style-details – Page 6 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Google kills 200 ad-injecting Chrome extensions, says many are malware

Google is cracking down on ad-injecting extensions for its Chrome browser after finding that almost 200 of them exposed millions of users to deceptive practices or malicious software. More than a third of Chrome extensions that inject ads were recently classified as malware in a study Google researchers carried out with colleagues from the University of California at Berkeley. The Researchers uncovered 192 deceptive Chrome extensions that affected 14 million users. Google officials have since killed those extensions and incorporated new techniques to catch any new or updated extensions that carry out similar abuses. The study also found widespread use of ad injectors for multiple browsers on both Windows and OS X computers. More than five percent of people visiting Google sites have at least one ad injector installed Within that group, half have at least two injectors installed, and nearly one-third have at least four installed. Google officials don’t bar such ad injectors outright, but they do place restrictions on them. Terms of service for Chrome extensions , for instance, require that the ad-injecting behavior be clearly disclosed. Customers of DoubleClick and other Google-operated ads services must also comply with policies barring unwanted software . Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Judge rejects AT&T claim that FTC can’t stop unlimited data throttling

A federal judge has rejected AT&T’s claim that it can’t be sued by the Federal Trade Commission, which is trying to put a stop to the carrier’s throttling of unlimited data plans . The FTC sued AT&T in October 2014, saying the company deceived customers by offering unlimited data plans and then throttling data speeds once customers hit certain usage thresholds, such as 3GB or 5GB in a month. AT&T claimed in January that because it is a common carrier, it isn’t subject to FTC jurisdiction. In a decision out of US District Court in Northern California yesterday, Judge Edward Chen refused to dismiss the lawsuit. Read 14 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Judge rejects AT&T claim that FTC can’t stop unlimited data throttling

Uber driver arrested for trying to burglarize passenger’s house

An Uber driver was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of attempting to break in to the residence of a woman he had just brought to the Denver International Airport. Gerald Montgomery The 51-year-old driver, Gerald Montgomery, allegedly used what the police described as “burglary tools” to try to open the back door of the Colorado woman’s house. The victim’s roommate was home and confronted Montgomery, the Denver Police Department said. Uber said it has “deactivated” Montgomery’s “access to the platform, pending a full investigation.” Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Uber driver arrested for trying to burglarize passenger’s house

New Firefox version says “might as well” to encrypting all Web traffic

Developers of the Firefox browser have moved one step closer to an Internet that encrypts all the world’s traffic with a new feature that can cryptographically protect connections even when servers don’t support the HTTPS protocol. Opportunistic encryption, as the feature is known, acts as a bridge between plaintext HTTP connections and fully compliant HTTPS connections based on transport layer security or its predecessor, protocol secure sockets layer. These traditional Web-based encryption measures require site operators to obtain a digital credential issued by a browser-recognized certificate authority and to implement TLS protection through OpenSSL or a similar code library. Even then, many sites are unable to fully encrypt their pages because they embed ads and other third-party content that’s still transmitted in plaintext. As a result, large numbers of sites (including this one) continue to publish some or all of their content in HTTP, which can be readily manipulated by people with the ability to monitor the connection. OE, as opportunistic encryption is often abbreviated, was turned on by default in Firefox 37, which was released this week. The move comes 17 months after an Internet Engineering Task Force working group proposed OE become an official part of the HTTP 2.0 specification . The move garnered critics and supporters alike, with the former arguing it may delay some sites from using the more secure HTTPS protections and the latter saying, in effect, some protection is better than none. The chief shortcoming of OE is its lack of authentication for cryptographically validating that a connected server is operated by the organization claiming ownership. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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New Firefox version says “might as well” to encrypting all Web traffic

California governor mandates 25 percent water use reduction

Today, California Governor Jerry Brown issued an executive order that is intended to spur water savings. The order comes as the state enters another year of extreme drought caused by lack of winter rain and snowfall. The state receives almost all of its precipitation in the winter and relies on that to fill reservoirs and deposit snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains. But this year, there was no precipitation for the entire month of January, leaving snowpack at many locations well below average —and completely absent in many areas. The new order focuses on conservation, with mandatory water reductions in cities and towns that will cut use by 25 percent. Many of the additional steps are obvious and probably should have been done before a crisis hit: remove 50 million square feet of lawns, have places like school campuses, golf courses, and cemeteries limit water use, and ban any installation of new irrigation systems that don’t use efficient drip irrigation. Standards for toilet and faucet water use will also be updated. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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California governor mandates 25 percent water use reduction

