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At a talk at the 30C3 in Hamburg, Ryan Lackey proposed an ingenious solution to detecting tampering with your computer, phone or tablet: paint the seams and screw-tops with glitter nail-polish and snap a photo of the random pattern formed by the glitter after it dries.

Security-conscious travelers have long used tamper-evident seals over their devices' screws and seams, but as Lackey points out, those seals are easy for spies, customs officials and other snoops to reproduce, especially if they can work in private (as happens when your laptop is taken away for a border inspection). But reproducing the random pattern of glitter polish is substantially more expensive that replicating a security seal -- it also takes longer, and there are no set procedures for doing so.

Lackey also recommends using stickers as an alternative seal; it's unlikely that a spy agency or a customs official has access to your favorite vintage Wacky Package sticker.

The idea is to create a seal that is impossible to copy. Glitter nail polish, once applied, has what effectively is a random pattern. Once painted over screws or onto stickers placed over ports, it is difficult to replicate once broken. However, reapplication of a similar-looking blob (or paint stripe, or crappy sticker) might be enough to fool the human eye. To be sure, the experts recommend taking a picture of the laptop with the seals applied before leaving it alone, taking another photo upon returning and using a software program to shift rapidly between the two images to compare them. Even very small differences – a screw that is in a very slightly different position, or glitter nail polish that has a very slightly different pattern of sparkle – will be evident. Astronomers use this technique to detect small changes in the night sky.

By taking the picture with a cellphone that is kept with you at all times, you can be reasonably sure the original picture hasn’t been tampered with or replaced. In order to guard against typical user forgetfulness, the experts recommend using a two-stage remote verification system. Such a tool would require that two pictures match exactly, for example, before allowing the user to log in to a potentially vulnerable system such as a VPN.

“This makes it non-skippable by users,” said Michaud, CEO of Rift Recon. “If the user doesn’t do the check, it doesn’t work.”

Don’t Want Your Laptop Tampered With? Just Add Glitter Nail Polish [John Borland/Wired]

(Image: Feather effect nail polish, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from berenicedecados's photostream)

блин, если бы вместо макулатуры на 100500 языках и сотне страниц "Getting started" для веб-камеры прилагали hw datasheet чтобы написать свой драйвер - это было бы более нормальным "getting started"
по последним данным вебкамеру достаточно подключить к компу, а уж NSA её опознает, подключит и начнёт трансляцию
ага. и отсутствующие драйвера под wifi втихаря подсовывает, чтобы транслировалось
да, в этом плане фря последний рубеж
даже линукс прогнулся

Доброе утро!

Дорогие друзья, сегодня последний, 365-й снимок сериала "мои любимцы орланы".
Как Вы помните, в прошлом году Союз охраны птиц России (СОПР) объявил, что 2013 год будет годом орлана белохвоста.
В честь этого события и родилась у меня идея публиковать каждый день новый снимок из жизни орланов.
Весь год в 8 часов эти красавцы говорили вам: "Доброе утро!" и желали хорошего дня.

Очень рад что многие снимки сериала вам понравились и собирали множество комментариев.
Сериал закончился, но не закончилась моя работа с орланами. В планах новые съемки этих чудесных птиц, но совсем по иному.

С наступающим Вас Новым Годом!
Желаю Вам, мои друзья, благополучия, крепкого здоровья, новых удач в творчестве!

Ваш Евгений Полонский

A new study maps how different emotions are felt within the body, with profound implications for ways to control how we feel.

"We often think the emotions are something that happen only in the mind, but there's also lots of evidence suggesting that they also happen in our bodies," lead author Lauri Nummenmaa, of the Aalto University School of Science in Finland, told NPR.

Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences, the study is based on five experiments involving 701 participants who were shown two silhouettes of bodies alongside emotional words, stories, movies, or facial expressions and asked to color the bodily regions whose activity they felt increasing or decreasing while viewing each stimulus.

