Tag: privacy-rights

FDIC was hacked by China, and CIO covered it up

Insuring deposits, but not your identity. Thanks, FDIC. (credit: Matthew G. Bisanz ) A report published by the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology today found that hackers purported to be from China had compromised computers at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation repeatedly between 2010 and 2013. Backdoor malware was installed on 12 workstations and 10 servers by attackers—including the workstations of the chairman, chief of staff, and general counsel of FDIC. But the incidents were never reported to the US Computer Emergency Response Team (US-CERT) or other authorities, and were only brought to light after an Inspector General investigation into another serious data breach at FDIC in October of 2015. The FDIC failed at the time of the “advanced persistent threat” attacks to report the incidents. Then-Inspector General at FDIC, Jon Rymer, lambasted FDIC officials for failing to follow their own policies on breach reporting. Further investigation into those breaches led the committee to conclude that former FDIC CIO Russ Pittman misled auditors about the extent of those breaches, and told employees not to talk about the breaches by a foreign government so as not to ruin FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg’s chances of confirmation. The cascade of bad news began with an FDIC Office of the Inspector General (OIG) investigation into the October “Florida incident.” On October 23, 2015, a member of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s Information Security and Privacy Staff (ISPS) discovered evidence in the FDIC’s data loss prevention system of a significant breach of sensitive data—over 1,200 documents, including Social Security numbers from bank data for over 44,000 individuals and 30,715 banks, were copied to a USB drive by a former employee of FDIC’s Risk Management Supervision field office in Gainesville, Florida. The employee had copied the files prior to leaving his position at FDIC. Despite intercepting the employee, the actual data was not recovered from him until March 25, 2016. The former employee provided a sworn statement that he had not disseminated the information, and the matter was dropped. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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FDIC was hacked by China, and CIO covered it up

In time warping study, people unconsciously controlled blood sugar levels

(credit: Dennis van Zuijlekom ) Ideas can be powerful drugs. If a person is simply convinced that a pill or treatment is going to yield real results, it can—even if that pill or treatment is completely bogus. Those results can be pretty substantial, too. Mental maneuvering, or placebo effect, can improve pilots’ vision , help people lose weight , and even up their IQ by a few points . And, according to a new study, it may also be able to help patients manage a chronic illness. In an experiment in which researchers duped participants about how much time had passed, the researchers found that participants’ blood sugar levels tracked with perceived time rather than actual time. That is, blood sugar dropped faster when the participants thought more time had passed. The results, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, support the idea that mindsets and psychological processes, like the abstract internal representation of time, can have profound influence over what our bodies do, the authors conclude. Moreover, it raises the idea of using the mind to help manage certain chronic conditions, particularly type 2 diabetes, which causes periodic and dangerous rises in blood sugar levels. “Official standards for care and treatment of diabetes make no explicit mention of the influence of subjective cognition on diabetic metabolism, but our results indicate otherwise,” the authors argue. They suggest that mindfulness, coping strategies, and trained cognitive styles may prove useful in controlling blood sugar levels in further studies. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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In time warping study, people unconsciously controlled blood sugar levels

Blizzard job posting outs plans for new Diablo game

Is it time to change that “III” into a “IV”? (credit: Blizzard) Just because Blizzard finally got a wholly new franchise out the door this year doesn’t mean the game maker isn’t keen on milking its older franchises for everything they’re worth. But one of those series, Diablo , has seen a bit of a content freeze since its 2014 expansion launched. While the company loves refreshing a game launch with expansion packs, Diablo III has been sitting idly. Now we might know why. A brand-new “unannounced” entry in the Diablo world was, er, announced on Friday by way of an official job posting for—get this—the next entry’s  director . It’s the game-news equivalent of New Line Cinema saying a new Lord of the Rings film is coming but, whoops, Peter Jackson’s not involved, and they could really use a new person to get this thing up and running. The post seeks someone to “lead the Diablo series into the future.” While such a public push for a series director might read like an attempt to bring more diversity into the hiring pool, we’d frankly be shocked to see anybody other than the industry’s old-guard vets fulfilling application requirements such as five years of game-directing experience and shipping “multiple AAA products as a game director or creative director.” The job posting mentions nothing about virtual reality or other experimental hardware. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Blizzard job posting outs plans for new Diablo game

