Thanks to , we know that the National Security Agency is listening. But what if we spoke in a language we could understand but they couldn’t? What if we wrote in a typeface we could read but would look like gibberish to the NSA’s massive supercomputers? That’s the puzzle Sang Mun set out to solve. During his two years in the Sourth Korean military, Mun worked as a contractor for the NSA, extracting information from intelligence intercepts. He’s also a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design. So Mung designed a typeface that can be deciphered by humans, but not by the optical character recognition software employed by spy agencies to rapidly scan billions of documents as they fly across the InterWebs. The typeface, called , inserts artifacts and extraneous bits of information that our brains can easily filter out, but machines can’t (at least, not yet). Some versions of ZXX can be scanned by OCR, some can’t. For example, the text at the top of the graphic at the left is composed in ZXX Combination and not computer readable. The text immediately below is written in ZXX Bold, which can be read by machines and humans alike.
The underground economy that sells fake Twitter and other social media accounts is now so large that is it easily making millions of dollars for the leading abusers, an updated study by Barracuda Networks has found. The firm has made a speciality of researching the burgeoning economy that now creates and markets a number of different fake social media accounts, including Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, and even the much-ignored Google+, but it is Twitter that is now the core of this industry. As with the established click-fraud scams, the con is made interesting by the huge currency the Internet places on followers, fans, connections, and views, all of which now have a price attached to them. For its from a number of sources before analysing who was selling (the dealers) and buying (the abusers), and the special fake accounts through which the market sells its wares.
Microsoft's monthly patch release for July will cover seven security issues, six of which could be remotely exploited by an attacker. The company publishes an advisory in advance of its patch date, which is the second Tuesday of the month, so administrators knows what products will be affected. It does not describe the vulnerabilities, however, until the security fixes are released. The are in the Windows OS, .NET Framework, Silverlight, Office, Visual Studio, Lync, and Internet Explorer (IE). A seventh bulletin, ranked as "important," affects Microsoft's Windows Defender security software. The most important bulletin addresses IE, Wolfgang Kandek, CTO for Qualys. It affects IE versions six through 10 on Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, Server 2003, Server 2008, and RT.
Lockheed Martin, BT, and BAE Systems are among a group of defense and security companies that have pledged to support the U.K. government in bolstering the security of the country against sophisticated cyber attacks. By pooling their experience of operating under the so-called Defense Cyber Protection Partnership (DCPP) says the alliance will identify and implement actions that have a real impact on the cyber defenses of the members of the partnership and the U.K. defense sector as a whole. The DCPP model is intended to lead the way in industry collaboration and action on cyber security and to act as a template which can then be followed by commercial sectors to improve resilience across U.K. industry. "I'm absolutely delighted by the level of commitment shown by the participating companies in helping us to build our national resilience against cyber attack, and I look forward to more of our key contractors coming on board," said Minister for Defense Equipment, Support and Technology Philip Dunne.
Venezuela's president Nicolas Maduro has offered to give asylum to Edward Snowden, the former contractor of the National Security Agency who about the agency's surveillance programs. Maduro said in a on Friday that his country would give "humanitarian asylum." Neighboring Nicaragua has also said it is considering offering Snowden asylum if circumstances permit, according to . But there are questions as to how he will get to Venezuela. Earlier this week, a plane carrying Evo Morales, president of Bolivia, was denied permission to enter airspace over some European countries as it was returning to Bolivia from Moscow. The countries had apparently been informed that Snowden was on board and their refusal to handle the aircraft sparked protests in Bolivia and the strong complaints from the Bolivian government.
