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Sunday, 13 December 2015
Have You been Pwned? Has your email been hacked after Tesco, Ashley Madison, Sony data breaches?
Saturday, 12 December 2015
Next iPhone 7 could not only be armored, but float on water too
Does an armored iPhone sound like a great idea to you?
Apple has been able to pack a lot of technology in its latest iPhones, so that does not leave a lot of room for the company to put in more technology right? Looks like our claims will be put to rest thanks to the latest patent, which states that the next iPhone could have an armored body, which will have several benefits, which we will obviously get to later. A document has been published by the US Patent and Trademark Office that describes the iPhone being protected thanks to a very hard body, as well as prevent the mobile phone from submerging into water.In other words, not only is the next iPhone going to have a very strong body, but that particular body is apparently going to be less than the density of water, allowing it to stay afloat. According to the details of the document, the system will utilize the phone’s onboard sensors in order to determine when a free fall occurs. Before the iPhone is about the hit a very hard surface, surface dampeners present at each corner of the phone will prevent the gadget from suffering immense damage.
The surface dampeners will also have an added benefit; they will be able to prevent the iPhone from receiving damage from the corner, which is the highest probability where the device receives majority of its damage from. The other very interesting thing about the smartphone is that its outer shell is apparently going to be lighter than the overall density of water, which will allow it to stay on the surface of water. This is going to be quite beneficial since it prevents the device from reaching its watery grave.
Since the patent has been filed right now, it is quite unlikely that this particular setup is going to be found in the next iPhone, but you never know, we could be immensely surprised.
Top 9 hacking groups sponsored by governments
Read about the top 9 hacking groups who are sponsored by governments around the world
1. Tailored Access Operations – Sponsor NSA, USA
2. Sofacy Group – APT28 – Pawn Storm – Sponsor Russia
3. Bureau 121 – Sponsor North Korea
4. Unit 61398 / Comment Crew /Putter Panda – Sponsor China
5. Hidden Lynx – Sponsor China
6. Tarh Andishan – Sponsor Iran
7. Dragonfly / Energetic Bear – Sponsor Eastern Europe
8. Ajax Security Team / Flying Kitten
Iran
9. Axiom
Friday, 11 December 2015
Who’ll Be The Winner: Human Intelligence Vs. Artificial Intelligence
Short Bytes: The emergence of highly advanced technologies allowing generic selection and fabrication of complex traits, including the selection of logical reasoning abilities, suggests that Human Intelligence will co -evolve with Artificial Intelligence.
While the belief in the abundance of availability and ease of fabrication of ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) is rather exaggerated, there is yet a streak of hope as there will expectedly be a speedy evolution of HUMAN INTELLIGENCE (HI) as well. On one hand, while it is estimated that by the year 2050, AI would gain human ability and super-human ability by 2080, other facts like the cost to sequence a human genome $1,000 and the existence of highly advanced technologies allowing generic selection and fabrication of complex traits. This includes the selection of logical reasoning ability, which leaves us in anticipation of the colossal potential of human ability.
Although by 2015, cognitive engineering is expected to produce individuals with an IQ of over 1,000, this only enlightens the fact that future smarter people and smarter machines shall be interwoven in a complex cycle of mutual interdependence.
History has been the witness of a handful of such geniuses with extraordinary cognitive abilities like Alan Turing- who broke the German Enigma Code and conceptualized the notion of “ mechanized thoughts”. The other exceptional example being Von Neumann, who laid practical realization of first electronics, computers through his revolutionary von Neumann Architecture
While some fear that with the advancement in AI in the future, the ordinary human may lose the ability to comprehend advancement in technologies, there lies a counter theory to this being that ordinary human beings of future will accept MI without deep understanding of it just like we use high technology smart-phones now without any prior knowledge about its knowledge or architecture.
History stands as the witness of how great scientists back in 20th Century feared about the ignorance of the future generation about Quantum Theory in Physics. While in Today’s world a good fraction of people not only has successfully understood the theorems, but also found brilliant applications of the same.
With advancements in technologies, human minds shall be uploaded with AI to create the beginning of “ shared thoughts “ – which shall lead to the dawn of new horizon of AI.
source:fossybyte.com
WhatsSpy Public : WhatsApp status tool lets stalkers track you bypassing privacy settings
“WhatsSpy Public” a tool for spying on WhatsApp users bypassing security settings
Social media is growing at a fast pace nowadays but with growing socialization the safety measures and privacy option should also be developed so that one’s information cannot be leaked at any endpoints. Social apps such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Hike, Instagram etc. are used by several people without knowing that how safe they really are or if their messages or personal information are not leaked.The smartphone stand alone instant messaging App, WhatsApp is once again in the news due to a certain tool which can break its security features. WhatsSpy Public tool which was recently released can give you status updates of any WhatsApp user, even if privacy options have been enabled.
WhatsSpy Public uses the web-based utility to trace the moments of a WhatsApp user and shows them in a dashboard with events being displayed in a timeline. The tool can be used to compare activities from one user to those of another for a more comfortable experience.
WhatsSpy Public has been created by Maikel Zweerink, who started working on it as a hobby. While working on it he found that some of the events sent out by the messaging app could be intercepted by anyone, and the list includes the current status (online/offline, despite setting privacy options to “nobody”) of a user, change of profile pictures, modification of privacy settings and of status messages.
Also the data collected in the dashboard offers good insight into the time frame a user is available on WhatsApp, with logs showing the exact moment when the user starts to use the service and when he/she disconnects from it.
WhatsSpy Public can record the profile picture and privacy settings for the status messages when turning it on.