Wi-Fi gets multi-gigabit, multi-user boost with upgrades to 802.11ac

(credit: Aurich Lawson) The Wi-Fi Alliance industry group is now certifying products that can deliver multi-gigabit speeds and improve coverage in dense networks by delivering data to multiple devices simultaneously. The new certification program, announced today , focuses on the so-called “Wave 2” features of the 802.11ac specification. 802.11ac is a few years old , but it includes several important features that were not available at launch. One such feature is MU-MIMO (multi-user, multiple-input, and multiple-output), which we wrote a feature on in May 2014. MU-MIMO is powered by multi-user beamforming technology that lets wireless access points send data streams to at least three users simultaneously. Without MU-MIMO, routers stream to just one device at a time but switch between them very fast so that users don’t notice a slowdown except when lots of devices are on the network. With the 80MHz channels supported in 802.11ac Wave 1, each data stream could provide up to 433Mbps and, when coupled with MU-MIMO routers, can send up to 433Mbps to at least three users simultaneously for a total of 1.3Gbps. But in addition to supporting MU-MIMO, Wave 2 also doubles the maximum channel bandwidth from 80MHz to 160MHz, boosting the potential throughput of each stream to 866Mbps. Wave 2 also supports four spatial streams instead of three, further boosting the theoretical maximum capacity. Technically, 802.11ac supports up to eight streams, but the certification program is still at four. Delivering eight streams with these data rates would use a lot of electricity. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Wi-Fi gets multi-gigabit, multi-user boost with upgrades to 802.11ac

“Godless” apps, some found in Google Play, root 90% of Android phones

(credit: greyweed ) Researchers have detected a family of malicious apps, some that were available in Google Play , that contain malicious code capable of secretly rooting an estimated 90 percent of all Android phones. In a recently published blog post , antivirus provider Trend Micro said that Godless, as the malware family has been dubbed, contains a collection of rooting exploits that works against virtually any device running Android 5.1 or earlier. That accounts for an estimated 90 percent of all Android devices. Members of the family have been found in a variety of app stores, including Google Play, and have been installed on more than 850,000 devices worldwide. Godless has struck hardest at users in India, Indonesia, and Thailand, but so far less than 2 percent of those infected are in the US. Once an app with the malicious code is installed, it has the ability to pull from a vast repository of exploits to root the particular device it’s running on. In that respect, the app functions something like the many available exploit kits that cause hacked websites to identify specific vulnerabilities in individual visitors’ browsers and serve drive-by exploits. Trend Micro Mobile Threats Analyst Veo Zhang wrote: Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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“Godless” apps, some found in Google Play, root 90% of Android phones

15 years later, new Ecco the Dolphin game leaks onto Dreamcast

The Dreamcast Ecco sequel you never expected is now available as a prototype download. (credit: Hidden Palace ) You probably thought that Sega’s official abandonment of the Dreamcast back in 2001 meant we wouldn’t see any new, Sega-produced Ecco the Dolphin games for that system. If so, you thought wrong. That’s because a newly unearthed prototype of the Dreamcast’s cancelled Ecco II: Sentinels of the Universe has hit the Internet, more than 15 years after it was made. The prototype build, uploaded by the game preservationists at Hidden Palace , is dated February 19, 2001, less than a month after Sega announced it would stop supporting the Dreamcast and step away from the hardware business for good. It comes to the Internet via a large lot of Ecco Dreamcast assets acquired by Hidden Palace , and the site promises “more exciting (and long overdue) [ Ecco ] stuff in the weeks to follow.” In addition to the ripped GD-ROM version, which is fully playable on PC Dreamcast emulators, Hidden Palace also released a self-boot CDI image that can be burned to disc and played on actual Dreamcast hardware (and hopefully on a real CRT television, for that authentic 2001 console gaming experience). We can thank the Dreamcast’s extremely broken copy protection technology for that little wrinkle and for the widespread piracy that  helped doom and/or popularize the system back in its day. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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15 years later, new Ecco the Dolphin game leaks onto Dreamcast

