Drashya's Blog

Global internet slows after 'biggest attack in history

2013-03-27T22:08:00.000+05:30

The internet around the world has been slowed down in what security experts are describing as the biggest cyber-attack in history. A row between a spam-fighting group and hosting firm has sparked retaliation attacks flooding core infrastructure. It is having an impact on widely used services like Netflix - and experts worry it could escalate to affect banking and email services.

Five national cyber-police-forces are investigating the attacks. Spamhaus, a group based in both London and Geneva, is a non-profit organisation which aims to help email providers filter out spam and other unwanted content. To do this, the group maintains a number of blocklists - a database of servers known to be being used for malicious purposes.

Recently, Spamhaus blocked servers maintained by Cyberbunker, a Dutch web host which states it will host anything with the exception of child pornography or terrorism-related material. Sven Olaf Kamphuis, who claims to be a spokesman for Cyberbunker, said, in a message, that Spamhaus was abusing its position, and should not be allowed to decide "what goes and does not go on the internet".Spamhaus has alleged that Cyberbunker, in cooperation with "criminal gangs" from Eastern Europe and Russia, is behind the attack.
Cyberbunker has as yet offered no reply to the BBC when contacted directly.

Immense job

Steve Linford, chief executive for Spamhaus, told the BBC the scale of the attack was unprecedented.
"We've been under this cyber-attack for well over a week. "But we're up - they haven't been able to knock us down. Our engineers are doing an immense job in keeping it up - this sort of attack would take down pretty much anything else." Mr Linford told the BBC that the attack was being investigated by five different national cyber-police-forces around the world, but said he was unable to disclose more details as the forces in question were concerned that they too may suffer attacks on their own infrastructure.

The attackers have used a tactic known as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), which floods the intended target with large amounts of traffic in an attempt to render it unreachable. In this case, Spamhaus's Domain Name System (DNS) servers were targeted - the infrastructure that joins domain names, such as bbc.co.uk, the website's numerical internet protocol address. Mr Linford said the attack's power would be strong enough to take down government internet infrastructure. "If you aimed this at Downing Street they would be down instantly," he said. "They would be completely off the internet." He added: "These attacks are peaking at 300 gb/s (gigabits per second).

"Normally when there are attacks against major banks, we're talking about 50 gb/s."

Clogged-up motorway'Clogged-up motorway

The knock-on effect is hurting internet services globally, said Prof Alan Woodward, a cybersecurity expert at the University of Surrey. "If you imagine it as a motorway, attacks try and put enough traffic on there to clog up the on and off ramps," he told the BBC. "With this attack, there's so much traffic it's clogging up the motorway itself." Spamhaus is able to cope, the group says, as it has highly distributed infrastructure in a number of countries.

The group is supported by many of the world's largest internet companies who rely on it to filter unwanted material. Mr Linford told the BBC that several companies, such as Google, had made their resources available to help "absorb all of this traffic".

The attacks typically happened in intermittent bursts of high activity. "They are targeting every part of the internet infrastructure that they feel can be brought down," Mr Linford said.
"We can't be brought down. "Spamhaus has more than 80 servers around the world. We've built the biggest DNS server around."

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Samsung Galaxy S4: What to expect from the most anticipated smartphone of 2013

2013-02-26T03:01:00.001+05:30

In an attempt to steal the thunder from Nokia, Asus, Sony, and a slew of other mobile device makers at Mobile World Congress 2013 in Barcelona, Samsung has announced that the Galaxy S4 will be unveiled at its own exclusive event in New York on March 14, with public availability to follow soon after.

With the slow but inexorable waning of the iPhone, both in terms of mind and market share, the Galaxy S4 is probably the most anticipated phone of 2013. The question on everyone’s lips, though, is whether Samsung can push the smartphone (and Android) envelope forward, despite lackluster innovation from Apple — and in the face of strong offerings from HTC. Let’s run through the expected hardware and software specs of the Samsung Galaxy S4, and then analyze the current state of play in the mobile space.

Hardware

The Samsung Galaxy S4 is expected to have a full-HD 1920×1080 display (up from 1280×720 on the S3) — and the display might even make the jump from 4.8 inches to an edge-to-edge 5 inches. There were some early rumors of a flexible display, but they can be discounted — the tech just isn’t there yet. It remains to be seen whether the underlying tech will be AMOLED or LCD, though reports suggest that Samsung’s AMOLED production line isn’t ready to produce 1920×0180 5-inch displays, while the LCD production line is raring to go. Maybe this will mean that the Galaxy S4 can finally compete with the iPhone in terms of image quality and accuracy.

Under the hood, the Galaxy S4 is expected to use Qualcomm’s quad-core Snapdragon 600 or 800 SoC. The Snapdragon 800 is particularly exciting because it’s the first chip to be built on TSMC’s new 28nm HPM (high performance mobile) process — though, at 2.3GHz, it might be more of a tablet part. There is also the possibility that we’ll see two Galaxy S4 SKUs — a Snapdragon model with integrated LTE for the US market, and an Exynos-powered model for the rest of the world. If the S4 does use Exynos, the most likely option is an eight-core Exynos 5 Octa — four Cortex-A15 and four Cortex-A7 in a big.LITTLE configuration. There are still big questions about whether the power-hungry Cortex-A15 is suitable for smartphone use, so it will be interesting to see how the Galaxy S4 pans out.

Rounding out the hardware, the Galaxy S4 is expected to have a high-res camera (13MP, according to some rumors), up to 64GB of flash storage, and 2GB of LPDDR3 RAM. Following the weak, uncertain, and confusing introduction of wireless charging in the Galaxy S3, we expect the S4 to rectify the situation and provide wireless charging by default. You can also expect all of the usual kitchen sink: WiFi (which should step up to MIMO), Bluetooth, GPS, NFC, and so on.

Software

There are unlikely to be any surprises in the software department: The Galaxy S4 will almost certainly run a TouchWizzified version of Android 4.2 Jelly Bean (sorry, Tizen fans — keep on dreaming). There is also a rumor that the Galaxy S4 will launch with a pad accessory, which, when bonded with S Health, will give your phone the ability to measure your pulse and blood sugar, among other things.

Evolution, not revolution

In short, all indicators point to the Galaxy S4 being a fairly gentle evolution of the Galaxy S3 — a lot like the iPhone 4 and 5. A 5-inch screen would be exciting, but it really isn’t that different from 4.8 inches. An octa-core Exynos would certainly offer a unique selling point — but when you remember that four of those cores are wimpy, and that the Cortex-A15 cores are the reason your smartphone only lasts for six hours, your excitement will be quickly tempered. A laser keyboard, like the one shown in the (fan-made) video below is unlikely.

Truth be told, we would all be wise to temper our expectations when it comes to smartphone and tablet technology. There are some exciting concepts coming down the pipe, but we are probably still years away from flexible, transparent smartphones, or high-capacity batteries that can support pico projectors and other power-hungry features. (See:DoE calls for a chemical battery with 5x capacity, within 5 years – can it be done?) It’s easy to be fooled by the dramatic bombast pumped out by Apple, Samsung, and others, but actual paradigm-shifting technologies really don’t come along very often. It has been five years since the launch of the first smartphone, and we’re still firmly in the penumbra of the capacitive touchscreen; processors have got faster and screens have got larger, but that’s just the continuing, predictable, and thoroughly non-revolutionary march of Moore’s law.

Don’t get me wrong: A mind-blowing smartphone that redefines the very meaning of the word will eventually come along — just probably not today.

