Tag: linux

Rooting SIM Cards

SmartAboutThings writes “Smartphones are susceptible to malware and carriers have enabled NSA snooping, but the prevailing wisdom has it there’s still one part of your mobile phone that remains safe and un-hackable: your SIM card. Yet after three years of research, German cryptographer Karsten Nohl claims to have finally found encryption and software flaws that could affect millions of SIM cards, and open up another route on mobile phones for surveillance and fraud.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

More here:
Rooting SIM Cards

Rethinking the Wetsuit

symbolset writes “Apparently Australians have come up with the brilliant idea: if you don’t want to be eaten by a shark, it’s best to not go swimming in shark-infested waters in a seal costume. ‘Scientists from the University of Western Australia, with designers Shark Attack Mitigation Systems (SAMS), have unveiled two new wetsuits that they say could save lives in the water. Based on a breakthrough discovery that sharks are colour-blind, one wetsuit, labelled the “Elude, ” is designed to camouflage a swimmer or diver in the sea. At the other extreme, the “Diverter” sports bold white and dark-blue stripes, and is intended to mirror nature’s warning signs to ward off any potential shark attack.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Excerpt from:
Rethinking the Wetsuit

Lifehacker Pack for Linux 2013: Our List of the Best Linux Apps

With so many flavors of Linux and the awesome apps in their repositories, finding the right app for getting things done can be tough. In our fifth annual Lifehacker Pack for Linux, we’re highlighting the must-have downloads for better productivity, communication, media management, and more. Read more…        

Continued here:
Lifehacker Pack for Linux 2013: Our List of the Best Linux Apps

Blackberry 10 Sends Full Email Account Credentials To RIM

vikingpower writes “How a phone manufacturer making a somewhat successful come-back can shoot itself in the foot: Marc “van Hauser” Heuse, who works for German technology magazine Heise, has discovered that immediately after setting up an email account on Blackberry 10 OS, full credentials for that account are sent to Research In Motion, the Canadian Blackberry manufacturer. Shortly after performing the set-up, the first successful connections from a server located within the RIM domain appear in the mail server’s logs. (Most of the story in English, some comments in German.) At least according to German law, this is completely illegal, as the phone’s user does not get a single indication or notice of what is being done.” (Here’s Heise’s article, in German.) Read more of this story at Slashdot.

More here:
Blackberry 10 Sends Full Email Account Credentials To RIM

Network Solutions Hit With DDoS

New submitter Landy DeField was the first of many of write in about Network Solutions’ website and DNS outage: “If your website does not load this morning you need to ask yourself do we use Network Solutions? Because all of their servers are all currently down. You can confirm this by visiting http://www.isitdownrightnow.com/networksolutions.com.html.” The only solid information from Network Solutions is a post on their Facebook page: “Network Solutions is experiencing a Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack that is impacting our customers as well as the Network Solutions site. Our technology team is working to mitigate the situation. Please check back for updates.” There have been several reports that the outage is causing hosted DNS to fail, leading to a number of unresolvable websites. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post:
Network Solutions Hit With DDoS

Google Fixes Glass Vulnerability To Malicious QR Codes

judgecorp writes “Google has fixed a vulnerability in its Glass device, which made it possible to fool the wearable gadget into joining malicious Wi-Fi networks, through the use of fake QR codes. Google fixed the flaw fast, following a tip-off from researchers — but there are two warnings to take from this. There are other weaknesses in Glass (such as the absence of a lockscreen), and this sort of weakness will increasingly hit as the Internet of Things takes hold and the number of communicating devices multiplies.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

More:
Google Fixes Glass Vulnerability To Malicious QR Codes

Linux 3.11 Features Fall Into Place With Merge Window

hypnosec writes “The Linux 3.11 merge window is about to close, most probably this Sunday, and most of the pull requests have been merged, including feature additions and improvements to disk & file system, CPU, graphics and other hardware. Some notable merges are: LZ4 compression; Zswap for compressed swap caching; inclusion of a Lustre file-system client for the first time; Dynamic Power Management (DPM) support for R600 GPUs; KVM and Xen virtualization on 64-bit hardware (AArch64); and a new DRM (Direct Rendering Manager) driver for the Renesas R-Car SoC.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read More:
Linux 3.11 Features Fall Into Place With Merge Window

NHS Fined After Computer Holding Patient Records Found On eBay

judgecorp writes “NHS Surrey, part of Britain’s health service, has been fined £200, 000 when a computer holding more than 3000 patient records was found for sale on eBay. The system was retired, and given to a contractor who promised to dispose of it securely for free, in exchange for any salvage value… but clearly just put the whole system up for sale.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Continue reading here:
NHS Fined After Computer Holding Patient Records Found On eBay

Open Source Tortilla For Tor To Be Released At Black Hat

msm1267 writes “A researcher is expected to release Tortilla, an open source tool that anonymously routes TCP and DNS traffic through Tor, at the upcoming Black Hat conference. Tortilla provides a secure, anonymous means of routing traffic through Tor regardless of client software and without the need for a VPN or secure tunnel.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post:
Open Source Tortilla For Tor To Be Released At Black Hat

Microsoft To Shut Down TechNet Subscription Service

otaku244 writes “Since 1998, Microsoft TechNet has been a the mainstay for all system developers attached to the Microsoft Platform given the ease of access to almost every product the company has produced. Unfortunately, the days of a cheap, unlimited Microsoft development stack are coming to an end.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

View article:
Microsoft To Shut Down TechNet Subscription Service