Tag: journal

Used Cars Can Still Be Controlled By Their Previous Owners’ Apps

An IBM security researcher recently discovered something interesting about smart cars. An anonymous reader quotes CNN: Charles Henderson sold his car several years ago, but he still knows exactly where it is, and can control it from his phone… “The car is really smart, but it’s not smart enough to know who its owner is, so it’s not smart enough to know it’s been resold, ” Henderson told CNNTech. “There’s nothing on the dashboard that tells you ‘the following people have access to the car.'” This isn’t an isolated problem. Henderson tested four major auto manufacturers, and found they all have apps that allow previous owners to access them from a mobile device. At the RSA security conference in San Francisco on Friday, Henderson explained how people can still retain control of connected cars even after they resell them. Manufacturers create apps to control smart cars — you can use your phone to unlock the car, honk the horn and find out the exact location of your vehicle. Henderson removed his personal information from services in the car before selling it back to the dealership, but he was still able to control the car through a mobile app for years. That’s because only the dealership that originally sold the car can see who has access and manually remove someone from the app. It’s also something to consider when buying used IoT devices — or a smart home equipped with internet-enabled devices. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Used Cars Can Still Be Controlled By Their Previous Owners’ Apps

RSA Conference Attendees Get Hacked

The RSA Conference “is perhaps the world’s largest security event, but that doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily a secure event, ” reports eSecurityPlanet. Scanning the conference floor revealed rogue access points posing as known and trusted networks, according to security testing vendor Pwnie Express. storagedude writes: What’s worse, several attendees fell for these dummy Wi-Fi services that spoof well-known brands like Starbucks. The company also found a number of access points using outdated WEP encryption. So much for security pros… At least two people stayed connected to a rogue network for more than a day, according to the article, and Pownie Express is reminding these security pros that connecting to a rogue network means “the attacker has full control of all information going into and out of the device, and can deploy various tools to modify or monitor the victim’s communication.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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RSA Conference Attendees Get Hacked

Iron Age Potters Accidentally Recorded the Strength of Earth’s Magnetic Field

Solandri writes: We’ve only been able to measure the Earth’s magnetic field strength for about two centuries. During this time, there has been a gradual decline in the field strength. In recent years, the rate of decline seems to be accelerating, leading to some speculation that the Earth may be losing its magnetic field — a catastrophic possibility since the magnetic field is what protects life on Earth from dangerous solar radiation. Ferromagnetic particles in rocks provide a long-term history which tells us the poles have flipped numerous times. But uncertainties in dating the rocks prevents their use in understanding decade-scale magnetic field fluctuations. Now a group of archeologists and geophysicists have come up with a novel way to produce decade-scale temporal measurements of the Earth’s magnetic field strength from before the invention of the magnetometer. When iron-age potters fired their pottery in a kiln to harden it, it loosened tiny ferromagnetic particles in the clay. As the pottery cooled and these particles hardened, it captured a snapshot of the Earth’s magnetic field. Crucially, the governments of that time required pottery used to collect taxed goods (e.g. a portion of olive oil sold) to be stamped with a royal seal. These seals changed over time as new kings ascended, or governments were completely replaced after invasion. Thus by cross-referencing the magnetic particles in the pottery with the seals, researchers were able to piece together a history of the Earth’s magnetic field strength spanning from the 8th century BCE to the 2nd century BCE. Their findings show that large fluctuations in the strength of the magnetic field over a span of decades are normal. The study has been published in the journal PNAS. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Iron Age Potters Accidentally Recorded the Strength of Earth’s Magnetic Field

