firehose

emmyc:

lil journal comics

That last one.

This building on the outskirts of Shanghai is the home of Unit 61398 of the Chinese military, which is responsible for the preponderance of digital espionage against American companies and the US government, according to a report just released by the computer security firm Mandiant.

The specificity of the report—and its treatment in a lengthy front-page article in the New York Times—is likely to inflame discussion of the threat posed to multinational corporations by state-sponsored hackers in China. Mandiant said Unit 61398, sometimes known in the US as “Comment Crew,” was responsible for attacks on at least 141 companies. Previous reports have identified Coca-Cola, Halliburton, and the European Union as among the victims of Comment Crew.

Here is another image from the Mandiant report identifying the location of Unit 61398 on Datong Road in Shanghai:

Mandiant said the building was built in 2007 and contains 130,663 square feet over 12 floors. “China Telecom provided special fiber optic communications infrastructure for the unit in the name of national defense,” the report notes.

The hackers of Unit 61398 use elaborate ruses to infiltrate computers that sit behind corporate and government networks, then maintain access for an average of 356 days, downloading files ranging from emails to contracts. Mandiant released a video of what it said it was an actual hacker in Unit 61398, nicknamed “DOTA,” engaging in cyber espionage:

The Chinese government denies any involvement in computer hacking and says any such activity emanating from China is the work of rogue hackers not sponsored by the state. But plenty of reports, including this latest one, have suggested otherwise. Here’s a map of victims of hacking by Unit 61398, which Mandiant refers to as Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) 1:

The Mandiant report doesn’t identify any victims by name, though others have in the past, but says the hacking of companies has spanned 20 major industries. (The Times reports that Unit 61398 wasn’t responsible for recent hacking of the newspaper’s servers.) This timeline gives a sense of where the hackers have seemed to focus their interest at various times:

The report, which is available as PDF here, also details the techniques and infrastructure of Unit 61398 in an attempt to aid defenses against the attacks—and, of course, to market Mandiant’s services for the same.

Alas, it seems the market might have issues with this. “That’s certainly interesting but I don’t know,” Perna mused. “If you look at what sells, it’s tough to justify something like that.”

Judgment introduces Sofia Hendricks as Kilo Squad’s medic. According to a GameInformer bio, “she joined the fight against the Locust after being exposed to the horrors of war as a media correspondent towards the end of the decades-long Pendulum Wars. Having seen terrible things during battle, she sets out to ensure that war is properly waged, and that ethics must not be sacrificed for victory.” (via Xbox 360 News: Epic: a female Gears of War star would be “tough to justify” - Xbox 360 - The Official Magazine)

The photo was reportedly posted on Jan. 25 by Mor Ostrovski, 20, a member of an Israeli sniper unit. It shows crosshairs zeroed in on the back of the head of what appears to be a Palestinian boy in a village. The photo has since been taken down and Ostrovski’s account has been deactivated. (via Sniper Posts Pic of Child in Crosshairs - Yahoo! News)

“Julian Fellowes has said that Season 4 will begin six months after your death and will be about “the rebuilding of Mary.” It will surely be a gloomy world of grief and mourning clothes. Downton Abbey has always been low on men, especially upstairs, and with you gone, the show’s Yorkshire village might as well twin with Northampton, Mass.”

- Downton Abbey obituary: Goodbye to Downton Abbey’s best character. - Slate Magazine

There’s two really useful parts to this hack which involves sniffing the HDMI protocol’s HDCP security keys. The first is just getting at the signals without disrupting communications between two HDCP capable devices. To do so [Adam Laurie] started by building an HDMI breakout cable that also serves as a pass-through. The board seen above is known as an HDMI screw terminal board. The image shows one cable connecting to itself during the fabrication process. What he did was cut one end off of an HDMI cable, then used a continuity tester to figure out which screw terminal connects with which bare wire. After all the wires are accounted for the end with the plug goes to his TV, with a second cable connecting between the board’s socket and his DVD player.

The rest of his post is dedicated to sniffing the security keys. His weapon of choice on this adventure turns out to be a Bus Pirate but it runs a little slow to capture all of the data. He switches to a tool of his own design, which runs on a 60MHz PIC32 demo board. With it he’s able to get the keys which make decrypting the protected data possible.

Filed under: home entertainment hacks, security hacks

By Jenna Pitcher on Feb 19, 2013 at 12:05a

Set to launch on Facebook March 4, Half the Sky Movement: The Game is a browser-based action adventure title to raise awareness about sex slave trafficking.

The game is part of the larger Half the Sky Movement, created by journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn with aim to end oppression of women across the globe.

Gameplay involves doing quests that are based on the real-life work of the movement's non-profit partners, which include The Fistula Foundation, GEMS, Heifer International, ONE, Room to Read, United Nations Foundation and World Vision.

Carrying out quests have a real-world impact as they unlock real-life donations from sponsors, such as Johnson & