Could an SRAM Hourglass Save RFID Chips Just in Time?

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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

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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.

Development Release: Damn Small Linux 4.11 RC1

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Nearly four years after the last stable release, the Damn Small Linux distribution is once again being actively developed. Yesterday John Andrews announced the availability of the first release candidate version 4.11: “Here is the first release candidate for Damn Small Linux DSL 4.11. The changes in this release are a step toward making DSL a friendly alternative for older hardware. I’ve fixed some bugs, updated some applications, and replaced others.

via Development Release: Damn Small Linux 4.11 RC1 DistroWatch.com News.

Download here.

E Ink: E Ink Agrees to Buy SiPix Shares

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The combined company will offer a vast portfolio of ePaper products that will allow it to expand its existing markets and diversify into newer applications. E Ink’s ePaper offers the best digital reading experience. It is easier on the eyes, consumes a fraction of the power compared to traditional displays. It is readable in sunlight, lightweight, rugged and field proven with over 50 million ePaper displays being used worldwide.

via E Ink: E Ink Agrees to Buy SiPix Shares.

Apple patent filing looks a lot like Microsoft Surface

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A patent application submitted by Apple last year — and made public just this morning — describes a flexible, magnetically attached cover for a tablet device. It’s similar to Apple’s existing smart cover for the iPad, except that this cover can also function as an input and display device. And one of the concepts described by Apple in the patent filing is an idea for using the cover as a keyboard.

The end result looks very similar to the signature feature of Microsoft’s Surface tablet computer.

via Apple patent filing looks a lot like Microsoft Surface – GeekWire.

How graphics card supercomputers could help us map the universe

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Over three decades video cards have transformed computer graphics from monochrome line drawings to near photo realistic renderings.

But the processing power of the GPU is increasingly being used to tame the huge sums of data generated by modern industry and science. And now a project to build the world’s largest telescope is considering using a GPU cluster to stitch together more than an exabyte of data each day.

via How graphics card supercomputers could help us map the universe | TechRepublic.

Sex, Lies and Cyber-crime Surveys

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Much of the information we have on cyber-crime losses is derived from surveys. We examine some of the difficulties of forming an accurate estimate by survey. First, losses are extremely concentrated, so that representative sampling of the population does not give representative sampling of the losses. Second, losses are based on unverified self-reported numbers. Not only is it possible for a single outlier to distort the result, we find evidence that most surveys are dominated by a minority of responses in the upper tail (i.e., a majority of the estimate is coming from as few as one or two responses). Finally, the fact that losses are confined to a small segment of the population magnifies the difficulties of refusal rate and small sample sizes. Far from being broadly-based estimates of losses across the population, the cyber-crime estimates that we have appear to be largely the answers of a handful of people extrapolated to the whole population. A single individual who claims $50,000 losses, in an N=1000 person survey, is all it takes to generate a $10 billion loss over the population. One unverified claim of $7,500 in phishing losses translates into $1.5 billion.

via Sex, Lies and Cyber-crime Surveys – Microsoft Research.

hype-free: Parsing pcap files with Perl

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Recently I was reading the blogpost on the BrekingPoint labs log about parsing pcap files with Perl and I immediately said to myself: it is impossible that there isn’t a module on CPAN, because Perl is great. Turns out I was right, there is Net::TcpDumpLog which can be combined with the NetPacket family of modules to parse the higher level protocols. Because example code is rather sparse on the POD pages of the respective modules, here is a small example to illustrate their use:

via hype-free: Parsing pcap files with Perl.

Over 3 Million Americans Now on IPv6

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In the U.S. the latest numbers for IPv6 are impressive. APNIC’s global survey as of August 1st has IPv6 penetration in the U.S at 1.35 percent. That translates into an estimated IPv6 user base of 3.3 million users, the largest base of IPv6 users in the world.

via Over 3 Million Americans Now on IPv6.

“There are Tier 1 ISPs out there that refuse to go and get either transit or peering with other ISPs,” Nygren said. “So there are places on the IPv6 Internet, in particular in parts of Europe, where there is no path between point A and B.”