How UPS Trucks Saved Millions of Dollars By Eliminating Left Turns

Some people probably already know this, but for those who don’t: UPS truck drivers don’t take left turns, and despite this usually resulting in longer route, they are saving millions of dollars in fuel costs. From a report: The company decided on eliminating left turns (or right turns in left-hand driving countries such as India) wherever possible after it found that drivers have to sit idly in the trucks while waiting to take the left turn to pass through traffic. So, it created an algorithm that eliminated left turns from drivers’ routes even if meant a longer journey. This meant that drivers do not have to wait in traffic to take a left turn and can take the right turn at junctions. Of course, the algorithm does not entirely eliminate left turns, but the number of left turns taken by UPS trucks is less than 10 percent of all turns made. Turns out that UPS was right — the idea really paid off. In 2005, a year after it announced that it will minimize left turns, the company said that the total distance covered by its 96, 000 trucks was reduced by 747, 000km, and 190, 000 litres of fuel had been saved. In 2011, Bob Stoffel, a UPS Senior Vice President, told Fortune that the company had reduced distance traveled by trucks by 20.4 million miles, and reduced CO2 emissions by 20, 000 metric tons, by not taking left turns. A recent report by The Independent says that the total reduction in distance traveled by UPS trucks now stands at 45.8 million miles, and there are 1, 100 fewer trucks in its fleet because of the algorithm. Even by conservative estimates, that’s tens of millions of dollar of savings in fuel costs. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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How UPS Trucks Saved Millions of Dollars By Eliminating Left Turns

Human Resources Startup Zenefits Is Laying Off Almost Half Its Employees

An anonymous reader shares a report: Zenefits will lay off 45% of its employees in an effort to slash costs, according to an internal memo this morning that was obtained by BuzzFeed News, a stark acknowledgment by the embattled human resources startup that its onetime expectations for growth were vastly inflated. Roughly 430 workers will be cut, including 250 in Zenefits’ San Francisco headquarters and 150 in its office in Tempe, Arizona, leaving the company with about 500 employees, according to the memo and a person briefed on the matter. That’s about a third of the size it was a year ago, when it ousted its founding CEO, Parker Conrad, over revelations that it flouted state regulations for selling health insurance. Thursday’s announcement, coming on the morning after the one-year anniversary of Conrad’s departure, is the third round of layoffs — and the largest — to hit the company since the crisis began. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Human Resources Startup Zenefits Is Laying Off Almost Half Its Employees

Microsoft Teases Windows 10’s Upcoming ‘Project Neon’ Design Language

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Windows Central: Microsoft just gave developers a sneak peek at Project Neon, Microsoft’s upcoming design language for Windows 10 that aims to add fluidity, animation and blur to apps and the operating system. We exclusively revealed that this was in the works in late 2016, and today Microsoft has given us a first peak at what Project Neon will look like. During the Windows Developer Day livestream, an image of Project Neon was seen the background of one of the PowerPoint slides being shown off on stage. Although not much, it’s further confirmation that this is the end goal for Windows 10’s UI, and Project Neon will be bringing a fresh coat of paint to apps. Project Neon should benefit all types of Windows 10 devices, including Windows 10 Mobile, HoloLens and even Xbox. We’re still several months away from Project Neon being everywhere in Windows 10, and we’re expecting to see more at BUILD this coming May. In fact, a lot of the Project Neon APIs are available in the latest Insider Preview builds of Windows 10, meaning developers can already begin taking advantage of these new user interfaces and design language! Animations and transitions are a big deal with Project Neon, with the goal of making the operating system and apps feel like they work together. Peter Bright does a good job summarizing the looks of the screenshot via Ars Technica: “The picture shows a refreshed version of the Groove music app on a Windows desktop. The fundamentals of the app and its layout aren’t changed, underscoring that Neon is very much an iteration of the current Metro/Microsoft Design Language (MDL). The window has shed its discrete title bar and one pixel border, with the application content now extending to the very edge of the window. The search text field no longer has a box around it, and the left hand pane has a hint of translucency to it.” You can view the screenshot here and judge it for yourself. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Microsoft Teases Windows 10’s Upcoming ‘Project Neon’ Design Language

French Politician Uses Hologram To Hold Meetings In Two Cities At the Same Time

neutrino38 writes: The French presidential election is approaching fast. One of the candidates, Jean-Luc Melanchon, used a hologram to hold two public meetings at once. With a political program that is mostly socialist and very left leaning, some people pointed out that he used private innovation to stand out from the crowd. Reuters notes that this is “not the first politician to employ such technology, ” adding that “in 2014, then-Turkish prime minister Tayyip Erdogan used a huge hologram of himself to attract wider support, while India’s Narendra Modi trounced the opposition with a campaign that included holograms of his speeches in villages across the country.” You can watch part of one of Melanchon’s virtual meetings here. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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French Politician Uses Hologram To Hold Meetings In Two Cities At the Same Time

