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techtalk.today/273

The post Tech Talk Today 274 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Show Notes: techtalk.today/273

The post Tech Talk Today 273 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Show Notes: techtalk.today/271

The post Tech Talk Today 271 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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• Amazon to acquire Ring video doorbell maker, cracking open the door in home security market — The surprise acquisition marks the latest move by the Seattle-based tech giant into the smart home technology market. Financial terms were not disclosed, but Reuters puts the deal at more than $1 billion.
• Watch: “Shark Tank” judges reject Jamie Siminoff’s idea for Ring that Amazon just spent $1 billion — In his Shark Tank pitch, Siminoff said he was seeking a $700,000 investment for a 10% stake in his then-struggling startup—called DoorBot at the time—which he thought was worth $7 million.
• Hangouts Chat, Google’s Slack competitor, comes out of beta — For all intents and purposes, Hangouts Chat is Google’s take on Slack, Microsoft Teams and similar projects
• Spotify Files for Public Offering, to Be Listed As ‘SPOT’ — Spotify officially filed for a public offering with the Security and Exchange Commission on Wednesday. The music service intends to trade under the “SPOT” symbol at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE)
• ‘Success’ on YouTube Still Means a Life of Poverty — In fact, 96.5 percent of all of those trying to become YouTubers won’t make enough money off of advertising to crack the U.S. poverty line * Drones for Space Operations by Gateway Foundation — Kickstarter — Our primary mission is to develop drones to be used at the International Space Station to retrieve objects that drift away during spacewalks and repair activities by astronauts.

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— The Cliff Notes —

• Great Supermicro Motherboard

• MyRackables

• Unix Surplus

• Tech Talk Today

• Support Chris & Jupiter Broadcasting

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Episode Links

• Red Hat at Mobile World Congress 2018 — Connect with Red Hat onsite at Mobile World Congress 2018 to see why 100% of telecommunications organizations in the global Fortune 500 rely on Red Hat technology.

• Mobile World Congress 2018 | Ubuntu Insights — Today Canonical operates telco networks worldwide in partnership with leading hardware and NFV vendors . We’re also collaborating with institutions worldwide to build tomorrow’s applications on Ubuntu: blockchain, machine learning, robotics or autonomous vehicles… To make sure that your infrastructure will be future proof.* FCC Will Auction 5G-ready 3.7–4.2GHz and mmWave Spectrum — Speaking at the Mobile World Congress today in Barcelona, Spain, U.S. FCC chairman Ajit Pai today announced that the commission is prepared to quickly make 5G-ready wireless spectrum available in two critically important ranges: Mid-frequency, including both 3.5GHz and 3.7–4.2GHz ranges, and high-frequency, including 24GHz and 28GHz millimeter wave (mmWave) ranges. Pai suggested that the FCC is ready to auction the spectrum in the near future, but requires Congressional cooperation by May 13 to make the 24GHz and 28GHz allocations happen.

• Samsung Galaxy S9, Nokia 8110: All smartphones unveiled at MWC 2018 — With 5G technology taking an increasing share of the spotlight, as top executives stress the importance of the next generation of mobile networks, smartphones are still very much center stage.

• How to find out if an old password has been stolen — The Pwned Passwords tool, integrated into the popular password manager 1Password, lets customers type in an old password and find out if it’s been leaked in a data breach.

• Pwned Passwords — With Half a Billion Passwords for Download* Apple confirms it now uses Google Cloud for iCloud services – The Verge — Apple has confirmed that it uses Google’s public cloud to store data for its iCloud services in its latest version of the iOS Security Guide last month, as spotted by CNBC.

• Apple confirms it uses Google cloud for some of iCloud | Hacker News — From Apple’s actual iCloud security document:

Each file is broken into chunks and encrypted by iCloud using AES–128 and a key derived from each chunk’s contents that utilizes SHA–256. The keys and the file’s metadata are stored by Apple in the user’s iCloud account. The encrypted chunks of the file are stored, without any user-identifying information, using third-party storage services, such as S3 and Google Cloud Platform.

• Vulkan is coming to macOS and iOS, but no thanks to Apple | Ars Technica — The open source, royalty-free release of MoltenVK—a runtime for macOS and iOS that offers an almost complete subset of the Vulkan API implemented using Metal. Released under the Apache 2 license

• Israel-Based Vendor Cellebrite Can Unlock Every iPhone, including the Current-Gen iPhone X, That’s On the Market: Forbes – Slashdot — The Israeli firm, a subsidiary of Japan’s Sun Corporation, hasn’t made any major public announcement about its new iOS capabilities. But Forbes was told by sources (who asked to remain anonymous as they weren’t authorized to talk on the matter) that in the last few months the company has developed undisclosed techniques to get into iOS 11 and is advertising them to law enforcement and private forensics folk across the globe. Indeed, the company’s literature for its Advanced Unlocking and Extraction Services offering now notes the company can break the security of “Apple iOS devices and operating systems, including iPhone, iPad, iPad mini, iPad Pro and iPod touch, running iOS 5 to iOS 11.”

