Court says an attacker was only required to send malformed UDP packets to a target’s Steam client, which would have triggered the bug and allowed him to run malicious code on the target’s PC.
Source: Valve Patches Security Bug That Existed in Steam Client for the Past Ten Years
This plan rests on Richard Jenkins, an engineer, sailor, and adventurer who invented the saildrone more or less by accident. Jenkins doesn’t act like one of Silicon Valley’s world-conquering capitalist nerds. For starters, he tends to skip the usual platitudes about disruption to focus on sailing, beer, and sailing with beer. “What’s the definition of a sailor?” he asks while launching one of the drones off the Alameda dock. “A primitive organism for turning beer into urine.”
Source: This Man Is Building an Armada of Saildrones to Conquer the Ocean – Bloomberg
“On default, Alexa ends the sessions after each duration… we were able to build in a feature that kept the session going [so Alexa would continue listening]. We also wanted to make sure that the user is not prompted and that Alexa is still listening without re-prompts,” Erez Yalon, manager of Application Security Research at Checkmarx, told Threatpost.
When a user grants a website access to their social media profile, they are not only trusting that website, but also third parties embedded on that site” writes Englehardt. This chart shows that what some trackers are pulling from users. Freedom To Tinker warned OnAudience about another security issue recently, leading it to stop collecting user info.
Source: Login With Facebook data hijacked by JavaScript trackers | TechCrunch
Don’t use Facebook.
With the removal of old architecture and other bits of tidying up, with v4.17 RC1 there were more lines of code removed than added: something described as “probably a first. Ever. In the history of the universe. Or at least kernel releases.”
Source: Linus Torvalds says Linux kernel v5.0 ‘should be meaningless’
Linus describes Secure Boot as being “pushed in your face by people with an agenda.” But his real problem is that Secure Boot would then imply Kernel Lockdown mode.
Source: Torvalds Expresses Concerns Over Current “Kernel Lockdown” Approach – Phoronix
“The National and Commercial Space Program Act requires a commercial remote sensing license for companies having the capacity to take an image of Earth while on orbit,” NOAA said in a statement last week. “Now that launch companies are putting video cameras on stage 2 rockets that reach an on-orbit status, all such launches will be held to the requirements of the law and its conditions.”
What’s odd is that the law in question has been on the books in its current form since at least 2010. SpaceX has been broadcasting video back to Earth from orbit for years without issue or, apparently, license.
Source: SpaceX Falcon 9 camera blackout still seems strange – CNET
In 2018, streaming companies know with precision how many people are listening to what song. Databases of artists and how much they’re being owed are being updated regularly. And yet, in this unprecedented age of information and automation, it’s only become more difficult and more complicated to get money to the people who are owed it. Everywhere else the digital revolution is supposed to be streamlining old processes; when it comes to music, the logistics have only gotten more convoluted.
Source: A $1.6 billion Spotify lawsuit is based on a law made for player pianos – The Verge
This also appears to be happening with Xfinity’s protected browsing feature. A reader alerted us that, when he tried to access TorrentFreak, access was denied stating that a “suspicious” site was ahead.
Source: Comcast’s Protected Browsing Blocks TorrentFreak as “Suspicious” Site – TorrentFreak
The Trump administration’s proposed 2019 budget says the U.S. will end its funding of the International Space Station by 2025. The news led to speculation the goal is to simply sell off the ISS to private enterprise. But experts say it’s not so simple.
Source: Why selling off the International Space Station would be a tricky mission for the U.S.
“There is a democratization of space going on … that you could never imagine 10 years ago.”