F-Secure: Android Accounted For 97% of All Mobile Malware In 2013

An anonymous reader writes “Back in 2012, Android accounted for 79 percent of all mobile malware. Last year, that number ballooned even further to 97 percent. Both those data points come from security firm F-Secure, which today released its 40-page Threat Report for the second half of 2013. More specifically, Android malware rose from 238 threats in 2012 to 804 new families and variants in 2013. Apart from Symbian, F-Secure found no new threats for other mobile platforms last year.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

More:
F-Secure: Android Accounted For 97% of All Mobile Malware In 2013

Tor Is Building an Anonymous Instant Messenger

An anonymous reader writes in with news about a new anonymous instant messenger client on the way from Tor. “Forget the $16 billion romance between Facebook and WhatsApp. There’s a new messaging tool worth watching. Tor, the team behind the world’s leading online anonymity service, is developing a new anonymous instant messenger client, according to documents produced at the Tor 2014 Winter Developers Meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read More:
Tor Is Building an Anonymous Instant Messenger

Blood Test of 4 Biomarkers Predicts Death Within 5 Years

retroworks writes “The NHS and the Daily Telegraph report on two studies (original and repeat duplicating results) in Estonia and Finland which predict whether an apparently healthy human will likely die within 5 years. The four biomarkers that appeared to determine risk of mortality in the next five years were: alpha-1-acid glycoprotein – a protein that is raised during infection and inflammation; albumin – a protein that carries vital nutrients, hormones and proteins in the bloodstream; very-low-density lipoprotein (VLDL) particle size – usually known for being ‘very bad’ cholesterol; and citrate – a compound that is an essential part of the body’s metabolism. Researchers found that people in the top 20% of the summary score range were 19 times more at risk of dying in the next five years than people in the lowest 20%.” The NHS’s summary of the news points out that “the implications of such a test are unclear. As this was an observational study, it can only show an association between the biomarkers and risk of death. It does not predict what the underlying cause of death would be for an individual and does not therefore provide an answer in terms of treatment.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

More:
Blood Test of 4 Biomarkers Predicts Death Within 5 Years

Horseshoe Crabs Are Bled Alive To Create an Unparalleled Biomedical Technology

Lasrick writes “Alexis Madrigal at the Atlantic: ‘The marvelous thing about horseshoe crab blood, though, isn’t the color. It’s a chemical found only in the amoebocytes of its blood cells that can detect mere traces of bacterial presence and trap them in inescapable clots.’ Madrigal continues, ‘To take advantage of this biological idiosyncrasy, pharmaceutical companies burst the cells that contain the chemical, called coagulogen. Then, they can use the coagulogen to detect contamination in any solution that might come into contact with blood. If there are dangerous bacterial endotoxins in the liquid—even at a concentration of one part per trillion—the horseshoe crab blood extract will go to work, turning the solution into what scientist Fred Bang, who co-discovered the substance, called a “gel.” … I don’t know about you, but the idea that every single person in America who has ever had an injection has been protected because we harvest the blood of a forgettable sea creature with a hidden chemical superpower makes me feel a little bit crazy. This scenario is not even sci-fi, it’s postmodern technology.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read the original:
Horseshoe Crabs Are Bled Alive To Create an Unparalleled Biomedical Technology

FFmpeg’s VP9 Decoder Faster Than Google’s

An anonymous reader writes “A VP9 video decoder written for FFmpeg, FFvp9, now holds the title of being the world’s fastest VP9 video decoder. FFvp9 is faster than Google’s de facto VP9 decoder found in libvpx, but this doesn’t come as too much of a surprise given that FFmpeg also produced a faster VP8 video decoder than Google a few years back with both single and multi-threaded performance.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read the article:
FFmpeg’s VP9 Decoder Faster Than Google’s

Iran’s Hacking of US Navy ‘Extensive,’ Repairs Took $10M and 4 Months

cold fjord sends news that Iran’s breach of a computer network belonging to the U.S. Navy was more serious than originally thought. According to a Wall Street Journal report (paywalled, but summarized at The Verge), it took the Navy four months to secure its network after the breach, and the repair cost was approximately $10 million. From the article: “The hackers targeted the Navy Marine Corps Intranet, the unclassified network used by the Department of the Navy to host websites, store nonsensitive information and handle voice, video and data communications. The network has 800, 000 users at 2, 500 locations, according to the Navy. … The intrusion into the Navy’s system was the most recent in a series of Iranian cyberoffensives that have taken U.S. military and intelligence officials by surprise. In early 2012, top intelligence officials held the view that Iran wanted to execute a cyberattack but had little capability. Not long after, Iranian hackers began a series of major “denial-of-service” attacks on a growing number of U.S. bank websites, and they launched a virus on a Saudi oil company that immobilized 30, 000 computers. … Defense officials were surprised at the skills of the Iranian hackers. Previously, their tactics had been far cruder, usually involving so-called denial of service attacks that disrupt network operations but usually don’t involve a penetration of network security.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