Zweerink says he released the tool on GitLab as a proof-of-concept to demonstrate the weakness in WhatsApp in terms of privacy. Zweerink said that “his only motive behind this project was to realise how broken the privacy options actually are. It just started out as experimenting with WhatsApp to build a Bot, but I was stunned when I realised someone could abuse this ‘online’ feature of WhatsApp to track anyone.” He further added that the privacy in the messaging app was broken by design and there was no hack or exploit leveraged.
The developer has provided complete instructions for installing WhatsSpy Public. For this you had to have a secondary WhatsApp account, a rooted/jailbroken mobile phone or PHP knowledge, a server that can run 24/7 (Raspberry Pi is recommended as a cheap alternative), Nginx or Apache with PHP and PostgreSQL.
Recently, 17-year-old Indrajeet Bhuyan, 17-year-old boy discovered that images that were shared from the mobile device and then deleted were still visible in the online version of the service. Bhuyan also found that a profile picture set to be available only to contacts can be accessed by individuals outside this contact list.
Privacy issues have been circling around WhatsApp for a long time now. If the privacy features of WhatsApp are not improved by Facebook, WhatsApp may face a SnapChat like leak in the near future.Wednesday, 2 December 2015
Top ten operating systems for ethical hackers and security researchers
A comprehensive list of most popular operating systems among hackers all around the world.
Back in August, we had posted a list of top ten hacker tools. Now we have advanced it one step further to bring you the best operating systems for hackers.
This time it is about operating systems, which have almost every necessary tool provided within. But before we dive deep, it would be great to know why a machine with a hacking oriented OS installed in it is way better than a machine running a casual OS with some platform based hacking tools. It is because a dedicated machine has benefits of hardware utilisation, anonymity (it is a major issue of interest ), and software efficiency.Here is the list of top ten. Note that these are based on Linux kernel hence are free and open source:
1- Kali Linux:
Kali Linux is an advanced penetration testing tool that should be a part of every security professional’s toolbox. Penetration testing involves using a variety of tools and techniques to test the limits of security policies and procedures. What Kali has done is collect just about everything you’ll need in a single CD. It includes more than 300 different tools, all of which are open source and available on GitHub.You can get ithere.
2-BackBox:
Backbox is a linux distribution based on Ubuntu. It has been developed to perform penetration tests and security assessments. BackBox is a lightweight OS and requires less hardware capacity. The power of this distribution is given by its Launchpad repository core constantly updated to the last stable version of the most known and used ethical hacking tools. The integration and development of new tools inside the distribution follows the commencement of open source community and particularly the Debian Free Software Guidelines criteria.3-Parrot Security OS:
Parrot Security is an operating system based on Debian GNU/Linux mixed with Frozenbox OS and Kali linux in order to provide the best penetration and security testing experience. it is an operating system for IT security and penetration testing developed by the Frozenbox Dev Team. It is a GNU/Linux distribution based on Debian and mixed with Kali.Parrot uses Kali repositories in order to take latest updates for almost all the tools, but it also has its own dedicated repository where all the custom packets are kept. This is why this distro is not just a simple Kali “mod” but entire new concept which relies on Kali’s tool repositories. As such, it introduces a lot of new features and different developing choices.Parrot uses MATE as a Desktop Environment. Lightweight and powerful interface is derived from famous Gnome 2, and thanks to FrozenBox highly customizable with captivating icons, ad-hoc themes and wallpapers. System look is proposed and designed by the community members and also members of Frozenbox Network, who are closely following the development of this project.
Click here to download.
4-DEFT:
Deft is Ubuntu customization with a collection of computer forensic programs and documents created by thousands of individuals, teams and companies. Each of these works might come under a different licence. There Licence Policy describe the process that we follow in determining which software we will ship and by default on the deft install CD.It can be downloaded here.
5-Samurai Web Security Framework:
The Samurai Web Testing Framework is a live linux environment that has been pre-configured to function as a web pen-testing environment. The CD contains the best of the open source and free tools that focus on testing and attacking websites. In developing this environment, we have based our tool selection on the tools we use in our security practice. We have included the tools used in all four steps of a web pen-test.You can simply click here to download.
6-Network Security Toolkit:
Network Security Toolkit (NST) is a bootable live CD based on Fedora Core. The toolkit was designed to provide easy access to best-of-breed open source network security applications and should run on most x86 platforms. The main intent of developing this toolkit was to provide the network security administrator with a comprehensive set of open source network security tools.What we find rather fascinating with NST is that we can transform most x86 systems (Pentium II and above) into a system designed for network traffic analysis, intrusion detection, network packet generation, wireless network monitoring, a virtual system service server, or a sophisticated network/host scanner.
NST can be downloaded here.
7-NodeZero:
It is said the necessity is the mother of all invention, and NodeZero Linux is no different. There team is built of testers and developers, who have come to the census that live systems do not offer what they need in their security audits. Penetration Testing distributions tend to have historically utilized the “Live” system concept of linux, which really means that they try not to make any permanent effects to a system. Ergo all changes are gone after reboot, and run from media such as discs and USB’s drives. However all that this maybe very handy for occasional testing, its usefulness can be depleted when your testing regularly. Its there believe that “Live System’s” just don’t scale well in a robust testing environment.All though NodeZero Linux can be used as a “Live System” for occasional testing, its real strength comes from the understanding that a tester requires a strong and efficient system. This is achieved in our belief by working at a distribution that is a permanent installation, that benefits from a strong selection of tools, integrated with a stable linux environment.
Download here.
8-GnackTrack:
GnackTrack is an open and free project to merge penetration testing tools and the linux Gnome desktop. GnackTrack is a Live (and installable) Linux distribution designed for Penetration Testing and is based on Ubuntu.Backtrack is not only a single player in the field of ethical hacking, so you can try some other distribution as well, if you are Gnome lover than must try this, however backtrack 5 is also available on Gnome platform. Just like backtrack, Gnacktrack comes with multiple tools that are really helpful to do a effective penetration testing, it has Metasploit, armitage, wa3f and others wonderful tools.
