anr blogja

Computers Can Be Hacked Using High-Frequency Sound

Using the microphones and speakers that come standard in many of today's laptop computers and mobile devices, hackers can secretly transmit and receive data using high-frequency audio signals that are mostly inaudible to human ears, a new study shows.

Michael Hanspach and Michael Goetz, researchers at Germany's Fraunhofer Institute for Communication, Information Processing, and Ergonomics, recently performed a proof-of-concept experiment that showed that "covert acoustical networking," a technique which had been hypothesized but considered improbable by most experts, is indeed possible.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=computers-can-be-hacke…
...
In their experiments, Hanspach and Goetz were able to transmit small packets of data between two air-gapped Lenovo business laptops separated by distances of up to about 65 feet (20 meters). Moreover, by chaining additional devices that picked up the audio signal and repeated it to other nearby devices, the researchers were able to create a "mesh network" that relayed the data across much greater distances. Importantly, the researchers were able to emit and record the ultrasonic and near-ultrasonic frequencies, which cannot be detected by humans, using the sound processor, speakers and microphone that came standard with the laptops.

.bit domain/Namecoin

.bit is a domain that was created outside of the most commonly used domain name system of the Internet and is not sanctioned by ICANN. The .bit domain is served via the Namecoin infrastructure, which acts as an alternative, decentralized domain name system.[1][2][3][4]
The current number of .bit domains is 104489.
.bit is a domain that was created outside of the most commonly used domain name system of the Internet and is not sanctioned by ICANN. The .bit domain is served via the Namecoin infrastructure, which acts as an alternative, decentralized domain name system.[1][2][3][4]
The current number of .bit domains is 104489.

Google Code-in, a global online contest for pre-university students (13-17 years old)

For the next seven weeks students from around the world will be able to choose from an extensive list of tasks created by 10 open source projects. Some tasks require coding in a variety of programming languages, creating documentation, doing marketing outreach or working on user interfaces.

Participants earn points for each task they successfully complete to win T-shirts and certificates. At the end of the contest, 20 students will be selected as grand prize winners and flown to Google’s Mountain View, California headquarters. Winners will receive a trip to San Francisco, a tour of the Googleplex and a chance to meet with Google engineers.
bejelentes: http://googleblog.blogspot.hu/2013/11/from-your-cs-class-to-real-world-…
a verseny oldala: http://www.google-melange.com/gci/homepage/google/gci2013
List of organizations accepted into Google Code-in 2013: http://www.google-melange.com/gci/accepted_orgs/google/gci2013

IT'S ALIVE! IT'S ALIVE! Google's secretive Omega tech just like LIVING thing

One of Google's most advanced data center systems behaves more like a living thing than a tightly controlled provisioning system. This has huge implications for how large clusters of IT resources are going to be managed in the future.
...
"Strict enforcement of [cluster-wide] behaviors can be achieved with centralized control, but it is also possible to rely on emergent behaviors to approximate the desired behavior," Google wrote in an academic paper [PDF] that evaluated the performance of Omega against other systems.

By handing off job scheduling and management to Omega and Borg, Google has figured out a way to get the best performance out of its data centers, but this comes with the cost of increased randomness at scale.

The Navy’s newest warship is powered by Linux

The USS Zumwalt will be a floating data center—armed with missiles and robot guns.
a kepekert erdemes kattintani: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/10/the-navys-newest-…
When the USS Zumwalt (DDG 1000) puts to sea later this year, it will be different from any other ship in the Navy's fleet in many ways. The $3.5 billon ship is designed for stealth, survivability, and firepower, and it's packed with advanced technology. And at the heart of its operations is a virtual data center powered by off-the-shelf server hardware, various flavors of Linux, and over 6 million lines of software code.
...
the operations center of the Zumwalt will have more in common with the fictional starship USS Enterprise's bridge than it does with the combat information centers of the ships I went to sea on. Every console on the Zumwalt will be equipped with touch screens and software capable of taking on the needs of any operator on duty, and big screens on the forward bulkhead will display tactical plots of sea, air, and land.

Watch 10 seconds of high-frequency stock trading in super slow motion

It's a video showing a mere 10 seconds worth of trade activity for BlackBerry on October 2 — and the whole thing runs for over three-and-a-half very busy minutes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRUCWIosL_k
Earlier this week, amid news of more-than-expected Blackberry losses and the potential for a buy-out (namely by FairFax Financial), the troubled smartphone maker's stock value warbled and dropped down to $7.92 — more than a full dollar below what was anticipated. This generated a flurry of activity — and as is typical these days, it all went down so very, very fast; computers trade on the order of milliseconds.
http://io9.com/watch-10-seconds-of-high-frequency-stock-trading-in-sup-…

The Church of Google

We at the Church of Google believe the search engine Google is the closest humankind has ever come to directly experiencing an actual God (as typically defined). We believe there is much more evidence in favour of Google's divinity than there is for the divinity of other more traditional gods.

