Author Archives: mea

How IoT hackers turned a university’s network against itself

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While this incident represents one of the first of its kind, the bad news is this form of attack is only going to become more common as more and more everyday items get connected to the internet, providing hackers with greater numbers of potential zombie devices.”

The reason behind it is the issue of default credentials for wireless devices. This is going to bring billions of devices into the fold by 2020, which is only three years away. Whenever it is, there’s going to be so many of these things used by people with very limited understanding of what they are,” says Dine.

Source: How IoT hackers turned a university’s network against itself | ZDNet

The network that IoT devices must use should be isolated and secured by a firewall.  This isn’t that difficult to do.

Microsoft Azure now offers patent troll IP protection

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Microsoft quotes a report from Boston consulting group which estimates a 22% rise in IP lawsuits relating to cloud products over the last five years in the U.S. alone. It also observes that non-practicing entities have increased their spending on cloud patents by 35% over the same period of time.

Source: Microsoft Azure now offers patent troll IP protection

How to Spot Ingenico Self-Checkout Skimmers

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The overlay skimming devices pictured here include their own tiny magnetic read heads to snarf card data from the magnetic stripe when customers swipe their cards. Consequently, those tiny readers often interfere with the legitimate magnetic card reader on the underlying device, meaning compromised self-checkout lines may move a bit slower than others.

Source: How to Spot Ingenico Self-Checkout Skimmers — Krebs on Security

Math and the Best Life

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If mathematics is a medium for human flourishing, it stands to reason that everyone should have a chance to participate in it. But in his talk Su identified what he views as structural barriers in the mathematical community that dictate who gets the opportunity to succeed in the field — from the requirements attached to graduate school admissions to implicit assumptions about who looks the part of a budding mathematician.

Source: Math and the Best Life — an Interview With Francis Su | Quanta Magazine

Microsoft shows Windows 10 market share growing steadily, but the numbers are fake

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That means that when Microsoft showed Windows 10 overtaking Windows 7, this apparently happened in August last year. Most other analysts don’t see that seismic shift happening globally until December 2017, at the earliest.

Source: Microsoft shows Windows 10 market share growing steadily, but the numbers are fake [Updated]

Tesla’s Battery Revolution Just Reached Critical Mass

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But prices for lithium-ion batteries have fallen fast—by almost half just since 2014. Electric cars are largely responsible, increasing demand and requiring a new scale of manufacturing for the same battery cells used in grid storage. California is mandating that its utilities begin testing batteries by adding more than 1.32 gigawatts by 2020. For context, consider this: In 2016, the global market for storage was less than a gigawatt.

Source: Tesla’s Battery Revolution Just Reached Critical Mass – Bloomberg

CMU AI Is Tough Poker Player

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Libratus was developed by Computer Science Professor Tuomas Sandholm and his Ph.D. student, Noam Brown. Libratus is being used in this contest to play poker, an imperfect information game that requires the AI to bluff and correctly interpret misleading information to win. Ultimately programs like Libratus also could be used to negotiate business deals, set military strategy or plan a course of medical treatment — all cases that involve complicated decisions based on imperfect information.

Source: CMU AI Is Tough Poker Player | Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science

Tesla’s Autopilot Vindicated With 40% Drop in Crashes

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It turns out that, according to the data Tesla gave investigators, installing Autopilot prevents crashes—by an astonishing 40 percent.

Source: Tesla’s Autopilot Vindicated With 40% Drop in Crashes – Bloomberg

In October, the company began shipping new Autopilot hardware with enhanced sensors that it says will eventually enable fully autonomous driving. Every car now ships with eight cameras and a dozen sensors to give 360-degree visibility. The company is rolling out new features that make use of the sensor suite in regular over-the-air updates.

Krebs pinpoints the likely author of the Mirai botnet

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The full story is admittedly lengthy, clocking in at over 8000 words, but worth the time to understand how botnet wranglers make money siccing their zombie device armies on unsuspecting targets. The sources that pointed Krebs to Anna Senpai’s identity were involved in using botnets on behalf of shadowy clients, unleashing them on security companies protecting lucrative Minecraft servers that host thousands of players. When their online gaming is obstructed — say, by repeated and annoying DDoS attacks — players leave, giving servers an incentive to jump ship to whichever security provider can ensure protection…in this case, providers that arranged for the botnet attacks in the first place.

Source: Krebs pinpoints the likely author of the Mirai botnet

Blockchain Tech Could Save Banks $12 Billion A Year

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By replacing independent, fragmented databases with a distributed system, banks can reduce data reconciliation costs while also improving data quality and ensuring data security.

Source: Blockchain Tech Could Save Banks $12 Billion A Year

It has become increasingly obvious in recent months that blockchain will be key to the future of the banking industry, with the majority of banks expected to adopt the technology within the next three years.