A Hacker Just Pwned Over 150,000 Printers Exposed Online

Last year an attacker forced thousands of unsecured printers to spew racist and anti-semitic messages. But this year’s attack is even bigger. An anonymous reader writes: A grey-hat hacker going by the name of Stackoverflowin has pwned over 150, 000 printers that have been left accessible online. For the past 24 hours, Stackoverflowin has been running an automated script that searches for open printer ports and sends a rogue print job to the target’s device. The script targets IPP (Internet Printing Protocol) ports, LPD (Line Printer Daemon) ports, and port 9100 left open to external connections. From high-end multi-functional printers at corporate headquarters to lowly receipt printers in small town restaurants, all have been affected. The list includes brands such as Afico, Brother, Canon, Epson, HP, Lexmark, Konica Minolta, Oki, and Samsung. The printed out message included recommendations for printer owners to secure their device. The hacker said that people who reached out were very nice and thanked him. The printers apparently spew out an ASCII drawing of a robot, along with the words “stackoverflowin the hacker god has returned. your printer is part of a flaming botnet… For the love of God, please close this port.” The messages sometimes also include a link to a Twitter feed named LMAOstack. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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A Hacker Just Pwned Over 150,000 Printers Exposed Online

Kaspersky Lab Promises New Backup Tool To Help Unhappy Social Media Users Quit

Kaspersky Lab surveyed 16, 750 people and concluded that often negative experiences on social experience overpower their positive effects — and they’re doing something about it. JustAnotherOldGuy pointed us to their latest announcement. 59% have felt unhappy when they have seen friends’ posts from a party they were not invited to, and 45% revealed that their friends’ happy holiday pictures have had a negative influence on them. Furthermore, 37% also admitted that looking at past happy posts of their own can leave them with the feeling that their own past was better than their present life. Previous research has also demonstrated peoples’ frustration with social media as 78% admitted that they have considered leaving social networks altogether. The only thing that makes people stay on social media is the fear of losing their digital memories, such as photos, and contacts with their friends. To help people decide more freely if they want to stay in social media or leave without losing their digital memories, Kaspersky Lab is developing a new app — FFForget will allow people to back up all of their memories from the social networks they use and keep them in a safe, encrypted memory container and will give people the freedom to leave any network whenever they want, without losing what belongs to them — their digital lives. The FFForget app will be released in 2017, but there’s already a web page where you can sign up for early access. Kaspersky plans to monetize this by creating both a free version of the app — limited to one social network — and a $1.99-per-month version which automatically backs up social content from Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Instagram in real-time with a fancier interface and more powerful encryption. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Kaspersky Lab Promises New Backup Tool To Help Unhappy Social Media Users Quit

Privacy-Centric Linux Distro Tails 3.0 Will Drop 32-Bit Processor Support

All of its outgoing connections are routed through Tor, and it even blocks non-anonymous connections. You can carry it around on a USB stick, and Edward Snowden uses it. But a big change is coming with Tails 3.0. BrianFagioli quotes BetaNews: Unfortunately for some users, Tails will soon not work on their computers. The upcoming version 3.0 of the operating system is dropping 32-bit processor support. While a decline in compatibility is normally a bad thing, in this case, it is good. You see, because there are so few 32-bit Tails users, the team was wasting resources by supporting them. Not to mention, 64-bit processors are more secure too… “In the beginning of 2016, only 4% of Tails users were still using a 32-bit computer. Of course, some of these computers will keep working for a while. But once the number had fallen this low, the benefits of switching Tails to 64-bit outweighed the reasons we had to keep supporting 32-bit computers, ” says the Tails team… “In the last few years, the developers who maintain Tails have spent lots of time addressing such issues. We would rather see them spend their time in ways that benefit our users on the long term, and not on problems that will vanish when Tails switches to 64-bit eventually.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Privacy-Centric Linux Distro Tails 3.0 Will Drop 32-Bit Processor Support