View article:
Iran’s Hacking of US Navy ‘Extensive,’ Repairs Took $10M and 4 Months

Whatever Happened To the IPv4 Address Crisis?

alphadogg writes “In February 2011, the global Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) allocated the last blocks of IPv4 address space to the five regional Internet registries. At the time, experts warned that within months all available IPv4 addresses in the world would be distributed to ISPs. Soon after that, unless everyone upgraded to IPv6, the world would be facing a crisis that would hamper Internet connectivity for everyone. That crisis would be exacerbated by the skyrocketing demand for IP addresses due to a variety of factors: the Internet of Things (refrigerators needing their own IP address); wearables (watches and glasses demanding connectivity); BYOD (the explosion of mobile devices allowed to connect to the corporate network); and the increase in smartphone use in developing countries. So, here we are three years later and the American Registry for Internet Numbers is still doling out IPv4 addresses in the United States and Canada. Whatever happened to the IPv4 address crisis?” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Continue reading here:
Whatever Happened To the IPv4 Address Crisis?

Elon Musk Says Larger Batteries Might Be On the Way

mknewman writes “Elon Musk intimated that more-powerful batteries could be on the way for the Model S. The most potent battery pack currently offered in the Model S holds 85 kWh of juice, or enough for 265 miles of driving. Musk wasn’t terribly specific, however: ‘There is the potential for bigger battery packs in the future, but it would probably be maybe next year or something like that. The main focus is . . . how do we reduce the cost per kWh of storage in the battery pack?’ In other words, Musk seems less concerned with stronger battery packs than making cheaper battery packs for the upcoming mid-size sedan, which is expected to be unveiled at the 2015 Detroit auto show. ‘Our goal is to drop the cost per kWh by 30 percent to 40 percent.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Continue reading here:
Elon Musk Says Larger Batteries Might Be On the Way

Kickstarter Security Breach Exposes Customer Data

New submitter jbov writes “Kickstarter members received an e-mail at about 16:40 EST notifying them of a security breach. According to the e-mail, information including user names, encrypted passwords, mailing addresses, and phone numbers may have been revealed. Kickstarter members were urged to change their passwords. ‘Older passwords were uniquely salted and digested with SHA-1 multiple times. More recent passwords are hashed with bcrypt.’ Kickstarter claims that credit card information was not accessed during the breach. According to Kickstarter, law enforcement officials contacted the company on Wednesday night and alerted them that ‘hackers had sought and gained unauthorized access to some of our customers’ data.’ Upon learning of the breach, Kickstarter closed the security breach and began strengthening security measures.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

View article:
Kickstarter Security Breach Exposes Customer Data

200-400 Gbps DDoS Attacks Are Now Normal

An anonymous reader writes “Brian Krebs has a followup to this week’s 400 Gbps DDoS attack using NTP amplification. Krebs, as a computer security writer, has often been the target of DDoS attacks. He was also hit by a 200Gbps attack this week (apparently, from a 15-year-old in Illinois). That kind of volume would have been record-breaking only a couple of years ago, but now it’s just normal. Arbor Networks says we’ve entered the ‘hockey stick’ era of DDoS attacks, as a graph of attack volume spikes sharply over the past year. CloudFlare’s CEO wrote, ‘Monday’s DDoS proved these attacks aren’t just theoretical. To generate approximately 400Gbps of traffic, the attacker used 4, 529 NTP servers running on 1, 298 different networks. On average, each of these servers sent 87Mbps of traffic to the intended victim on CloudFlare’s network. Remarkably, it is possible that the attacker used only a single server running on a network that allowed source IP address spoofing to initiate the requests. An attacker with a 1 Gbps connection can theoretically generate more than 200Gbps of DDoS traffic.’ In a statement to Krebs, he added, ‘We have an attack of over 100 Gbps almost every hour of every day.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Visit site:
200-400 Gbps DDoS Attacks Are Now Normal