We reject supernatural gods on the notion they are not scientifically provable. Thus, Googlists believe Google should rightfully be given the title of "God", as She exhibits a great many of the characteristics traditionally associated with such Deities in a scientifically provable manner.

We have compiled a list of nine proofs which definitively prove Google is the closest thing to a "god" human beings have ever directly experienced.
Proof Google Is God:
http://www.thechurchofgoogle.org/Scripture/Proof_Google_Is_God.html

The Poisonous Employee-Ranking System That Helps Explain Microsoft’s Decline

At the center of the cultural problems was a management system called “stack ranking.” Every current and former Microsoft employee I interviewed—every one—cited stack ranking as the most destructive process inside of Microsoft, something that drove out untold numbers of employees. The system—also referred to as “the performance model,” “the bell curve,” or just “the employee review”—has, with certain variations over the years, worked like this: every unit was forced to declare a certain percentage of employees as top performers, then good performers, then average, then below average, then poor. …
For that reason, executives said, a lot of Microsoft superstars did everything they could to avoid working alongside other top-notch developers, out of fear that they would be hurt in the rankings. And the reviews had real-world consequences: those at the top received bonuses and promotions; those at the bottom usually received no cash or were shown the door. …
“The behavior this engenders, people do everything they can to stay out of the bottom bucket,” one Microsoft engineer said. “People responsible for features will openly sabotage other people’s efforts. One of the most valuable things I learned was to give the appearance of being courteous while withholding just enough information from colleagues to ensure they didn’t get ahead of me on the rankings.” Worse, because the reviews came every six months, employees and their supervisors—who were also ranked—focused on their short-term performance, rather than on longer efforts to innovate. …

German Government Warns Key Entities Not To Use Windows 8

According to leaked internal documents from the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) that Die Zeit obtained, IT experts figured out that Windows 8, the touch-screen enabled, super-duper, but sales-challenged Microsoft operating system is outright dangerous for data security. It allows Microsoft to control the computer remotely through a built-in backdoor. Keys to that backdoor are likely accessible to the NSA – and in an unintended ironic twist, perhaps even to the Chinese.

The backdoor is called “Trusted Computing,” developed and promoted by the Trusted Computing Group, founded a decade ago by the all-American tech companies AMD, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, and Wave Systems. Its core element is a chip, the Trusted Platform Module (TPM), and an operating system designed for it, such as Windows 8. Trusted Computing Group has developed the specifications of how the chip and operating systems work together.

Android has 80% of the smartphone market and Apple has 14%

Global smartphone shipments grew 47 percent to hit 230 million devices in the second quarter of 2013, according to a new report from research firm Strategy Analytics. And Android captured record market share of 80 percent. Apple iOS reached 14 percent global smartphone share in the quarter.

Microsoft has 4%.

There will likely a bit over 1 billion smartphones for 2013.
http://venturebeat.com/2013/08/01/android-reaches-massive-80-market-sha…

Microsoft reveals Surface tablet sales figures

Microsoft has revealed that sales of its Surface tablets totalled $853m (£562m) in their first eight months on sale.

The figure suggests the company may struggle to make a profit out of the product.

It has booked a $900m write-down on the value of unsold Surface RT stock after cutting the device's price.

Its latest financial filing also notes that its advertising budget swelled to promote the machines.

The filing says the Windows Division's sales and marketing expenses were $843m higher in the firm's last financial year than the previous one because of the launch of the Surface tablets and new Windows operating systems.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23520010

FBI and NSA put heat on Web firms for SSL master encryption keys

Whether the FBI and NSA have the legal authority to obtain the master keys that companies use for Web encryption remains an open question, but it hasn't stopped the U.S. government from trying.
...
"The government is definitely demanding SSL keys from providers," said one person who has responded to government attempts to obtain encryption keys. The source spoke with CNET on condition of anonymity.
The person said that large Internet companies have resisted the requests on the grounds that they go beyond what the law permits, but voiced concern that smaller companies without well-staffed legal departments might be less willing to put up a fight. "I believe the government is beating up on the little guys," the person said. "The government's view is that anything we can think of, we can compel you to do."
...
One of the leaked PRISM slides recommends that NSA analysts collect communications "upstream" of data centers operated by Apple, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, and other Internet companies. That procedure relies on a FISA order requiring backbone providers to aid in "collection of communications on fiber cables and infrastructure as data flows past."
Mark Klein, who worked as an AT&T technician for over 22 years, disclosed in 2006 (PDF) that he met with NSA officials and witnessed domestic Internet traffic being "diverted" through a "splitter cabinet" to secure room 641A in one of the company's San Francisco facilities. Only NSA-cleared technicians were allowed to work on equipment in the SG3 secure room, Klein said, adding that he was told similar fiber taps existed in other major cities.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57595202-38/feds-put-heat-on-web-firm…

Snowden leak: Microsoft added Outlook.com backdoor

NSA praises Redmond for 'collaborative teamwork'
documents from the NSA's Special Source Operations (SSO) division covering Microsoft's involvement in allowing backdoor access to its software to the NSA and others.