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• LineageOS 15.1 is finally here — We’ve been working hard these months to get this new version available; the changes that were done in upstream (AOSP) are huge: Project Treble changed the way hardware is managed in Android, so all the OEM-abandoned platforms that are supported by Lineage had to be adapted for the new platform.
• XDA article
• Unity 8 running on 18.04
• Ubuntu metrics collection will be opt-in when upgrading to 18.04 — “Upgrading users would need to purposely “opt-in” to this behaviour, as that wasn’t
  explicitly asked in the past.
• Collecting user data while protecting user privacy — The technique varies a lot in exactly how it’s applied, but the basic concept is that for any question, there’s a random chance that the answerer should lie in their response.
• Signal Foundation is born thanks to $50M from WhatsApp co-founder — Today, we are launching the Signal Foundation, an emerging 501(c)(3) nonprofit created and made possible by Brian Acton, the co-founder of WhatsApp, to support, accelerate, and broaden Signal’s mission of making private communication accessible and ubiquitous.
• First RISC-V board available to pre-order —
  HiFive Unleashed is the ultimate RISC-V developer board. Featuring the world’s first and only Linux-capable, multi-core, RISC-V processor — the Freedom U540 — the HiFive Unleashed ushers in a brand new era for RISC-V.
• HiFive Unleashed launch FOSDEM 2018 Video
• Tech Talk Today is back — Elon Musk bet the future of SpaceX on the Falcon Heavy launch. On Thursday SpaceX launched a pair of prototype satellites intended to form the basis for Starlink, a constellation of satellites that are designed to beam broadband internet down to Earth.

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Microsoft announces support for SSH built into powershell, crashing Skype with a simple text chat, Tim Cook defends user’s rights to privacy and encryption & running OS X in VirtualBox.

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• Apple CEO Tim Cook Speaks on Importance of Privacy, Encryption at Champions of Freedom Event – Mac Rumors
• Let the snooping resume: Senate revives Patriot Act surveillance measures | Ars Technica
• Google Photos: The Mossberg Review | Re/code
• These 8 characters crash Skype, and once they’re in your chat history, the app can’t start (Update: fixed) | VentureBeat | Security | by Emil Protalinski
• Our Future, Wunderlist Joins Microsoft
• Looking Forward: Microsoft: Support for Secure Shell (SSH) – Looking Forward: Microsoft: Support for Secure Shell (SSH) – Site Home – MSDN Blogs
• Install OS X 10.10 Yosemite in VirtualBox
• Support Jupiter Broadcasting on Patreon

The post PowerSSHell | Tech Talk Today 178 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Spy agencies target mobile phones, app stores to implant spyware & the extent of the effort is shocking. Linux 4.0 has a EXT4 corruption bug, YouTube brings the fight to Twitch & Netflix has some big updates.

Then we have a Kickstarter of the week to help you men lucid dream, the penis way.

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Spy agencies target mobile phones, app stores to implant spyware

Electronic intelligence agencies began targeting UC Browser — a massively popular app in China and India with growing use in North America — in late 2011 after discovering it leaked revealing details about its half-billion users.

Their goal, in tapping into UC Browser and also looking for larger app store vulnerabilities, was to collect data on suspected terrorists and other intelligence targets — and, in some cases, implant spyware on targeted smartphones.

The 2012 document shows that the surveillance agencies exploited the weaknesses in certain mobile apps in pursuit of their national security interests, but it appears they didn’t alert the companies or the public to these weaknesses. That potentially put millions of users in danger of their data being accessed by other governments’ agencies, hackers or criminals.

NSA Planned to Hijack Google App Store to Hack Smartphones – The Intercept

Linux 4.0 Has a File-System Corruption Problem, RAID Users Warned

For the past few days kernel developers and Linux users have been investigating an EXT4 file-system corruption issue affecting the latest stable kernel series (Linux 4.0) and the current development code (Linux 4.1). It turns out that Linux users running the EXT4 file-system on a RAID0 configuration can easily destroy their file-system with this newest “stable” kernel. The cause and fix have materialized but it hasn’t yet worked its way out into the mainline kernel, thus users should be warned before quickly upgrading to the new kernel on systems with EXT4 and RAID0.

• Apparently this was fixed in the 4.0.3 Kernel. The current release is 4.0.4.

YouTube eyes Twitch user base, adds 60 FPS live streams with HTML5 playback | Ars Technica

The HTML5 player will not only save users from the CPU and batter__y-eating Flash player, but will also enable variable speed playback, allowing users to “skip backward in a stream while it’s live and watch at 1.5x or 2x speed to catch back up.”

Netflix To Roll Out A New, More Immersive Web Interface Starting In June | TechCrunch

Netflix confirms today that it will roll out a new user interface on the web to all users worldwide beginning next month. A number of Netflix customers are already seeing the updated look-and-feel, however, according to various reports. The interface, which was previously demonstrated at CES and Mobile World Congress, brings the design of Netflix’s website more in line with what users today see on mobile phones, tablets, on gaming consoles and on other streaming media players, like Roku.

NPT Lucid Dreamer by NPT Lucid Dreamer — Kickstarter

Men, trigger lucid dreams using nocturnal penile tumescence (NPT). By far the simplest & most reliable method possible.

The post Corrupt Accomplices | Tech Talk Today 174 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

The White house announces and executive order allowing sanctions against cyber war threats, some downsides of the Galaxy S6 Edge, an April Fools roundup & more!

