On the Feasibility of Side-Channel Attacks with Brain-Computer Interfaces

Posted on by

The security risks involved in using consumer-grade BCI devices have never been studied and the impact of malicious software with access to the device is unexplored. We take a first step in studying the security implications of such devices and demonstrate that this upcoming technology could be turned against users to reveal their private and secret information. We use inexpensive electroencephalography (EEG) based BCI devices to test the feasibility of simple, yet effective, attacks. The captured EEG signal could reveal the user’s private informa- tion about, e.g., bank cards, PIN numbers, area of living, the knowledge of the known persons. This is the first attempt to study the security implications of consumer-grade BCI devices. We show that the entropy of the private information is decreased on the average by approximately 15 % – 40 % compared to random guessing attacks.

via On the Feasibility of Side-Channel Attacks with Brain-Computer Interfaces | USENIX.

YouTube Flags Democrats’ Convention Video on Copyright Grounds

Posted on by

On Wednesday morning, a campaign spokesman confirmed there was a “technical error on YouTube that inadvertently triggered a copyright message at the end of the live stream Tuesday night,” adding “We do not expect tonight’s coverage will be affected.”

After this story was published, the video was subsequently marked “private.”

via YouTube Flags Democrats’ Convention Video on Copyright Grounds | Threat Level | Wired.com.

Intel immerses its servers in oil — and they like it!

Posted on by

The idea of immersing servers in oil to keep them cool isn’t entirely new — passionate gamers have been housing their systems in vegetable oil for years. But it’s time to take notice of this trend when Intel starts singing its praises as a potentially revolutionary method for slashing the price of running a data center.

via Intel immerses its servers in oil — and they like it! — Cloud Computing News.

Most servers today follow design principles for optimal airflow, but “we could throw some of those rules out,” he said, and maybe build a better server. The obvious steps are eliminating anything to do with fans, sealing hard drives (or going to solid-state drives) and replacing any organic materials that might leech into the oil. A redesign of the heat sink probably would be in order, as would a rethinking of where things sit on the motherboard.

TSMC plans 450mm wafers by 2018

Posted on by

The 450mm wafers would help solve the problem of rising costs in making advanced chips, allowing TSMC to provide affordable 10 nanometer chips with FinFET transistors for customers, J.K. Wang (王建光), vice president of TSMC’s operation in charge of 300mm factories, told a media briefing arranged by semiconductor industry association SEMI.

via TSMC plans 450mm wafers by 2018 – Taipei Times.

Chipmakers can get 2.5 times more chips from a 450mm wafer than from a 300mm wafer.

Voicemail usage plunging

Posted on by

In data prepared for USA Today, Vonage, an Internet phone company, says the number of voice-mail messages left on user accounts was down 8 percent in July from a year ago.

Checking voice mail seems to be an even a bigger chore than leaving a voice message. Retrieved voicemail fell 14 percent among Vonage users in the same period.

via Voicemail usage plunging – Chicago Sun-Times.

Set Up the Master Boot Record

Posted on by

When setting up the Master Boot Record, you need to enter appropriate partition information. In this example, Grub is in the first partition on the first hard drive, which is (hd0,0) in Grub. Change this to whatever partition Grub is in.

After getting the Grub prompt, type:

root (hd0,0)
setup (hd0)
quit

via Set Up the Master Boot Record.

This has been sitting as draft since August 5 and works in setting the MBR on a hard drive and since things like this can be easily forgotten, it has become a reference.  Even Testdisk couldn’t  write the MBR correctly when I tried to transfer a Fedora14 VM onto a real hard drive.  After setting the MBR and getting it to boot the network and graphic interfaces required manual intervention.  I’m not convinced transferring a virtual image to a physical image is much of a time saver.

Note: Not all installations have grub installed by default.  The command to get the grub prompt is /sbin/grub run as root.

Cambridge offers free online Raspberry Pi course

Posted on by

The University of Cambridge has released a free 12-step online course on building a basic operating system for the Raspberry Pi.

The course, Baking Pi – Operating Systems Development, is aimed at students of 16 and over with some prior programming experience, “although younger readers may still find some of it accessible, particularly with assistance”.

via Cambridge offers free online Raspberry Pi course | News | PC Pro.

The Baking Pi course was compiled by student Alex Chadwick, and is just one of a growing series of tutorials by students working as summer interns at the university.