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Anonymous Protest Goes From Internet to Real Life. #Occupy India on June 9

2012-06-01T15:48:00.001+05:30

A bunch of stuff has happened since we last reported about ISP’s blocking a bunch of Internet sites, and Anonymous India retaliating. Amongst other things, their twitter account was banned, but they are back up again. More government sites were targeted, This time it was not just DDoS attacks, but they actually hacked into the sites to put up their message of the #Occupy movement.
One of the interesting things that happened was that Anonymous also hacked into Reliance Communications servers and what they found was startling. Reliance was blocking access to sites that had no court order against them which is basically a crime. Here is a list of sites blocked illegally by Reliance, and a message from Anonymous - http://pastehtml.com/view/bz8kycy0o.html. One of the blocked URL’s is the Air India’s protest Facebook page! #WTH

Anonymous also temporarily blocked access to facebook.com, to draw attention to the cause, but the site was accessible via www.facebook.com.

After this, Anonymous hacked Trinamool Congress‘ and Mizoram government’s websites, and put up a message for the masses about the peaceful Occupy movement. They did not take down the main Mizoram site, but only took down a bunch of sub-domains. Here is a list of the sub-domains, all corresponding to different departments.

And now the important part : #Occupy India

Anonymous has decided to take the protest on the streets, and the date is July 9th. It is happening in Delhi Mumbai, and many other major cities all over India.

When Anonymous hacked the Mizoram sites, they put up this message -

The Future of India, Rise for your Nation

Join the June 9 Protest with Anonymous, Fight for your Freedom

To the Students of India,
You are the future of this nation and hence it is your decision to make at this critical point. You out of all people will understand the oppression of others, rule of Elite, corruption and denial of rights better than any one. We have come to a time in which we can’t even speak freely and even to the point where we are not allowed to think freely. They tell you to Sit in class, Obey the rules, don’t allow you to speak, and once you are outside the classes they take your freedom, even at a place where everything is supposed to be yours! We are calling to every student and youth soul to join us for the struggle of freedom. On this June 9th we are calling for every one to get on the streets, organize protests or join one. Do not wait any longer, because the more you wait the more this system will crush your rights and abilities to correct it.Today they took away your right to use a few websites, tomorrow they will sensor the websites like they sensor the media so that nothing against them get’s reported and day after tomorrow they will take away your freedom of speech and no one will be there to speak for you. Speak Now or Never.

Led Zeplin’s Kashmir played in the background. [ Another weird thing happened, as I was trying to report the hacked site to zone-h.org to mirror it, I found out that zone-h has also been blocked in India due to an unrelated court order. What is the Indian government doing? ]

Check out if the protest is happening in your city and if you are going to one of these protests, you can download and print the Anonymous mask here. Also note that Anonymous has strict guidelines to keep the protest peaceful.

In Delhi it will happen at the India Gate. If there is no protest happening in you city, just create an event on Facebook, and tweet it to their account with the hashtag #June9. Or you could chat with them on IRC.

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'Operation India' engaged DOT is Next, warns Anonymous after hacking Supreme Court and All India Congress websites

2012-05-17T18:47:00.001+05:30

New Delhi: Hacker group Anonymous has brought down the websites of the Supreme Court and the Congress party. In an audio message posted on YouTube, the hackers say they protesting against the blocking of file-sharing websites like RapidShare and popular video websites like Vimeo. "We cannot let censorship happen... Operation India engaged" the audio message warns.

(Hear message posted by Anonymous, warns "Operation India engaged")

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like Airtel, Reliance and others have blocked these websites. The internet service providers say the blocking has been done in "in response to a court order".

According to tweets from the @opindia_revenge account (which was retweeted by the official Twitter account of Anonymous), the hacktivists have taken down http://supremecourtofindia.nic.in and http://aicc.org.in and intends to take down the website of Department of Telecommunication (http://dot.gov.in) and of the Chennai-based Copyright Labs (http://www.copyrightlabs.in) which had issued the John Doe order to various ISPs to block Vimeo, DailyMotion and all major torrent sites in the country to prevent the piracy of their tamil films Dammu and 3.

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Technology writers give Microsoft a thumbs up as Windows 8 released for public testing

2012-03-02T01:54:00.000+05:30

Windows Live Division President Steven Sinofsky at the Windows 8 Consumer Preview presentation in Barcelona on Feb. 29. Microsoft's new operating system uses a system of tiles to manage applications. David Pogue of the New York Times calls it 'a Lego kit for your life’s control panel."

BARCELONA/SEATTLE—Microsoft Corp opened up an incomplete version of Windows 8 for the public to download and test on Wednesday, looking to rev up excitement for its slick, new-look operating system which it hopes will restore its fading tech supremacy. (See below to find out what the tech sites had to say.)

Windows 8, as the first Microsoft operating system compatible with low-power microprocessors designed by ARM Holdings Plc, will run on tablets as well as desktops and laptops, in an effort to counter the runaway success of Apple Inc’s iPad.

“It’s an even better Windows than Windows 7,” said Steven Sinofsky, head of Microsoft’s flagship Windows unit, as he demonstrated the new system at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Windows 7, Microsoft’s last operating system, was its fastest-selling ever, racking up 525 million sales in less than three years.

“It’s incredibly fast and fluid to just navigate this UI (user interface)”, said Sinofsky, showing off Windows 8 on a tablet and an ultra-thin laptop at the event in Barcelona.

The test version of Windows 8 is available for download here. Sinofsky said people from 70 countries had already downloaded the software on Wednesday morning, but he did not give exact numbers.

The downloadable version will only work on laptops and PCs running traditional Intel x86 chips. The ARM-compatible version of the system is not yet ready for public use. Microsoft has said it will distribute ARM tablets running Windows 8 to select developers at some point.

Microsoft says it is aiming to get machines running on both the ARM and Intel platforms into the market at the same time but has not set a target date. The world’s largest software company generally tries to bring out a new version of Windows every three years, so that would indicate a full release date around October this year, in time for the holiday shopping season.

In both versions, Windows 8 features a completely new interface, borrowed from what Microsoft calls the “Metro” style of the current Windows Phone software. It features blocks or “tiles” that can be moved around the screen or tapped to go straight into an application.

Microsoft said the latest version of Windows 8 unveiled on Wednesday has better performance, quality and reliability than the version it released to developers last autumn.

For the first time, this version of Windows 8 includes the Windows Store, where users can download and try out free apps, get access to cloud storage with the ability to move content across a range of devices including Windows phones, and download a test version of Microsoft’s newest browser, Internet Explorer 10.

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10,000,000,000,000,000 calculations per second.

2012-02-12T07:56:00.001+05:30

Paying a visit to the fastest computer on earth.

The "K Computer"

In today's ever-more digitalized world, we all have a tale or two to share about how personal computers have let us down: like how they refused to let us run different programs at the same time or how the data was so heavy that the damned device kept us on hold forever before conducting even the most trivial operation.

Well, there is one machine in the world — and it's in Japan — that is absolutely free of such concerns, being the fastest computer on Earth and capable of handling a mind-boggling number of tasks in far less than the blink of an eye.

Tadashi Watanabe led the K computer project at RIKEN (TOMOKO OTAKE PHOTOS)

In June and November last year, the K computer — jointly developed by the IT giant Fujitsu and housed at the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science (AICS) in Kobe — was ranked No. 1 in the TOP500 list of the world's fastest computers. The ranking is announced twice a year at the SC conference of supercomputing experts — also known as the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis.

The K computer — which will be available for shared use by researchers in November — is named after the Japanese numerical unit 京 (kei), meaning 10 quadrillion, or 10,000 trillion. By achieving the targeted 10 petaflops, a measure of computer performance equaling 10 quadrillion calculations — or floating-point operations, to be precise — per second, K lived up to its name in November.

