Tag: personal

Uber paid off a 20-year-old Florida man to destroy hacked data

More details are coming to light about Uber’s huge data breach . Reuters is reporting that a 20-year-old Florida man was behind the 2016 extortion-oriented cyberattack and was paid through the firm’s bug bounty program. We know that the individual, whose identity Uber refuses to disclose, received $100, 000 for destroying the info, which exposed the personal data of roughly 57 million customers and drivers. The ride-hailing firm then kept quiet about the breach for more than a year. You can bet Congress and the five sates investigating Uber will be paying close attention to any new nuggets of info. Bug bounties (where compensation is offered to hackers who find vulnerabilities) are commonplace within tech circles — everyone from Apple to Samsung utilizes them. And, while highly-publicized rewards of up to $200, 000 are the norm, it’s rare that the largest sum is dispensed to any one person. Making Uber’s $100, 000 silent payout an all-time record for HackerOne, the firm that hosts Uber’s bug bounty program, according to a former exec who spoke to Reuters . The Florida hacker, described in the report as “living with his mom, ” reportedly paid a second individual for help accessing GitHub’s resources to procure credentials for Uber data stored elsewhere. Upon divulging the breach last month, the company fired chief security officer Joe Sullivan and one of his deputies, senior lawyer Craig Clark, for covering up the breach. But Reuters sources claim the coverup went straight to the top of the food chain to former CEO Travis Kalanick . Both Uber and Kalanick refused to comment. Source: Reuters

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Uber paid off a 20-year-old Florida man to destroy hacked data

Sotheby’s is auctioning off artifacts from the US space program

Nothing celebrates an anniversary like getting people to cough up extraordinary amounts of money, which is why Sotheby’s has something special planned for the 48th anniversary of the first moon landing. On July 20, the auction house will be holding a space exploration-themed auction with one-of-a-kind items up for sale. The most interesting item of the collection is a lunar sample return bag (complete with lunar dust), used by Neil Armstrong to bring back the first moon rocks. Sotheby’s says, “Nearly all of the equipment from that historic mission is housed in the US national collection at the Smithsonian. This is the only such artifact available for private ownership.” It’s estimated to sell for between $2 million and $4 million. Many of these items come from the personal collections of the astronauts themselves, so there are some unexpected items up for grabs. Sure, there are the usual autographed photos and books , but there are also flight plans and charts , signed by astronauts, a small U.S. flag flown on Apollo 13 and a spacesuit thermal cover made for Gus Grissom . There’s also hardware for sale: If you’ve ever wanted to own the computer processor of a Space Shuttle orbiter , this is your chance. It’d be easy to make fun of this auction, but honestly there’s a lot of really cool stuff in here for space enthusiasts. As for me, I have my eye on an autographed matted and framed photo of the Apollo 11 crew. Anyone have an extra $7, 000 I can borrow? Source: Sotheby’s

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Sotheby’s is auctioning off artifacts from the US space program

The arcade world’s first Easter egg discovered after fraught journey

(credit: Arcade Flyer Archive ) The historical record of video games received a strange shake-up on Wednesday from Ed Fries, the ex-Microsoft executive who had a huge part in the creation of the original Xbox . Fries took to his personal blog, which typically covers the world of retro gaming, to announce a zany discovery : he had found the world’s earliest known arcade game Easter egg. His hunt began with a tip from Atari game programmer Ron Milner about the 1977 game Starship 1 . This tip seemingly came out of nowhere, as the duo were talking about an entirely different ’70s arcade game, Gran Trak 10 , which Fries was researching separately. Starship , Milner said, had a few special twists that didn’t all make it to market, but one did: a secret message to players. The game would display “Hi Ron!” if players put in the right combination of button commands. This type of thing is better known to gaming fans as an Easter egg , and more than a few Atari games had them as a way to include the developer’s name (which Atari never put in games or on cabinets). Milner didn’t tell anyone at Atari about the secret message for 30 years, he told Fries, and one reason is because he’d forgotten how to trigger it. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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The arcade world’s first Easter egg discovered after fraught journey