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A New Tool Against Cyber Threats — Medium

It’s one of the great paradoxes of our Information Age — the very technologies that empower us to do great good can also be used by adversaries to inflict great harm. The same technologies that help keep our military strong are used by hackers in China and Russia to target our defense contractors and systems that support our troops. Networks that control much of our critical infrastructure — including our financial systems and power grids — are probed for vulnerabilities by foreign governments and criminals.

Cyber intrusions and attacks — many of them originating overseas — are targeting our businesses, stealing trade secrets, and costing American jobs. Iranian hackers have targeted American banks. The North Korean cyber attack on Sony Pictures destroyed data and disabled thousands of computers. In other recent breaches that have made headlines, more than 100 million Americans had their personal data compromised, including credit card and medical information.

Living life on the S6 Edge | The Verge

The Galaxy S6 Edge also doesn’t play too nicely with Google’s Material Design. Samsung has my eternal appreciation for following Google’s lead in moving to a cleaner, more minimalist interface, but Material Design emphasizes flatness and geometric regularity, which the Edge’s warping side screens disturb. They create a sort of vignette effect on white pages and are a hindrance rather than a help when editing photos.

Meet the Asus Chromebook Flip, a $249 Chrome OS tablet with a 360-degree hinge | PCWorld

The Chromebook Flip squeezed an adequate supply of connectivity into its slender profile. On one side, you’ll see two USB 2.0 ports, an SD card slot, HDMI, and an audio jack. On the other, you’ll see power and volume buttons, plus the DC power port.

Under the hood you’ll find 2GB of RAM and the Rockchip 3288 CPU. Rockchip, a new partner for Google, brings less expensive, more power-efficient CPUs to the Chromebook lineup. Google also announced new Chromebooks from Haier and Hisense with the same chip. Benchmarks from our hands-on with the new Hisense Chromebook indicate that this processor holds up well compared to older ARM chips.

Google pushes Chrome OS software, with or without Chromebooks – CNET

To that end, one of Google’s newest additions to the lineup of devices, the Chomebit, hawks Chrome OS without even trying to sell a Chromebook laptop.

RadioShack co-branding of stores with Sprint wins court approval | Reuters

A plan to salvage RadioShack Corp’s RSHCQ.PK business by co-branding most of its 1,740 surviving stores with cellular phone provider Sprint Corp (S.N) earned U.S. bankruptcy court approval on Tuesday, ending four days of contested court hearings.

The stores are what survived of more than 4,000 outlets after RadioShack went bankrupt in February. Founded in 1921, the chain was a go-to retailer for electronics before becoming increasingly irrelevant in the digital age.

Gentoo announces total website makeover – Gentoo Linux

Gentoo Linux today announced the launch of its new totally revamped and more inclusive website which was built to conform to the CGA Web(tm) graphics standards.

Smartbox by Inbox: the mailbox of tomorrow, today – YouTube

We’re excited to introduce Smartbox—a better, smarter mailbox that fuses physical mail with everything you love about the electronic kind.

Smartbox is currently in field trial—stuck in the ground, in a field—for Inbox by Gmail customers. If you’re not yet using Inbox, simply email inbox@google.com any time before April 2 to be invited, and to reserve your spot on the Smartbox waitlist.

The post Sanction IT | Tech Talk Today 151 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We discuss the details of the current crop of smart phones, then look at Microsoft’s new Surface 3, get skeptical about Project Spartan & celebrate the Supreme Court’s GPS Tracker decision.

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Microsoft’s Surface 3 is a $499 tablet that could be a full Windows laptop | The Verge

Surface 3 will start at just $499, and it’s available to pre-order today with devices shipping on May 5th in the US / Canada and May 7th internationally.

Introducing Project Spartan: The New Browser Built for Windows 10

As we started building Project Spartan, we took a hard look at everything we were doing with the browser — from the way we engineered it, to the way we designed the user experience, to the way we approached compatibility and interoperability, to the way we interacted with our customers and Web developers, to the way we released it.

License Details Hint MS Undecided On Suing Users of Its Open Source Net Runtime – Slashdot

With Microsoft proudly declaring its .NET runtime open source, a colleague and I decided to look at the licensing aspects. One part, the MIT licence, is straightforward, but there’s also a patent promise. The first two-thirds of the first sentence seems to announce good news about Microsoft not suing people. Then the conditions begin. It seems Microsoft can’t yet bring itself to release something as free software without retaining a patent threat to limit how those freedoms can be exercised. Overall, we found 4 Shifty Details About Microsoft’s “Open Source” .NET.

U.S. Supreme Court: GPS Trackers Are a Form of Search and Seizure — The Atlantic

The Supreme Court clarified and affirmed that law on Monday, when it ruled on _Torrey Dale Grady v. North Carolina, _before sending the case back to that state’s high court. The Court’s short but unanimous opinion helps make sense of how the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure, interacts with the expanding technological powers of the U.S. government.

“It doesn’t matter what the context is, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s a car or a person. Putting that tracking device on a car or a person is a search,” said Jennifer Lynch, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF).

In this case, that context was punishment. Grady was twice convicted as a sex offender. In 2013, North Carolina ordered that, as a recidivist, he had to wear a GPS monitor at all times so that his location could be monitored. He challenged the court, saying that the tracking device qualified as an unreasonable search.

North Carolina’s highest court at first ruled that the tracker was no search at all. It’s that decision that the Supreme Court took aim at today, quoting the state’s rationale and snarking:

The post Google Kills Your Battery | Tech Talk Today 150 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Amazon debuts unlimited cloud drive, Gnome 3.16 is looking good, Chris debates the merits of getting a Galaxy S6 & more!