If humans were to perform the same number of calculations as K does in a second, it would take the world's entire population of 7 billion people — each tackling one problem per second — 17 consecutive days.

In that latest November ranking, the K computer was proved to be four times faster than the runner-up, a Chinese machine named Tianhe-1A. Developed by the National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin, Tianhe-1A achieved 2.566 petaflops, followed by the American supercomputer Jaguar, installed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, and run by the U.S. Department of Energy, which ranked 3rd, marking 1.759 petaflops.

So what's the secret to this overwhelming speed ?

Fujitsu's SPARC64 VIIIfix processor, which measures about 2 cm x 2 cm.

The hardware of which has been completed but which still has system software under development — looked like rows and rows of tall refrigerators neatly lined up in a huge warehouse. It is made up of 864 fridge-like units called "racks." Each rack — 80 cm wide, 75 cm deep and 206 cm tall — contains 24 system boards tacked on top of each other and connected by cables. Each system board carries four CPUs (central processing units), which make up the "brain" of computers. While normal PCs are mounted with just one CPU, K has a total of 82,944 custom-made CPUs.


One of K's 20,736 system boards carrying four CPUs, which feature water pipes to keep the units cool FUJITSU.

One of the greatest technological breakthroughs for K was to get these microprocessors — measuring 2.27 cm x 2.26 cm apiece — working efficiently together to achieve the maximum speed, explained Akihiko Fujino, a senior manager at Fujitsu's Technical Computing Solutions Unit. To that end, the engineers came up with a "six-dimensional" network of CPUs that allows for rapid exchange of data across the system.

Dubbed "Tofu" technology the "six-dimensional torus interconnect" creates a number of channels through which data can travel. This can be easily explained using train lines as an analogy: To get from JR Shinjuku Station to JR Tokyo Station, for example, you can take the Yamanote loop line in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction, passing through many stations along the way. But you can get to the destination much faster if you take the Chuo Line, which cuts the loop in half and connects the two stations directly across the loop. K uses a similar concept, connecting different elements of the computer network multidimensionally.

In addition, to save energy and stabilize the machine's operation, each system board has extensive copper plumbing, with cooling water running through it to keep the CPUs from overheating.

"K's CPU, which we ourselves developed, has succeeded in striking the right balance between speed and energy efficiency," Fujino said. "Its electric power consumption is about 60 percent of that of Intel processors (used in many supercomputers)."

Tadashi Watanabe, the K project leader at AICS, also pointed to the building's unique architectural features that were designed for the computer. In order to dissipate heat from the densely racked system, the computer room uses air cooling, through which cold air blows from under the floor, cools the racks, hits the ceiling and then gets sent downstairs via air passageways in the periphery of the room.

The exterior the RIKEN AICS building in Kobe's Port Island

In addition, to connect the 864 racks, 200,000 cables with a total length of more than 1,000 km are used, Watanabe said. In order to efficiently configure the racks and cables, the third floor of the building — a space covering 50 meters by 60 meters — is free of structural pillars. That meant the building itself had to be designed to be extra sturdy. Also, dampers placed in the building's basement are capable of absorbing shocks from earthquakes with an intensity of Shindo 6 (in the Japanese seismic scale of 0-7), and anti-liquefaction measures have been taken on the man-made Kobe Port Island plot where the institute is located.

But enough about the technicalities of the computer and the site: What will K be able to offer that others cannot — when it goes fully operational in November?

Engineers, scientists and government officials who have pushed for the K-project all say that supercomputers on the scale of K can greatly advance simulations — the so-called "third science" after theory and experiment.

"While simulations and computational sciences have long been called the third science, we have not been able to accomplish much because of limitations in the computers' ability," said Kimihiko Hirao, AICS director and himself a researcher in the field of computational chemistry. "But with K, we can start simulating many things scientifically — like detailed simulations of damage from the Tonankai earthquakes (ones that that hit areas along the Pacific Coast all the way from Shizuoka to Kochi every 100 to 150 years). It enables real predictions in many fields."

The K-computer project, which started in 2006, is the first one backed by the Japanese government since the Earth Simulator project, which won the top spot in the Top 500 list back in 2002, achieving 35.86 teraflops in the same benchmarking program. (1,000 teraflops equals one petaflop.) But while the Earth Simulator, developed by NEC Corp. and installed at the Yokohama center of the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, was designed specifically for the purpose of simulating climate change models, the K-computer is built to be universal — to accommodate all kinds of simulation needs. Thus it is hoped to accelerate the R&D and design of a wide range of products and services — from jet engines to silicon semiconductors, to new drugs and to tsunami warning systems.

K's reputation as the world's No. 1 computer could be short-lived, however. The race for supercomputing supremacy between the United States, Japan and, most recently, China, is intense, and the U.S. "Sequoia" computer — a 20 petaflops machine being developed by IBM and set to be installed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California — is poised to overtake K later this year. This comes as no shock to industry experts.

"It is a known fact that the first-place winner in the Top 500 list is normally twice as fast as the winner from the previous year, and even 1,000 times faster than the top machine 10 years ago," said Naoki Shinjo, another Fujitsu official in charge of system development at the firm's next-generation technical computing unit. "So it's only natural that someone else will take the top spot next year."

Experts even predict the arrival of "exa-scale" computers — which are 1,000 times faster than 1-petaflops-level computers, and 100 times faster than K — by 2018.

Though Japan has yet to decide whether, and how, to take on the exa-scale project, experts say that the greatest technical challenge awaiting any machine surpassing K will be its energy consumption. While being among the most energy-efficient machines in the Top 500, K still needs 17 megawatts to run, which means that its annual power consumption is equivalent to an aggregated total of that of 25,000 average households. And the environmental impact of computing is under increasing scrutiny these days, as seen in a recent controversy over a U.S. scientist's estimate that every two Google searches uses enough energy to boil a kettle.

"The biggest bottleneck to the future development of supercomputers is energy," AICS's Hirao admitted. "If we are to develop a machine 100 times faster than K, we would still have to keep the level of power consumption at the current level. That means that the new computer will have to be 100 times more energy efficient. That would definitely be the biggest challenge."

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Flipkart acquires Letsbuy, fashion retailer Myntra raises Rs 100 crore.

2012-02-11T04:43:00.002+05:30

Online retailer Flipkart bought Letsbuy, and specialised fashion retailer Myntra said it has raised $21 million (100 crore) on Thursday, both transactions underscoring the rapid evolution of India's e-commerce industry.

Flipkart, one the country's biggest online retailers, said it has acquired smaller rival Letsbuy in a cash and stock deal without specifying the value of the transaction. But people familiar with the matter said it was worth around $20 million.

"This acquisition opportunity came at a very attractive price for us and the timing has also been ideal," Flipkart's cofounder and chief executive officer Sachin Bansal was quoted as saying in a statement. Letsbuy, a seller of consumer electronic goods, has been struggling to raise additional money and was left with little option but to do a deal with Flipkart, a manager at a private equity firm said.

Tiger Global and Accel Partners are both investors in Letsbuy and Flipkart.

"Investors push for such acquisitions as it makes strategic sense for them," said Raja Lahiri, a partner at Grant Thornton.

Online retailers are racing to consolidate their gains as they prepare for the entry of global competition once the government approves foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail. Last week, the world largest e-commerce player, Amazon, made a quiet entry into India through comparison shopping site junglee.com, which it owns. Amazon insists that Junglee is not a trading platform but Indian online retailers believe the writing on the wall is clear.