Download here.
9-Blackubuntu:
Blackbuntu is distribution for penetration testing which was specially designed for security training students and practitioners of information security. Blackbuntu is penetration testing distribution with GNOME Desktop Environment. It’s currently being built using the Ubuntu 10.10 and work on reference BackTrack.Download here.
10- Backtrack
The other well known linux based Operating system is backtrack that is being used from few pwevious years and best known as the OS for network cracking and pentesting. And its also the one of the best OS that can perform various network hacks with privacy. Download here.Bugtraq:
Bugtraq isnt a operating system but an electronic mailing list dedicated to issues about computer security. On-topic issues are new discussions about vulnerabilities, vendor security-related announcements, methods of exploitation, and how to fix them. It is a high-volume mailing list, and almost all new vulnerabilities are discussed there.Bugtraq team is experienced freaks and developers, It is available in Debian, Ubuntu and OpenSuSe in 32 and 64 bit architectures.
sourece:techworm.com
5 frightening hacking targets that everyone should be scared of
5 frightening hacking targets which include planes, guns, automobiles, Nuclear power plants and everyday devices
With nearly 5 billion non-communication devices connected to the internet worldwide ranging from watches to CT-scanners to airplanes, providing government, cyber criminals and cyber terrorists can cause confusion and damage in our everyday life.Let’s have a look at the 5 most dangerous things that can be hacked today.
Every household electronic device
Gartner, the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company, who have provided the above 5 billion figure says that over 2,800 million consumer devices -and more than 300 million cars are already online. The figure is expected to hit 25 billion by 2020 due to the number of objects connected to the Internet of Things (IoT), which is not an unbelievable figure given that many of the household appliances these days are coming with online functions.Ted Harrington, who is organizing an IoT “theme park” at DefCon, which is a leading hacker conference in August, told tech site Informationweek “One of the things we’re constantly seeing is functionality absolutely being considered first, and security implications not being considered at all,”
While giving control of the baby monitors, fridges, garage doors, and security cameras to hackers at DefCon, it would be interesting to see the hacking unfold with the dangers of it likely to be more delicate and extensive.
Earlier this year, Ken Westin, an analyst for security company TripWire, told Wired “As we interact with our devices there’s this trail of digital exhaust that we leave behind. Once you combine this data and create very rich profiles of people.”
Two sources are believed to bring dangers according to Westin and other experts. Firstly, criminals who can hack objects to get to know target behavior, steal information, and carry out financial crimes; and secondly governments, who have a new set of devices to keep an eye on people.
Over 70 percent of IoT devices have vulnerabilities that can be abused by hackers, a percentage that is disturbing according to the study conducted by HP last year.
Cars
1.4 million Jeeps were recalled by Chrysler last week after two notorious hackers hijacked a moving car from a laptop hundreds of miles away and demonstrated the same to the media.Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek told the petrified Wired journalist whose car they had hacked and sped up and slowed down until he begged them to stop that “If consumers don’t realize this is an issue, they should, and they should start complaining to carmakers. This might be the kind of software bug most likely to kill someone.”
Back in 2011, Miller and Valasek had their first successful car hacks; however, their own 2013 demonstration that needed them to sit in the carjacked vehicle found no truck with automotive giants, who told them the hack was almost the same except that the brake lines were cut manually.
Looking for more susceptibilities, the two enraged Americans have now humiliated Chrysler into providing a USB stick with a fix to their customers – an offer that would probably be taken up by only a small percentage of Chrysler car owners, while the rest would hope that they do not become the targets.
And the danger is not limited to one brand.
Josh Corman from IoT security company I Am the Cavalry, said to Wired “I don’t think there are qualitative differences in security between vehicles today. The Europeans are a little bit ahead. The Japanese are a little bit behind. But broadly writ, this is something everyone’s still getting their hands around.”
Getting in the grove, of late the Congress had come up with a new bill last week that will call on regulators to introduce more strict car security standards along with a ranking system that would set manufacturers against each other.
With the autonomous car revolution around the corner, of course, the potential danger will only multiply.
Weapons
According to a report in German newspapers, a group of digital perpetrators took control of the Patriot missile system standing on Turkey’s border. However, later the Germans officials rejected the claims, saying it was “extremely unlikely” their missile systems could be vulnerable.In an interview with RT, reasoned UK-based hacker Robert Jonathan Schifreen says systems are not linked to public networks, they require special codes to fire the missile, which only a certain number of people have, and you generally need the code from two or three people to fire it, or to do anything that is of significance. I don’t think it’s actually happened, which is not to say that some of these systems are not hackable in some way.”
The ability to hack enemy military equipment could cause damage worth billions has made all the leading military powers follow them.
Earlier this year, Defense Undersecretary Frank Kendall said “It’s about the security of our weapons systems themselves and everything that touches them. It’s a pervasive problem and I think we have to pay a lot more attention to it,” after the Pentagon insisted on providing $5.5 billion dollars for cybersecurity in the next year’s budget.
The vulnerability to outside interference is more in the case of advanced equipment. Richard Stiennon, chief research analyst at IT-Harvest, last month told FCW, a US state tech procurement website, that the troubled F-35 joint strike fighter costing over $100 million per unit, has 9 million lines of code in its software, and 17 million more in all the software suites written to support its basic function. According to Stiennon, it would cost “hundreds of billions of dollars” to completely destroy the susceptibilities in all military code in all the weapons systems used by the U.S.
“If we ever go to war with a sophisticated adversary, or have a battle, they could pull out their cyber weapons and make us look pretty foolish,” said Steinnon, who believes that the problem has resulted due to the inability to predict the action in future and a reliance on supposedly proprietary tech on the part of the Pentagon.