The founder of an eavesdropping-resistant instant messaging application called Cryptocat has apologized over a now-fixed bug that made some types of messages more vulnerable to snooping. which runs inside a web browser, is an open-source application intended to provide users with a high degree of security by using encryption to scramble messages. But Cryptocat warns that users should still be very cautious with communications and not to trust their life with the application. The vulnerability, found by Steve Thomas, affected group chats and not private conversations, said Nadim Kobeissi, in an interview from Germany Friday. The encryption keys used to encode those conversations were too short, which in theory made it easier for an attacker to decrypt and read conversations. The error was the result of an oversight spotted by Thomas, Kobeissi said. The encrypted conversations were still carried over SSL (Secure Sockets Layers), another overlay of encryption. But if an attacker broke the SSL encryption and had the underlying encrypted chats, "it would be significantly easier to crack" using brute-force techniques, he said.
A court in Pakistan has ordered a continuation of the block on YouTube in the country, after the government argued that a removal of the ban would have implications on law and order in the country. YouTube was over a controversial video clip, called "Innocence of Muslims," which mocked Prophet Muhammad. The country's telecom regulator said it was blocking the entire site as it was not able to separately block individual URLs (uniform resource locators) linking to copies of the video. The plaintiff, Bytes For All, Pakistan, has argued that the PTA has Internet filtering technology that is already used to selectively filter Internet content, said Shahzad Ahmad, country director, of the civil rights group on Friday. A report released in June by Citizen Lab, based at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, , for example, that Pakistan is actively filtering content, with Netsweeper filtering devices actively used to censor content on an ISP-wide level in Pakistan. Bytes for All had asked the court for an interim order unblocking YouTube. "We wanted the government to go ahead and block the 700 to 800 URLs with the blasphemous content, and remove the block on the rest of the site," Ahmad said. He alleged that the government is intent on continuing to block YouTube as part of its overall plan to control Internet access in the country. The YouTube issue is part of a broader petition by Bytes For All against Internet censorship in the country.
Several members of the Icelandic Parliament introduced a bill Thursday that seeks to grant Icelandic citizenship to U.S. National Security Agency document leaker Edward Snowden, but the bill won't be discussed until September. On Thursday, Snowden formally filed a request for citizenship to the Icelandic Parliament, according to Birgitta Jónsdóttir, member of the Icelandic Parliament for the Icelandic Pirate Party. Snowden, who almost two weeks ago. With assistance from a legal advisor to WikiLeaks, Snowden has from more than 20 countries, including Iceland, but none of the requests have been granted so far. Some countries have already rejected the requests on different grounds, including the fact that their laws require asylum requests to be made on their soil.
A European Union team will arrive in Washington, D.C. on Monday to assess how the U.S. is using data it receives from the E.U. As part of a scheduled review, experts from the European Commission's home affairs department will conduct an examination of the Passenger Name Record (PNR) deal and the Terrorist Finance Tracking Programme (TFTP). The European Parliament gave its consent Thursday to the possibility of suspending the two data-sharing deals following allegations that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) bugged E.U. offices in New York and Washington. The NSA's activities have come under the spotlight following of telecommunications metadata and its Prism program to collect data from a broad range of Internet services. Parliament's resolution, which was approved by 483 votes to 98 with 65 abstentions, said that the European Commission, the Council of Ministers, and E.U. member states should consider "all levers at their disposal" in negotiations with the U.S., including suspending the current PNR and TFTP arrangements.
The U.K. Information Commissioners Office has ordered Google to change the privacy policy it to make it more informative for users. If Google does not change its policy to comply with the U.K. Data Protection Act by September 20, it could face formal enforcement action, the ICO said in on Thursday. ICO can issue monetary penalties of up to $752,000 for serious breaches of the Data Protection Act. ICO has written to Google warning that its privacy policy raises serious questions about its compliance with U.K. data regulation. "In particular, we believe that the updated policy does not provide sufficient information to enable U.K. users of Google's services to understand how their data will be used across all of the company's products," the ICO said.
