Tag: score2

German Police Allowed To Use Its Own "Federal Trojan"

An anonymous reader writes: The German Interior Ministry has approved for investigative use a spying Trojan developed by the German Federal Criminal Police (a so-called “federal Trojan”). In fact, it could end up being used as early as this week. The police will have to get a court order to use the spyware, and prove that the suspect is involved in a crime threatening citizens’ “life, limb or liberty”. The malware has been developed in-house, and has been available since autumn 2015. It is supposed to be used only for so-called telecommunication surveillance at the source, i.e. to read emails, chats and wiretap phone calls made by the target via his or her computer or smartphone, and not to access files, steal passwords, or set up video or audio surveillance via the device. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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German Police Allowed To Use Its Own "Federal Trojan"

Telstra To Roll Out 1000Mbps 4G

An anonymous reader writes: After beginning support for LTE Category 9 last year on their 4Gx network (with it’s theoretical max download speed of 450Mbps), Telstra has now announced that they will upgrade their network to support LTE category 16. In theory, this means that if a customer has the correct equipment in the correct location, they will be able to have a maximum theoretical download speed of 1000Mbps, and a maximum theoretical upload speed of 150Mbps. Of course, it’s unlikely that customers will be able to sustain these speeds, but Telstra lists on their website that 4GX devices currently have a typical download speed of 2 to 75Mbps on 4GX. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Telstra To Roll Out 1000Mbps 4G

Nvidia Pascal GP100 GPU To Rock 4 TFLOPS Double Precision, 12 TFLOPS Single Precision Processing Power

New information emerged regarding Nvidia’s Pascal GPU, covering the total compute performance of the much-anticipated FinFET-based chip. Based on a number of slides from an independent researcher, the Nvidia Pascal GPU100 features Stacked DRAM (1 TB/s) giving it as much as 12 TFLOPs of Single-Precision (FP32) compute performance. The flagship GPU is purportedly able to provide four TFLOPs of Double-Precision (FP64) compute performance as well. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Nvidia Pascal GP100 GPU To Rock 4 TFLOPS Double Precision, 12 TFLOPS Single Precision Processing Power

A 19-Year-Old Made A Free Robot Lawyer That Has Appealed $3M In Parking Tickets

schwit1 writes: Hiring a lawyer for a parking-ticket appeal is not only a headache, but it can also cost more than the ticket itself. Depending on the case and the lawyer, an appeal — a legal process where you argue out of paying the fine — can cost between $400 to $900. But with the help of a robot made by British programmer Joshua Browder, 19, it costs nothing. Browder’s bot handles questions about parking-ticket appeals in the UK. Since launching in late 2015, it has successfully appealed $3 million worth of tickets. He is cutting into the government trough and lawyers’ jobs. That’s a double whammy. How long is it before the bar association and government get automated lawyers disqualified? Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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A 19-Year-Old Made A Free Robot Lawyer That Has Appealed $3M In Parking Tickets

Yahoo Closes Lab – Among Other Things

mikejuk writes: In its recent earnings call, Yahoo revealed plans to cut its workforce by 15% — around 1, 600 employees by the end of the year. Yahoo Labs is another victim of the cuts as revealed in a Tumbler post by Yoelle Maarek who reports that both Yahoo’s Chief Scientist, Ron Brachman, and VP of Research Ricardo Baeza-Yates, will be leaving the company and that going forward: Our new approach is to integrate research teams directly into our product teams in order to produce innovation that will drive excellence in those product areas. We will also have an independent research team that will work autonomously or in partnership with product partners. The integrated and independent teams, as a whole, will be known as Yahoo Research. Maarek, formerly VP of Research now becomes leader of Yahoo Research. To anyone who has followed the story of research at Yahoo there will be a sense of deja vu. Back in 2012 Yahoo laid off many of its research team, many of whom found a new home with Microsoft. It was Marissa Meyer who in the following year recruited a substantial number of PhDs to Yahoo Labs which initiated some interesting projects. Meyer clearly thought research would save Yahoo!, but now it all seems a bit late and Yahoo! can’t save its research lab. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Yahoo Closes Lab – Among Other Things

Linux 4.3 Reached End of Life; Users Need To Move To Linux 4.4

prisoninmate writes: As some of you may know, Linux 4.3 was not an LTS (Long Term Support) release, so the last maintenance build is now Linux kernel 4.3.6, as announced earlier by Greg Kroah-Hartman, a renowned kernel developer and maintainer. While he’s telling users of the Linux 4.3 series to update to the 4.3.6 point release, he also urges them, especially OS vendors, to move to the most advanced stable series, in this case, Linux kernel 4.4 LTS, which just received its second point release the other day. However, it appears that Linux kernel 4.3.6 is quite an update, as it changes a total of 197 files, with 2310 insertions and 963 deletions, bringing some much-needed improvements. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Linux 4.3 Reached End of Life; Users Need To Move To Linux 4.4

Comodo Antivirus Tech Support Feature Lets Anyone Connect To Your PC

An anonymous reader writes: Google Project Zero security researcher Tavis Ormandy has discovered that one of Comodo’s tech support tools packed with many of the company’s security products leaves the door open for attackers to connect with admin privileges on the user’s PC. He discovered that to blame for this problem was a remote desktop tool called GeekBuddy, which Comodo was bundling with its security software. This tool either used no password, or used a simple system to create the password which tech support staff would use to connect to user PCs. Ormandy previously discovered a similar issue in Comodo software, related to the company’s Chromodo browser. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Comodo Antivirus Tech Support Feature Lets Anyone Connect To Your PC

Apple Says Sorry For iPhone Error 53 and Issues IOS 9.2.1 Update To Fix It

Mark Wilson writes: Apple has a lot of support at the moment for its stance on encryption and refusing the FBI access to an iPhone’s contents, but it’s only a couple of weeks since the company was seen in a less favorable light. There was quite a backlash when users found that installing an update to iOS resulted in Error 53 and a bricked iPhone. Apple initially said that Error 53 was caused ‘for security reasons’ following speculation that it was a bid to stop people from using third party repair shops. iFixit suggested that the problem was a result of a failure of parts to correctly sync, and Apple has been rounding criticized for failing to come up with a fix. Today the company has issued an apology, along with an update that ensures Error 53 won’t happen again. But there’s more good news … If you were talked into paying for an out of warranty replacement as a result of Error 53, you could be in line to get your money back. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Apple Says Sorry For iPhone Error 53 and Issues IOS 9.2.1 Update To Fix It

IRS Warns Of 400% Flood In Phishing and Malware This Tax Year Alone

coondoggie writes: There has been a 400% surge in phishing and malware incidents in this tax season alone, the Internal Revenue Service warned this week. According to the IRS, there have been thousands of phony emails aimed at fooling taxpayers into thinking these are official communications from the IRS or others in the tax industry, including from many tax software companies. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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IRS Warns Of 400% Flood In Phishing and Malware This Tax Year Alone

Backdoor In MVPower DVR Firmware Sends CCTV Stills To an Email Address In China

An anonymous reader writes: An IoT security research company has discovered that a DVR model manufactured by MVPower includes a backdoor-like feature in its code that takes a screenshot of your CCTV feed and sends it to an email address hosted somewhere in China. The device’s firmware is based on an open source project from GitHub that was pulled by its developer when someone confronted him about the backdoor. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Backdoor In MVPower DVR Firmware Sends CCTV Stills To an Email Address In China