"Amazon's entry means bigger competition and hence large Indian players will look at strategic opportunities to grow the scale and size of business," said Lahiri.

The online retail industry appears to be coalescing into two distinct types: one that comprises large multibrand retailers and another consisting of specialised sellers of high-margins products such as jewellery and fashion apparel. The successful fundraising by Myntra, a fashion retailer, is an indicator of this trend.

Tiger Global led the round for Myntra with existing investors IndoUS Venture Partners, IDG Ventures India and Accel Partners participating. Myntra has raised a total of $38 million in four rounds, said founder Mukesh Bansal.

Flipkart has announced raising $31 million so far and is believed to be in talks to raise $100-$150 million as it looks to scale rapidly.

"Smaller companies will find it difficult to raise funds unless they have something new to offer," said Sudhir Sethi, a technology investor who is the chairman of IDG Ventures.

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Microsoft drops Start button from Windows 8

2012-02-07T03:23:00.002+05:30

Microsoft will scratch the 17-year-old Start button from Windows 8, according to reports based on a purported leak of the latest beta build.

First reported by The Verge yesterday and then followed by other blogs -- all seemingly based on screenshots posted in a Chinese forum that claim the images are from the newest private "build" of the beta -- the Start button has been discarded in favor of a corner "hotspot" that when touched or clicked switches between the traditional desktop and the new Metro-style Start display.

Microsoft declined to comment on the reports, with a company spokeswoman saying, "We have no information to share at this time."

The Windows 8 Developer Preview, which Microsoft made available to the general public last September, includes a Start button that toggles between the new operating system's Metro Start page and the more familiar desktop.

Microsoft first used the Start button in Windows 95, when it reportedly paid the Rolling Stones millions for the rights to the band's song "Start Me Up" to use at the launch and in subsequent commercials. (Microsoft executives later disputed that, saying the company paid the Stones "a small fraction" of a widely-cited range of $8 million-$14 million.)

Windows 95 debuted in August 1995, and was marked by a dramatic overhaul of Windows 3.1's user interface.

The Verge and others based their reports on unnamed sources as well as screenshots published over the weekend on a Chinese-language forum. The screenshots claimed to be of Build 8220 of the upcoming Windows 8 public beta, which evidence hints will actually be called "Consumer Preview" rather than "Beta."
Replacing the Start button, according to the reports, will be a "hot corner" at the lower left. When that invisible hotspot is touched or clicked, the interface switches from desktop to Metro, or vice versa. That location is where the Start button currently resides in the Windows 8 Developer Preview.

Microsoft has said that Windows 8 will use a "touch-first" interface where the traditional desktop is demoted to an alternate view.

According to reports, Microsoft will drop the Start button from Windows 8, and replace it with an invisible "hotspot" to toggle between the Metro-style Start page and the traditional desktop.

The beta -- or Consumer Preview -- of Windows 8 will be released late this month, Microsoft first said in December 2011. The company has yet to narrow the launch date, however.

The Windows 8 Developer Preview can still be downloaded from Microsoft's website.

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NASA, Pentagon Hacker TinKode Arrested in Romania

2012-02-02T06:35:00.000+05:30

Police in Romania said they have nabbed the notorious hacker TinKode, who is known for breaking into U.S. government and military Web sites and exposing security shortfalls in their systems.

The accused hacker, Razvan Manole Cernaianu, accessed high profile computer systems without authorization, including those belonging to the Pentagon and NASA, then posted evidence of his attacks online, the Romanian Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism, said in a statement Tuesday. Cernaianu, a 20 year-old IT student from Timisoara, Romania, broke into servers belonging to the U.S. Army and stole confidential information, which he published on his blog, authorities said.
He also posted a video on his blog demonstrating an attack he carried out against the U.S. government, and created and offered for sale a computer program used to hack Web sites. Through his exploits, Cernaianu blocked access to systems and seriously disabled their proper functioning, authorities said.

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at security firm Sophos, said in a blog post Tuesday that TinKode often published information online about security flaws in the systems he hacked. The hacker was likely seeking bragging rights, rather than financial gains, Cluley added.

"In my estimation over the last few years TinKode's motivation has been more about mischief-making than the more malicious attacks we often see, fueled by a desire for publicity via his active Twitter and Facebook accounts," Cluley wrote. "Perhaps now is a good time to remind everyone who thinks it's cool or amusing to expose an organization’s weak security that hacking into a site is still a crime, regardless of what your incentive may be."

Romanian authorities said the FBI and NASA took part in the investigation. TinKode also previously claimed credit for an attack against the Web site for Britain's Royal Navy.

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Hacking Seen as Rising Risk With Car Electronics

2012-01-30T13:36:00.003+05:30

Drivers can talk with each other via Bluetooth phone connections, ask their cars for directions and dial up satellite radio. The same cars use electronic components to signal the gas pedal to accelerate and control stability.
What increasingly worries scientists is that entertainment computers could be manipulated to tell the safety computers what to do.
“There clearly is a vulnerability,” said Adrian Lund, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, based in Arlington, Va. “All these electronics we’re bringing into cars seem to exacerbate that.”
A National Academy of Sciences panel, including Lund, elevated the concerns in a report Jan. 18 reviewing U.S. regulators’ work in finding the cause of unintended acceleration in Toyota Motor Corp. vehicles.
While safety and entertainment systems are intended to be separate, “it is not evident that this separation has been adequately designed for cybersecurity concerns,” the academy wrote. It agreed with U.S. regulators who said they found no evidence the Toyota incidents were caused by faulty electronics.
Automotive engineers at a conference in Washington last week said they aren’t immediately concerned that a hacker will take over a car and drive it off a bridge. Instead, they said, they want to help automakers spot vulnerabilities while they’re hypothetical and ease fears of consumers who are already familiar with cyberattacks in other areas.

Listening In

Car thieves could exploit security weaknesses to remotely open and start a car, or a spy could listen to conversations inside a car, Stefan Savage, a University of California-San Diego computer science professor, said in a telephone interview. He co-authored a paper last year after discovering ways to hack into cars.
Any electronic system in a car from brakes to radios is a potential target for hackers, said Andre Weimerskirch, chief executive officer of Escrypt, a closely held security company in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with automotive clients. While the risk is hypothetical so far, automakers and regulators need to address it now, he said in telephone interview.
“Once you have access through the infotainment system, the question is could a hacker get access to the safety-critical components,” Weimerskirch said.
Weimerskirch spoke last week in Washington at the annual conference of SAE International, a group of automotive engineers whose members are helping draft an industry standard for car electronics.

Fast-Moving Technology

Savage and co-author Tadayoshi Kohno, from the University of Washington, found vulnerabilities in telematics systems, which make the connections between cars and mobile communications. They also successfully inserted an infected CD into a car’s compact-disc player and directed it to control safety systems. They aren’t aware of any real-world examples of car hacking.
“The issue for the industry and for the government is that you’re one really bad situation away from it becoming a thing that people think about,” Savage said. “Much better to try to address it early.”
The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which regulates automotive safety, needs better expertise in vehicle electronics, the science panel’s report concluded after studying the agency’s response to the Toyota incidents.
“This technology is changing so fast that NHTSA needs to make sure they can keep up,” Lund said.