A privacy debate has erupted in Japan over a new service from a major rail operator that sells private e-ticket records as marketing data. This week East Japan Railway (JR East), the country's largest rail company, has begun offering for sale the anonymized histories of millions of its passengers. The data is gleaned from its Suica train pass system, which is Japan's most popular with 43 million users, roughly equivalent to a third of the national population. JR East and Hitachi, which will handle the technical aspects of the service, announced it last week via a terse news release that initially drew little attention. But this is the first time Suica information has been sold to third parties, and the news was soon highlighted by prominent bloggers, triggering a discussion that has now spread to Twitter and other online forums. "Even if there is a proper way to use this (data), it must be done with the approval of society," wrote Hiromitsu Takagi, a professor and prominent commentator on data privacy, on his Twitter account.
HTC's second quarter net profit plummeted 83 percent year on year as sales of the company's latest flagship handset failed to meet expectations. Revenue totaled $2.3 billion, down 22 percent. which went on to reach sales of 10 million units within a month of its launch in late April. to help create more brand visibility.
It’s scorching out. Any housework that needs doing is already done. And with the long weekend ahead, it’s time for a simple computing project. Here’s one: Install the Windows 8.1 preview. Last week, , the next iteration of its Windows 8 operating system. From a marketing standpoint, Windows 8.1 is a do-over, a bid to simplify and personalize an operating system that, quite frankly, turned off a lot of people. If you own Windows 8 and dislike it, we encourage you to follow along and consider giving Windows 8.1 a try. Not only does it have features designed to make Windows 8.1 a friendlier experience, but it has tons—yes, tons—of new features. Note that, eventually, Windows 8.1 will be available to you, for free, when the software is released to “general availability,” most likely this fall. What Microsoft released last week is a preview, and so it may contain a bug or two. If you have any critical apps or data, make sure that you have backup copies, or that your data is also stored within Microsoft’s SkyDrive. Though I haven’t encountered a single bug in Windows 8.1, there’s no guarantee that you’ll have the same experience. If you do run into problems, try visiting the (Have you already seen this message? According to Microsoft, your PC might be running a 32-bit Intel Atom chip that’s currently unsupported.)
Samsung Electronics predicted a big jump in profit for the second quarter compared to a year earlier, but the company's explosive growth is slowing amid signs its top end Galaxy smartphones are less popular than expected. Samsung said Friday that its operating profit for the April-June quarter will probably be between $8.1 billion and $8.3 billion. This is at least a 44 percent gain from what it generated during the same stretch in 2012, and Samsung said sales are also likely up around 20 percent. Those are strong gains, but analysts and investors had expected better. Bloomberg said a survey of 34 financial analysts predicted an average of $8.7 billion in earnings. A number of investment banks have cut their ratings on the Korean company in recent weeks, and its stock has fallen. The results correspond to the launch of and the company held a major launch event at New York City's Radio City Music Hall, with a live broadcast to people watching in nearby Times Square.
A persistent, widespread malware campaign that utilizes compromised Apache servers is locking users' computers and demanding a fee of $300 to free their data. Researchers from Eset wrote that the is an extension of a long-running attack that compromises the infrastructure of web hosting companies with a variant of a malicious Apache module called "Darkleech." "Malicious modification of server binaries seems to be a very popular trend for malware distribution," wrote Sebastien Duquette, an Eset malware researcher, on a . Eset also suspects that hackers also may have figured out how to compromise , which are both software programs used by hosting companies to manage their networks and websites.
Cyber criminals could face tougher penalties across the European Union under new rules adopted by the European Parliament, which include the creation of a specific offense of using botnets. The draft directive adopted by the parliament on Thursday defines specific criminal offenses for and sets specific sanctions for each. It also requires E.U. countries to assist fellow member states and respond to urgent requests for help within eight hours in the event of a cyber attack. The text has already been informally agreed with member states, and that agreement is expected to be formalized shortly. The member states will the have two years to implement it in national law. Under the draft law, using botnets to establishing remote control over a significant number of computers by infecting them with malicious software carries a penalty of at least three years' imprisonment.
