretty much nothing: people who tried to actually use their AHS insurance found it impossible to get them to actually do anything in exchange for this money. Here’s a quick Wells Fargo fraud scorecard: stealing thousand of cars with fraudulent repos; defrauding mortgage borrowers; blackballing whistelblowers; creating 2, 000, 000+ fraudulent accounts, and stealing millions with fraudulent fees and penalties. Life Pro Tip: if you don’t like banks, join a credit union. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Online Critics Decry Even More Wells Fargo Fraud Scandals

Russian Group That Hacked DNC Used NSA Attack Code In Attack On Hotels

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A Russian government-sponsored group accused of hacking the Democratic National Committee last year has likely been infecting other targets of interest with the help of a potent Windows exploit developed by, and later stolen from, the National Security Agency, researchers said Friday. Eternal Blue, as the exploit is code-named, is one of scores of advanced NSA attacks that have been released over the past year by a mysterious group calling itself the Shadow Brokers. It was published in April in the group’s most damaging release to date. Its ability to spread from computer to computer without any user action was the engine that allowed the WCry ransomware worm, which appropriated the leaked exploit, to shut down computers worldwide in May. Eternal Blue also played a role in the spread of NotPetya, a follow-on worm that caused major disruptions in June. Now, researchers at security firm FireEye say they’re moderately confident the Russian hacking group known as Fancy Bear, APT 28, and other names has also used Eternal Blue, this time in a campaign that targeted people of interest as they connected to hotel Wi-Fi networks. In July, the campaign started using Eternal Blue to spread from computer to computer inside various staff and guest networks, company researchers Lindsay Smith and Ben Read wrote in a blog post. While the researchers didn’t directly observe those attacks being used to infect guest computers connected to the network, they said a related campaign from last year used the control of hotel Wi-Fi services to obtain login credentials from guest devices. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Russian Group That Hacked DNC Used NSA Attack Code In Attack On Hotels

Font Maker Sues Universal Music Over ‘Pirated’ The Vamps Logo

An anonymous reader writes: Universal Music Group is being sued by HypeForType, which accuses the record label of using “pirated” copies of its fonts for the logo of The Vamps. The font is widely used for artwork, promotion material and merchandising of the popular British band, and the font creator is looking for a minimum of $1.25 million in damages. The font maker has filed a lawsuit accusing the major label of using its “Nanami Rounded” and “Ebisu Bold” fonts without permission. According to a complaint, filed in a New York federal court, Universal failed to obtain a proper license for its use, so they are essentially using pirated fonts. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Font Maker Sues Universal Music Over ‘Pirated’ The Vamps Logo

Amazon Suspends Sales of Blu Android Phones Due To Privacy Concerns

CNET reports: Amazon just put budget phone maker Blu in the penalty box. The online retailing giant told CNET that it was suspending sales of phones from Blu, known for making ultra-cheap Android handsets, due to a “potential security issue.” The move comes after security firm Kryptowire demonstrated last week how software in Blu’s phones collected data and sent it to servers in China without alerting people. Blu defended the software, created by a Chinese company called Shanghai Adups Technology, and denied any wrongdoing. A company spokeswoman said at the time it “has several policies in place which take customer privacy and security seriously.” She added there had been no breaches. Blu said it was in a process of review to reinstate the phones at Amazon. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Amazon Suspends Sales of Blu Android Phones Due To Privacy Concerns

LibreOffice 5.4 Adds More New Features, Improves Office File Format Compatibility

The Document Foundation has released LibreOffice 5.4. Again, it’s on time, arriving six months after the release of LibreOffice 5.3. From a report: LibreOffice 5.4 is “the last major release of the LibreOffice 5.x family, ” and like other point releases is a major one, adding features across all components and incrementally improving compatibility with Microsoft Office document formats. Highlights include a new standard color palette based on the RYB (Red Yellow Blue) color model. File format compatibility improvements include better support for EMF vector images and higher quality rendering of imported PDF files (with support for embedding video in exported PDFs from Writer and Impress). Also added is OpenPGP key support for signing ODF documents in Linux. LibreOffice Writer adds new context menu items for working with sections, footnotes, endnotes and styles. Users can now import AutoText entries from Microsoft Word .dotm templates. The full structure of bulleted and numbered lists is now preserved when pasted as plain text, and users gain the ability to create custom watermarks for their documents via the Format menu. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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LibreOffice 5.4 Adds More New Features, Improves Office File Format Compatibility

How a podcaster managed to confront his tech support scammer, in person

Enlarge / This November 2015 photo appears to be a company photo of Accostings, which Reply All identified as an India-based tech support scam company. Kamal Verma is standing in a black shirt with a watch in the center of the photo. (credit: Kamal Verma ) The following post contains spoilers of Reply All episode #102: Long Distance , which was released on July 27, 2017. If you don’t wish to know what happens in that episode, read no further. Here at Ars, we are no strangers to online tech support scammers. For years now, we have played along with scammers, cajoled them, and called them out on their tricks . Such scams are notoriously difficult to shut down. But we never even dreamed of doing what the podcast Reply All has done  in an amazing episode that was released Thursday morning: doggedly pursue corporate records, find Facebook profiles of at least one company executive, and even manage to have extended conversations with one of them before trying to confront him. In person. In India. Read 93 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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How a podcaster managed to confront his tech support scammer, in person

Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Hundreds of Victims For Years

An anonymous reader shares a report: A mysterious piece of malware has been infecting hundreds of Mac computers for years — and no one noticed until a few months ago. The malware is called “FruitFly, ” and one of its variants, “FruitFly 2” has infected at least 400 victims over the years. FruitFly 2 is intriguing and mysterious: its goals, who’s behind it, and how it infects victims, are all unknown. Earlier this year, an ex-NSA hacker started looking into a piece of malware he described to me as “unique” and “intriguing.” It was a slightly different strain of a malware discovered on four computers earlier this year by security firm Malwarebytes, known as “FruitFly.” This first strain had researchers scratching their heads. On the surface, the malware seemed “simplistic.” It was programmed mainly to surreptitiously monitor victims through their webcams, capture their screens, and log keystrokes. But, strangely, it went undetected since at least 2015. There was no indication of who could be behind it, and it contained “ancient” functions and “rudimentary” remote control capabilities, Malwarebytes’s Thomas Reed wrote at the time. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Hundreds of Victims For Years

Sweden Accidentally Leaks Personal Details of Nearly All Citizens

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hacker News: Swedish media is reporting of a massive data breach in the Swedish Transport Agency (Transportstyrelsen) after the agency mishandled an outsourcing deal with IBM, which led to the leak of the private data about every vehicle in the country, including those used by both police and military. The data breach exposed the names, photos and home addresses of millions of Swedish citizen, including fighter pilots of Swedish air force, members of the military’s most secretive units, police suspects, people under the witness relocation program, the weight capacity of all roads and bridges, and much more. The incident is believed to be one of the worst government information security disasters ever. In 2015, the Swedish Transport Agency hand over IBM an IT maintenance contract to manage its databases and networks. However, the Swedish Transport Agency uploaded IBM’s entire database onto cloud servers, which covered details on every vehicle in the country, including police and military registrations, and individuals on witness protection programs. The transport agency then emailed the entire database in messages to marketers that subscribe to it. And what’s terrible is that the messages were sent in clear text. When the error was discovered, the transport agency merely thought of sending a new list in another email, asking the subscribers to delete the old list themselves. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Sweden Accidentally Leaks Personal Details of Nearly All Citizens