Friday, December 06, 2013

Here's A Great Idea For Creating Passwords That Are Easy To Remember But Hard To Hack

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/idea-for-easy-to-remember-passwords-2013-12

Neal O'Farrell Identity Theft Council

In the past couple of months, security researchers have discovered huge numbers of hacked passwords for popular websites posted to the net, available for hackers to use and abuse.

One of the things made obvious is how many people use the same, easy-to-guess passwords for their online activities, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter.

The most popular passwords are "123456" or the even more clever "123456789" or the ever-popular "password." (Here's a list of the top 25 passwords to avoid.)

After we wrote about 2 million more user names/passwords found on the net this week, we heard from computer security expert Neal O'Farrell, executive director of The Identity Theft Council.

He offered this excellent tip about how to create easy-to-remember passwords that are hard for hackers to guess:

Don't use passwords, use passphrases

He explains it this way:

A passphrase is a short sentence that’s easy for you to remember – that describes something about you and your life, for example - but that a hacker would have a very hard time knowing or guessing.

For example, the phrase could be something like “I graduated from Notre Dame University on June 1st 2002.”  Pick the first letter from every word in that phrase, making sure you include the upper and lower case, and keep all the numbers.

That would give you the following password: “IgfNDUoJ1st2002” That’s a massive 15 characters and includes upper and lower case letters and numbers. Change the “I” to the symbol “!” and now you’ve made it even harder to crack.

SEE ALSO: 9 Tech Trends That Will Make Someone Billions Of Dollars Next Year

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Thursday, December 05, 2013

MSI reveals two GT60 laptops with 3K displays

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/12/05/msi-reveals-two-gt60-laptops-with-3k-displays/

MSI is jumping into the world of ultra-sharp displays today with the launch of two high-end GT60 laptop models. Both the gaming-oriented 2OD-261US and the workstation-grade 2OKWS-278US have 15.6-inch, 2,880 x 1,620 screens that make the most of 3D graphics and photos. As you'd hope, the two systems have more than enough horsepower to justify the high resolution. Each GT60 variant carries a quad-core 2.4GHz Core i7, 16GB of RAM, a 128GB SSD and a 1TB hard drive; the gaming rig relies on GeForce GTX 780M graphics and runs Windows 8, while its sibling uses pro-level Quadro K3100 video and Windows 7. Whichever PC you choose, you'll pay a lot for MSI's newfound visual prowess. The 20D-261US is available now for $2,200, while the 2OKWS-278US raises the asking price to $2,800.

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Source: MSI (1), (2)

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How To Get Refunded The Difference If Amazon Discounts The Product You Just Ordered

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-get-a-price-match-from-amazon-2013-12

If Amazon discounts a product you just ordered, there's a quick and easy way to get your money back. 

Reddit user poorsol posted an exchange with the retailer to demonstrate how easy it is to get a refund. 

In a brief chat with an Amazon customer service representative, poorsol explains that the wine rack he originally bought for $28.52 has been discounted by about $8. 

The rep says that the company will refund for any discounts made within seven days of your purchase: 

amazon refund chat

We dug around Amazon's website and couldn't find anything about this policy, so we decided to chat customer service. 

They confirmed that this is the policy: 

Amazon customer service chat

SEE ALSO: What Victoria's Secret Workers Think When Men Walk Into The Store

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Even the U.N. Is Using Drones to Spy on People Now

Source: http://gizmodo.com/even-the-u-n-is-using-drones-to-spy-on-people-now-1477098024

Even the U.N. Is Using Drones to Spy on People Now

The United Nations now has its own drone program. Its first unmanned aircraft took off earlier this week in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Joining some 87 countries with the capability, the organization says it's just keeping up with the world's technological advances.

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Avoid Injuries With Smart Sneakers That Tell You How To Run Properly

Source: http://gizmodo.com/avoid-injuries-with-smart-sneakers-that-tell-you-how-to-1477096679

Avoid Injuries With Smart Sneakers That Tell You How To Run Properly

A daily run can be great for your health and fitness, but it can actually be harmful too if not done properly. Of course the right shoes are an important part of the formula, especially this sensor-laden pair developed by the Fraunhofer Institute which provide real-time feedback on your running style, and how to improve it.

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Google's Auto-Awesome Will Make Your Photos Snow or Twinkle

Source: http://gizmodo.com/googles-auto-awesome-will-make-your-photos-snow-or-twi-1477153557

Google's Auto-Awesome Will Make Your Photos Snow or Twinkle

Google's Auto-Awesome feature that's baked into Google+ already does cool things, like make your pictures more balanced, auto-stitch panoramas, and even create animated GIFs. Today, it's adding two new Holiday-ish Auto-Awesomes. It's either the best new feature, or the cheesiest, worst new feature.

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NSA collecting 5 billion cellphone location records per day

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/12/04/nsa-collecting-location-data-from-cellphones-worldwide/

Hey everyone, the government's tracking you. Quelle surprise. In what has to be one of the least shocking pieces of news to come from the Edward Snowden leaks, The Washington Post is reporting that the National Security Agency has been gathering surveillance data on foreign cellphone users' whereabouts globally, with some Americans potentially caught in the net. The database, which collects about 5 billion records per day, is so vast that not even the NSA has the proper tools to sift through it all. That's not to say the agency hasn't been able to make "good" use of it with analytics programs, though.

One such program, ominously labeled Co-Traveler, allows the NSA to determine "behaviorally relevant relationships" based on data from signals intelligence activity designators (or sigads for short) located around the world, including one codenamed "Stormbrew." That's a lot of jargon for what are essentially data hubs that collect geolocation information down to the cell tower level. Co-Traveler can locate targets of interest based on cellphone users moving in tandem, even if they're unknown threats -- frequent meetups with an existing suspect could reveal a close associate, for instance.