Here are the results:

Nummenmaa noted that the maps illustrate how emotions evolved: Approach-related emotions such as anger and love show increased activity in the arms (and to a lesser extent the feet) while avoidance-related emotions sadness and anxiety show deactivation of those areas.

As you can see, happiness and depression evoke the most activity.

The authors contend that the distinct bodily sensation maps represent universal biological responses since the maps were consistent across experiments, including both West European and East Asian samples.

"Our data show bodily sensations associated with different emotions are so specific that, in fact, they could at least in theory contribute significantly to the conscious feeling of the corresponding emotion," said Nummenmaa.

The results led the authors to conclude that our perception of these emotion-triggered bodily changes "may play a key role" in how we consciously experience different emotions.

What that means is that not only can voluntary actions (such as focusing on breathing or smiling) produce corresponding emotions in the body, but also awareness of emotional responses throughout the body can affect our state of mind.

This understanding of this mind-body interplay can be used to deal with strong emotions. In the words of Tibetan teacher Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche:

"A more constructive approach to negative emotions, similar to working with negative thoughts, is simply to rest your attention on the emotion itself rather than on its object. Just look at the emotion without analyzing it intellectually. Don't try to hold on to it and don't try to block it. Just observe it. When you do this, the emotion won't seem as big or powerful as it initially did."

As Columbia professor and scientist Myrna Weissman told Reuters when discussing the effects of spirituality: "The brain is an extraordinary organ. It not only controls, but is controlled by our moods."

Nummenmaa

SEE ALSO: Scientists Used Facebook For The Largest Ever Study Of Language And Personality — And The Results Are Groundbreaking

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Slow and steady is the prescribed pace for the Curiosity rover, especially after recent photos showed a growing number of dents, scratches, and punctures on the car-size robot's wheels.

The rate of deterioration, which was not seen during earlier phases of the mission, is probably linked to the rough terrain that Curiosity has been traveling since October. It's different than what scientists have seen on Mars before.

Curiosity has tackled rocks in the past, but they were mostly small, isolated patches that didn't leave much of a mark on the wheels. Over the last month or so, the rover has wrestled large areas of rocks that are very sharp and embedded in the ground rather than loose, says Curiosity project manager Jim Erickson, from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It's very similar to a type of volcanic lava, called "aa," found on Earth.

"The idea of driving on this terrain, which is kind of like a bed of nails in some respects, that's something that we didn't assume we would drive on," said Erickson.

Curiosity's six wheels are made from aluminum, a material that's favored in the aerospace industry because it's strong, yet lightweight. The wheels are the thickness of about nine sheets of paper, or about two to three times as thick as an soda can, according to Erickson.

Each wheel has cleats to help the rover grip soft sand or climb over steep hills. All the tires are also imprinted with a zigzag pattern as well as a straight line of "dot" and "dash" cutouts that spell out "JPL" in Morse code. The unique track marks are used to determine how far the rover has traveled on Mars.

NASA engineers drove the wheels on a full-scale rover through rugged environments on Earth to try to simulate what the machine would experience on Mars, but they "were never able to beat them to the point where they didn't drive," said Erickson. As a result, he said, "we do not know really know how much damage you have to do to these wheels to make them not work."

Over the holidays, scientists took close-up images of the wheels to better assess their condition. They noticed that the front wheels have sustained more damage than both the middle and rear wheels, but haven't yet determined a cause for this since the ground pressure for each of the wheels is roughly the same.

Although rock-strewn terrain seems to be the main culprit, scientists are analyzing many possible factors for the increasing pace of wear and tear, including whether it's related to the Morse code holes  (one of the larger gashes on the left-front wheel was found next to this imprint), vast swings in temperature, or if extensive denting of the aluminum is making the tires more susceptible to punctures, says Erickson.

