Cyberattackers Hijack Screens at Two Vietnam Airports, Broadcast Political Messages

An anonymous reader quotes an article from the Washington Times: Hackers on Friday successfully pulled off cyberattacks against Vietnam’s two largest airports and the nation’s flag carrier, Vietnam Airlines. The attacks — attributed to a Chinese hacking group known as 1937CN — ultimately failed to cause any significant security issues or air traffic control problems, Vice Minister of Transport Nguyen Nhat told local media. Nonetheless, the individuals briefly hijacked flight information screens and sound systems inside Noi Bai and Tan Son Nhat airports in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, respectively… Instead of departure and arrival details, the airports’ flight screens and speakers broadcast what local media described as anti-Vietnamese and Philippines slogans, in turn prompting authorities to shut down both systems… Vietnam Airlineâ(TM)s website, meanwhile, “was seized control and transferred to a malicious website abroad” and… passenger data pertaining to an undisclosed number of its frequent flyers was published online as well, the airline said in a statement. Local media on Friday said about 100 MB of data concerning roughly 40, 000 VMA passengers had been dumped online. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Cyberattackers Hijack Screens at Two Vietnam Airports, Broadcast Political Messages

There are limits to 2FA and it can be near-crippling to your digital life

A video demonstration of the vulnerability here, using a temporary password. (credit: Kapil Haresh) This piece first appeared on Medium and is republished here with the permission of the author. It reveals a limitation in the way Apple approaches 2FA, which is most likely a deliberate decision. Apple engineers probably recognize that someone who loses their phone won’t be able to wipe data if 2FA is enforced, and this story is a good reminder of the pitfalls. As a graduate student studying  cryptography, security and privacy (CrySP ), software engineering and human-computer interaction , I’ve learned a thing or two about security. Yet a couple of days back, I watched my entire digital life get violated and nearly wiped off the face of the Earth. That sounds like a bit of an exaggeration, but honestly it pretty much felt like that. Here’s the timeline of a cyber-attack I recently faced on Sunday, July 23, 2016 (all times are in Eastern Standard): That’s a pretty incidence matrix (credit: Kapil Haresh) 3:36pm— I was scribbling out an incidence matrix for a perfect hash family table on the whiteboard, explaining how the incidence matrix should be built to my friends. Ironically, this was a cryptography assignment for multicast encryption. Everything seemed fine until a rather odd sound started playing on my iPhone. I was pretty sure it was on silent, but I was quite surprised to see that it said “Find My iPhone Alert” on the lock screen. That was odd. Read 20 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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There are limits to 2FA and it can be near-crippling to your digital life

Cisco Finds $34 Million Ransomware Industry

Ransomware is “generating huge profits, ” says Cisco. Slashdot reader coondoggie shares this report from Network World: Enterprise-targeting cyber enemies are deploying vast amounts of potent ransomware to generate revenue and huge profits — nearly $34 million annually, according to Cisco’s Mid-Year Cybersecurity Report out this week. Ransomware, Cisco wrote, has become a particularly effective moneymaker, and enterprise users appear to be the preferred target. Many of the victims were slow to patch their systems, according to the article. One study of Cisco devices running on fundamental infrastructure discovered that 23% had vulnerabilities dating back to 2011, and 16% even had vulnerabilities dating back to 2009. Popular attack vectors included vulnerabilities in JBoss and Adobe Flash, which was responsible for 80% of the successful attacks for one exploit kit. The article also reports that attackers are now hiding their activities better using HTTPS and TLS, with some even using a variant of Tor. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Cisco Finds $34 Million Ransomware Industry

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Becomes World’s Third Richest Person

