Tag: lucky-modern

Feds used Adobe Flash to identify Tor users visiting child porn sites

A little more than 16 months ago, word emerged that the FBI exploited a recently patched Firefox vulnerability to unmask Tor users visiting a notorious child pornography site. It turns out that the feds had waged an even broader uncloaking campaign a year earlier by using a long-abandoned part of the open source Metasploit exploit framework to identify Tor-using suspects. According to Wired , “Operation Torpedo,” as the FBI sting operation was dubbed, targeted users of three darknet child porn sites. It came to light only after Omaha defense attorney Joseph Gross challenged the accuracy of evidence it uncovered against a Rochester, New York-based IT worker who claims he was falsely implicated in the campaign. Operation Torpedo used the Metasploit Decloaking Engine to identify careless suspects who were hiding behind Tor, a free service used by good and bad guys alike to shield their point of entry to the Internet. The Decloaking Engine went live in 2006 and used five separate methods to break anonymization systems. One method was an Adobe Flash application that initiated a direct connection with the end user, bypassing Tor protections and giving up the user’s IP address. Tor Project officials have long been aware of the vulnerability and strenuously advise against installing Flash. According to Wired: Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Feds used Adobe Flash to identify Tor users visiting child porn sites

Oakland cops disciplined 24 times for failing to turn on body-worn cameras

OAKLAND, Calif.—Over the last two years, the Oakland Police Department (OPD) has disciplined police officers on 24 occasions  for disabling or failing to activate body-worn cameras, newly released public records show. The City of Oakland did not provide any records prior to 2013, and the OPD did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment. The records show that on November 8, 2013 one officer was terminated after failing to activate his camera. Less than two weeks later, another resigned for improperly removing the camera from his or her uniform. However, most officers received minor discipline in comparison. The OPD has used Portable Digital Recording Devices (PDRDs) since late 2010 . According to the department’s  own policy , patrol officers are required to wear the cameras during a number of outlined situations, including detentions, arrests, and serving a warrant. At present, the city has about 700 officers . Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Oakland cops disciplined 24 times for failing to turn on body-worn cameras

Steam’s first “Holiday Auction” halted after dupe bug ruins market [Updated]

Update:  Valve has updated its auction site to note that the Gem auctions will return “shortly” and that “an issue with Gems… means we need to reset and start again.” Specifically: All gems created by you will be returned to your Inventory. All Gem purchases from the Community Market will be reimbursed. All Auction bids have been canceled and the Auction will be reset. Trades involving Gems are being investigated on a case-by-case basis. Original Story The virtual “Holiday Auction” Steam first announced yesterday evening seemed like a cute idea at the time. For a limited time, users would be able to trade in unused or unwanted Steam Inventory items for “gems,” which could in turn, starting Monday, be used to bid against others on codes for 2,000 Steam games, 200,000 copies in all. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Steam’s first “Holiday Auction” halted after dupe bug ruins market [Updated]

Synaptics builds a fingerprint reader right into its trackpads

Consider the trackpad. The ones in Windows laptops are rarely (if ever) their best feature, but they nevertheless remain ubiquitous. Synaptics is one of the biggest names in trackpads, and today it announced a new one called the ” SecurePad ” that integrates a fingerprint reader into the trackpad itself rather than as a separate component. The SecurePad will have a small, 4mm by 10mm sensor on the trackpad’s surface that can scan a “fingertip placed at any angle on the sensor.” Said sensor will be available in a variety of different Synaptics trackpads, including the TouchPad , ClickPad , and ForcePad , and those trackpads will all be available in a variety of sizes. LED lights will provide feedback and allow the sensor to be used in dark environments. Fingerprint data traveling between the sensor and the “host processor” is encrypted to prevent the information from being accessed by other apps (Apple uses a similar sort of encryption with TouchID , and it prevents user apps from accessing fingerprint data in transit). We’ve contacted Synaptics to see if storing and reading fingerprints securely requires a separate chip to be installed in laptops that use the SecurePad and to get more detail on how this encryption works—we’ll update this article if we receive a response. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Synaptics builds a fingerprint reader right into its trackpads

Bizarre Yelp lawsuit over alleged fake reviews to finally move ahead

A judge in San Diego, California,  ruled Tuesday against a local bankruptcy lawyer who had attempted to put a stop to Yelp’s lawsuit against him. Specifically, Julian McMillan asked the court more than six months ago to issue an anti-SLAPP ruling. A ” SLAPP ,” or strategic lawsuit against public participation, is a type of lawsuit meant to stifle speech—one where one party employs tactics against a smaller target by drawing out the suit in terms of time and money and intimidating the defendant. Yelp sued McMillan in August 2013. The  lawsuit , filed in San Francisco, alleges breach of contract, intentional interference with contract, unfair competition, and false advertising. Read 18 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Bizarre Yelp lawsuit over alleged fake reviews to finally move ahead