China saw an increase in Trojan and botnet attacks coming from other countries in 2012, as the amount of mobile malware in the country also surged, according to a local security group. During the year, a total of 73,000 Trojan and botnet command-and-control servers had hijacked 14.2 million host machines in the country. The number of Trojan and botnet servers marks an almost 60 percent increase from 2011. Close to 13,000 of those servers were based in the U.S., the for the largest number of Trojan and botnet attacks targeting China. South Korea was second, followed by Germany. China's National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team (CNCERT) reported the figures on Thursday. They were later published by the nation's state press, Xinhua News Agency.
A German data protection authority has begun a formal action against Google over last year. The French privacy regulator announced a similar action last month. The Hamburg Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information announced Thursday that it will join other European privacy regulators in taking action against the company. The French National Commission on Computing and Liberty (CNIL) announced last month that to its complaints or face court action, after the company repeatedly rejected requests to reverse changes it made to its privacy policy in March 2012. Spain's privacy regulator too has notified Google of if Google does not comply with Spanish law.
The European Parliament gave European Commissioners and national ministers some extra ammunition Thursday in discussions with the U.S. following allegations about American spying and possible suspension of data-sharing agreements. The Parliament called on the U.S. to provide full disclosure of any and set up an inquiry to look into the allegations, but stopped short of suspending bilateral trade talks due to start on Monday. The resolution was approved by 483 votes to 98 with 65 abstentions. Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) said that the European Commission, the Council of Ministers and E.U. member states should consider "all levers at their disposal" in negotiations with the U.S., including suspending deals for sharing air passenger (Passenger Name Record) data and bank data (the Terrorist Finance Tracking Programme). The resolution also expresses grave concern that similar surveillance programs may be run by E.U. member states, including the U.K., Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany, and Poland. It calls on those countries to examine whether their programs are compatible with E.U. law.
The Internet held up in Egypt as the military deposed the country's president Wednesday, with both the former president's aides and the opposition using Twitter and Facebook extensively to communicate with followers in Egypt and the rest of the world. "Egypt remains online. So far no repeat of 2011," said Internet monitoring company Renesys in a late Wednesday. It said it was continuing to monitor. In January 2011, the government of former president Hosni Mubarak ordered service providers to in the wake of widespread unrest in the country. This time, Egyptians on both sides used social media services using hashtags like #WeAreWithMorsi and #EgyptRevolutionNotMilitaryCoup, as the military cut off many TV channels and news sources, according to reports.
We were using drive letters before DOS, and I'm surprised we're still using them. Everyone knows that C: is the main drive--or at least the one Windows boots from. (Why C:? Because A: and B: were originally reserved for floppies.) But not everyone knows that if you have an administrator-level account, you can reassign drive letters. Here's how to change a PC's drive letters:
An online protest against the surveillance programs of the U.S. National Security Agency was off to a slow start Thursday morning, despite expectations it would see participation from thousands of websites. The action is part of a larger movement called —a reference to the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution—that is also expected to include live protests in dozens of cities across the U.S. Organizations who are part of the Internet Defense League, a loose coalition committed to were expected to participate in the July 4 online protest by displaying a message against "NSA spying" on their websites using a banner or a modal window. However, as of 8 a.m. Eastern Time, only a few of the high-profile Internet Defense League supporting websites were showing the protest message. Many of the participating websites belonged to civil rights organizations. They included 4chan, The Electronic Frontier Foundation, O'Reilly Media, Piwik, Free Press, Accessnow.org, and ColorOfChange.org.
