Category Archives: Technical

General Technical information

Welcome to Hive!

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Hive is a data warehouse system for Hadoop that facilitates easy data summarization, ad-hoc queries, and the analysis of large datasets stored in Hadoop compatible file systems. Hive provides a mechanism to project structure onto this data and query the data using a SQL-like language called HiveQL. At the same time this language also allows traditional map/reduce programmers to plug in their custom mappers and reducers when it is inconvenient or inefficient to express this logic in HiveQL

via Welcome to Hive!.

Ebooks Made of YouTube Comments Invade Amazon Kindle Store

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A pair of artist-coders have unleashed a small army of bots designed to flood the Kindle e-book store with texts comprised entirely of YouTube comments. According to the artists, even they have no idea how many books their autonomous bots are posting to the store.

via Ebooks Made of YouTube Comments Invade Amazon Kindle Store – Technology Review.

“The KINDLE’VOKE machinary is based on three major parts. (1) The “Sucker” a clever suction apparatus to gather comments from Youtube. (2) the “Ghost Writer’s Table”: the book compiler that handles generation of books content, book covers, authors at the same time. (3) The “Amazon Kindle Scatter Bots” that make the brand new digital literature available for all of us.

European ISPs Lobby ITU Against Net Neutrality

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ETNO’s submission to the ITU sets out a difference between “end to end quality of service delivery” and “best-effort delivery”, and says operators should get “fair compensation”,  concluding that “nothing shall preclude” commercial agreements based on differentiated service.

Net Neutrality advocates say charging for services would allow providers to kill off competitors that run on top of their networks, like VoIP services such as Skype that operate over networks and compete with telephone services. The question also raises fears of Internet taxes.

via European ISPs Lobby ITU Against Net Neutrality | | TechWeekEurope UKTechWeekEurope UK.

Microsoft Certificate Was Used to Sign “Flame” Malware

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Microsoft certification authority signing certificates added to the Untrusted Certificate StoreWhile these security issues are not Flame-specific, and could be used in other forms of unrelated malware, Microsoft was able to identify components of the Flame malware that had been signed with a certificate that ultimately chained up to the Microsoft Root Authority.

via Microsoft Certificate Was Used to Sign “Flame” Malware | SecurityWeek.Com.

Microsoft did not say what algorithm was exploited in order to generate the rogue certificates, though SecurityWeek did reach out to Microsoft for comment and we will update the story if a response is recieved.

US warns users of new Citadel ransomware hit

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This variation, called Reveton, lures the victim to a drive-by download website, at which time the ransomware is installed on the user’s computer, says the U.S. Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). Once installed, the computer freezes and a screen is displayed warning the user they have violated United States Federal Law. The crimeware declares the user’s IP address was identified by the Computer Crime & Intellectual Property Section as visiting child pornography and other illegal content.

via US warns users of new Citadel ransomware hit.

GNU IceCat

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GNU IceCat, formerly known as GNU IceWeasel,[3] is a free software rebranding of the Mozilla Firefox web browser distributed by the GNU Project. It is compatible with both the GNU/Linux and Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5 operating systems.The GNU Project keeps IceCat in synchronization with upstream development of Firefox while removing all trademarked artwork. It also maintains a large list of free software plugins and add-ons, and includes a few security features not found in the mainline Firefox browser.

via GNU IceCat – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Return of the Vacuum Tube

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The new device is a cross between today’s transistors and the vacuum tubes of yesteryear. It’s small and easily manufactured, but also fast and radiation-proof. Meyyappan, who co-developed the “nano vacuum tube,” says it is created by etching a tiny cavity in phosphorous-doped silicon. The cavity is bordered by three electrodes: a source, a gate, and a drain. The source and drain are separated by just 150 nanometers, while the gate sits on top. Electrons are emitted from the source thanks to a voltage applied across it and the drain, while the gate controls the electron flow across the cavity. In their paper published online today in Applied Physics Letters, Meyyappan and colleagues estimate that their nano vacuum tube operates at frequencies up to 0.46 terahertz—some 10 times faster than the best silicon transistors.

Return of the Vacuum Tube – ScienceNOW.

A closer look into the RSA SecureID software token

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Widespread use of smart phones by employees to perform work related activities has introduced the idea of using these devices as an authentication token. As an example of such attempts, RSA SecureID software tokens are available for iPhone, Nokia and the Windows platforms. Obviously, mobile phones would not be able to provide the level of tamper-resistance that hardware tokens would, but I was interested to know how easy/hard it could be for a potential attacker to clone RSA SecureID software tokens. I used the Windows version of the RSA SecurID Software Token for Microsoft Windows version 4.10 for my analysis and discovered the following issues:

via extern blog SensePost;.

New $74 Android mini computer is slightly larger than a thumb drive

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The small computer has an AllWinner A10 single-core 1.5GHz ARM CPU, a Mali 400 GPU, and 512MB of RAM. An HDMI port on the exterior allows users to plug the computer into a television. It outputs at 1080p and is said to be capable of playing high-definition video.

The device also has a full-sized USB port with host support for input devices, a conventional micro-USB port, a microSD slot, and an internal 802.11 b/g WiFi antenna. The computer can boot from a microSD card and is capable of running Android 4.0 and other ARM-compatible Linux platforms.

via New $74 Android mini computer is slightly larger than a thumb drive | Ars Technica.