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Galaxy S6 release date is April 10th, and US pre-orders start tomorrow | The Verge

The Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge coming to the US will largely be the same as the model available globally. They have 5.1-inch, qHD Super AMOLED displays, 32, 64, or 128GB of internal storage, Samsung’s octacore Exynos processors, and 16-megapixel cameras with optical image stabilization. Unfortunately, US customers will only be able to choose from black, white, or gold color options — the striking emerald green S6 Edge and navy blue S6 are not coming to the US, at least not at this time.

• AnandTech | Samsung Galaxy S 6 and S 6 Edge: Preview

Yesterday we received our Galaxy S6 and S6 edge review units. We’re still working on the final review but I wanted to share some early results from both devices. For those that are unfamiliar with these two phones, the Galaxy S6 range represents the result of Samsung’s “Project Zero”. In fact, the phones seem to have the internal name of Zero, which can be seen in terminal, and the build properties of both devices. For Samsung, these phones represent their attempt at completely rethinking how Samsung makes phones. There is a strong emphasis on a new unibody design, which has no visible gaps or screws. Rather than the plastic that previous Samsung phones have been known for, the new design is composed of metal and glass. Samsung’s design team has been given unprecedented control throughout the process of making this phone and the result of this is a Galaxy phone that looks unlike anything else they’ve ever released.

HTC One M9 to go on sale for $649 unlocked tonight

Never mind that M9+ thing in China. Back in the US, it’s all about the M9 for local HTC fans, as the device is about to hit the official online store at midnight ET for $649 unlocked (it’ll have the same bands as the AT&T model). This may not mean much for folks who are used to subsidized phones, but if you compare this contract-free price with those from other regions, it’s actually rather attractive — even when you include tax. In Hong Kong, you’re looking at around $770. Not to mention that US buyers also get to enjoy HTC’s “Uh Oh Protection” program, which replaces your device — be it faulty or simply because you want to change networks — one time for free within a year, and you get $100 credit towards your next HTC phone if you end up not requiring this service.

Amazon Cloud Drive goes unlimited: $11.99/year for photos and $59.99/year for everything | VentureBeat | Cloud | by Paul Sawers

Amazon has announced two unlimited storage plans for its cloud-based storage service, Amazon Cloud Drive, which sees a massive price reduction for its giant hard-drive in the sky.

The plans focus on two specific scenarios. For those who have loads of photos, there is the Unlimited Photos plan that costs $11.99 per year. Then there’s the Unlimited Everything plan that, well, does what its name suggests, and costs $59.99 per year. There’s also a free three-month trial available to see how much “unlimited” space you actually need and for what. At any rate, with a monthly cost of $5, it’s almost worthwhile paying for the service irrespective of how much cloud-based storage you actually need.

GNOME 3.16 Released, See What’s New And Improved

When you think of GNOME Shell (the desktop section of GNOME) you tend to think of black. Black menus, translucent-y black dock, black buttons, black login screen pods and so on.

• GNOME 3.16 Released – GNOME

The post Amazon Photo Foothold | Tech Talk Today 149 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Twitch gets hacked, Microsoft rolls back its Windows 10 for pirates pledge, Glass will be sticking around & hacking computers with heat!

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Twitch Accounts Were Compromised, All Passwords Reset

Uh oh, game streaming service Twitch has posted a short notice to its blog warning that there “may have been” some unauthorized access to some Twitch user information.

Upgrading to Windows 10 on pirated versions won’t get you a valid license

Unfortunately, the company had scaled back a bit on its plans saying that the free upgrade, though available, won’t actually change the license state of a user’s OS. In plain speak this means that if you were running a pirated copy of Windows, you’ll still be running a pirated copy even after upgrading to Windows 10.

Google Isn’t Giving Up on Glass, Eric Schmidt Says – Digits – WSJ

“It is a big and very fundamental platform for Google,” Schmidt said. “We ended the Explorer program and the press conflated this into us canceling the whole project, which isn’t true. Google is about taking risks and there’s nothing about adjusting Glass that suggests we’re ending it.”

He said Glass, like Google’s self-driving car, is a long-term project. “That’s like saying the self-driving car is a disappointment because it’s not driving me around now,” he said. “These things take time.”

Hack Air-Gapped Computers Using Heat – Slashdot

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) researchers have discovered a new method to breach air-gapped computer systems called “BitWhisper,” which enables two-way communications between adjacent, unconnected PC computers using heat. BitWhisper bridges the air-gap between the two computers, approximately 15 inches apart that are infected with malware by using their heat emissions and built-in thermal sensors to communicate. It establishes a covert, bi-directional channel by emitting heat from one PC to the other in a controlled manner.

The post Computers In Heat | Tech Talk Today 148 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Microsoft is killing off the Internet Explorer brand & Google is reversing course on a major Play store position. Plus a new study shows Firefox and Chrome users make better employees & the huge direction change for Nintendo.

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Microsoft is killing off the Internet Explorer brand | The Verge

Speaking at Microsoft Convergence yesterday, Microsoft’s marketing chief Chris Capossela revealed that the company is currently working on a new name and brand. “We’re now researching what the new brand, or the new name, for our browser should be in Windows 10,” said Capossela. “We’ll continue to have Internet Explorer, but we’ll also have a new browser called Project Spartan, which is codenamed Project Spartan. We have to name the thing.”

