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There are limits to 2FA and it can be near-crippling to your digital life

A video demonstration of the vulnerability here, using a temporary password. (credit: Kapil Haresh) This piece first appeared on Medium and is republished here with the permission of the author. It reveals a limitation in the way Apple approaches 2FA, which is most likely a deliberate decision. Apple engineers probably recognize that someone who loses their phone won’t be able to wipe data if 2FA is enforced, and this story is a good reminder of the pitfalls. As a graduate student studying cryptography, security and privacy (CrySP ), software engineering and human-computer interaction , I’ve learned a thing or two about security. Yet a couple of days back, I watched my entire digital life get violated and nearly wiped off the face of the Earth. That sounds like a bit of an exaggeration, but honestly it pretty much felt like that. Here’s the timeline of a cyber-attack I recently faced on Sunday, July 23, 2016 (all times are in Eastern Standard): That’s a pretty incidence matrix (credit: Kapil Haresh) 3:36pm— I was scribbling out an incidence matrix for a perfect hash family table on the whiteboard, explaining how the incidence matrix should be built to my friends. Ironically, this was a cryptography assignment for multicast encryption. Everything seemed fine until a rather odd sound started playing on my iPhone. I was pretty sure it was on silent, but I was quite surprised to see that it said “Find My iPhone Alert” on the lock screen. That was odd. Read 20 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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There are limits to 2FA and it can be near-crippling to your digital life

The quest to get a unique SNES CD-ROM prototype working again

Part 1 of Ben Heck’s SNES-CD restoration project (part 2 at the bottom of this post). Since a prototype of the fabled, unreleased SNES-CD (aka the “Nintendo PlayStation”) was first found and disassembled last year, we’ve learned enough about this one-of-a-kind piece of hardware to actually emulate homebrew games as if they were running on its CD-ROM drive. The prototype console itself, though, has never been fully functional—it couldn’t generate sound, the CD-ROM drive wouldn’t spin up, and, after a recent trip to Hong Kong, it actually stopped generating a picture. That’s when the prototype’s owners, Terry and Dan Diebold, went to famed gaming hardware hacker Ben Heck . They want this piece of gaming history up and running again. Heck documented his efforts in a fascinating two-part YouTube series that reveals a lot about the system and what makes it tick. Terry Diebold starts off talking about how he first discovered the prototype SNES while boxing up an estate sale, where it was sold in a lot alongside CDs, cups, saucers, and other knickknacks. After paying $75 for the entire lot, Diebold recalls, “if you break it down to everything I did buy, I probably paid a nickel for it.” Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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The quest to get a unique SNES CD-ROM prototype working again

One professor’s quest to 3D scan every fish in the sea

If you were wondering what a mottled sculpin looks like, there are plenty of pictures available online. But while they may satisfy a curious tidepooler, the discerning icthyologist demands more. That’s why a professor at the University of Washington is getting full 3D scans of every fish in the sea — every species, anyway. Read More

Four crops grown in simulated Martian soil are safe to eat

We’re still not sure if we can Mark Watney our way through a Martian mission , because soil on the red planet contains heavy metals toxic to humans, including lead and arsenic. A team of scientists from the Wageningen University in the Netherlands, however, found out that radishes, peas, rye and tomatoes grown in Martian soil are safe to eat after years of research. The scientists have been growing different types of plants in soil that NASA developed to simulate what’s found on the red planet since 2013. While they haven’t exactly eaten any of them yet — and team leader Wieger Wamelink admits radishes are still best grown on Earth — they confirmed that these four can grow on Mars without absorbing dangerous levels of heavy metals. The researchers’ work isn’t done yet, especially since NASA and various private space corporations have already begun planning manned missions. They’re also growing six other crops, including potatoes, which still have to be tested for heavy metal content. The currently running a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for their project. first #potato flower on Mars soil simulant, to feed the human #Martians , including #Whatney https://t.co/EZK76clZHr pic.twitter.com/qQoRAlzy5u — Wieger Wamelink (@wamelink_wieger) May 16, 2016 Harvest of green beans on #Mars and # moon soil simulants pic.twitter.com/lNUJZlPQ50 — Wieger Wamelink (@wamelink_wieger) May 31, 2016 #peas on #Mars and #moon soil simulant at @WageningenUR . On the moon you will be a bit hungry, sorry about that. pic.twitter.com/qAlht1esZS — Wieger Wamelink (@wamelink_wieger) June 20, 2016 #cress on #Mars and #moon soil simulant at @WageningenUR . they looked and smelled tasty. pic.twitter.com/TvNKwfnTuk — Wieger Wamelink (@wamelink_wieger) June 20, 2016 Source: The Guardian , Physorg , Wageningen University

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Four crops grown in simulated Martian soil are safe to eat

