To beat crypto, feds have tried to force fingerprint unlocking in 2 cases

Enlarge (credit: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images News) Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles have been successful in getting judicial approval for two highly unusual searches. The warrants allowed the authorities to force suspects, who were inside their California homes, to press their fingerprints on a seized smartphone to see if it would unlock, Ars has learned. On Sunday, Forbes published the first-known redacted court filing associated with the search of a home in Lancaster, California, about 70 miles north of downtown Los Angeles. The 12-page memo  filed in federal court outlines the government’s argument as to why it believes it can conduct such a search under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, which protect against unreasonable search and seizure, and against compelled self-incrimination, respectively. The Lancaster document is dated May 9, and Forbes managed to contact an unnamed resident at the home, who confirmed that the search had taken place. That person said that “neither they nor any relatives living at the address had ever been accused of being part of any crime, but declined to offer more information,” according to Forbes . Read 25 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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To beat crypto, feds have tried to force fingerprint unlocking in 2 cases

Teslas will now be sold with enhanced hardware suite for full autonomy

Enlarge (credit: Tesla) Late Wednesday, Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk announced that the company would be adding its own hardware to new all new Tesla cars to allow up to Level 5 autonomy. In the automotive industry, Level 5 denotes a fully self-driving vehicle. Musk said that it would be some time before Tesla’s software would advance to meet capabilities of the new hardware available, which the company is calling “Hardware II.” Still, the CEO stressed that all new cars would come with the new hardware suite, even if the software isn’t activated. The hardware includes eight cameras for a 360-degree view, twelve ultrasonic sensors, “forward-facing radar with advanced processing,” and an Nvidia Titan GPU that’s capable of 12 trillion operations per second. Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Teslas will now be sold with enhanced hardware suite for full autonomy

T-Mobile punished by FCC for hidden limits on unlimited data

Enlarge T-Mobile USA failed to adequately disclose speed and data restrictions on its “unlimited data” plans and has agreed to pay a fine and provide some benefits to customers, the Federal Communications Commission said today. Like other carriers, T-Mobile slows the speeds of its unlimited data customers after they’ve used a certain amount of data each month; when these customers connect to congested cell towers, they receive lower speeds than customers without unlimited data plans. The throttling is applied after customers use 26GB in a month. “Under its ‘Top 3 Percent Policy,’ T-Mobile ‘de-prioritizes’ its ‘heavy’ data users during times of network contention or congestion,” the FCC said in an announcement today. “This potentially deprived these users of the advertised speeds of their data plan. According to consumers, this policy rendered data services ‘unusable’ for many hours each day and substantially limited their access to data.” Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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T-Mobile punished by FCC for hidden limits on unlimited data

XG.fast DSL does 10Gbps over telephone lines

(credit: Bob Dormon / Ars Technica UK) Nokia has achieved a connection speed of 5Gbps—about 625MB/sec—over 70 metres of conventional twisted-pair copper telephone wire, and 8Gbps over 30 metres. The trial used a relatively new digital subscriber line (DSL) protocol called XG.fast (aka G.fast2). XG.fast is the probable successor of G.fast , which was successfully trialled in a few countries over the past couple of years and will soon begin to commercially roll out. (In an unusual turn of events,  the UK will probably be the first country with G.fast .) Fundamentally, both G.fast and XG.fast are best described as “VDSL on steroids.” Basically, while a VDSL2 signal frequency maxes out around 17MHz, G.fast starts at 106MHz (it can be doubled to 212MHz) and XG.fast uses between 350MHz and 500MHz. This means that there’s a lot more bandwidth (the original meaning of the word), which in turn can be used for transferring data at higher speeds. Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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XG.fast DSL does 10Gbps over telephone lines

iOS 10.0.3 fixes iPhone 7 cellular connectivity problems

Enlarge / The iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. (credit: Andrew Cunningham) Apple has just released iOS 10.0.3, a minor update to iOS 10 intended to fix cellular connectivity problems with the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus . Unlike most iOS updates, this one is available exclusively for the newest iPhones, since older iPhones and iPads running iOS 10.0.2  don’t seem to be affected. The problem seems to affect US users on Verizon the most consistently, and most users’ complaints say that the phones drop their LTE connections and either fall back to 3G speeds or lose connectivity altogether. Reports of similar connectivity problems have also come from AT&T users, and late last week, Bloomberg also reported on complaints from Chinese users who were losing their signals . Apple’s release notes don’t mention any particular countries or carriers, but iOS 10.0.3 will hopefully resolve the problems for everyone. Apple is also working on a major update to iOS 10, version 10.1, which adds the “portrait mode” feature to the iPhone 7 Plus’ dual-camera system and makes other tweaks. That update is currently in its third developer beta and will be released later this fall. Read on Ars Technica | Comments

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iOS 10.0.3 fixes iPhone 7 cellular connectivity problems

Breach exposes at least 58 million accounts, includes names, jobs, and more

(credit: Hefin Richards ) There has been yet another major data breach, this time exposing names, IP addresses, birth dates, e-mail addresses, vehicle data, and occupations of at least 58 million subscribers, researchers said. The trove was mined from a poorly secured database and then published and later removed at least three times over the past week, according to this analysis from security firm Risk Based Security. Based on conversations with a Twitter user who first published links to the leaked data , the researchers believe the data was stored on servers belonging to Modern Business Solutions , a company that provides data storage and database hosting services. Shortly after researchers contacted Modern Business Solutions, the leaky database was secured, but the researchers said they never received a response from anyone at the firm, which claims to be located in Austin, Texas. Officials with Modern Business Solutions didn’t respond to several messages Ars left seeking comment and additional details. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Breach exposes at least 58 million accounts, includes names, jobs, and more