App Submissions On Google Play Now Reviewed By Staff, Will Include Age-Based Ratings | TechCrunch

Google has today disclosed that, beginning a couple of months ago, it began having an internal team of reviewers analyze apps for policy violations prior to publication. And going forward, human reviewers will continue to go hands-on with apps before they go live on Google Play.

Analysis: People Who Use Firefox Or Chrome Make Better Employees – Slashdot

In the world of Big Data, everything means something. Now Joe Pinsker reports that Cornerstone OnDemand, a company that sells software that helps employers recruit and retain workers, has found after analyzing data on about 50,000 people who took its 45-minute online job assessment, that people who took the test on a non-default browser, such as Firefox or Chrome, ended up staying at their jobs about 15 percent longer than those who stuck with Safari or Internet Explorer. They also tended to perform better on the job as well. Chief Analytics Officer Michael Housman offered an explanation for the results in an interview with Freakonomics Radio: “I think that the fact that you took the time to install Firefox on your computer shows us something about you. It shows that you’re someone who is an informed consumer,” says Housman. “You’ve made an active choice to do something that wasn’t default.” But why would a company care about something as seemingly trivial as the browser a candidate chooses to use? “Call centers are estimated to suffer from a turnover rate of about 45 percent annually (PDF), and it can cost thousands of dollars to hire new employees,” says Pinsker. “Because of that, companies are eager to find any proxy for talent and dedication that they can.”

Nintendo is making smartphone games with Japanese mobile giant DeNA | The Verge

The company has announced that it will team up with DeNA, a major Japanese mobile gaming company, to make smartphone games featuring Nintendo characters.

The two companies “intend to jointly operate new gaming applications featuring Nintendo IP, which they will develop specifically for smart devices,” according to a Nintendo statement.

The post Google's Human Revolution | Tech Talk Today 145 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Some critical security news, then Microsoft expands Cortona, Apple is a little creepy, Google ends sales on the Nexus 5 & much more!

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Adobe Flash Update Plugs 11 Security Holes — Krebs on Security

The newest, patched version is 17.0.0.134 for Windows and Mac users. Adobe Flash Player installed with Google Chrome, as well as Internet Explorer on Windows 8.x, should automatically update to version 17.0.0.134.

Exclusive: Microsoft’s digital assistant to head to Android, Apple devices | Reuters

“This kind of technology, which can read and understand email, will play a central role in the next roll out of Cortana, which we are working on now for the fall time frame,” said Eric Horvitz, managing director of Microsoft Research and a part of the Einstein project, in an interview at the company’s Redmond, Washington, headquarters. Horvitz and Microsoft declined comment on any plan to take Cortana beyond Windows.

Epic Google snafu leaks hidden whois data for 280,000 domains | Ars Technica

The 282,867 domains counted by Cisco Systems’ researchers account for 94 percent of the addresses Google Apps has registered through a partnership with registrar eNom.

Tim Cook offered Steve Jobs his liver, and other revelations from new biography | Cult of Mac

After discovering that he shared a rare blood type with his sick colleague, and undergoing a battery of tests at a hospital “far from the Bay Area, since he didn’t want to be recognized,” Cook offered his liver to Jobs — only for Steve to turn it down.

Google is done selling the Nexus 5 | The Verge

A Google spokesperson told The Verge today that “while some inventory of Nexus 5 still exists (with our retail and carrier partners), our focus is on the Nexus 6 at this time.”

The post RIP Nexus 5 | Tech Talk Today 144 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Angela and Chris cover some Faux tech news that will bend your mind, then discuss the new Firefox developer browser, Obama’s plans for Net Neutrality & more!

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Pepsi Is Testing Doritos-Flavored Mountain Dew, Which Means the End Is Near | E! Online

Reddit user pcmasterrace posted the above photo of a booth setup at his school with Pepsi employees handing out little cups filled with Doritos-flavored Mountain Dew.

We repeat: Doritos-flavored Mountain Dew. They’re calling it Dewitos.

Tagline suggestion: “Because stoners shouldn’t have to buy Mountain Dew and Doritos separately.”

Sharing Night-Time Photos Of The Eiffel Tower Is Illegal

Taking and sharing photos of the Eiffel tower at night is a copyright violation that could land you with a hefty fine (not that it’s stopped the selfie-snapping masses, of course).

Torrent Freak explains that although the building itself is in the public domain, the light show that illuminates it at night is an artistic work, and as such ‘reproducing’ it (i.e. snapping a photo) would require the permission of the artist. It’s the same law that stops you from filming a theatre show, just taken to a slightly absurd extreme.

vIt’s not just a theory, either: the website for the commercial use of the tower confirms that “the usage of these images is subject to prior request from the Société d’Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel.”

Selfies With Homeless People: The Latest Craze For Bored, Rich Kids

Net Neutrality: President Obama’s Plan for a Free and Open Internet

Mozilla launches Firefox Developer Edition with built-in tools for debugging apps and mobile browsers

The post Faux Talk | Tech Talk Today 88 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

A major flaw in SSL 3.0 has been discovered by Google & the web springs into action. The Double Irish is getting shut down & Google has something very sweet for us all!

