Tag: security

US Military Working On 3D Printing Exact Replicas of Bones & Limbs

ErnieKey writes The U.S. military is working with technology that will allow them to create exact virtual replicas of their soldiers. In case of an injury, these replicas could be used to 3D print exact medical models for rebuilding the injured patient’s body and even exact replica implants. Could we all one day soon have virtual backups of ourselves that we can access and have new body parts 3D printed on demand? Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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US Military Working On 3D Printing Exact Replicas of Bones & Limbs

US Gas Pump Hacked With ‘Anonymous’ Tagline

An anonymous reader writes Researchers at Trend Micro have uncovered a gas pump in the United States whose ID has been changed from ‘DIESEL’ to ‘WE_ARE_LEGION’ — the call-sign of the Anonymous hacking group. Following up recent revelations regarding the vulnerability of gas pump systems to online attackers, the researchers found 1, 515 completely unprotected gas pump monitoring devices via the Shodan device-based search engine. The report notes that the exposed devices are capable of being protected via six-digit pins, but this security measure is not being used. The report concludes: “Our investigation shows that the tampering of an Internet-facing device resulted in a name change. But sooner or later, real world implications will occur, causing possible outages or even worse.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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US Gas Pump Hacked With ‘Anonymous’ Tagline

WA Pushes Back On Microsoft and Code.org’s Call For Girls-First CS Education

theodp writes On Tuesday, the State of Washington heard public testimony on House Bill 1813 (video), which takes aim at boy’s historical over-representation in K-12 computer classes. To allow them to catch flights, representatives of Microsoft and Microsoft-bankrolled Code.org were permitted to give their testimony before anyone else (“way too many young people, particularly our girls…simply don’t have access to the courses at all, ” lamented Jane Broom, who manages Microsoft’s philanthropic portfolio), so it’s unclear whether they were headed to the airport when a representative of the WA State Superintendent of Public Instruction voiced the sole dissent against the Bill. “The Superintendent strongly believes in the need to improve our ability to teach STEM, to advance computer science, to make technology more available to all students, ” explained Chris Vance. “Our problem, and our concern, is with the use of the competitive grant program…just providing these opportunities to a small number of students…that’s the whole basic problem…disparity of opportunity…if this is a real priority…fund it fully” (HB 1813, like the White House K-12 CS plan, counts on philanthropy to make up for tax shortfalls). Hey, parents of boys are likely to be happy to see another instance of educators striving to be more inclusive than tech when it comes to encouraging CS participation! Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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WA Pushes Back On Microsoft and Code.org’s Call For Girls-First CS Education

VLC Acquiring Lots of New Features

jones_supa writes: Two weekends ago an update for VLC media player was shared during a presentation in Brussels at FOSDEM. Lead developer Jean-Baptiste Kempf covered VLC’s continued vibrant development, as well as features that are coming for VLC 2.2 and VLC 3.0. VLC 2.2.0 will feature automatic, GPU-accelerated video rotation support, extension improvements, resume handling, support for new codecs/formats and rewrites to some of the existing formats, VDPAU GPU zero-copy support, x265 encoder support, etc. Further out is VLC 3.0.0, which is planned to have Wayland support, GPU zero-copy support for OpenMAX IL, ARIB subtitle support, HEVC / VP9 hardware decoding on Android, a rework of the MP4 and TS demuxers, and browsing improvements. The VLC FOSDEM 2015 presentation is available in PDF form. The VLC Git shortlog can be used to follow the development of the project. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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VLC Acquiring Lots of New Features

Demonii Tracker Tops 30 Million Connected Peers

An anonymous reader writes Demonii is the tracker behind the scenes for many BitTorrent sites serving pirated content. This week the tracker broke through the barrier of 30 million connected peers, handling no less than 2 billion connections per day. In other words, the scale of operation has become massive. TorrentFreak interviewed an operator of the site, and it was revealed that the tracker runs smoothly on just three dedicated servers, communicating at 180 Mb/s while serving 4 million torrents. Some people have argued that trackers are obsolete in the first place, as DHT and PEX allow peers to share the same information among each other, but Demonii’s operator reminds that having trackers speeds up the initial peer finding significantly. In any case, Demonii is not going away anytime soon. The tracker is already on its way to another milestone. The 40 million peer milestone will probably come into view later this year, but first there are a trillion more connections to process. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Demonii Tracker Tops 30 Million Connected Peers

With Insider Help, ID Theft Ring Stole $700,000 In Apple Gift Cards

itwbennett writes The Manhattan District Attorney’s office has indicted five people for using personal information stolen from around 200 people to fund the purchase of hundreds of thousands of dollars in Apple gift cards, which in turn were used to buy Apple products. “Using stolen information to purchase Apple products is one of the most common schemes employed by cybercrime and identity theft rings today, ” District Attorney Cyrus Vance said in a statement. “We see in case after case how all it takes is single insider at a company—in this instance, allegedly, a receptionist in a dentists’ office—to set an identity theft ring in motion, which then tries to monetize the stolen information by purchasing Apple goods for resale or personal use, ” he said. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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With Insider Help, ID Theft Ring Stole $700,000 In Apple Gift Cards

Some Stock Broker Lost $75,000 To Hackers Over One Email

The SEC just revealed that the vast majority of brokerages and financial advisers have been hit with cyberattacks . The agency’s report also reveals : “One adviser reported a loss in excess of $75, 000 related to a fraudulent email, for which the client was made whole.” LOL what? Read more…

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Some Stock Broker Lost $75,000 To Hackers Over One Email

Obama’s 2016 NASA Budget Status Quo, Funds Europa Mission

MarkWhittington writes The Washington Post reported that the NASA portion of the president’s 2016 budget proposal is basically status quo though it does provide further funding for a mission to Europa. A Europa probe is near and dear to the new chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee that funds NASA, Rep. John Culberson. However, the $18.5 billion budget proposal also funds the asteroid redirect mission, which has come under increasing fire from both Congress and the scientific community. The Houston Chronicle suggested that the final spending bill will be considerably different once congressional Republicans get through with it. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Obama’s 2016 NASA Budget Status Quo, Funds Europa Mission

Blur Uses One-Time Use Credit Card Numbers to Deter Hackers

After all the recent credit hacking news , many people are a little more hesitant about using plastic. Blur is a service that makes your shopping a little more secure by generating “fake” credit card numbers to deter hackers. Read more…

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Blur Uses One-Time Use Credit Card Numbers to Deter Hackers