Standards, Research

NHTSA is researching auto cybersecurity, Lynda Tran, an agency spokeswoman, said in an e-mail.
“The agency recognizes there are potential vulnerabilities, especially those related to future connected vehicles, that need to be fully understood and addressed,” she said. “NHTSA has been conducting exploratory research and is now planning further efforts that would evaluate the vulnerabilities and possible counter-measures on an industrywide basis,” including more research and evaluation.
Both SAE and the United States Council for Automotive Research, whose members include General Motors Co. (GM), Ford Motor Co. (F) and Chrysler Group LLC, have groups working on engineering standards aimed at cybersecurity.
Unlike automotive standards that specify performance minimums, a security standard would have to specify what systems shouldn’t do, Savage said, such as not allowing a CD to send signals to the brakes. Improving electronic security in cars takes a combination of hardware, software and more personal expertise, he said.

Potential Sales

“The knowledge how to do it is known, but it’s not a market where you have off-the-shelf products,” Weimerskirch said.
The cost to automakers and their suppliers will depend on the model of car and level of desired protection, he said. It’s unlikely car companies will offer special security systems as an option because automakers wouldn’t want to imply that customers would need to buy something to protect their cars, Savage said.
“It sends the wrong message,” he said.
Coverity Inc., based in San Francisco, and Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ)’s Fortify unit are among the companies that may gain sales to manufacturers, Weimerskirch said. Computer security companies such as McAfee Inc., a unit of Intel Corp. (INTC), might also try to sell automotive-security products, he said. A spokesman for McAfee didn’t immediately respond to a phone call seeking comment.

Industry Has Time

Escrypt, which gets about 50 percent of its revenue from automotive work, hopes to profit as well, Weimerskirch said, declining to disclose which automakers employ the company.
The one comfort for automakers rushing to address cybersecurity concerns may be that it takes a great deal of effort to hack a car, Savage said. He worked with a team on his research for more than a year.
“The average person, they’re much more likely to get their car stolen in the traditional way and the average person is not concerned about somebody bugging their car,” he said. “That’s a big advantage that the industry has and it gives them time.”

Source

TCS site hacked; domain name put up for sale

2010-02-14T11:25:00.002+05:30

9th Feb 2010.

MUMBAI/KOLKATA: India’s biggest software exporter Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) became a victim of cyber attack on Sunday, after the company’s website was hacked and the domain name was put up for sale.

While in the recent past, hackers have attacked top government websites, including telecom regulator’s trai.gov.in, this is the first time a large IT company’s website has been hacked.

The company’s official website www.tcs.com displayed the message ‘this domain name is for sale’ for nearly three hours, before the portal was restored by around 7 am.

When contacted by ET, a TCS spokesman said the attacks happened at the domain name registrar’s end, which is Network Solutions in this case. Network Solutions is one of the top five domain name registrars on internet, managing almost 6.4 million domains.

Source

LHC restart gets reset to June 2009

2009-04-18T13:28:00.007+05:30

The £5bn Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is intended to smash protons - one of the building blocks of matter - into each other.

The world's most powerful particle accelerator will go live again in June 2009 at the earliest, after a shutdown in September 2008. The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) thought it would only be out of action until November but the damage was worse than expected. CERN also said that repairing the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will cost up to €16.6 million or US$21 million.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), which runs the Large Hadron Collider, previously suggested that the apparatus would be restarted in April 2009, following maintenance. However, it emerged that June would be the earliest possible date for operations to resume fully.

The LHC is housed in a 17-mile-long circular tunnel nestled beneath the Swiss-French border in the Alps. It is designed to shoot streams of particles around the tunnel in opposing directions, smashing them into each other and thereby hopefully discovering more about the origin and nature of matter and the universe.

The particle beams are held on their paths by dipole magnets and focused by quadrupole magnets. These magnets are made of a superconducting material that needs to be cooled by liquid helium to a temperature of 1.9 kelvins (3.4 degrees Fahrenheit), if it is to avoid overheating and exploding.

The LHC was successfully turned on in September 2008, but little more than a week later, an electrical fault caused a helium leak that necessitated the complete shutdown of the machine.

This week, details began to emerge about the cost of the necessary repairs and the likely resumption date for the LHC. Repair time aside, the process will also be slowed down by the fact that the LHC needs to be out of service throughout winter; as it uses a tremendous amount of electricity, CERN cannot risk power issues at a time when citizens' homes need to be heated.

"We already said the bare minimum (repair time) included two months to warm up the sector (from its cryogenic state)," a CERN representative. "It became clear that there was no way of doing that before we shut down the accelerator complex for winter, anyway, so that puts the earliest possible date (for the refreezing of the LHC to start) in May. When we start up our accelerator complex, getting it up and running again takes a few weeks, so that takes you into June 2009."

CERN said the glitch and resulting shutdown had been educational, as "markers" had been identified that show when such an incident is likely to occur.

"Those markers would have allowed us to stop (the LHC before the helium leak), had we known where to look," the representative said. "We're building in additional monitoring and protection systems to make sure this kind of incident won't happen again, and this will take time."

"We expect that the repairs and the (installation of additional monitoring systems) will cost us between 10 million and 20 million Swiss francs ($8.4 million to $16.8 million)," CERN's spokesperson said. However, because the repairs will eat into CERN's supply of spare parts for the LHC, a second phase of the resumption operation will involve buying more spares, thereby raising the total costs further.

The costs for repairing the LHC and buying new spares would be "accommodated within CERN's annual budget," the spokesperson said, and the organization would not be requesting additional funds from European member states for those purposes.

Fundamental questions

The LHC was built to smash protons together at huge speeds, recreating conditions moments after the Big Bang, and scientists hope it will shed light on fundamental questions in physics.

The fault occurred just nine days after it was turned on with Cern blaming the shutdown on the failure of a single, badly soldered electrical connection in one of its super-cooled magnet sections.

The collider operates at temperatures colder than outer space for maximum efficiency and experts needed to gradually warm the damaged section to assess it.

"Now the sector is warm so they are able to go in and physically look at each of the interconnections," Mr Gillies told Associated Press.

The cost of the work will fall within the Cern's existing budget.

Dr Lyn Evans, the Welsh-born project director has called the collider "a discovery machine, the most sophisticated scientific instrument of our time."

Wireless Power

2009-03-26T01:00:00.001+05:30

Physicist Marin Soljacic is working toward a world of wireless electricity.

In the late 19th century, the realization that electricity could be coaxed to light up a bulb prompted a mad dash to determine the best way to distribute it. At the head of the pack was inventor Nikola Tesla, who had a grand scheme to beam electricity around the world. Having difficulty imagining a vast infrastructure of wires extending into every city, building, and room, Tesla figured that wireless was the way to go. He drew up plans for a tower, about 57 meters tall, that he claimed would transmit power to points kilometers away, and even started to build one on Long Island. Though his team did some tests, funding ran out before the tower was completed. The promise of airborne power faded rapidly as the industrial world proved willing to wire up.

Then, a few years ago, Marin Soljačić, an assistant professor of physics at MIT, was dragged out of bed by the insistent beeping of a cell phone. "This one didn't want to stop until you plugged it in for charging," says Soljačić. In his exhausted state, he wished the phone would just begin charging itself as soon as it was brought into the house.

So Soljačić started searching for ways to transmit power wirelessly. Instead of pursuing a long-distance scheme like Tesla's, he decided to look for midrange power transmission methods that could charge--or even power--portable devices such as cell phones, PDAs, and laptops. He considered using radio waves, which effectively send information through the air, but found that most of their energy would be lost in space. More-targeted methods like lasers require a clear line of sight--and could have harmful effects on anything in their way. So Soljačić sought a method that was both efficient--able to directly power receivers without dissipating energy to the surroundings--and safe.

He eventually landed on the phenomenon of resonant coupling, in which two objects tuned to the same frequency exchange energy strongly but interact only weakly with other objects. A classic example is a set of wine glasses, each filled to a different level so that it vibrates at a different sound frequency. If a singer hits a pitch that matches the frequency of one glass, the glass might absorb so much acoustic energy that it will shatter; the other glasses remain unaffected.