“Many of the things that are in the field today were not developed and fielded with cybersecurity in mind. So the threat has sort of evolved over the time that they’ve been out there,” admitted Kendall.
Planes
Earlier this year, a tweet sent by Chris Roberts, a security researcher from a United Airlines flight departing from Denver to Chicago marked a event in the wider awareness that planes could be hacked. He simply plugged into the electric box underneath a standard plane seat with just a laptop and an Ethernet cable. He told the FBI he was able to figure a way from the in-flight entertainment system to the important commands that influence the plane. Roberts also said he was able to operate one of the engines, and convincingly change direction of an actual flying passenger plane off-course.The vulnerabilities that were brought out were all too real. As far as 2008, the FAA had warned Boeing of susceptibility in its Dreamliner design; however, it still does not look like to have been completely resolved.
“A virus or malware planted in websites visited by passengers could provide an opportunity for a malicious attacker to access the IP-connected onboard information system through their infected machines,” said a US Government Accountability Office report from April.
This is one target that will surely be tested by terrorists in the future, which is even before the ever increasing number of drones is considered – a hard-to-calculate batch of new risks, some of which have already been abused by hackers.
Nuclear power facilities
Infrastructure infiltrations like weapons hacks are meant not only for criminals or terrorists but also for organizations with million-dollar budgets, headquartered in Maryland, Tel Aviv and Beijing. Also, infrastructure hacks do not require an immediate war to be employed, which is the case in weapons hacks.Though it is difficult to think that the U.S. and China would go to war, but asymmetrical disagreement between world superpowers and “rogue states” remain probable. For example, Stuxnet, supposed to be a US-Israeli piece of malware was utilized to destroy nuclear centrifuges in Iran. However, it was later found out in North Korea although with little success. Surprisingly, not many similar operations are ongoing nor this technology has been surpassed ever since. As recent as last year, South Korea charged its northern neighbor, Pyongyang of hacking into its nuclear plants, which was clearly denied by them.
And technology that initially cost governments massive funds to develop often does eventually become available to less responsible groups, at a fraction of the cost.
Speaking to the Jerusalem Post in April, Gabi Siboni, Director of the Cyber Security Program at the Institute for National Security Studies said “The disruption and possible infiltration of critical infrastructure is the most severe form of cyber-attack. Such attacks on airplanes or air traffic control towers, for instance, means that hackers could cause accidents, or even paralyze entire flight systems. As of now, this area of capabilities is the exclusive domain of developed states,”
“I strongly believe, however, that the next 9/11 will happen without suicide bombers aboard the plane with box-cutters, but will occur because of a cyber-incident perpetrated by a terror organization.”
Even though there has not yet been a terrorist Chernobyl, according to a survey published by the Organization of American States taken from 35 states shows that more than fifty percent of the security chiefs of critical infrastructure objects, such as dams, power plants, airports, said that there had been “attempts to manipulate” their equipment from the outside.
Tom Kellermann, Chief Cyber Security Officer for Trend Micro Inc., who compiled the report said “This is going to be the year we suffer a catastrophe in the hemisphere, and when you will see kinetic response to a threat actor.”
Source: RT.com
Meet Hack Rod, the world’s first car designed by Artificial Intelligence (AI)
This is Hack Rod, the first car designed by AI and first vehicle with a nervous system
A company called Primordial Research Project is developing a car which is fully built by artificial intelligence. What’s more, the car is called Hack Rod, could well be the first vehicle with a nervous system.Hack Rod is a collaboration between Primordial Research Project, design software giant Autodesk and media company Bandito Brothers.
The key persons behind Hack Road are Autodesk research fellow Mickey McManus and Bandito Brothers CEO and creative director Mouse McCoy. The idea of building Hack Road came to McCoy. Two years ago, McCoy told Fast Company, he decided to figure out the future of making things. “I knocked on the door of Autodesk,” he recalled, and ended up meeting McManus, who soon became inspired to see how his interest in digital fabrication and machine learning could be applied to the trillion-dollar auto industry.
Hack Road uses new hardware approach like like 3-D printing. His idea was to leverage machine learning. After all, the Internet of Things, “all these trillions of computers, are bored. They’ve got sensors….they’re starting to form their own opinions. [And] what’s in self-driving cars today are in your shoes tomorrow. That’s Moore’s Law,” explained McManus.
Autodesk had new tools built around the idea of reality capture—harnessing data points through photography, laser scanning, and other methods, that could then be plugged into computer systems and used to build 3-D models. McCoy saw that the Autodesk’s reality capture can be used to build a complete car.
Fast Company notes that the team developed a prototype vehicle chassis, complete with hundreds of sensors, and took it out to California’s desolate Mojave Desert. They came up with a car resembling Shelby Cobra and powered by a Ducati engine. McCoy said that the goal was to get the same power-to-weight ratio as a Ferrari, despite it weighing just 1,000 pounds.
The driver of the car was hooked up with an EEG and other sensors to collect all sort of data that could put a Formula 1 driver to shame. They feeded all the data from this automotive nervous system and plugged it into Autodesk’s Dreamcatcher, a generative design software system that takes input of design objectives—including types of materials, functional goals, methods of manufacturing, performance criteria, and even cost limits—and spits out numerous design alternatives to satisfy all those requirements.
The Hack Road will be unveiled this week at Autodesk University—the company’s annual training and developers conference in Las Vegas. Still, Autodesk CEO Carl Bass will highlight the Hack Rod’s progress during his AU keynote, and the team will soon return to the Mojave to continue its work.
Tuesday, 17 November 2015
You Can Now Remotely Turn Off Any Android Smartphone/Tablet By Sending SMS
This is how you can remotely turn off Android smartphones/tablets by sending a SMS
Android is the most popular and widely used operating system in the world, which offers a lot of features to its users. To make Android more user friendly, a lot of apps are being developed to run on this OS.
In this article, we will discuss about the apps that will allow you to remotely shutdown Android smartphone/tablet by sending a single SMS that you will set in the app. This feature comes in handy if you have forgotten the phone at home and want no one to attend your calls. Similarly, there are many situations in where we want to remotely shutdown our Android smartphone.
To configure the secret code or SMS in your Android device, you just need to follow the simple guide below:
Steps To Remotely Turn Off Any Android Smartphone/Tablet By Sending SMS
It is important to note that the app works only on the rooted Android smartphone/tablet. Visit here to get complete guide to root your Android smartphone/tablet.Now download Remote Power Off zip file in your computer. Extract the zip file in your computer and navigate to Folder > System>App> Remoteturnoff.apk.Then transfer the Apk file in your Android deviceBe sure to enable Install from unknown sources in Settings > Security > Unknown sources.Install this app now in your Android smartphone/tablet by tapping the Apk that you have transferred. First, type the current password that is null and then type the new password and confirm it again by clicking on change secret code.Grant this app superuser permission by going to superuser app.It’s done. You now just need to send the secret code as a SMS to your Android smartphone/tablet when you want to remotely shut it down.
By following the above steps, you can send a secret code and easily turn off your device without touching it, or without being near to your Android smartphone/tablet and also without using the Internet.
Monday, 16 November 2015
Tired With Slow WiFi? Your Good Old FM Is Here To Help You
Short Bytes: Facing slower WiFi speed due to network congestion and signal interference is a very common problem. However, researchers have found a way to use FM Radio signals to solve this problem.
He describes the root cause of this problem as none of the WiFi devices have a reference point about the activities of the other WiFi devices. This lack of coordination and timing creates trouble, that results in poor WiFi performance.
To enable the devices to communicate with each other, researchers have developed the first system for WiFi devices that coordinates without any human involvement and operates over FM frequency.
Also read: Your WiFi Router Has a Superpower You Didn’t Know
Sharing the information via RDS (Radio Data System) data of FM, WiFi networks can operate with coordination. Talking to All Tech, Kuzmanovic says, “Devices are able to detect that there is this particular repeating structure and hence they are all able to independently come to the conclusion that hey, this must be the beginning of this particular RDS signal sequence that’s repeating in time.”
Thus, the RDS signals act like a clock for WiFi devices that harmonizes the operations of multiple devices. In a recent research paper, the researchers called this technique Wi-FM and outlined one possible scheduling algorithm.
Kuzmanovic expects his idea to be further used and spread by the industry giants like Google and Apple in their operating system.
source:fossybyte.com
Sunday, 15 November 2015
These Two Guys Spent 40 Years Making “World’s Only Real Jetpack”
Short Bytes: JB-9 JetPack, from the company JetPack Aviation, has showed off its jet turbine powered machine. In a demonstration of its capabilities, it was flown around the Statue of Liberty and over the Hudson river.
The jetpack is approved by the Federal Aviation Authority and US Coast Guard, and took 40 years to develop – according to the website. David Mayman, company’s CEO from Australia, flew this JB-9 jetpack around the Statue of Liberty and over the Hudson river to show-off a demo.
David Mayman has spent the last 10 years working with Nelson Tyler, a Hollywood-based inventor. They have designed prototypes of this jetpack and “spent millions of dollars and thousands of hours secretly developing the device.”
On their website, JetPack Aviation says: “We believe a JetPack should be just that — a jet turbine powered backpack that is capable of vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL), is extremely light and small and can easily be carried around by the pilot.”
The JB-9 can fly more than 100 miles per hour and can reach heights up to 10,000 feet for about 10 minutes. Watch the video below:
click here
Tell us your views in the comments below.
source:fossybyte.com
Thursday, 12 November 2015
Meet the world’s lightest metal which is 99.99% air
Researchers have created a metal for Boeing which is 99.99% air and light enough to balance on top of a dandelion.
A few years ago, researchers created the world’s lightest metal for Boeing, and now the airline has shown it off for the first time in this new video. Called microlattice, the material is 100 times lighter than styrofoam but is as rigid as metal, which means that it has some pretty exciting applications.
Microlattice was inspired by the structure of our bones, which are very rigid on the outside but mostly hollow on the inside, which means they can’t be easily crushed, but are lightweight enough for us to carry around all day. The new Boeing metal mimics this, and despite its rigid exterior, it has a 3D open-cellular polymer structure, which means its structure is 99.99 percent air.
The lattice in the metal is made up of interconnected hollow metal tubes – constructed from nickel, in the case of the prototype. Each of these tubes has a wall thickness of just 100 nanometres, which is 1,000 times thinner than human hair.
These open cells in the structure give microlattice huge compression potential, which means it can absorb a whole lot of energy.
Here is the video explaining the phenomenon behind it:
In the video above, Sophia Yang, a research scientist at HRL Laboratories (a joint Boeing venture), explains that the microlattice could be used in something like the egg drop challenge, to protect an egg being dropped from 25 storeys with very little material required. By comparison, you’d need to wrap an egg in around a metre (or just over three feet) of bubble wrap to keep it safe when dropped the same distance.
That means that it could help Boeing build aeroplanes that are significantly lighter – but just as tough – as today’s models. “In the future the material could help Boeing save a lot of weight make aeroplanes more fuel efficient,” Yang explains.
HRL laboratories also does research and development from General Motors, asCore77 reports, so we may see the material pop up in automobiles in the future too.