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BBC: Strong earnings from Amazon and a boost to the company’s stock have made its founder, Jeff Bezos, the world’s third richest person, according to Forbes. Mr Bezos owns 18% of Amazon’s shares, which rose 2% in trading on Thursday. Forbes estimated his fortune to be $65.3 billion (49.5 billion British Pound). Amazon’s revenue beat analysts’ expectations, climbing 31% from last year to $30.4 billion in the second quarter. Profit for the e-commerce giant was $857 million, compared with $92 million in 2015. According to Forbes estimates, Mr Bezos’s fortune is only surpassed by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, worth $78 billion (59 billion British Pound), and the $73.1 billion (55 billion British Pound) fortune of Zara founder Amancio Ortega. Amazon had developed a reputation for announcing little or no profit each quarter, but appeared to hit a turning point last year and has seen improving earnings since. Amazon shares have spiked 50% since February. BBC’s report includes some bullet points about Bezos. He was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1964. He studied at Princeton University and worked on Wall Street. In 1994, he launched Amazon as an online book retailer. A lifelong Star Trek fan, Bezos launched Blue Origin spaceflight and aerospace firm in 2000, and more than a decade later, he purchased The Washington Post newspaper in 2013. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Becomes World’s Third Richest Person

Office 365 Gets New Word, PowerPoint and Outlook Features

New submitter Miche67 writes: As part of the July 2016 update to Office 365, Microsoft is adding several features across the board to Word, PowerPoint and Outlook. Word, however, is getting the biggest new features — Researcher and Editor — to improve your writing. “As its name implies, Researcher is designed to help the user find reliable sources of information by using the Bing Knowledge Graph to search for sources, and it will properly cite them in the Word document, ” reports Network World. “[Editor] builds on the already-existing spellchecker and thesaurus to offer suggestions on how to improve your overall writing. In addition to the wavy red line under a misspelled word and the wavy blue line under bad grammar, there will be a gold line for writing style.” The new features are expected to be available later this year. In addition to the two new features added to PowerPoint last year — Designer and Morph, Microsoft is offering Zoom, a feature that lets you easily create “interactive, non-linear presentations.” “Instead of the 1-2-3-4 linear method of presenting slides, forcing you to place them all in the order you wish to display, presenters will be able to show their slides in any order they want at any time, ” reports Network World. “This way you can change your presentation order as needed without having to stop PowerPoint or interrupt the display.” As for Outlook, Focused Inbox is coming to Office 365. Focused Inbox separates your inbox into two tabs. The “Focused” tab is where all of your high-priority emails will be found, while everything else will be in the “Other” tab. Outlook will learn from your behavior over time and sort your mail accordingly. In addition, @mentions are coming to Outlook 365 and Outlook for PC and Mac, “making it easy to identify emails that need your attention, as well as flag actions for others.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Office 365 Gets New Word, PowerPoint and Outlook Features

Nintendo NX Is a Portable Console With Detachable Controllers, Says Report

An anonymous reader writes from a report via Eurogamer.net: We now have a good idea as to what the Nintendo NX will consist of thanks to a new report from Eurogamer. According to a number of sources, Nintendo’s upcoming NX will be a portable, handheld console with detachable controllers. Eurogamer.net reports: “On the move, NX will function as a high-powered handheld console with its own display. So far so normal — but here’s the twist: we’ve heard the screen is bookended by two controller sections on either side, which can be attached or detached as required. Then, when you get home, the system can connect to your TV for gaming on the big screen. A base unit, or dock station, is used to connect the brain of the NX — within the controller — to display on your TV. NX will use game cartridges as its choice of physical media, multiple sources have also told [Eurogamer]. Another source said the system would run on a new operating system from Nintendo. It won’t, contrary to some earlier rumors, simply run on Android. The system will harness Nvidia’s powerful mobile processor Tegra. Graphical comparisons with current consoles are difficult due to the vastly different nature of the device — but once again we’ve heard Nintendo is not chasing graphical parity. Quite the opposite, it is sacrificing power to ensure it can squeeze all of this technology into a handheld, something which also tallies with earlier reports. Finally, we’ve heard from one source that NX planning has recently moved up a gear within Nintendo ahead of the console’s unveiling, which is currently slated for September. After the confused PR fiasco of the Wii U launch, the company is already settling on a simple marketing message for NX — of being able to take your games with you on the go.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Nintendo NX Is a Portable Console With Detachable Controllers, Says Report