Soljačić found magnetic resonance a promising means of electricity transfer because magnetic fields travel freely through air yet have little effect on the environment or, at the appropriate frequencies, on living beings. Working with MIT physics professors John Joannopoulos and Peter Fisher and three students, he devised a simple setup that wirelessly powered a 60-watt light bulb.

The researchers built two resonant copper coils and hung them from the ceiling, about two meters apart. When they plugged one coil into the wall, alternating current flowed through it, creating a magnetic field. The second coil, tuned to the same frequency and hooked to a light bulb, resonated with the magnetic field, generating an electric current that lit up the bulb--even with a thin wall between the coils.

So far, the most effective setup consists of 60-centimeter copper coils and a 10-megahertz magnetic field; this transfers power over a distance of two meters with about 50 percent efficiency. The team is looking at silver and other materials to decrease coil size and boost efficiency. "While ideally it would be nice to have efficiencies at 100 percent, realistically, 70 to 80 percent could be possible for a typical application," says Soljačić.

Wireless Light

Marin Soljačić and colleagues used magnetic resonance coupling to power a 60-watt light bulb. Tuned to the same frequency, two 60-centimeter copper coils can transmit electricity over a distance of two meters, through the air and around an obstacle.

1. Resonant copper coil attached to frequency converter and plugged into outlet
2. Wall outlet
3. Obstacle
4. Resonant copper coil attached to light bulb

Other means of recharging batteries without cords are emerging. Startups such as Powercast, Fulton Innovation, and WildCharge have begun marketing adapters and pads that allow consumers to wirelessly recharge cell phones, MP3 players, and other devices at home or, in some cases, in the car. But Soljačić's technique differs from these approaches in that it might one day enable devices to recharge automatically, without the use of pads, whenever they come within range of a wireless transmitter.

The MIT work has attracted the attention of consumer-electronics companies and the auto industry. The U.S. Department of Defense, which is funding the research, hopes it will also give soldiers a way to automatically recharge batteries. However, Soljačić remains tight-lipped about possible industry collaborations.

"In today's battery-operated world, there are so many potential applications where this might be useful," he says. "It's a powerful concept."

Intel Releases Draft USB 3.0 Spec

2009-03-25T21:47:00.001+05:30

Intel has released part of the draft specification for USB 3.0, a move that could speed up the release of the next-generation data transfer standard.

The Extensible Host Controller Interface (xHCI) draft specification revision 0.9 is available under royalty free licensing terms to all USB 3.0 Promoter Group members, and AMD, Dell, Microsoft and NEC were among those to back the move, according to Intel.

USB 3.0 -- also known as SuperSpeed USB -- is expected to enable transfer speeds of up to 4.8Gbps, a significant leap from the 480Mbps supported by the current USB 2.0 spec.

"The future of computing and consumer devices is increasingly visual and bandwidth intensive," said Phil Eisler, corporate vice president at Intel rival AMD.

"Lifestyles filled with [high-definition] media and digital audio demand quick and universal data transfer. USB 3.0 is an answer to the future bandwidth need of the PC platform. AMD believes strongly in open industry standards, and therefore is supporting a common xHCI specification."

Intel said it expects to release a revised xHCI 0.95 specification in the fourth quarter, and the technology should become widely available in 2010.

The chip giant announced plans to release more details on the USB 3.0 spec earlier this year.

In June, Intel spokesman Nick Knupffer said on his blog: "The sooner USB 3.0 hits the market, the sooner all you readers will be flooding your devices and hard drives with insanely large files requiring masses amounts of computational resources, improving your lives, and making you pleased that you bought a quad-core processor."

Source

Hacking with a Pringles tube

2009-03-25T18:13:00.005+05:30

A crisp can is an effective tool for curious hackers

Empty cans of Pringles crisps could be helping malicious hackers spot wireless networks that are open to attack.

Security company i-sec has demonstrated that a directional antenna made with a Pringles can significantly improves the chances of finding the wireless computer networks being used in London's financial district.

An informal survey carried out by i-sec using the homemade antenna has found that over two-thirds of networks were doing nothing to protect themselves.

The security firm said all the companies at risk could easily thwart anyone that wanted to find and penetrate their network by making a few simple changes to the hardware used to build the wireless networks.

Hack here

In November last year BBC News Online was shown just how easy it is to find and gain information about wireless networks.

These networks are rapidly becoming popular because they are cheap, easy to set up and replace the unsightly cables that many companies have used to link PCs together into networks.

But the convenience of using radio waves to transfer data between machines is not without its risks.

Many curious hackers have started carrying out so-called war-driving expeditions.

US security expert Peter Shipley invented the practice. It involves driving around an area using a laptop fitted with a wireless network card to find and map out the networks.

Crisp signal

Pringles tube works as an antenna

Wireless, or WiFi, networks have an encryption system built in, but it is not turned on when the basic hardware of the network is set up.

"People have made these antenna out of Pringles tubes, coffee cans and even old satellite dishes"

Geoff Davis, i-sec

Geoff Davies, managing director of i-sec, said its informal survey revealed that 67% of the networks it found had this encryption system turned off.

"Many companies are going out and buying a wireless access point to see what it can do," said Mr Davies. "The problem is that they have opened a great big back door into their network."

He said that i-sec had boosted the chance of spotting networks by converting an empty can of Pringles into a directional, or Yagi, antenna. Plans to make such an antenna first appeared on the net last year.

Properly made, such an antenna can boost signal strengths by up to 15 decibels, vastly aiding the discovery of wireless networks.

Potential for havoc

In one 30-minute journey using the Pringles can antenna, witnessed by BBC News Online, i-sec managed to find almost 60 wireless networks.

"Those doing [war-driving] are not necessarily looking to take down corporate networks, they are looking to use corporate bandwidth," said Mr Davies.

"But if they are doing that then someone with more nefarious purpose could wreak havoc."

Mr Davies said that a few basic steps such as changing default names, moving wireless access points to the centre of a building and switching off the networks' broadcast functions could help significantly improve the security of these systems.

Avoid email embarrassment with Gmail

2009-03-25T16:54:00.000+05:30

Have you ever sent an email that only seconds later you wish you hadn’t? Sending an embarrassing message to the wrong person with the same first name can happen without warning too. Thankfully, hitting the send button, and the feeling of panic almost happen simultaneously.

Gmail now lets you “undo” a sent message with one of their newest Labs features. Enable the feature by clicking on the labs icon at the top of your Gmail (beside settings), and click the “enable” option beside the “Undo Send” experiment.

After enabling this feature, you will notice an “undo” link above your inbox for 5 seconds after sending a message — that might not be enough time in some situations, but it’s better than nothing!

In addition to this feature, there were also some other new experiments that may interest you — they include inline YouTube, Picasa, Flicker, and Yelp previews.

What do you think of these new features?

Source

Nasa hacker: I’m safe until prosecution decision

2009-03-25T14:24:00.004+05:30

Nasa hacker Gary McKinnon has said he is ’safe’ until the director of public prosecutions makes a decision about whether to prosecute him in the UK.

At the Royal Courts of Justice on Tuesday, McKinnon told ZDNet UK that home secretary Jacqui Smith had decided not to extradite the self-confessed hacker to the US to face charges of hacking military networks until Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, had decided whether to prosecute McKinnon in the UK. Starmer will reach a decision within four weeks.

“I’m safe until the director of public prosecutions makes his decision,” said McKinnon. “Nice one. It’s such a relief.”

