insightful – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Warner Bros Claims Agency Ran Its Own Pirate Movie Site

Warner Bros Entertainment has sued talent agency Innovative Artists, claiming that the agency ran its own pirate site when it ripped DVD screeners and streamed them to associates via Google servers. TorrentFreak adds: In a lawsuit filed in a California federal court, Warner accuses the agency of effectively setting up its own pirate site, stocked with rips of DVD screeners that should have been kept secure. “Beginning in late 2015, Innovative Artists set up and operated an illegal digital distribution platform that copied movies and then distributed copies and streamed public performances of those movies to numerous people inside and outside of the agency, ” the complaint reads. “Innovative Artists stocked its platform with copies of Plaintiff’s works, including copies that Innovative Artists made by ripping awards consideration ‘screener’ DVDs that Plaintiff sent to the agency to deliver to one of its clients.” Given its position in the industry, Innovative Artists should have known better than to upload content, Warner’s lawyers write. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

More here:
Warner Bros Claims Agency Ran Its Own Pirate Movie Site

Spanish Police Arrest Their First Ever eBook Pirate

An anonymous reader writes: Spain’s Ministry of the Interior has announced the first ever arrest of an eBook pirate. The suspect is said to have uploaded more than 11, 000 literary works online, many on the same day as their official release. More than 400 subsequent sites are said to have utilized his releases. The investigation began in 2015 following a complaint from the Spanish Reproduction Rights Centre (CEDRO), a non-profit association of authors and publishers of books, magazines, newspapers and sheet music. According to the Ministry, CEDRO had been tracking the suspect but were only able to identify him by an online pseudonym. However, following investigations carried out by the police, his real identity was discovered. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

View original post here:
Spanish Police Arrest Their First Ever eBook Pirate

Android 7.1 To Roll Out To Nexus Devices in December; Preview Goes Out This Month

Google said today it will roll out Android 7.1 to a range of Nexus devices — including Nexus 6 — later this year (December). A developer preview of Android 7.1 will be available to enthusiasts later this month. From an Engadget report: They also confirmed what 7.1 will bring to the table. Aside from Daydream VR support, most of the new features focus on giving developers more options to spruce up their apps’ functionality. First, they can now make custom shortcuts, much like the ones popping up in iOS via 3D Touch. There’s also support for image keyboards so users can insert stickers or GIFs within apps. For carriers and calling apps, 7.1 has APIs for multi-endpoint calling and telephony configuration. Lastly, developers can now route users to a Settings page to free up storage space by deleting unused files. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read the original:
Android 7.1 To Roll Out To Nexus Devices in December; Preview Goes Out This Month

HTC 10 With 5.2-inch QHD Display, Snapdragon 820 SoC, 12MP Camera Launched at $699

Dan Seifert, writing for The Verge: HTC is today formally announcing the 10, its flagship smartphone for 2016. The HTC 10 follows last year’s M9 and blends the design of the M series with the A9 that came last fall. HTC says it spent 12 months designing this phone and integrated feedback from its customers throughout the development process. The 10 has everything you might expect from a flagship Android phone in 2016. There’s a 5.2-inch, quad HD Super LCD 5 display that HTC says displays 30 percent more color than last year’s phone. The screen is covered in Gorilla Glass with curved edges that blend into the phone’s metal frame. You’ll be able to find out if that’s enough for HTC to compete when the phone ships next month for $699. One interesting feature, which separates HTC 10 from many other Android flagship smartphones, is support for AirPlay. The feature enables the smartphone to stream media content to an Apple TV. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read this article:
HTC 10 With 5.2-inch QHD Display, Snapdragon 820 SoC, 12MP Camera Launched at $699

Hacked Swedish Military Servers Used In Attacks On US Banks

Reader wiredmikey writes: Swedish military computers were hacked and used in an attack targeting major U.S. banks in 2013, the armed forces said on Monday. The attack knocked out the web sites of as many as 20 major U.S. banks and financial institutions, sometimes for several days. According to Swedish military spokesman Mikael Abramsson, a server in the Swedish defense system had a vulnerability which was exploited by hackers to carry out the attacks. At the time, the attack, which began in 2012 and continued for months, was one of the biggest ever reported. U.S. officials blamed Iran, suggesting it was in retaliation for political sanctions and several earlier cyberattacks on its own systems. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Continued here:
Hacked Swedish Military Servers Used In Attacks On US Banks