As we've come to expect by now, both the NSA and the Office of the Director for National Intelligence argue that this location-based surveillance is legal. Agency representatives tell the Post that the collection system doesn't purposefully track Americans. However, the NSA also says it can't determine how many US residents get swept up in these location scans; there are concerns that it's following targets protected by Fourth Amendment search rights.

Joseph Volpe contributed to this report.

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Source: Washington Post

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Microsoft's immediate plans against NSA 'threat': court challenges, encryption and transparency

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/12/05/microsoft-government-snooping-protections/

The NSA / PRISM / MUSCULAR scandal sparked by Edward Snowden's leaks stained many tech companies, and tonight Microsoft has laid out several plans it hopes will convince customers (particularly non-US businesses and foreign governments) they're safe using its products and services. In a blog post, general counsel and executive VP Brad Smith lays out a three pronged approach of "immediate and coordinated action" against the threat of government snooping. It's expanding the use of encryption to cover any content moving between it and its customers, any transmissions between its data centers, and data stored on its servers -- all of this is said to be in place by the end of 2014.

In terms of court orders that may push it to reveal data, Microsoft is committing to notify "business and government" customers of any legal orders, and if it is prevented from doing so by a gag order, says it will challenge those in court. Finally, it's expanding the existing program giving governments access to its source code so they can make sure it doesn't contain any back doors. According to Reuters, this will put Microsoft on par with other Internet companies like Amazon Web Services, Yahoo and Google for how it treats data. Still, while that may help foreign diplomats feel better about logging into Outlook or Skype, there are probably a few individuals who will keep their tin foil hats on, Kinect cameras covered and cellphones off.

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Source: Microsoft TechNet Blog

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Here's An Awesome Presentation On What Bitcoin Really Is

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/presentation-what-is-bitcoin-2013-3

robert mcnally bitcoin

Is Bitcoin the new gold?

Some former gold bugs certainly think so.

And its value has skyrocketedin recent months.

But many readers at this point are probably wondering ... what exactly is Bitcoin?

Robert McNally, an iOS developer at parking payment startup QuickPay, gave the following presentation to last year's Hackers' Conference in Santa Cruz, answering exactly that question

With his kind permission, we have republished it here. 

Let's begin ...



And start with basics.



In 2013, Bitcoin *is* money — at least for some — and that population grows each day.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider
    






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Wednesday, December 04, 2013

Raspberry Pi-equipped AR.Drone can hijack other quadcopters' WiFi link (video)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/12/04/skyjack-parrot-drone-raspberry-pi/

There might come a time when you'll wait for a drone instead of a truck for your Amazon or UPS package, while worrying about tech-savvy thieves instead of armed robbers. Let's just hope no ne'er-do-well uses Samy Kamkar's SkyJack for evil, because the software can worm its way into flying machines to take over their brains. Kamkar, who hacks things presumably to spread security awareness, loaded the offending code onto a Raspberry Pi-equipped Parrot AR.Drone 2.0. The result is a flying contraption that's capable of seeking out other drones' wireless signals and forcefully severing their connection from their true owners. Worse, the software works just as well installed on a land-based computer.

Curious folks can check out Kamkar's video after the break for a quick demo, but those tech-savvy enough can get a deeper understanding through SkyJack's source code. The system can only hijack drones with Parrot's WiFi MAC addresses at this point, but here's hoping companies take note and make future delivery drones more secure just in case.

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Via: SlashGear

Source: SkyJack, GitHub

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Google creating a tool to port Chrome apps to Android and iOS

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/12/03/google-mobile-chrome-apps/

Google's been shepherding web applications to the desktop as packaged Chrome apps (think the browser-based Google Keep) for a while now, and it turns out the search titan is building a tool to help them go mobile. The Next Web noticed that Googler Michal Mocny has been hard at work on a project dubbed Mobile Chrome Apps that's been hosted on Github since May. The repository's description reveals the code is a toolkit for porting Chrome packaged apps to ones that will run on Android and iOS by using Apache Cordova (formerly known as PhoneGap). Though the applications will retain their HTML, CSS and Javascript innards, they'll look like native apps and can even be submitted to their respective app stores. While the software is publicly available, it's not expected to be in beta form until January. Ready to lunge into development anyway? Venture to the source and hack away.

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Via: The Next Web

Source: Mobile Chrome Apps (Github)

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Tuesday, December 03, 2013

Vuzix's Android-powered M100 Smart Glasses now available to pre-order for $1,000

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/12/03/vuzix-m100-smart-glasses-now-available-to-pre-order/

If you want Android-powered eyewear that's readily available, you won't have to wait for Glass' commercial launch next year; Vuzix has already beaten Google to the punch. The company's M100 Smart Glasses have started shipping to developers, and the general public can now pre-order the eyepiece ahead of its expected December release date. Do be prepared to pay for the privilege of seeing your Android and iOS apps on a heads-up display, however. The M100 will officially sell for $1,000 -- about twice as much as Vuzix predicted in January.

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Via: Electronista

Source: Vuzix, PRNewswire

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Square absorbs Viewfinder team, picks up some ex-Googlers in the process

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/12/03/square-viewfinder/

If you're in the market for a few more engineers, you could go through the rigamarole of posting a listing on some job site - or you could just pick up a whole team. The small staff behind photo-sharing app Viewfinder will be setting up shop in Square's New York offices, including co-founders Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis, who'd previously done time at Google and created image editor GIMP. While Square's engineering blog happily talks up the fact that the move will effectively triple the company's NYC staff, no mention is made regarding the fate of Viewfinder itself, which may not bode well for the future of the app.

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Via: Techcrunch

Source: Square

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