Apple announced iOS 10 for iPhones and iPads at WWDC today

(credit: Apple) Apple today announced iOS 10, a new major version of its operating system for iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touches. There is a redesigned control center with interactive notifications, and improvements to widgets (such as those that show calendar and weather information). 3D Touch can now do more: For example, you can press your screen to clear all notifications at once. Siri is getting improvements, with the ability to book rides on services like Uber and Lyft, the ability to start and pause workouts, and make payments to send money to friends with SquareCash and other services. Siri’s will be more intelligent in messaging. For example, if a friend asks for the contact information of another friend, Siri can automatically provide the contact. Siri can also pull up calendar availability in message threads, and let you do multilingual typing without switching the keyboard language. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Apple announced iOS 10 for iPhones and iPads at WWDC today

Xbox Play Anywhere: buy the game once, play on Xbox One and PC (multiplayer too)

(credit: Microsoft) When announcing  Gears of War 4 at its E3 event today, Microsoft unveiled a new gaming feature called Xbox Play Anywhere. Essentially, this initiative allows a gamer to purchase a title once but still have the option to play on console  and  PC. As perhaps the headlining feature of Xbox Play Anywhere, multiplayer across platform will become a reality. With  Gears of War 4 , for instance, the co-op modes will support this crossplay between Windows 10 and Xbox One users. Progress and achievements will be shared on Xbox Live across these platforms at no additional cost. In addition to Gears of War 4,  Microsoft announced that  Forza Horizons 3  will be another upcoming Xbox Play Anywhere title. Additionally, the game will allow for four player campaign co-op for the first time. And this version of the game will feature “the largest car roster ever seen in Horizon ,” according to Ralph Fulton from Playground Games. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Xbox Play Anywhere: buy the game once, play on Xbox One and PC (multiplayer too)

Gawker declares bankruptcy, will auction itself off in wake of Hulk Hogan lawsuit

(credit: Miguel Discart ) UPDATE 3:00pm ET : The Verge located and published Gawker’s federal Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection filing, which we have mirrored here . In that document, owner Nick Denton estimates the company’s assets at $50 million to $100 million, and liabilities at $100 million to $500 million. Ryan Mac, a reporter at Forbes , provided Ars with a three-page statement from Gawker, that we have published in full , here. Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Gawker declares bankruptcy, will auction itself off in wake of Hulk Hogan lawsuit

US coal production drops to levels not seen since a 1980s miners’ strike

(credit: US EIA ) The first three months of 2016 saw a plunge in the US’ coal production that may be without precedent. The US Energy Information Administration, which has figures going back to the 1970s, shows only a single quarterly drop of similar magnitude—and that one came during a workers’ strike back in the early 1980s. Excepting periods of labor problems, US coal production has not been this low since the EIA started tracking it. Part of the problem is temporary. The winter was unusually mild, which lowers energy use in general. As a result, many of the coal-burning electrical plants had large stockpiles of coal on hand; they burned through these reserves rather than ordering new coal. But most of the issues are systemic. Coal is now being undercut by renewables and natural gas, which are displacing some of the demand. Utilities are responding to those low prices by adding new renewable and gas capacity. That additional capacity comes at a time when the US’ electricity demand has been growing at an unexpectedly slow pace. Combined, these factors have resulted in less use of existing coal plants. New environmental regulations are also forcing the oldest and least efficient plants to shut down early. Most of these are also coal. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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US coal production drops to levels not seen since a 1980s miners’ strike