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Google Online Security Blog: This POODLE bites: exploiting the SSL 3.0 fallback

Today we are publishing details of a vulnerability in the design of SSL version 3.0. This vulnerability allows the plaintext of secure connections to be calculated by a network attacker.

SSL 3.0 is nearly 15 years old, but support for it remains widespread. Most importantly, nearly all browsers support it and, in order to work around bugs in HTTPS servers, browsers will retry failed connections with older protocol versions, including SSL 3.0. Because a network attacker can cause connection failures, they can trigger the use of SSL 3.0 and then exploit this issue.

ImperialViolet – POODLE attacks on SSLv3

Fundamentally, the design flaw in SSL/TLS that allows this is the same as with Lucky13 and Vaudenay’s two attacks: SSL got encryption and authentication the wrong way around — it authenticates before encrypting.

The POODLE Attack and the End of SSL 3.0 | Mozilla Security Blog

SSL version 3.0 is no longer secure. Browsers and websites need to turn off SSLv3 and use more modern security protocols as soon as possible, in order to avoid compromising users’ private information.

SSLv3 will be disabled by default in Firefox 34, which will be released on Nov 25. The code to disable it is landing today in Nightly, and will be promoted to Aurora and Beta in the next few weeks. This timing is intended to allow website operators some time to upgrade any servers that still rely on SSLv3.

“Double Irish” Tax Loophole Used By US Companies To Be Closed

The Irish Finance Minister announced on Tuesday that Ireland will no longer allow companies to register in Ireland unless the companies are also tax resident. This will effectively close off the corporate tax evasion scheme known as the “Double Irish” used by the likes of Google, Apple, and Facebook to route their earnings through their Irish holdings in order to garner an effective tax rate of, as in Google FY2013, 0.16%. Ireland’s new policy will take effect in 2015 for new companies. “For existing companies, there will be provision for a transition period until the end of 2020.”

GT Advanced COO sold $1.2M in shares before bankruptcy, Apple asks court to seal documents | 9to5Mac

There has been some indication that executives anticipated the bankruptcy with reports that the company’s CEO unloaded approximately $160,000 in stock days before the iPhone 6 launched without GT’s sapphire cover that was previously rumored to make an appearance on the device. Today, The Wall Street Journal reports that another GT Advanced executive, COO Daniel Squiller, sold $1.2 million of stock in May and “set up a plan under which he sold another $750,000 of shares over ensuing months before the company filed for bankruptcy.”

Details of Apple’s contracts with supplier GT Advanced have been trickling out since the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier this month. While asking courts for permission to “wind down” operations at its Arizona plant, the company called its agreement with Apple “oppressive and burdensome” and reportedly requested courts disclose more information about its relationship with Apple. The exact reason behind what lead to the bankruptcy filing is still unclear, but there has been speculation that it’s related to a final $139 million payment that was reportedly withheld by Apple.

Google Teases Android L Ahead of Rumored Nexus Launch

Among rumors that the newest Nexus devices will be announced as soon as tomorrow, Google Senior VP Sundar Pichai sent out this tweet earlier today:

Met some sweet new friends today.

The post Poodle Bytes your SSL | Tech Talk Today 76 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

A major Xen flaw forces the “cloud” to reboot, we share the details. ComputerCop malware pitched as saving the children turns out to be major spyware.

Plus a big Adobe Linux support rant, the Mac botnet that reads reddit & more!

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Rackspace Joined Amazon in Patching, Rebooting Cloud Servers

About a quarter of Rackspace’s 200,000-plus customers were impacted when the cloud provider had to patch a flaw in the Xen hypervisor.
Rackspace, like cloud competitor Amazon Web Services, was forced to reboot some of its servers after patching them to fix a security flaw in some versions of the XenServer hypervisor.

The cloud provider had to patch an untold number of servers in its global data centers over the weekend and then reboot them, which caused disruption to about a quarter of Rackspace’s more than 200,000 customers, according to President and CEO Taylor Rhodes. The issue was further complicated by a tight deadline—the vulnerability was first discovered early last week, and a patch wasn’t worked out with Xen engineers until late Sept. 26.

AWS started sending out letters to its customers Sept. 24 informing them that there was an issue, but assured them that the problem was not related to the Bash bug that arose last week as a threat to systems running Unix and Linux. Officials instead let them know that the problem was with the Xen hypervisor, and that a patch was being worked on.

• Security bug in Xen may have exposed Amazon, other cloud services [Updated] | Ars Technica

The bug, introduced in versions of Xen after version 4.1, is in HVM code that emulates Intel’s x2APIC interrupt controller. While the emulator restricts the ability of a virtual machine to write to memory reserved specifically for its own emulated controller, a program running within a virtual machine could use the x2APIC interface to read information stored outside of that space. If someone were to provision an inadvertently buggy or intentionally malicious virtual machine on a server using HVM, Beulich found that VM could use the interface to look at the physical memory on the physical machine hosting the VM reserved for other virtual machines or for the virtualization server software itself. In other words, an “evil” virtual machine could essentially read over the shoulder of other virtual machines running on the same server, bypassing security.

• XSA-108 – Xen Security Advisories

EFF: Security software distributed by cops is actually spyware in disguise

Various schools, libraries and ordinary American families might have been using a “security” software called ComputerCOP for years. After all, they probably got their copy from cops, attorney’s offices or other branches of law enforcement, which tout it as a way to protect children online.