The quest for eternal life makes a Russian scientist inject himself with 3.5-million-year-old bacteria
Russian scientist injects himself with 3.5-million-year-old bacteria to get immortality
People can go to any heights in the quest to have an eternal life. A Russian scientist, Anatoli Brouchkov, who injected himself with 3.5-million-year-old bacteria has said how it has helped him work longer and avoid the flu for the last two years. He has made a very strange claim connecting ancient bacteria to immortality.
Anatoli Brouchkov is the head of the Geocryology Department at Moscow State University. His job involved the study of soil, frozen rock, and underground masses, which became a very distinct area of study later.
The discovery of Bacillus F that managed to survive for millions of years, the scientists later decided to test it on mice and fruit flies in order to see what effects it would have on them. While it allowed older mice to reproduce after they had gone past their prime, it also showed regenerative properties in plants.
In the hope of uncovering the key to finding eternal life, Brouchkov put himself forward as a guinea pig for the controversial experiment and injected himself with Bacillus F.
“I started to work longer, I’ve never had a flu for the last two years,” he told The Siberian Times.
“It wasn’t quite a scientific experiment, so I cannot professionally describe the effects,” he added.
“But it was quite clear for me that I did not catch flu for two years.”
“Perhaps there were some side-effects, but there should be some special medical equipment to spot them. Of course, such experiments need to be conducted in clinic, with the special equipment and statistics.”
“Then we could say clearly about all the effects.”
While there is still no solid proof that this bacteria holds the key to everlasting youth, or even a new flu vaccine, Brouchkov’s methods are undoubtedly controversial wherein the quest for eternal life is becoming an increasingly trendy pursuit among scientists.
During a dig at Mammoth Mountain in the Sakha Republic, a region in Northeast Russia in 2009, the scientists had found the Bacillus F bacteria. It’s home to the Yakuts, a Turkic people who have unintentionally been consuming Bacillus F for generations.
“After successful experiments on mice and fruit flies, I thought it would be interesting to try the inactivated bacterial culture,” Brouchkov explained.
“Besides, the permafrost is thawing, and I guess these bacteria get into the environment, into the water, so the local population, the Yakut people, in fact, for a long time are getting these cells with water, and even seem to live longer than some other nations. So there was no danger for me,” says Brouchkov.
Well, only time will tell if the never ending human quest for eternal life can be solved with Brouchkov’s miracle bacteria. For now, he can continue to Iive flu free knowing that he is/was host to a very old microorganism.
Is Learning To Code Hard ?
Is learning to code hard?
The answer would be yes, its very hard, many people are willing to learn coding but the problem is they don’t know from where they need to start and they need to start coding.
Also Read: Is coding the most important language in the World
The real problem is people think that coding is going to be hard to learn. Well what we are willing to say is, if your willing to learn coding then you need to choose any one of the basic coding languages and Google coding tutorials on that particular language.
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Also Read: Top website to learn coding
If you practice regularly then its going to be really easy and interesting with lots of fun! Here is a short video for inspiration.
Tuesday, 10 November 2015
This 9-Year-Old Boy Is An Accomplished Hacker And CEO Of A Company
Short Bytes: Reuben Paul is a cybersecurity expert who lives in Austin, Texas, and attends third grade. He is the CEO of his own company Prudent Games and recently attended the Ground Zero Summit as a ‘special ambassador.’
“With all the data breaches, cyberbullying and other kinds of attacks happening on the Internet, it’s important for us to teach kids and educate them on the dangers so they can protect themselves.”
Speaking at the conference, chief guest Home Minister Rajnath Singh called the Worldwide Web the fifth dimension of security and maintaining it should be our top priority.
Reuben spoke at the conference and mentioned Cyber KungFu, telling about his experiences as the youngest Do KungFu 2nd degree black belt.
His company Prudent Games makes games that combine fun with educational content. “Reuben was selected for the Gifted and Talented programme (run by the Texas education system) and had to make a game. The others made boardgames and such like, but Reuben who is passionate about video games, decided to come up with one,” says his mother Sangeetha, an IT professional herself.
Prudent Games also made an app that shows children how to come up with secure passwords. His another app tells the basics of Bruteforce attacks used to crack passwords.
His father mentions that when he was just five, he used words like firewall and he was totally surprised. “At age five I introduced him to Scratch, and then by six we were looking at real world programing and security concepts,” Mano Paul said.
Apart from hacking and app development, Reuben spends time with his friends and takes gymnastics, swimming, and Kung Fu lessons.
With inputs from iDigitalTimes
source: fossybyte.com
Thursday, 5 November 2015
Quantum Internet is Coming, Quantum Teleportation Sets New Record
Short Bytes: The scientists have teleported photons across a distance of 63 miles (102 kilometres), four times the previously held record. This Quantum Teleportation research could lead to a “quantum Internet” that could build the base for the next-gen encryption.
Anew distance record has been established, relaying the quantum data through fibres by breaking the previous record for quantum teleportation. This act of transferring data to a different reminds me instantly of Star Trek where objects were teleported without moving it through space.
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) involved the transportation of quantum of information contained in one photon to another photon over a 102 km distance to an NIST laboratory in Colorado.
Data carrying photons were considered unsuitable for long distance communication as during a standard trip over a distance in an optical fiber, 99 percent of photons never complete the trip. But, this time, a single photon carrying quantum data completed such long distance with the help of newer detectors.
“Only about 1 percent of photons make it all the way through 100 km of fiber,” NIST’s Marty Stevens says. “We never could have done this experiment without these new detectors, which can measure this incredibly weak signal.”
Teen Who Sold His App to Yahoo for $30 Million, Leaves Company to Study More
Short Bytes: Nick D’Aloisio has left Yahoo to concentrate on his computer science and philosophy studies at Oxford. Just two years ago, he sold his news-aggregation app called Summly to Yahoo for $30 million. Since then, he was working as a part-time product manager at Yahoo.