SpaceX wins its first military launch contract

Elon Musk has been fighting to be treated with the same level of respect as Lockheed Martin and Boeing, and it looks like his persistence has paid off. Reuters is reporting that the US Air Force has handed SpaceX a contract worth $83 million to launch the next GPS satellite into orbit. It’s a big deal, because until now, only Lockheed and Boeing (through the United Launch Alliance ) have been permitted to fling objects into the heavens on the Air Force’s behalf. The launch will take place in May 2018 from Florida atop a Falcon 9 rocket, although while Musk has won the battle, he might also be well on the way to winning the war. Back in 2014, the US Air Force awarded a contract for 26 rocket launches to ULA, the space joint venture from Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Musk believed that SpaceX was able to offer a better deal, and was peeved he wasn’t even allowed the chance to bid for the business. Shortly afterward, Musk launched a lawsuit to try and block the contract, alleging that there was something fishy about the contract process. Namely that one of the officials in charge of awarding the deal was subsequently handed a cushy job at the ULA . It didn’t take long for red-faced bodies at the Pentagon to agree that it needed to improve “the competitive landscape” for “national security space launches.” Reuters is also suggesting that the ULA might not be able to compete with SpaceX and its ability to make space launches progressively cheaper. That’s not much of a surprise, since the company has struggled in recent years to deal with its upstart rival. Part of this is down to the fact that its Atlas V rockets use Russian-made rocket engines, which are cheap and reliable but politically inconvenient. In the wake of the occupation of Crimea, the US imposed trade sanctions on Russia that preclude ULA from sourcing its engines. Last week the Motley Fool published a report that said that something might be rotten in the state of the ULA more generally. Former executive Brett Tobey apparently told students at the University of Colorado that it simply couldn’t compete with SpaceX. He reportedly said that it was because of the way his former company’s pricing structure was laid out, representatives were prohibited from quoting under $125 million. Even worse is that when the subsidiary costs are also included in the calculation, the price of a ULA launch is closer to $200 million. In addition, the firm has announced that it’ll cut jobs, and could let anywhere between 375 and 500 employees go between now and 2017. By comparison, SpaceX is riding high after showing that its Falcon 9 rocket can land on a platform after being shot into space . Reusable rockets is going to massively reduce the cost for each launch, and should help make journeys into the heavens that much cheaper. In addition, Musk is pledging to get the first SpaceX capsules to land on Mars by 2018 , an ambitious goal, but one that he’s uniquely equipped to see to reality.

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SpaceX wins its first military launch contract

Former Tor Developer Created Malware To Hack Tor Users For The FBI

Patrick O’Neill writes: Matt Edman is a cybersecurity expert who worked as a part-time employee at Tor Project, the nonprofit that builds Tor software and maintains the network, almost a decade ago. Since then, he’s developed potent malware used by law enforcement to unmask Tor users. It’s been wielded in multiple investigations by federal law-enforcement and U.S. intelligence agencies in several high-profile cases. The Tor Project has confirmed this report in a statement after being contacted by the Daily Dot, “It has come to out attention that Matt Edman, who worked with the Tor Project until 2009, subsequently was employed by a defense contractor working for the FBI to develop anti-Tor malware.” Maybe Tor users will now be less likely to anonymously check Facebook each month… Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Former Tor Developer Created Malware To Hack Tor Users For The FBI

You’ll Never Forget Your Password When It’s the Sound Your Skull Makes

Lacking a decent keyboard for password entry, it’s tricky to secure a wearable computer so that someone else can’t just put it on and access your private files. But researchers have come up with a better alternative , by listening to the unique sound of the wearer’s skull. Read more…

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You’ll Never Forget Your Password When It’s the Sound Your Skull Makes

This tattoo-like display is made possible by a new ultra-thin protective ‘E-skin’

It sounds like something out of Star Trek: a patch thinner than a band-aid that you slap on your arm and, within moments, it lights up with heart rate, blood sugar, and so on — then peels off a few days later. That’s the goal of work by researchers at the University of Tokyo. Read More

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This tattoo-like display is made possible by a new ultra-thin protective ‘E-skin’

Facebook Messenger Hits 900M Monthly Active Users; To Get Snapchat-Like Features

Facebook, on Thursday, announced that Messenger now has 900 million monthly active users. On the sidelines, the company also announced a couple of Snapchat-like features it is bringing to its messaging client. Alex Health, reporting for Tech Insider: Facebook executive David Marcus said that Messenger will soon let you create profile usernames and web links. The links will look like “m.me/yourusername” and let anyone quickly add you in Messenger without looking up your Facebook account. The usernames and profile links will also be available to businesses, which are starting to use Messenger as a way to deliver customer support and let you buy things through chatting. Every Messenger account will also have a scannable QR code within the app, which is exactly how Snapchat lets people share their profiles with others. Snapchat also recently added the ability to share profiles on the web with public URLs. It is worth noting that earlier this year, Facebook-owned WhatsApp app reached 1 billion monthly active users. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

307-million-year-old “monster” fossil identified at last

Sean McMahon Reconstruction of the Tully Monster as it would have looked 300 million years ago, swimming in the Carboniferous seas. Notice the jointed proboscis, the multiple rows of teeth, and the dorsal eye bar. 4 more images in gallery The “Tully monster,” a mysterious animal that swam in the inland oceans of Illinois more than 300 million years ago, left behind a tantalizingly detailed map of its body in a well-preserved package of fossils. Unfortunately, nobody could figure out what the creature was for half a century—until now. Francis Tully found the remains of the tiny beast (it’s only about 10 centimeters long) in Illinois in 1958 and gave it the whimsical scientific name Tullimonstrum (nickname: Tully monster). A long stalk extends from the front of its body, which ends in a toothy orifice called a buccal apparatus. Its body is covered in gills and narrows down into a powerful tail that it probably used for propulsion. Its eyes peer out from either end of a long, rigid bar attached to the animal’s back. The Tully monster lived during the Carboniferous period, when the North American Great Basin was an enormous inland sea. Trees were colonizing the land for the first time, transforming the soil and filling the atmosphere with higher levels of oxygen than Earth had known before or since. Giant arthropods, like the 8-foot-long millipede known as Arthropleura , crawled through the new forests. It was a good time to be a weird animal, and the Tully monster probably fit right in. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Ken May

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