Matter-antimatter asymmetry confirmed in baryons

The LHCb detector. (credit: Fermilab ) Everyone, at some point in their lives, wonders why they are here. Existential questions don’t stop at the personal level, though. Why is there a Universe, and why is it filled with matter? The last question is a puzzle that has gainfully occupied the minds of and employed physicists for many years. The time spent pondering such questions has not been wasted, as it turns out, as researchers from the LHCb detector report  that one of the theoretical paths that allows matter to outnumber antimatter is open for business. An overly simple reading of the Standard Model of physics predicts that matter will be produced at the same rate as antimatter. The antimatter and matter should, through simple statistics, collide and wipe each other out, leaving only energy. But that didn’t happen. The substance we label matter was, somehow, produced in greater abundance than antimatter. In the beginnings of the Universe, antimatter was eliminated, leaving only matter. A closer look at the Standard Model reveals that some imbalance is expected. But it also predicts a Universe with much less matter than we observe. And, experimentally, we’ve only observed the relevant matter/antimatter asymmetry for a particular class of particles, called mesons. That notably leaves out the particles that make up the Universe, called baryons. Luckily, baryon asymmetry is exactly what one of the LHC detectors, called LHCb, is designed to investigate. Read 13 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Matter-antimatter asymmetry confirmed in baryons

All Eddie Bauer stores in the US hit with malware

If you shopped at an Eddie Bauer store in the first half of 2016, you may want to keep a close eye on your personal and banking information. The clothing store chain has reported that — like a growing number of retailers of the last few years — it’s detected and subsequently removed malware from its point-of-sale systems at every one of its 350+ stores in North America. Unfortunately, if you used a credit or debit card during the first six months of 2016 at Eddie Bauer, there’s a good chance your information may have been compromised. The official announcement from Eddie Bauer comes a good six weeks after KrebsOnSecurity picked up on a possible intrusion. It’s possible the malware was able to grab both credit and debit card numbers from transactions made at Eddie Bauer stores between January 2nd, 2016 through July 17, 2016, though sales online at EddieBauer.com appear to have been unaffected. Source: KrebsOnSecurity

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All Eddie Bauer stores in the US hit with malware

Windows 10 preview makes it easier to do a fresh install

Windows 10 Insiders are greedy but brave souls who want the latest software toys and are willing to take some risks to get them. The latest preview build (14367) gives them a “get out of jail free” card, however, with a new tool called “Refresh Windows.” According to Microsoft, the tool will “install a clean copy of the most recent version of Windows, and remove apps that came pre-installed or that you installed on your PC.” The caveats are that it’s only available to Windows 10 Insider Preview users (of course) and that it will replace the latest version with an older, but more stable Insider Preview build. The tool gives novice users a slightly easier way to do a clean install than the “Media Creation Tool, ” but unlike that app, doesn’t let you download your own ISO. Given the fact that most Insiders will prefer the Media Creation Tool, Refresh Windows seems more at mainstream users in an upcoming Windows 10 release. Should you wish to use it, you’d better back up any content, apps and other personal data, despite the fact that you have the option to keep your personal files. The preview build also includes new languages for handwriting recognition and a keyboard shortcut to access the Feedback Hub. You get numerous fixes and improvements for PCs, like better notifications from your phone to your PC with Cortana and reduced battery drain when using Edge. Windows Mobile customers also get a slew of fixes. Source: Microsoft

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Windows 10 preview makes it easier to do a fresh install

That Massive IRS Hack Was Way More Massive Than We Thought

Remember that awful news of Russian hackers stealing the personal information of 100, 000 taxpayers ? Turns out the Internal Revenue Service lowballed the number . The agency now says that over 600, 000 people were targeted with 300, 000 unlucky persons losing their data privacy completely. Read more…

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That Massive IRS Hack Was Way More Massive Than We Thought