Before hearing the news, McKinnon faced the prospect of extradition to the US within a few days. If found guilty of hacking military systems and endangering national security by a US court, McKinnon could face up to 70 years in a maximum security prison.

A UK prosecution would enable McKinnon to avoid extradition to the US. McKinnon is accused of hacking into 97 US military computers, which he has never denied. He does deny US prosecution allegations that he caused over $700,000 (£430,000) worth of damage to military systems by deleting files.

In the UK, McKinnon could be prosecuted under the Computer Misuse Act. In late December McKinnon sent a letter to Starmer, confessing to offences under section 2 of the Computer Misuse Act, which involves unauthorised access to computer systems with intent to commit further offences. This offence carries a maximum penalty of five years’ imprisonment.

In addition to asking Starmer to prosecute McKinnon in the UK, McKinnon’s solicitor Todner also requested in January that foreign secretary David Miliband press outgoing US president George Bush for a pardon for McKinnon, or at least that McKinnon be prosecuted in the UK.

Todner told ZDNet UK on Tuesday that she had heard nothing from either Miliband or the US authorities, but would make the same request of Barack Obama, who was inaugurated as US president on Tuesday.

“I don’t think he can be pardoned,” said Todner. “What I want is [the US] to give consent to a UK prosecution. If [the US] was willing, that would be a big plus point in terms of getting a UK prosecution.”

The hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice on Tuesday was to consider another aspect of McKinnon’s case — an application for a judicial review of home secretary Jacqui Smith’s decision to continue with McKinnon’s extradition, even after McKinnon was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome last summer. Asperger’s syndrome is a condition on the autistic spectrum.

McKinnon’s legal team requested from presiding judges Lord Justice Maurice Kay and Mr Justice Simon that the application for a judicial review be postponed until the director of public prosecutions had reached a decision. The judges denied the request.

“We didn’t get an adjournment,” McKinnon told ZDNet UK outside the courtroom. “Right now they’re going ahead with the application for a judicial review. And I’m going to the pub.”

Source

Hack Google's Native Client and get $8,192

2009-03-25T14:11:00.000+05:30

Google is challenging hackers to rip apart their ActiveX alternative called Google Native Client. Native Client allows users to run native x86 code on the web — something that has been deemed as extremely dangerous, especially from untrusted sources.

Google says this challenge is to make Native Client more secure, but I think this may also be a great way to gain some trust points for technologies like this. Winners of the challenge are awarded cash prizes — the grand prize is $8,192USD.

There are five cash prizes: The first prize is $8,192, the second prize $4,096, the third prize is $2,048, the fourth prize is $1,024 and the fifth prize is $1,024. All amounts are in USD.

If they can get through this challenge without any serious problems being reported, that’s a huge win for Google, and some pretty impressive marketing material. That type of marketing ammo can be used to possibly help future pushes to get this type of technology pre-installed in browsers.

Source

Surface computer

2009-03-20T05:55:00.001+05:30

Surface computing is the term for the use of a specialized computer GUI in which traditional GUI elements are replaced by intuitive, everyday objects. Instead of a keyboard and mouse, the user interacts directly with a touch-sensitive screen. It has been said that this more closely replicates the familiar hands-on experience of everyday object manipulation.

Recent minor innovations in the surface computing field are attributed to Apple, Inc and to Microsoft Corporation. Apple had demonstrated surface computing interfaces intended for professional use since 2006, with no expected product release date. Microsoft unveiled plans for the Microsoft Surface in May 2007.

A surface computer is a computer that interacts with the user through the surface of an ordinary object, rather than through a monitor and keyboard.

The category was created by Microsoft with Surface (codenamed Milan), the surface computer from Microsoft which was based entirely on a Multi-Touch interface and using a coffee-table like design, and was unveiled on 30 May 2007. Users can interact with the machine by touching or dragging their fingertips and objects such as paintbrushes across the screen, or by setting real-world items tagged with special bar-code labels on top of it.

The Surface is a horizontal display on a table-like form. Somewhat similar to the iPhone, the Surface has a screen that can incorporate multiple touches and thus uses them to navigate multimedia content. Unlike the iPhone, which uses fingers' electrical properties to detect touch, the Surface utilizes a system of infrared cameras to detect input. Uploading digital files only requires each object (e.g. a Bluetooth-enabled digital camera) to be placed on the Surface. People can physically move around the picture across the screen with their hands, or even shrink or enlarge them. The first units of the Surface will be information kiosks in the Harrah's family of casinos.

Besides the microsoft-created devices, other computer firms have also entered the surface computing market. These include Mitsubishi Electric with its DiamondTouch.

Also receiving units will be T-Mobile, for comparing several cell phones side-by-side, and Sheraton Hotels and Resorts, which will use Surface to service lobby customers in numerous ways.

The Surface has a 3GHz Pentium 4 processor, 2GB of memory, an off the shelf graphics card, a scratch-proof spill-proof surface, a DLP projector, and 5 infrared cameras as mentioned above. However, the expensive components required for the interface also give the Surface a price tag of nearly $10,000.

Microsoft Surface

Phoenix Mars Lander’s mission site hacked

2008-06-24T03:03:00.000+05:30

With the world’s eyes on the latest multimedia streaming straight from Mars, during the weekend the Phoenix Mars Mission’s site got hit twice, first by an Ukrainian web site defacer who posted a message at the site’s blog, and hours later, the Turkish “sql loverz crew 2008″ redirected the official mission’s site, as well as the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory site to a third-part location serving the defaced page. The Phoenix Mars Lander mission’s security staff are aware of the issue, and seem to have fixed it already, right before making an announcement - Hacker changes Phoenix Mars Lander Web site

A spokeswoman for the Phoenix Mars Lander mission says a hacker took over the mission’s public Web site during the night and changed its lead news story. Spokeswoman Sara Hammond says a mission update posted Friday was replaced with a hacker’s signature and a link redirecting visitors to an overseas Web site. Hammond says the site hosted by the University of Arizona has been taken off line while computer experts work to correct the problem.

Meet the latest group of script kiddies empowered by publicly obtainable remote SQL injection scanners, that each and every site that’s been affected in the past could have downloaded, and self-audited itself. The perspective that if you don’t take care of your site’s web application vulnerabilities, someone else would, fully applies here. No malware, or false information was distributed despite that the defacer linked to what looks like his homepage and therefore could have embedded malicious links or directly pointed the surfer to them.

And while this doesn’t seem to be what them wanted to achieve, in three of the most recent web site defacement incidents, we have defacers fully abusing the access they have. Last month for instance, Russian nuclear power websites were attacked and nuclear accident rumors spread using them, the Pro-Serbian hacktivists attacking Albanian web sites to spread propaganda messages, as well as a fake rumor for upcoming earthquake spread on the site of a Chinese seismological bureau.

Source

Super Antennas, Made From 'Invisible' Stuff

2008-06-23T02:40:00.002+05:30

Metamaterials might be used to create a real-life invisibility cloak, or even a cloak of silence -- some day. The Pentagon is seeking short-term gains by using metamaterials for revolutionary new antennas with obvious commercial spin-offs.

In fact, this is back where metamaterials started, when Prof. Sir John Pendry found that bundles of carbon fiber did not reflect radar in the usual way. Metamaterials gain their special properties because of the way they are structured, rather than their composition. This entails having a structure on the same scale as the wavelengths involved, so a metamaterial to influence light is going to require nano-technology, whereas radio waves and microwaves work on a scale of centimeters so metamaterials to influence them are far more practical in the short term.