One of the main feature of ComputerCop is a keylogger called KeyAlert. Keyloggers record all keystrokes made on a computer keyboard, including credit card information and username and password combinations. KeyAlert’s logs are stored unencrypted on Windows computers, and on Macs they can be decrypted with the software’s default password. The software can also be configured so that trigger words email an alert to the computer’s owner.

KeyAlert must be installed separately from the rest of the ComputerCop software, but not all versions of ComputerCop have been distributed with it. There’s no way to configure KeyAlert for a particular user, so it’s possible to use it against anybody using the computer — not just kids.

“When that happens, the software transmits the key logs, unencrypted, to a third-party server, which then sends the email,” the EFF report said.

According to the foundation, law enforcement agencies typically buy between 1,000 and 5,000 copies of ComputerCOP for a few dollars per piece — and yes, they use taxpayer dollars for the purchase. Within the past two years for instance, several Attorney’s Offices, including San Diego’s, bought 5,000 pieces for 25 grand.

• ComputerCOP: The Dubious ‘Internet Safety Software’ That Hundreds of Police Agencies Have Distributed to Families | Electronic Frontier Foundation

Adobe Pulls Linux PDF Reader Downloads From Website – OMG! Ubuntu!

As flagged by a Reddit user who visited the Adobe site to grab the app, Linux builds are no longer listed alongside other ‘supported’ operating systems.

Adobe is no stranger to giving penguins the brush off. The company stopped releasing official builds of Flash for Linux in 2012 (leaving it to Google to tend to), and excluded Tux-loving users from its cross-platform application runtime “Air” the year before.

All is not lost. While the links are no longer offered through the website the Debian installer remains accessible from the Adobe FTP server.

China pre-orders 2 million iPhone 6 handsets in just 6 hours

The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus were delayed in China as the result of trouble for Apple securing the necessary regulatory approvals from the country’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. In its absence, rival company Samsung rushed to release their new flagship handset in the country.

Despite China’s absence, however, Apple’s eagerly-anticpated handsets sold 10 million+ units in their opening weekend alone.

According to new reports coming out of China, both retailers and carriers have taken in a massive 2 million reservations just six hours after putting the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus on earlier-than-expected pre-order.

New Mac botnet malware uses Reddit to find out what servers to connect to

Mac users should beware of some new malware spreading, that tries to connect infected machines with a botnet for future exploitation. As detected by Dr Web, the malicious worm (dubbed Mac.BackDoor.iWorm) first checks whether any interfering applications are installed on the Mac.

If it is clear, it calls out to Reddit posts to find the IP addresses of possible servers to callback too. Although these posts have been deleted, it’s not hard for the people behind the exploit to repost them at a later time. Once connected to the botnet, the infected Mac can be literally instructed to perform almost any task the hackers want, such as redirect browsing traffic to potentially steal account credentials for instance.

Dr.Web estimates over 15,000 distinct IP addresses have been connected to the botnet already. Although 15,000 IPs does not directly translate into 15,000 separate infected users, it is indicative of a rather large base for a Mac worm.

The post ComputerCop Malware | Tech Talk Today 69 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Live streaming site Justin.tv shuts down, and we reflect on the early days of our broadcasting on the service.

Plus the crypto-malware spreading to NAS boxes, Sprint pulls out of the T-Mobile deal and why Tech Talk Today might soon have a party mode.

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Goodbye from Justin.tv

Justin.tv was created by Justin Kan, Emmett Shear, Michael Seibel and Kyle Vogt in March 2007.

Twitch today announced that the Justin.tv website, mobile apps, and APIs are no longer in service. A very simple explanation is given for the shutdown: since rebranding the company to Twitch Interactive in February 2014, all resources are now focused on Twitch.tv.

• Twitch Shuts Down Justin.tv, Google Acquisition to Blame?

The news today will almost certainly further fuel the rumors that Google is acquiring, or has already acquired, Twitch. Purchases are often followed by consolidation, as well as cutting off any excess limbs.

SynoLocker demands 0.6 Bitcoin to decrypt Synology NAS devices – CSO | The Resource for Data Security Executives

The new attack on Synology kit comes within a year of Synology NAS devices being struck by fraudulent Bitcoin mining operators, with several owners on Sunday reporting that they had found a message from the “SynoLocker Automated Decryption Service” — when accessing the main page of the Web-server for their NAS device — stating that “all important files on this NAS have been encrypted using strong cryptography”.

As one victim on Synology’s English user forum commented, the SynoLocker “service” asks for 0.6 Bitcoins to unlock the encrypted files

• News – Synology – Network Attached Storage (NAS)

Report: Sprint abandons bid for T-Mobile because US would block merger | Ars Technica

Sprint owner SoftBank has been talking about buying T-Mobile US for months, but is reportedly abandoning the plan because US regulators would likely object.

AT&T tried to buy T-Mobile in 2011 but gave up in the face of opposition from the Justice Department and Federal Communications Commission. While AT&T had to pay a $4-billion breakup fee, which helped T-Mobile build out its LTE network, Sprint apparently wouldn’t suffer that fate because no deal was ever finalized.

Exclusive: Sprint to Name Brightstar’s Marcelo Claure as CEO | Re/code

Sprint plans to name Marcelo Claure, one of its board members and head of wireless distributor Brightstar, as its new CEO, Re/code has learned from a number of sources.