A silk casing enables long-lasting, implantable Wi-Fi medical devices

Not the silk casing discussed. Flickr user: CameliaTWU For a variety of medical reasons, it’s useful to implant devices inside the body. These devices may be needed to help regulate the cardiovascular system, or they can release drugs inside the body. Unfortunately, they’re also problematic. Once such a device has served its function, it must be removed, which necessitates another surgery. Plus, the presence can lead to complications such as infection, inflammation, and pain. To address some of these problems, scientists have developed new kinds of circuitry that can safely dissolve in the body. While these water-soluble devices don’t need to be removed, they come with a new problem—they dissolve too quickly for many purposes. So a group of researchers have now reported that they’ve developed a new way to control how long the devices last. The researchers propose that dissolving devices could be encased in a material made from silk protein and magnesium. The advantage of this approach comes from a property of the silk: its crystallinity. Different preparations of silk dissolve in water at different rates depending on their crystallinities. Altering this property allows researchers to choose among a range of dissolution times from only a few minutes up to a few weeks. This gives more control over the duration of the device, which is important, since different medical situations require devices that can last vastly different times. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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A silk casing enables long-lasting, implantable Wi-Fi medical devices

New wireless charging gear promises 3x faster charging

Faster charging, like Qualcomm’s “Quick Charge 2.0” (branded as “Turbo Charging” on the Nexus 6), is one of the nicest new smartphone features available. If we can’t make a battery last all day with heavy use, we can at least make it charge faster. The faster charging is possible because these devices charge at a higher voltage—instead of the normal 5 watts from a standard USB charger, these hit about 14 watts. These faster chargers have left wireless chargers in the dust, though. Today’s Qi charging pads still only put out 5W, the same as a slow wired charger. Freescale Semiconductor, a company that provides various chips to OEMs, is out to fix that. Today the company announced integrated circuits for 15 watt wireless chargers —a wireless solution that should be just as fast as a hardwired turbo charger. Of course, you will need new hardware to make this work. Freescale’s solution will require a new chip in your smartphone or tablet and a new charging pad. The good news is that this isn’t a new standard. Freescale’s chips can be tweaked to be compliant with Qi charging, which is found in many smartphone, or with lesser-used standards like the Power Matters Alliance. The Qi “medium power” standard is actually good up to 120W, provided the pad and device support it. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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New wireless charging gear promises 3x faster charging

Apple manager gets year in jail, $4.5m fine for selling industry secrets

Onetime Apple supply manager Paul Shin Devine will spend a year in prison and repay $4.5 million for selling Apple’s secrets to suppliers, the AP reports . Devine, who worked at Apple from 2005 until his arrest in August of 2010 , pleaded guilty to wire fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering—and could have been sentenced to as much as 20 years in prison. Working with Singapore resident Andrew Ang, Devine was accused of selling confidential information to companies that hoped to become Apple suppliers, and to suppliers trying to negotiate better deals with the company. Winning an Apple contract can be a make-or-break moment for a supplier, as we saw in the recent dust-up between Apple and would-be sapphire manufacturer GT Advanced Technologies ; companies hoping to get in on the action sent “millions in kickbacks” to Devine. Ang and Chua Kim Guan, who were respectively the sales director and general manager of Jin Li Mould Manufacturing, were charged in 2013 for bribing Devine. They were accused of paying Devine $387,600 between 2006 and 2009. Read on Ars Technica | Comments

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Apple manager gets year in jail, $4.5m fine for selling industry secrets

Rovio lays off 110 people as Angry Birds hype fades

Rovio has confirmed that 110 people will lose their jobs as the Angry Birds maker also shuts down its game-development studio in Tampere, Finland. The layoffs, first announced in October, amount to about 14 percent of the company’s workforce. It had been expected that Rovio would make 130 people redundant but after a round of consultations this number has now been reduced. Rovio said that as a result of the redundancies “several positions” have been opened for internal applications. The actual number of employees out of work will depend on how many new internal positions are filled. The closing of its Tampere development studio means that Rovio will move all of its Finnish operation to its Espoo headquarters. The company shot to fame in 2009 when it released Angry Birds , its 52nd game . The title went on to become the most downloaded mobile game of all time. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Rovio lays off 110 people as Angry Birds hype fades

AT&T still throttles “unlimited data”—even when network not congested

A while back, we reported that AT&T had stopped throttling unlimited data users except in cases when the network is congested. We were wrong. AT&T did change its policy to stop the automatic throttling of many unlimited data plans, but the company’s older, more draconian throttling policy still applies to customers with unlimited LTE data. AT&T told Ars the policy will be changed for all customers sometime in 2015, but it did not say whether that will happen closer to the beginning of the year or the end of the year. Here’s how it works: Customers who have 3G or non-LTE 4G phones and “ legacy unlimited data plans ” are throttled for the remainder of the billing period after they exceed 3GB of data in a month, but only “at times and in areas that are experiencing network congestion.” 4G and LTE are practically synonymous these days, but AT&T also applies the 4G label to its HSPA network technology. Read 14 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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AT&T still throttles “unlimited data”—even when network not congested