Documents seen by The Guardian detail how the NSA became concerned when Microsoft started testing Outlook.com, and asked for access. In five months Microsoft and the FBI created a workaround that gives the NSA access to encrypted chats on Outlook.com. The system went live in December last year – two months before Outlook.com's commercial launch.

Those Outlook users not enabling encryption get their data slurped as a matter of course, the documents show. "For Prism collection against Hotmail, Live, and Outlook.com emails will be unaffected because Prism collects this data prior to encryption," an NSA newsletter states.

HP Keeps Installing Secret Backdoors in Enterprise Storage

For the second time in a month, Hewlett-Packard has been forced to admit it built secret backdoors into its enterprise storage products.
The admission, in a security bulletin posted July 9, confirms reports from the blogger Technion, who flagged the security issue in HP’s StoreOnce systems in June, before finding more backdoors in other HP storage and SAN products.
The most recent statement from HP, following another warning from Technion, admitted that “all HP StoreVirtual Storage systems are equipped with a mechanism that allows HP support to access the underlying operating system if permission and access is provided by the customer.”
While HP describes the backdoors as being usable only with permission of the customer, that restriction is part of HP’s own customer-service rules—not a limitation built in to limit use of backdoors. The entry points consist of a hidden administrator account with root access to StoreVirtual systems and software, and a separate copy of the LeftHand OS, the software that runs HP’s StoreVirtual and HP P4000 products.
http://slashdot.org/topic/datacenter/hp-keeps-installing-secret-backdoo…

How Can Any Company Ever Trust Microsoft Again?

Skype, bought by Microsoft in May 2011. In 2012, there were discussions about whether Microsoft had changed Skype's architecture in order to make snooping easier (the company even had a patent on the idea.) The recent leaks seems to confirm that those fears were well founded, as Slate points out:

There were many striking details in the Washington Post’s scoop about PRISM and its capabilities, but one part in particular stood out to me. The Post, citing a top-secret NSA PowerPoint slide, wrote that the agency has a specific “User’s Guide for PRISM Skype Collection” that outlines how it can eavesdrop on Skype “when one end of the call is a conventional telephone and for any combination of 'audio, video, chat, and file transfers' when Skype users connect by computer alone.”

China Tianhe-2 Supercomputer will have over 55 petaflops this month

Dr. Jack Dongarra from Oak Ridge National Lab, one of the founders of the Top500, was on hand for the event in China and shared a draft document that offers deep detail on the full scope of the Tianhe-2, which will, barring any completely unexpected surprises, far surpass the Cray-built Titan.

The 16,000-node Inspur-built Tianhe-2 is based on Ivy Bridge (32,000 sockets) and 48,000 Xeon Phi boards, meaning a total of 3,120,000 cores. Each of the nodes sports 2 Ivy Bridge sockets and 3 Phi boards.

According to Dongarra (Report of his visit to the National University for Defense Technology Changsha, China), there are some new and notable LINPACK results:

Beaglebone Black 1 Ghz computer with many interfaces for $45


BeagleBone Black was announced last week by BeagleBoard.org, a small group of engineers interested in creating powerful, open and embedded devices. The credit card sized computer runs on Linux and is designed to be an open hardware and software development platform that makes it quick and easy to build systems.

BeagleBone Black includes all the necessary components to connect a display, keyboard and network. It's based on production-ready hardware and software. All of the components—including TI’s 1-GHz Sitara AM335x processor—are commercially available right now.

Mozilla making the Web a gaming platform with Unreal 3 engine in a browser

Mozilla wants the Web to be a platform that's fit for any purpose. That's why the company is investing in Firefox OS—to fight back against the proliferation of platform-specific smartphone apps—and it's why the company has been working on WebGL, in order to bring 3D graphics to the browser, Emscripten, a tool for compiling C++ applications into JavaScript, and asm.js, a high performance subset of JavaScript.

The organization doesn't just want simple games and apps in the browser, however. It wants the browser to be capable of delivering high-end gaming experiences. At GDC today, the company announced that it has been working with Epic Games to port the Unreal 3 engine to the Web.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/03/mozilla-making-th…