Japan’s Softbank, which owns a controlling stake in Sprint, also acquired a majority stake in Brightstar last year.

Apple is Making Progress | Jonathan Zdziarski’s Domain

• Shortly after my talk at HOPE/X, citing my paper, “Identifying Backdoors, Attack Points, and Surveillance Mechanisms in iOS Devices”, along with a proof of concept, Apple released Beta 5, and a number of the “high value forensic services” I’d outlined in my paper have now been disabled wirelessly, including the packet sniffer service that got many upset

• Apple’s fixes are clearly still a work in progress, and not all of my security concerns have been addressed yet

• Given that a number of my threat models involved government spying, it feels good to know that Apple has taken my research seriously enough to address these concerns. Keep in mind, the threat model we’re dealing with also includes foreign governments, many of which have long histories of spying on our country’s diplomats.

• Apple would be wise to add additional protections to ensure that sensitive data is protected in cases involving data at rest and physical security. This, too, is achievable with a small amount of effort, and will ensure that Apple is the only entity capable of extracting sensitive, encrypted data from the device. To do this, Apple’s file_relay service, which they claim is for “diagnostics purposes” would need to be closed off, or at least fixed so that it doesn’t bypass the user’s backup password and the encryption it is tied to. Additionally, the house_arrest service would need to be patched so that it doesn’t allow sandbox access while the device is locked, or some other creative approach.

WOULD YOU FUND IT: LIGHTFREQ: The First Genius Light Bulb With HD Audio by LightFreq Inc — Kickstarter

LightFreq, the genius multi-functioning HD audio light bulb that offers an audio system, wake-up mode, phone alerts, intercom and more!

The post Justin Time for Twitch.tv | Tech Talk Today 39 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

A list of the most hackable cars has been released on the eve of a highly anticipated Black Hat presentation, Mozilla developers get hacked, getting started with Linux and why a little video games can be good for kids.

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Least Secure Cars Revealed At Black Hat

Research by two security experts presenting at Black Hat this week has labeled the 2014 Jeep Cherokee, the 2015 Cadillac Escalade and the 2014 Toyota Prius as among the vehicles most vulnerable to hacking because of security holes that can be accessed through a car’s Bluetooth, telematics, or on-board phone applications. The most secure cars include the Dodge Viper, the Audi A8, and the Honda Accord, according to Researchers Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek. Millar and Valasek will reveal the full report on Wednesday, but spoke to Dark Reading today with some preliminary data.

The two security experts didn’t physically test the vehicles in question, but instead used information about the vehicles’ automated capabilities and internal network. “We can’t say for sure we can hack the Jeep and not the Audi,” Valasek told Dark Reading. “But… the radio can always talk to the brakes” because both are on the same network. According to the “Connected Car Cybersecurity” report from ABI Research, there have been “quite a few proof of concepts” demonstrating interception of wireless signals of tire pressure monitoring systems, impairing anti-theft systems, and taking control of self-driving and remote control features through a vehicle’s internal bus, known as controller area network (CAN).

• Researchers to name the most hackable cars at Black Hat – Computerworld

Thousands of Mozilla developers’ e-mail addresses, password hashes exposed | Ars Technica

About 76,000 e-mail addresses and 4,000 password hashes were left on a publicly accessible server for about 30 days beginning June 23, according to a blog post. There is no indication the data was accessed, but Mozilla officials investigating the disclosure can’t rule out the possibility.

The code Mozilla uses for their developer login site is open source and posted on GitHub. It looks like from the code they didn’t key stretch the hash. While the salt keeps things ‘safer’ (no rainbow tables, etc), against a GPU brute-forcing attempt, the fact these are straight hashes means they are a little weak against brute-forcing.

Introduction to Linux | edX

Beginning August 1st, The Linux Foundation, in conjunction with online education giant edX, is offering a free Introduction to Linux course.

This class, first announced in early March, is available for free. That’s not bad for a class that usually runs $2,400!

This massively open online course (MOOC) is being taught by Jerry Cooperstein. Cooperstein is a nuclear astrophysicist who’s been using Linux since 1994 and teaching it for almost that long.

According to Dice, the leading career site for technology and engineering professionals, nine out of ten IT hiring managers are looking for Linux pros.

This class looks at Linux from a very high level. You’ll be able to use Linux distributions from any of the three major Linux families, including Red Hat, with Fedora or CentOS; Debian, including Ubunt or Mint; and SUSE, including openSUSE.

This course will cover the various tools and techniques commonly used by Linux programmers, system administrators and end users to do day-to-day work in Linux.

• Linux Foundation’s free online intro to Linux class opens its doors | ZDNet

Could a Little Video Game Play Be Good for Kids?

Researchers found that kids who played video games for less than one hour a day were more likely to be happy, helpful and emotionally stable than kids who never grab a controller, according to findings published online Aug. 4 in the journal Pediatrics.

More than three hours daily of gaming had the opposite effect, however. Video game junkies were more likely to be moody, unhappy with their life and apt to act out in negative ways.

To examine both the positive and negative effects of gaming, researchers assessed the video game habits and emotional growth of nearly 5,000 British boys and girls aged 10 to 15.

The post BlackHat Carmageddon | Tech Talk Today 38 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.