Helsinki, Finland and Santa Clara, US – August 9th 2012, Digia, the software powerhouse listed on the NASDAQ OMX Helsinki exchange (DIG1V), today announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire Qt software technologies and Qt business from Nokia. Following the acquisition Digia becomes responsible for all the Qt activities formerly carried out by Nokia. These include product development, as well as the commercial and open source licensing and service business. Following the acquisition, Digia plans to quickly enable Qt on Android, iOS and Windows 8 platforms.
Open-source movements butt heads over logo
The gear logo is backed by the Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA), which was formally established earlier this year to promote hardware innovation and unite the fragmented community of hackers and do-it-yourselfers. The gear mark is now being increasingly used on boards and circuits to indicate that the hardware is open-source and designs can be openly shared and modified.
via Open-source movements butt heads over logo.
OSI has now informed OSHWA, which is acting on behalf of the open-source hardware community, that the logo infringes on its trademark.
Debian Now Defaults To Xfce Desktop
The default desktop task has been changed from GNOME to Xfce within the Tasksel Git. While one might assume the change is due to the criticism expressed by many GNOME users since the 3.x series — with some saying it’s losing its relevance on the Linux desktop — the main reason expressed within the Git commit comes down to Xfce being able to fit entirely on the first Debian CD.
Researchers Identify Four BlackBerry Zitmo Variants
Zitmo refers to a version of the Zeus malware that specifically targets mobile devices. Previous Zitmos variants masqueraded as banking security applications or security add-ons to circumvent out-of-band authentication systems used by some financial institutions by intercepting one-time passwords sent via text message and forwarding it to a another cell number that acted as a command-and-control device.
via Researchers Identify Four BlackBerry Zitmo Variants | SecurityWeek.Com.
Collaborating on research is important because the vulnerability doesn’t have to be within BlackBerry’s code to compromise the platform, Stone noted. For example, researchers exploited issues in the open source browser engine Webkit to hack a BlackBerry last year’s CanSecWest Pwn2Own contest. It’s about “protecting the ecosystem,” as one vulnerability identified in one platform can easily exist in another platform, Stone said.
Our Planned Approach to Secure Boot
At the implementation layer, we intend to use the shim loader originally developed by Fedora – it’s a smart solution which avoids several nasty legal issues, and simplifies the certification/signing step considerably. This shim loader’s job is to load grub2 and verify it; this version of grub2 in turn will load kernels signed by a SUSE key only. We are currently considering to provide this functionality with SLE11 SP3 on fresh installations with UEFI Secure Boot present.
The underground economy of social networks
In a new study, Barracuda Labs analyzed a random sampling of more than 70,000 fake Twitter accounts that are being used to sell fake Twitter followers.
via The underground economy of social networks.
This underground economy consists of dealers who create and sell the use of thousands of fake social accounts, and Abusers who buy follows or likes from these fake accounts to boost their perceived popularity, sell advertising based on their now large social audience or conduct other malicious activity.
Content-Centric Networking
CCN directly routes and delivers named pieces of content at the packet level of the network, enabling automatic and application-neutral caching in memory wherever it’s located in the network. The result? Efficient and effective delivery of content wherever and whenever it is needed. Since the architecture enables these caching effects as an automatic side effect of packet delivery, memory can be used without building expensive application-level caching services.
This is What Wall Street’s Terrifying Robot Invasion Looks Like
HFT affects all investors to an extent, because stocks are now priced differently than in the past. The market used to consist mostly of investors analyzing cash flows and balance sheets, trying to calculate a company’s fair value. HFTs, on the other hand, react to movements in stock prices alone. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but since HFTs are responsible for two-thirds of the trading volume, we have the strange situation where they can set the price based on what they perceive others’ perceptions to be.
via This is What Wall Street’s Terrifying Robot Invasion Looks Like | Motherboard.
Could an SRAM Hourglass Save RFID Chips Just in Time?
The clock operates over spans of seconds to minutes after an RFID chip is charged up from an RFID reader or other ambient radio-wave energy. As a result, even after the radio signal is removed, the clock endows the RFID chip with the ability to know when its security keys may be in danger.
via Could an SRAM Hourglass Save RFID Chips Just in Time? – IEEE Spectrum.
Having a clock can be very useful in defending against brute-force attacks that may try to guess the chip’s passwords hundreds or thousands of times per second. A TARDIS-enabled chip—requiring no new hardware and representing fewer than 50 lines of additional code—would receive a power-up from, say, a nearby RFID reader. Instead of wiping the SRAM clean, the device would first read off the state of the SRAM, which would be partially decayed from the last time the chip was powered up. Comparing the percentage of decayed bits to a precompiled table would enable TARDIS to read off the time elapsed since the previous power-up.
NASA – Curiosity Lands on Mars
NASA’s Curiosity rover has landed on Mars! Its descent-stage retrorockets fired, guiding it to the surface. Nylon cords lowered the rover to the ground in the “sky crane” maneuver. When the spacecraft sensed touchdown,…
via NASA – Curiosity Lands on Mars.
From: Curiosity’s Sky Crane Maneuver, Artist’s Concept
The sheer size of the Mars Science Laboratory rover (over one ton, or 900 kilograms) would preclude it from taking advantage of an airbag-assisted landing. Instead, the Mars Science Laboratory will use the sky crane touchdown system, which will be capable of delivering a much larger rover onto the surface. It will place the rover on its wheels, ready to begin its mission after thorough post-landing checkouts.