Notorious Group OurMine Hacks TechCrunch

Prominent technology blog TechCrunch — which is often cited on Slashdot — has become the latest victim of the OurMine hacking group. The notorious group gained access to Seattle-based writer Devin Coldewey’s account, and posted the following message earlier today: “Hello Guys, don’t worry we are just testing techcrunch security, we didn’t change any passwords, please contact us.” The post was then promoted as a ticker, the top banner in red and as the main story on TechCrunch’s front page. BetaNews adds: The OurMine website says that the group offers “top notch vulnerability assessment”, so it’s possible that the hack was little more than a PR stunt touting for business. It did not take TechCrunch long to notice and remove the story (and presumably change a series of passwords…) but the site is yet to issue a statement about what has happened. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Notorious Group OurMine Hacks TechCrunch

Laser-Armed Martian Robot Now Vaporizing Targets of Its Own Free Will

Slashdot reader Rei writes: NASA — having already populated the Red Planet with robots and armed a car-sized nuclear juggernaut with a laser — have now decided to grant fire control of that laser over to a new AI system operating on the rover itself. Intended to increase the scientific data-gathering throughput on the sometimes glitching rover’s journey, the improved AEGIS system eliminates the need for a series of back-and-forth communication sessions to select targets and aim the laser. Rei’s original submission included a longer riff on The War of the Worlds, ending with a reminder to any future AI overlords that “I have a medical condition that renders me unfit to toil in any hypothetical subterranean lithium mines…” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Laser-Armed Martian Robot Now Vaporizing Targets of Its Own Free Will

US Navy Faces $600M Lawsuit For Allegedly Pirating 3D VR Software

An anonymous reader quotes a report from HotHardware: The U.S. Navy has been accused of pirating 3D software after first testing a software package offered by Germany company Bitmanagement Software GmbH. The company is suing the United States of America for nearly $600 million. HotHardware reports: “According to the court filing, Bitmanagement licensed its BS Contact Geo software for use on 38 Navy computers from 2011 to 2012. This limited rollout was ‘for the purposes of testing, trial runs, and integration into Navy systems.’ While this test period was underway, the Navy reportedly began negotiating to license the software for use on thousands of additional computers. However, even as the negotiations were ongoing, the Navy decided to go ahead and initiate its full-scale rollout without actually paying for the software. In total, the initial 38 computers allegedly swelled to 104, 922 computers by October 2013. As of today, BS Contact GEO is claimed to be installed on 558, 466 Navy computers, although ‘likely this unauthorized copying has taken place on an even larger scale’ according to the filing. As if the unauthorized installation of software onto hundreds of thousands of computers wasn’t enough, Bitmanagement is alleging that the Navy during 2014 began disabling the Flexwrap software that is tasked with tracking the use of BS Contact Geo and helping to prevent it from being duplicated. When this software piracy was taking place, the retail price of a single BS Contact Geo license was $1067.76. With nearly 600, 000 computers now in play, Bitmanagement is seeking a whopping $596, 308, 103 in damages. The lawsuit, which alleges willful copyright infringement was filed on July 15th.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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US Navy Faces $600M Lawsuit For Allegedly Pirating 3D VR Software

Intel ChromeBooks Can Now Run Wine and Steam

“With Google Play and Android app support hitting Chromebooks, it’s now possible to run Windows applications/games on Chromebooks via CrossOver For Android, ” reports Phoronix. Slashdot reader grungy writes: The first Intel ChromeBooks have access to the Play Store now, and the Android version of Wine apparently runs on them… Pictures show the Steam client running, and a clip of a D3D game. Of course, the Play Store is only available on the ChromeOS developer channel so far, but that should change later this year. CrossOver for Android also hasn’t been officially released, but Thursday CodeWeavers’ president blogged excitedly that “we are staring at a Leprechaun riding on the back of a Unicorn while taking a picture of a UFO. We are running CrossOver through Android on a ChromeBook running a Windows based game launched from the Steam client. THIS HAS NEVER BEEN DONE BEFORE…EVER!!!” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Intel ChromeBooks Can Now Run Wine and Steam