Yesterday, we told you about Michael Sayman, one of the youngest employees at Facebook and how he wrote a #1 iOS app and got hired by Facebook. In this article, we are telling you about another teenager who sold his news-aggregation app to Yahoo for $30 million two years ago. Now, Nick D’Aloisio, the founder of this app called Summly, has left Yahoo, according to TechCrunch.
Nick D’Aloisio took this step to focus more on his computer science and philosophy course at Oxford. Earlier this year, it was reported that he was dividing his time as a part-time product manager at Yahoo and Oxford University’s philosophy classes.
Nick sold his app for $30 million to the tech-giant when he was just 17. Yahoo worked upon his app to build Yahoo’s News Digest app that won an Apple Design Award last June.
“Nick has taken time to focus on his studies; he continues to be involved with Yahoo,” said a Yahoo spokesperson when asked about D’Aloisio. They are still in talks, but things aren’t the same as they were before.
According to the sources of TechCrunch, it’s possible that D’Aloisio is more interested in working in his own startup. Along the similar lines, last year he said in an interview: “I’ve no idea where I’ll be in five years. I could be at Yahoo … I could be at university … I could be doing another company. But wherever I am, I want to innovate and create companies or ideas that I’m super-passionate about.”
What do you think about this step taken by Nick D’Aloisio? Tell us in the comments below.
Hackers can access your PC with this 10 second Fitbit hack
Fitbit health trackers can be hacked in 10 seconds and allow hackers to access your PC
The health care gadgets market is growing phenomenally and Fitbit health tracker leads the band. In fact they are the most popular devices among people who like to track their steps and exercise. However, the very fitness band that you use to track your health can be used to gain access into your PC with a malware and wreak havoc.
Fortinet researcher, Axelle Apvrille discovered vulnerability in Fitbit device that opens it up simple malware attacks. More importantly, the malicious code that can be sent to a Fitbit device without the user’s knowledge can then infect a computer used to sync data collected by the wearable.
According to Apvrille, Fitbit can be easily hacked over Bluetooth and needs just 10 seconds to be delivered. A hacker only has to be in the proximity of the target (Bluetooth range) to send the code and then wait for the target to connect his or her Fitbit to a PC. According to Apvrille, the malicious code can survive even if Fitbit is restarted after it is transmitted to Fitbit.
Once that’s done, the second phase of the attack commences, as the malicious code can infect the computer with a backdoor, trojan or any other malicious program.
“An attacker sends an infected packet to a fitness tracker nearby at Bluetooth distance then the rest of the attack occurs by itself, without any special need for the attacker being near,” Apvrille said. “[When] the victim wishes to synchronize his or her fitness data with Fitbit servers to update their profile … the fitness tracker responds to the query, but in addition to the standard message, the response is tainted with the infected code.”
He continued, “From there, it can deliver a specific malicious payload on the laptop, that is, start a backdoor, or have the machine crash [and]can propagate the infection to other trackers (Fitbits).”
The ease of delivery – the attack can be completed in under 10 seconds – means that hackers can easily gain access to a computer via the Fitbit device, potentially wrecking havoc.
Apvrille informed Fitbit about the exploit in March 2015. It does not appear that Fitbit has patched the vulnerability however, Apvrille said he had found no indications of the bug being exploited in the wild.
Apvrille will offer a proof-of-concept demonstration video at the Hack.Lu conference in Luxembourg.
Fitbit reached out to us with this statement :
“As the market leader in connected health and fitness, Fitbit is focused on protecting consumer privacy and keeping data safe. We believe that security issues reported today are false, and that Fitbit devices can’t be used to infect users with malware. We will continue to monitor this issue.
Fortinet first contacted us in March to report a low-severity issue unrelated to malicious software. Since that time we’ve maintained an open channel of communication with Fortinet. We have not seen any data to indicate that it is currently possible to use a tracker to distribute malware.
We have a history of working closely with the security research community and always welcome their thoughts and feedback. The trust of our customers is paramount. We carefully design security measures for new products, monitor for new threats, and rapidly respond to identified issues. We encourage individuals to report any security concerns with Fitbit’s products or online services tosecurity@fitbit.com. More information about reporting security issues can be found online at https://www.fitbit.com/security/.”
Wednesday, 4 November 2015
Self-driving Cars Must be Programmed to Kill, Study Says
Short Bytes: As we advance more and more in artificial intelligence and related technologies, we must solve some complex ethical problems. A similar dilemma is faced in the case of self-driving cars and how they should act in case of unavoidable accidents. Should they kill more people on the road to save the car occupants? Or, should they protect others on the road by sacrificing the life of occupants?
Every big automobile company is preparing its artillery with the technology that will help them to produce autonomous vehicles. Even the companies like Google and Apple are hiring engineers and designers to make their ‘next big product’.
In the future, self-driving cars will soon dominate roads and as the tests suggest, the autonomous vehicles take extra security precautions. According to the reports, very few minor accidents that took place on the road during tests, were caused due to the mistake of other vehicles or people on the road. This brings us to a very interesting scenario that deals with an event of unavoidable accidents.
How should a car act in such scenario? Should it minimize the loss of life on the road at the cost of occupants’ life, or should it protect the car occupants at all costs?
These ethical questions need to be answered when we talk about a future with self-driving cars.
Also read: First Apple Car Coming in 2019, According to Report
“Our results provide but a first foray into the thorny issues raised by moral algorithms for autonomous vehicles,” says said UAVB and Oxford University scholar and bioethics expert Ameen Bargh who advised to change the course of the car to reduce the loss of life.
However, deontologists argue that “some values are simply categorically always true”.
“For example, murder is always wrong, and we should never do it, even if shifting the trolley will save five lives, we shouldn’t do it because we would be actively killing one,” Bargh said.