As of Dec. 8, Curiosity had driven a distance of just under four miles after more than one year on the surface of Mars. Her main destination since July has been the base of Mount Sharp, which rises three miles up from the center of the Gale Crater landing site.

Curiosity is hardly a speed demon — she moves a sluggish 8 feet per minute at her fastest — but now the rover's engineers will be even more cautious about her next steps. They are looking at overhead and local imagery to chart a smoother driving path going forward, and believe that the rover will remain healthy as long as it stays on more benign ground.  

"We want this vehicle to not just work for the prime mission, which ends in June 2014, but to be around for a large set of extended missions," Erickson said. "We have plans to make sure this vehicle is going to be around for a long time." 

SEE ALSO: 2013's Biggest Science Breakthroughs

SEE ALSO: The Most Amazing Satellite Images Of The Year

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The State Department hoped the building of satellite monitoring stations might soften tempers between the US and Russia, which have flared in the wake of asylum for Edward Snowden and arguments over Syrian politcs. Congressional Republicans, the Pentagon and the CIA, on the other hand, had different ideas, suggesting that US-based stations built to support Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS) - the Russian equivalent to GPS - could help the country's spying efforts. And now language included in a defense bill signed by President Obama late last week likely marks the end of the project - for now, at least.

An anonymous Republican aide told The New York Times that, "the idea was to make it next to impossible, if not impossible, to do this," essentially removing the State Department from the process as, "they were the ones who caused all the trouble in the first place." The plan, intended to improve GLONASS's accuracy, would require the director of national intelligence and the secretary of defense to assure Congress that the stations wouldn't be used to spy on the US to get the green light.

Filed under: GPS

Comments

Source: The New York Times

Привет, я занимаюсь фронтенд разработкой, и как-то так сложилось, что в своей повседневной работе активно использую vim.

В процессе работы накопился довольно большой, неплохо документированный конфиг, и в какой-то момент мне захотелось поделиться им с внешним миром, и возможно, что-нибудь в нем улучшить. Он может быть полезен не только веб разработчикам, но и в общем-то всем остальным.

Под катом я опишу основные фишки конфига. Vim использую в связке c iTerm и темой solarized, но конфиг с минимальными изменениями подходит для любого терминала и любой темы. Из-за подробного описания каждой опции он будет очень полезен для тех, кто по каким-то причинам решил перейти на вим недавно.

Как ни странно — в статье много картинок ;)
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Сегодня были оглашены результаты уважаемого фото конкурса  Global Arctic Awards , посвященного природе и народам Севера. В конкурсе приняли участие фотографы из 34 стран мира. Оценивали фотографии международное жюри из 12 человек. Среди победителей - фотографы из 14 стран. 11 медалей у россиян. 25 медалей у зарубежных фотографов. В этом году я впервые принял участе в этом конкурсе.

Моя фотография "Завалил!" заняла 3-е место в номинации PSA Белый Медведь и принесла  мне Бронзовую медаль PSA.

Открытие выставки в Москве 28-го апреля 2014 г.

From dancing clouds to bouncing Jell-O, 2013 was filled with great science GIFs. Here are some of our favorites.

Researchers created "ball lightning" in the lab. Read more » 

Jell-O falls, flattens, then bounces back. Read more »

 

A cube of magnetic putty swallowed a smaller cube of metal. Read more »

Liquid nitrogen instantly boils and turns into gas when spilled. Read more »

Sunlight reflecting off ice crystals made these clouds "dance." Read more »

We learned how to turn water into ice in seconds. Read more »

Scientists made an incredible water-proof surface. Read more »

NASA released the first full map of the planet Mercury. Read more »

Comet ISON rounded the sun on Thanksgiving day. Read more »

The Discovery Channel caught a pair of giraffes in a heated battle. Read more »

Here's how keys work. Read more »

A camouflaged octopus surprised a photographer. Read more »

SEE ALSO: 2013's Biggest Science Breakthroughs

Join the conversation about this story »