Guy Builds Intricate Star Trek Klingon Warship Using 25,000 LEGO Blocks

All photos courtesy Kevin J. Walter It was a project eight years in the making—well, technically nine now. One LEGO fan has built his own Star Trek Klingon Bird of Prey using about 25, 000 blocks, based on a virtual blueprint he started all the way back in 2008. Read more…

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Guy Builds Intricate Star Trek Klingon Warship Using 25,000 LEGO Blocks

Windows 10 Getting a Game Mode That Would Improve Game Performance – Report

Microsoft may have plans to improve gaming experience on Windows 10. The speculation comes after long time watcher @h0x0d found a new “gamemode.dll” in the latest Windows 10 developer build, reports GameSpot. The feature appears to allow Windows 10 to adjust CPU and GPU resources when running a game to allocate more power for the game that’s running instead of toward any background apps. From the article: The feature will reportedly launch as part of the Creators update and will be enabled for Windows Insider users soon. What’s unclear is exactly which games this is compatible with. It’s possible it could be limited to only to those downloaded from the Windows Store, or it might be much more far-reaching. We should know more once Windows Insiders testers get their hands on the feature. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Windows 10 Getting a Game Mode That Would Improve Game Performance – Report

Repurpose a Busted Wii U Controller as a Classic Game Emulator with a Raspberry Pi

We’re all well aware that the Raspberry Pi makes a fantastic game emulation machine , but sudomod user banjokazooie steps it up a notch by using a Wii U controller as a screen and controller combo for his little DIY system. Read more…

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Repurpose a Busted Wii U Controller as a Classic Game Emulator with a Raspberry Pi

Some hacked e-mails, documents from Putin advisor confirmed as genuine

Enlarge Recently a cache of 2,337 e-mails from the office of a high-ranking advisor to Russian president Vladimir Putin was dumped on the Internet after purportedly being obtained by a Ukrainian hacking group calling itself CyberHunta . The cache shows that the Putin government communicated with separatist forces in Eastern Ukraine, receiving lists of casualties and expense reports while even apparently approving government members of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic. And if one particular document is to be believed, the Putin government was formulating plans to destabilize the Ukrainian government as early as next month in order to force an end to the standoff over the region, known as Donbass. Based on reporting by the Associated Press’s Howard Amos and analysis by the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab , at least some of the e-mails—dumped in a 1-gigabyte Outlook .PST mailbox file—are genuine. Amos showed e-mails in the cache to a Russian journalist, Svetlana Babaeva, who identified e-mails she had sent to Surkov’s office. E-mail addresses and phone numbers in some of the e-mails were also confirmed. And among the documents in the trove of e-mails is a scan of Surkov’s passport (above), as well as those of his wife and children. A Kremlin spokesperson denied the legitimacy of the e-mails, saying that Surkov did not have an e-mail address. However, the account appears to have been used by Surkov’s assistants, and the dump contains e-mails with reports from Surkov’s assistants. The breach, if ultimately proven genuine, would appear to be the first major publicized hack of a Russian political figure. And in that instance, perhaps this could be a response to the hacking of US political figures attributed to Russia. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Some hacked e-mails, documents from Putin advisor confirmed as genuine

Ubuntu 16.10: Convergence is in a holding pattern; consistency’s here instead

Enlarge / Rumor has it staffer Megan Geuss is now considering Ubuntu 16.10 solely based on codename . (credit: itsfoss.com / YouTube ) There’s plenty in Ubuntu 16.10 that makes it worth the upgrade, though nothing about Canonical’s latest release is groundbreaking. This less experimental but worthwhile update continues to refine and bug-fix what at this point has become the fastest, stablest, least-likely-to-completely-change-between-point releases of the three major “modern” Linux desktops. Still, while the Unity 7.5 desktop offers stability and speed today, it’s not long for this world. Ubuntu 16.10 is the seventh release since the fabled Unity 8 and its accompanying Mir display server were announced. Yet in Ubuntu 16.10, there’s still no Unity 8 nor Mir. Read 32 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Ubuntu 16.10: Convergence is in a holding pattern; consistency’s here instead

Using Rowhammer bitflips to root Android phones is now a thing

Enlarge / An LG Nexus 5 at the moment it is rooted using Rowhammer-induced bit flips. (credit: van der Veen et al.) Researchers have devised an attack that gains unfettered “root” access to a large number of Android phones by exploiting a relatively new type of bug that allows adversaries to manipulate data stored in memory chips. The breakthrough has the potential to make millions of Android phones vulnerable, at least until a security fix is available, to a new form of attack that seizes control of core parts of the operating system and neuters key security defenses. Equally important, it demonstrates that the new class of exploit dubbed Rowhammer can have malicious and far-reaching effects on a much wider base of devices than was previously known, including those running ARM chips. Previously, some experts believed Rowhammer attacks that altered specific pieces of security-sensitive data weren’t reliable enough to pose a viable threat because exploits depended on chance hardware faults or advanced memory-management features that could be easily adapted to repel the attacks. Now, an international team of academic researchers is challenging those assumptions by demonstrating a Rowhammer exploit that alters crucial bits of data in a way that completely roots name brand Android devices from LG, Motorola, Samsung, OnePlus, and possibly other manufacturers. An app containing the researchers’ rooting exploit requires no user permissions and doesn’t rely on any vulnerability in Android to work. Read 17 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Using Rowhammer bitflips to root Android phones is now a thing

“Most serious” Linux privilege-escalation bug ever is under active exploit (updated)

(credit: michael ) A serious vulnerability that has been present for nine years in virtually all versions of the Linux operating system is under active exploit, according to researchers who are advising users to install a patch as soon as possible. While CVE-2016-5195, as the bug is cataloged, amounts to a mere privilege-escalation vulnerability rather than a more serious code-execution vulnerability, there are several reasons many researchers are taking it extremely seriously. For one thing, it’s not hard to develop exploits that work reliably. For another, the flaw is located in a section of the Linux kernel that’s a part of virtually every distribution of the open-source OS released for almost a decade. What’s more, researchers have discovered attack code that indicates the vulnerability is being actively and maliciously exploited in the wild. “It’s probably the most serious Linux local privilege escalation ever,” Dan Rosenberg, a senior researcher at Azimuth Security, told Ars. “The nature of the vulnerability lends itself to extremely reliable exploitation. This vulnerability has been present for nine years, which is an extremely long period of time.” Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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“Most serious” Linux privilege-escalation bug ever is under active exploit (updated)

Feds seized 50TB of data from NSA contractor suspected of theft

The National Security Operations Center at NSA, photographed in 2012—the nerve center of the NSA’s “signals intelligence” monitoring. (credit: National Security Agency ) In a new Thursday court filing , federal prosecutors expanded their accusations against a former National Security Agency contractor. Federal investigators seized at least 50 terabytes of data from Harold Thomas Martin III, at least some of which was “national defense information.” If all of this data was indeed classified, it would be the largest such heist from the NSA, far larger than what former contractor Edward Snowden took. Prosecutors also said that Martin should remain locked up and noted that he will soon be charged with violations of the Espionage Act . That law, which dates back nearly a century, is the same law that was used to charge Chelsea Manning and Snowden, among others. If convicted, violators can face the death penalty. United States Attorney Rod Rosenstein and two other prosecutors laid out new details in the case against Martin, whose arrest only became public earlier this month . Martin had been a contractor with Booz Allen Hamilton and possessed a top-secret clearance. Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Feds seized 50TB of data from NSA contractor suspected of theft