Don’t buy a Galaxy Note 7—and return yours if you already have

Enlarge / The Note 7 has too many safety issues for us to recommend. (credit: Ron Amadeo) When we review phones, we do our best to tell you everything you need to make a smart purchase. We talk about the underlying tech, too, but in the end, people usually read a review because they either want to know which thing to buy or they want to know more about the thing they already intend to buy. Usually, we give you all of that information and make a general recommendation but leave the ultimate purchasing decision up to you. But for Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7, we need to go a step further: don’t buy this phone. And if you have bought it, you should return the Galaxy Note 7 immediately and purchase something else. Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Don’t buy a Galaxy Note 7—and return yours if you already have

More than 400 malicious apps infiltrate Google Play

Enlarge (credit: Curious Expeditions ) Google Play was recently found to be hosting more than 400 apps that turned infected phones into listening posts that could siphon sensitive data out of the protected networks they connected to, security researchers said Thursday. One malicious app infected with the so-called DressCode malware had been downloaded from 100,000 to 500,000 times before it was removed from the Google-hosted marketplace, Trend Micro researchers said in a post . Known as Mod GTA 5 for Minecraft PE, it was disguised as a benign game, but included in the code was a component that established a persistent connection with an attacker controlled server. The server then had the ability to bypass so-called network address translation protections that shield individual devices inside a network. Trend Micro has found 3,000 such apps in all, 400 of which were available through Play. “This malware allows threat actors to infiltrate a user’s network environment,” Thursday’s report stated. “If an infected device connects to an enterprise network, the attacker can either bypass the NAT device to attack the internal server or download sensitive data using the infected device as a springboard.” Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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More than 400 malicious apps infiltrate Google Play

Verizon technician sold calling, location data for thousands of dollars

Enlarge (credit: Bloomberg via Getty Images) An Alabama man who worked as a Verizon Wireless technician has agreed to plead guilty to a federal hacking charge in connection to his illegal use of the company’s computers to acquire customer calling and location data. The man, Daniel Eugene Traeger, faces a maximum five years in prison next month. He admitted Thursday that he sold customer data—from 2009 to 2014—to a private investigator whom the authorities have not named. According to the man’s signed plea deal  (PDF): At some point in 2009, the Defendant met a private investigator (“the PI”) who wanted to buy Verizon customer information from the Defendant. The Defendant accepted the PI’s offer. The defendant used Verizon computer systems and facilities to access customer call records and customer location data that he knew he was not authorized to access, and provided that information to the PI even though the Defendant knew that he was not authorized to provide it to a third party. The Defendant accessed customer call records by logging into Verizon’s MARS system. The Defendant then compiled the data in spreadsheets, which the Defendant provided to the PI, including by e-mail. The Defendant accessed customer location data using a Verizon system called Real Time Tool. Using RTT, the Defendant “pinged” cellular telephones on Verizon’s network and provided location data for those telephones to the PI. The plea agreement said that Traeger began making $50 monthly in 2009, when he sold two records a month. By mid-2013, he was earning $750 each month by selling 10 to 15 records. In all, the plea deal says he made more than $10,000 over a five-year period. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Verizon technician sold calling, location data for thousands of dollars

NASA changed all the astrological signs and I’m a crab now

Enlarge / The new sign, “Ophiuchus,” means “Snake Bearer.” And who’s got two thumbs and loves snakes? THIS GUY RIGHT HERE. (credit: Wikimedia Commons ) According to a post on NASASpacePlace , everything we thought we knew about the influence the heavens have over our Earthly lives has been thrown into chaos. NASA has announced that the celestial sphere above us contains not twelve canonical zodiacal constellations, but 13. The heretofore overlooked constellation, Ophiuchus, is purported to guide and command events surrounding humans born between November 29 and December 17—so, if you used to be a Sagittarius, then congratulations: you’ve got a new sign, baby! The addition of Ophiuchus—the snake bearer , in case you were wondering—has obvious and far-reaching implications for the entire western Babylonian-derived zodiac calendar. For one thing, squeezing it in means changing the effective dates of all the other signs. According to Yahoo News , the new 13-sign calendar plays out like this: Capricorn:  January 20-February 16 Aquarius:  February 16-March 11 Pisces:  March 11-April 18 Aries:  April 18-May 13 Taurus:  May 13-June 21 Gemini:  June 21-July 20 Cancer:  July 20-August 10 Leo:  August 10-September 16 Virgo:  September 16-October 30 Libra:  October 30-November 23 Scorpio:  November 23-November 29 Ophiuchus:  November 29-December 17 Sagittarius:  December 17-January 20 The changes are as sweeping as they are staggering. For example, I woke up this morning firmly believing that I was an outgoing, courageous, independent, generous Leo. However, now I have to come to grips with the fact that I am in fact a stupid, sulky, inconsiderate, pessimistic Cancer. I have gone from lion to crab, and it weighs heavily upon me. Read 20 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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NASA changed all the astrological signs and I’m a crab now