The members of UAB’s Ethics and Bioethics teams are doing a lot of work to deal with such type of questions. One way to tackle this problem is to act in such a way that it reduces the loss of life. The results of the tests are interesting and people are comfortable with the idea that self-driving cars should be programmed in such a manner that they reduce the death toll.
As we advance more and more in AI and technology, we must find answers to these ethical and philosophical questions and find the ways to arrive at a worthy solution.
Source: MIT Technology Review
Sunday, 1 November 2015
Experts Explain The Car Hack Process – How to Hack a Car
Short Bytes : The recent Fiat Chrysler car hack exposed the vulnerabilities and the extent to which insecure IoT can be dangerous. The hacking of remote devices connected via internet of things is not new, and neither is the car hack. We notified you guys how Shodan-The Hacker Search Engine scouts for the devices connected to the internet and discloses the identity information making them open to attacks. Today, we share more about car hack with the help of an informative video.
Hacking the car or parts of it was never that easy, but not very tough either. The engineers have long told about the modern cars’ susceptibility to get hacked. I was looking out for the news about car hacks and stumbled upon this year-old YouTube video that explains why you should be scared if you have the latest IoT enabled car. The cars who have a cloud server, accessible by mobile networks like Bluetooth or wi-fi, are especially prone to an incursion- what we commonly refer to as a car hack.
The car hack video is an episode of Phreaked Out in which the top security researchers of the car hacking world highlight the loopholes in the sophisticated car technology. Security researcher Mathew Solnik gives the live demonstration of himself hijacking the car’s computer system and getting a complete control over the machine.
He was able to control the car’s engine, brakes and security system wirelessly through Controller Area Network or CAN bus network. For car hack, he used some microcontroller chips, a telematic control unit, a GSM transceiver and of course, his thorough research and expertise over the subject.
Check out the car hack video and see for yourself:
Source: Motherboard
Sunday, 25 October 2015
HTC: “It’s Apple That Copied Our Design, We Didn’t”
Short Bytes: Taking inspiration from another’s designs is an old tale in the smartphone industry. The latest controversy is revolving around iPhone 6-inspired HTC One A9. Defending HTC, a top executive said that it was Apple that copied HTC’s design. Read more to know the whole story.
Recently we wrote about HTC One A9 that looks a lot like the iPhone 6. The struggling Taiwanese smartphone maker hinted in the past that the company is looking to drift in a new design direction. But, nobody expected the design pioneer HTC to completely rip-off Apple iPhone 6.
In a surprising move, HTC North Asia President Jack Tong has accused Apple of stealing its ideas.
As reported by WantChinaTimes.com, HTC executive said, “We’re not copying.” Talking about HTC One M7, he said, “We made a uni-body metal-clad phone in 2013. It’s Apple that copies us in terms of the antenna design on the back.”
Arguing about the design breakthrough in radio signals for metal-clad phones, he said,”The A9 is made thinner and more lightweight than our previous metal-clad phones. This is a change and evolution, and we’re not copying.”
It should be noted that HTC One A9 is the first non-Nexus phone that comes pre-installed with the latest Android Marshmallow. It features a 1920×1080, 5-inch AMOLED display and a 13-megapixel rear camera.
“The A9 is made thinner and more lightweight than our previous metal-clad phones,” Tong said. “This is a change and evolution, and we’re not copying.”
Tell us your views about this controversy in the comments below
Monday, 19 October 2015
Hacker reveals how to extract PIN of a smartphone from any selfie
Corneal Key Logger can extract PIN of any smartphone using the owner’s selfie
If you thought biometrics was the ultimate weapon of authentication, you may be proved wrong by Starbug. German researcher Jan Krissler, aka Starbug is a hacker whose claim to fame is breaching Apple’s TouchID and recreating the German defense minister’s thumbprint from a high-res image.
Starbug has revealed that he can now decode anyone’s smartphone PIN code from any selfie “image”. of the owner.
Starbug and his colleagues have extracted the reflection of smartphone screens in the eye whites of “selfie” subjects, then they used an ultra-high resolution image techniques to extract the user’s PIN code. Starbug presented his discovery at the Biometrics 2015 conference in London.
His team also revealed a method to take hi-res images of iris using a high-resolution camera and recreating them using a simple laser printer. They were also able to extract the reflection of phone screens in the eye whites of “selfie” subjects, then using ultra-high res image techniques to glean the user’s PIN code.
Here is an image of the “corneal key logger”
The team then used this technique to extract the iris data of German chancellor Angela Merkel, using a photo taken at a press conference. He said that these images could be printed onto a contact lens and this method can be used to hack any biometric enabled authentication device.
Starbug’s speech also focussed on the vulnerability of fingerprint and facial technology, saying that together with iris these represented “90% of the biometrics market value”. “Everything is spoofable,” he said.
Earlier Starbug had revealed how to make a dummy fingerprint to spoof Apple’s Touch ID sensor, simply by lifting a fingerprint from a basic print scanner and then making a mould. He also revealed how to use a digital SLR camera with a 200ml lens to take fingerprints that can be replicated from a distance – the method used to extract German Defense Minister Dr Von Der Leyen’s thumbprint.
According to Starbug even fingerprint sensors featuring liveness detection are at risk. “I can fool every fingerprint sensor in two hours”, he said, welcoming challenges from manufacturers to beat their technology. Starbug said a simple photo of the users face is often more than enough – even for most infrared devices. Here “liveness detection is very important”, he said.
Starbug also outlined a method to bypass liveness detection that demands that makes users blink, and he closed his presentation defeating a 3D facial recognition by using a papier mache mask.
Starbug said that the current biometrics technology is weak and should improved upon. However, he said he feels that biometrics is the future of the authentication.