Done up in black and clear plastic, the Aspire U has a clean, modern look. The computer looks like an oversize picture frame, supported in the front by a clear plastic panel running its width and in the back by an articulating kickstand. This design lets you angle the Aspire U from nearly flat on the desk to nearly straight up. It’s an effective design if you have plenty of desk space or table area to work with. If you want to buy an all-in-one to maximize storage area in a small workspace, forget it: The area behind the Aspire U is completely blocked off. The styled-to-match wireless keyboard and mouse bundled with the Aspire U are both pleasant surprises. The keyboard has a slightly sloppy feel, but the keys offer plenty of travel and feel quite nice overall. The up and down arrow keys are half-size, which makes them difficult to use, but the keyboard includes a numeric keypad that you can use for navigation (when Num Lock is turned off). The mouse has a nice heft, and it tracks well on just about any surface. The touchscreen display responds well to finger movements, and the Aspire U has one of the nicest webcams out there. It’s HD, and it provides very smooth video—significantly smoother than usual. The Aspire U can also respond to hand gestures via said webcam, though in truth it's a rather strenuous and inaccurate way to navigate Windows. The A5600U-UB13 model of the Aspire U that we tested was sprightly enough, subjectively—once the Windows 8 operating system worked its caching magic. Until things were cached, however, the sluggish 1TB, 5400-rpm hard drive caused windows and applications to open rather slowly. This is a machine that you’d rather have hibernate or sleep than shut down, lest all that caching go for naught. Acer doesn’t offer an SSD option, which would have worked miracles in both perceived and actual speed.
Heading off to the great outdoors is all about leaving the trappings of the modern world behind—but maybe not your tech. Emergency alerts on your phone, or a quick search to see if those tasty-looking berries you found are safe to eat, are just a couple of good reasons to have a smartphone handy. And then there’s the fun stuff, like listening to music while you fish, or sharing photos with friends who couldn’t make the trip. Keeping your gadgets humming while you commune with nature does take planning, though. Here’s some gear that’ll turn your next outdoor adventure into one you can track, share, and enjoy without necessarily breaking the bank.
You think your workload is tough? Imagine how it must have been for the Founding Fathers around this time in 1776, when they had to sit down, write, and ratify the Declaration of Independence. Let's give our forefathers a high-tech leg up. Here are 13 technologies—one for each colony—that would have expedited the Revolution and the drafting of that key document.
Microsoft’s former head of Windows 8 development has agreed not to badmouth Microsoft or work for some of its competitors and in return will receive a payout for unvested stock in the company, according to a regulatory filing Wednesday. The “retirement agreement” with Steven Sinofsky, who with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Sinofsky has agreed to not compete with Microsoft by accepting a job at certain competitors, which were not named, or encouraging customers to move away from its products. He’s also agreed not to solicit Microsoft employees to work at other companies, not to “disparage” Microsoft and not to take part in any litigation against the company, the filing says. In return, Microsoft will pay Sinofsky the value of his outstanding unvested stock options up to the start of Microsoft’s 2013 fiscal year, which began last July, and award him other stock compensation.
Douglas Engelbart, a Silicon Valley engineer who invented the computer mouse and is credited with many of the concepts that underpin modern computing and the Internet, died on Tuesday at his home in Atherton, California. He was 88. Born in 1925, Engelbart was coming of age as World War II raged in Europe. He joined the U.S. Navy as an electronic and radar technician, and after the war studied electrical engineering at Oregon State University. He went on to complete a master’s degree and Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeley, where he was also an assistant professor. About a year later, in 1957, he joined the Stanford Research Institute (today called SRI International), which was just over a decade old. From 1959 until 1977 he led the organization’s Augmentation Research Center, and .
Yahoo said Friday that it has bought contact management specialist Xobni for an undisclosed amount, presumably to enhance Yahoo Mail and its related applications. But as to the future of Xobni’s own products—well, that’s not exactly clear. Xobni released a indicating that the company plans to continue supporting its contact management tools for Outlook, but that other platforms may expire on July 2, 2014. In a sense, that means that Xobni’s statements about continuing support could be seen as a bit disingenuous. “Not to worry — we aren’t pulling the rug out from under you. If you’re using a Xobni product today, you can keep using it,” the Xobni team said in a . However, Xobni won’t be accepting any more premium subscriptions, including Xobni Pro, Xobni Enterprise, Xobni for Teams, the Xobni Salesforce Gadget, and the Xobni JIRA Gadget, the company said. Smartr Contacts for Android and Xobni for BlackBerry are no longer officially available for download, although the Android app will be pulled by the end of the day, the company said.