10% of Americans have a smartphone but no other Internet at home

One out of 10 Americans owns a smartphone but has no other Internet service at home, with the poor far more likely to find themselves in this situation than those who are well off, according to a Pew Research Center report released today . “10 percent of Americans own a smartphone but do not have broadband at home, and 15 percent own a smartphone but say that they have a limited number of options for going online other than their cell phone,” Pew Senior Researcher Aaron Smith wrote. “Those with relatively low income and educational attainment levels, younger adults, and non-whites are especially likely to be ‘smartphone-dependent.’” Pew said that 7 percent of Americans are in both categories—a smartphone is their only option for using the Internet at home, and they have few easily available options for going online when away from home. Pew refers to these Americans as “smartphone-dependent.” Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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10% of Americans have a smartphone but no other Internet at home

“Copyright troll” Perfect 10 hit with $5.6M in fees after failed Usenet assault

One of the original “copyright trolls,” a porn company called Perfect 10, has been slapped with a massive $5.6 million fee award that could finally shut down the decade-old lawsuit factory. Perfect 10’s model has been to sue third-party providers for carrying images of its porn. It hasn’t been afraid to go after big targets, either—Perfect 10 even sued Google over its image search, resulting in an appeals court case that made crystal clear that such searches are fair use . Despite that ruling, Perfect 10 went ahead and sued Microsoft on similar grounds three months later. The company also sued Giganews, a Usenet provider, in April 2011. Perfect 10 pursued claims for both indirect and direct copyright infringement, stating that Giganews employees directly uploaded infringing images onto its network. Giganews ultimately prevailed on all grounds; now, Perfect 10 has been required to pay its substantial legal bill as well. Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Dark Web vendors offer up “thousands” of Uber logins starting at $1 each

Two vendors on a relatively new Dark Web marketplace are selling active Uber usernames and passwords. On Saturday, Ars verified that “Courvoisier” is claiming to sell these logins for $1 each on the AlphaBay Market, which launched in late 2014. Another vendor, “ThinkingForward,” sells the same items for $5 each. As Courvoisier writes: “The credentials provided will be a valid login for the Uber website for which you can use to order phones from completely free. (You can find the guide in our store if you’re unaware on the how-to).” Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Dark Web vendors offer up “thousands” of Uber logins starting at $1 each

German pro basketball team relegated to lower division due to Windows update

A second-tier German professional basketball team has been relegated to an even lower-tier as a result of being penalized for starting a recent game late—because the Windows laptop that powered the scoreboard required 17 minutes to perform system updates. The March 13 match between the Chemnitz Niners and the Paderborn Baskets was set to begin normally, when Paderborn (the host) connected its laptop to the scoreboard in the 90 minutes leading up to the game. In an interview with the German newspaper, Die Zeit (Google Translate), Patrick Seidel, the general manager of Paderborn Baskets said that at 6:00pm, an hour and a half before the scheduled start time, the laptop was connected “as usual.” Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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German pro basketball team relegated to lower division due to Windows update

NASA announces details of its asteroid redirection mission

Today, NASA held a press conference in which it described the latest developments in its plan to return an asteroid to an orbit close enough to Earth that it could easily be studied by a manned mission. Gone is the idea of returning an entire asteroid. In its place, a robotic probe will pluck a boulder from the surface of an asteroid and return that, testing our ability to redirect similar rocks if they threaten Earth. In fact, the entire mission is generally focused on technology development. Once the asteroid is placed in a cis-lunar orbit (orbiting Earth and closer than the Moon), it will be visited by a crewed Orion capsule that will allow detailed study and a return of samples to Earth. But the focus of this mission will be testing technology that will allow extended manned missions in space. The current timeline involves further studies of potential targets for extracting a boulder in the years leading up to 2019. Right now, three asteroids are on the menu: Itokawa (which was visited by the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa), Bennu (which is planned for a sample return mission called OSIRIS-REx), and 2008 EV5. In each case, the orbit and composition are well-known, making them relatively low risk. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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NASA announces details of its asteroid redirection mission