Sophisticated Bribe Scheme Gets Malware Onto Chinese Antivirus Whitelist

An anonymous reader writes “Malware operators have bribed employees of a gaming company to bundle malware with their mobile apps.” Because the app-maker reportedly had a good-faith agreement with China’s biggest antivirus company, the apps were apparently whitelisted without a thorough check, according to Softpedia. They cite a report from Check Point which describes how attackers would later pretend to be shoppers on a popular Chinese site where pictures of the desired items are sent to sellers. “The seller would open the picture on a PC and become infected, ” writes Check Point, “because the Trojan would not be detected, ” and a subsequent request for a refund would deliver the login credentials for the seller’s payment account. “This example illustrates how important it is to avoid third-party stores and to instead at least rely on stores with more reliable security, ” argues Check Point. “But even still, stores like the App Store and Google Play aren’t immune to threats.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read the original post:
Sophisticated Bribe Scheme Gets Malware Onto Chinese Antivirus Whitelist

Every Voter In The Philippines Exposed In Massive Data Breach

schwit1 writes: “The database of the Philippine Commission on Elections has been breached and the personal information of 55 million voters potentially exposed in what could rank as the worst ever government data breach anywhere, ” according to Infosecurity Magazine. The magazine attributes an initial web site breach to Anonymous, who were reportedly trying to persuade the commission to enable more security features on their automated vote-counting system before upcoming national elections on May 9. A second group named LulzSec Pilipinas then later posted the entire voter database online. Trend Micro originally broke the story, writing that “Every registered voter in the Philippines is now susceptible to fraud and other risks after a massive data breach leaked the entire database of the Philippines’ Commission on Elections.” They report that the breached data even included 15.8 million fingerprint records, as well as 1.3 million records for overseas Filipino voters, including their passports’ numbers and expiration dates, all stored in plain text. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Patch Out For ‘Ridiculous’ Trend Micro Command Execution Vulnerability

An anonymous reader shares a report on The Register: A bug in its software meant that Trend Micro accidentally left a remote debugging server running on customer machines. The flaw, discovered by Google’s Project Zero researcher Tavis Ormandy, opened the door to command execution of vulnerable systems (running either Trend Micro Maximum Security, Trend Micro Premium Security or Trend Micro Password Manager). Ormandy — who previously discovered a somewhat similar flaw in Trend Micro’s technology — described the latest flaw as ‘ridiculous’. Trend Micro issued a patch for the flaw, a little over a week after Ormandy reported the bug to it on 22 March. The patch is not complete but does address the most critical issues at hand, according to the security firm. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Continue reading here:
Patch Out For ‘Ridiculous’ Trend Micro Command Execution Vulnerability

NVIDIA Announces New Quadro M6000 With 24GB Memory Buffer For Heavy Workloads

Reader MojoKid writes: Some might say there’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to computing, and that’s especially true for workstation graphics professionals who need varying levels of performance and memory space. For that reason, NVIDIA is now offering a version of its Quadro M6000 graphics card with 24GB of GDDR5 memory, twice as much memory as much as the original model. According to NVIDIA, customers rendering datasets larger than 12GB can experience up to 5X faster performance compared to the previous Quadro M6000. Like the 12GB version, the new 24GB Quadro M6000 is based on NVIDIA’s Maxwell architecture. It has 3, 072 CUDA cores, a 384-bit memory bus, four DisplayPort 1.2 connectors, a single DVI-I connectors, and a maximum power consumption rating of 250W. In addition to the doubling the memory buffer, NVIDIA added a few other features, including more GPU clock options, greater software temperature control to keep the GPU temp below the point where throttling occurs, and a new under-power boot message if the card is ever under powered. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Autonomous Cars? How About Autonomous Bikes?

R3d M3rcury writes: So we’ve all heard about the brave new world of autonomous cars which will be at our beck-and-call. But how about an autonomous bike? The i-Bike (not to be confused with the iBike computer) is the winner of KPIT Sparkle 2016, the All India Science and Engineering Student Contest. It started off as a bicycle suitable for use by people with disabilities. If you could use a smartphone, you could ride a bike. But the developers realized that this could be part of a bike-sharing system. You could rent a bike at the train station, ride to work, and then have the bike automatically return to the train station for the next person. Of course, the obvious question is: Will the bike stop at stop signs? Read more of this story at Slashdot.

More:
Autonomous Cars? How About Autonomous Bikes?