Which is why the Air Force has put out a call for "Applied Metamaterials for Antennas." The goal is to demonstrate materials could improve antennas by:

" Beam shaping and steering / lobe control; enhanced center frequency tuning range; enhanced bandwidth; reduction in antenna size/weight/thickness; and enablers for conformal, flexible antenna designs. The overall technical objective of this research is to develop improved metamaterials with low electrical losses and simultaneous control over permittivity and permeability in the 20MHz to 10GHz frequency range. "

What does that mean, in English? Better antennas which give an improved performance for the same size. In particular, this is about conformal antennas which are integrated into a surface -- rather than sticking out from it. These are useful for aircraft and UAVs; metamaterial antennas could provide 'em with better radar and communications.

There is plenty of commercial potential for this technology, too. A metamaterial antenna does not just mean improved radio reception from a smaller aerial. It also means mobile phones which can work from a fainter signal and which less power. The same goes for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and other wireless devices.The future urban landscape might benefit when all TV aerials, satellite dishes and mobile phone masts are replaced with conformal antennas.

The Air Force's call for proposals on metamaterial development is for a three-year program which will also investigate optical metamaterials. No invisibility cloaks, alas. But they are considering "optical / IR beam steering, compact optical systems, mirrors, optical circuitry, interconnects, filters and limiter applications."

This kind of technology could lead to a drastic increase in the amount of data you can fit optical media like DVDs ; a flat metamaterial 'lens' can beat the diffraction limit which restricts the ultimate magnifying power of telescopes and other optical devices.

This is a fast-moving field and nobody knows how much further it will advance in the next three years. But the results will certainly be worth watching.

Source

Virus writers charged with copyright violation

2008-06-22T21:56:00.000+05:30

Japan has arrested its first suspected virus writers, but in a strange twist the three suspected creators and distributors of a strain of P2P malware have been charged with copyright violation, in an arrest that recalls Al Capone's prosecution for tax evasion.

The trio were cuffed by cops in Kyoto on suspicion of involvement in a plot to infect users of the Winny P2P file-sharing network with a Trojan horse that displayed images of popular animé characters while wiping MP3 and movie files. The malware, called Harada is Japanese reports, is reckoned to be related to the Pirlames Trojan horse (http://www.sophos.com/pressoffice/news/articles/2007/02/pirlames.html) intercepting by net security firm Sophos in Japan last year.

According to local reports, the three men have confessed to their roles in unleashing the malware. One is said to have created the malware, while the other duo are reckoned to have offered the malware up to prospective marks on Winny. A lack of relevant computer crime law in Japan means that the group have been charged with copyright offences.

"It isn't illegal to write viruses in Japan, so the author of the Trojan horse has been arrested for breaching copyright because he used cartoon graphics without permission in his malware," explained Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. "Because this is the first arrest in Japan of a virus writer, it's likely to generate a lot of attention and there may be calls for cybercrime laws to be made tighter."

Due to the lack of applicable cybercrime laws, the authors of the malware face much the same fate as the coder who developed Winny. Isamu Kaneko, Winny's author, was fined by a Japanese court in December 2006 for copyright offences. ®

Source

Arduino

2008-06-22T21:46:00.000+05:30

Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It's intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments.

Arduino can sense the environment by receiving input from a variety of sensors and can affect its surroundings by controlling lights, motors, and other actuators. The microcontroller on the board is programmed using the Arduino programming language (based on Wiring) and the Arduino development environment (based on Processing). Arduino projects can be stand-alone or they can communicate with software on running on a computer (e.g. Flash, Processing, MaxMSP).

The boards can be assembled by hand or purchased preassembled; the software can be downloaded for free. The hardware reference designs (CAD files) are available under an open-source license, you are free to adapt them to your needs.

Arduino received an Honory Mention in the Digital Communities section of the 2006 Ars Electronica Prix. Credits

Source

Double jeopardy ..

2008-03-28T21:39:00.000+05:30

In India, protection against double jeopardy is a Fundamental Right guaranteed under Article 20 of the Constitution of India. Accordingly no person can be prosecuted and punished for the same offence more than once. Right to Freedom in the Constitution of India. The provision enshrines the principle that a person cannot be tried twice for the same offense by any equally competent court. Thus a person cannot be tried for an offense for which he has been tried and convicted. Double Jeopardy involves the concept of Autrefois Acquit or Autrfois Convict. Autrfois acquit means again acquit and autrefois convict means again convict. The Constitution of India under article 20(3) only provides for autrefois convict. Thus in India if a person is acquitted once he can be tried twice. But if a person is prosecuted and punished then he can't be prosecuted again.

Broadband to go free in 2 years ....

2007-06-25T01:46:00.000+05:30

NEW DELHI: The government proposes to offer all citizens of India free, high-speed broadband connectivity by 2009, through the state-owned telecom service providers BSNL and MTNL. While consumers would cheer, the move holds the potential to kill the telecom business as we know it. You have heard of free municipal broadband — many cities in the US have drenched themselves in wireless broadband connectivity which is freely accessible to residents. The idea is to boost economic activity in general.

The government of India plans to achieve free broadband connectivity at a speed of 2 MB per second across the country, with a similar goal. Senior government officials expect to be able to achieve this goal spending only a portion of the corpus of the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF). All telecom operators contribute 5% of their revenues every year to USOF. It is estimated that the unutilised sum from the USOF has touched Rs 9,194.12 crore by March, 2007-end.

The current technological trend is for voice calls also to shift to the internet, using voice over internet protocol (VOIP). The quality of VOIP calls, patchy to start off with, has been improving steadily over the years and by 2009, is likely to be as good as current analogue calls that establish a circuit between the calling and called parties. When that happens, revenue streams from calls would dry up and telecom companies would need to develop value-added applications to make money from the connectivity they provide for free or virtually free. The department of telecom (DoT) will be taking a series of steps to make its plans for free broadband a reality. These include, using the USOF to set an extensive optic cable network across the country, opening up the long-distance sectors to further competition, allowing free and fair access to cable landing stations, permitting the resale of bandwidth, setting up web hosting facilities within the country and asking all internet service providers to connect to the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI). With international bandwidth rates in India being between two-to-five times higher than the global standards, the DoT will also go all out to break the monopoly of existing national and international distance players in a bid to induce cut throat competition in this sector. “India has only a handful of NLD/ILD operators while small countries such as Singapore and Taiwan have over 30 and 60 long distance operators respectively.

With limited players, they control the bandwidth gateways and form a cartel and this ensures that tariffs remain high. The entry of new players such as AT&T, British Telecom amongst others has started creating an impact,” the government source added. Importantly, the ground work for this project is already being laid. This comes as telecom regulator Trai had recently proposed that access to submarine cables be made cost-based and independent companies be given free and fair access to cable landing stations. (Cable landing stations connect submarine telecom cables with data and voice networks in the country.) Additionally, Trai had also recommended that bandwidth resale be permitted in India.

Industry analysts estimate that these two steps by Trai alone will lead to a 30% reduction in bandwidth costs, when implemented. In a related move, the DoT will also issue norms which mandate Indian companies, including state-owned BSNL and MTNL to begin large scale web hosting services. “This is because, most of the internet traffic generated in India is currently routed out of the country and re-routed back, resulting in the increased use of international bandwidth,” the government source said. Additionally, the plan also includes asking all internet service providers to connect their networks to NIXI. This will also ensure that internet traffic, originating and destined for India, is routed within India resulting in optimum domestic bandwidth utilisation. Currently, the very purpose of establishment of NIXI has not been served as only 27 ISPs out of 135 operational ISPs have joined it, the source explained.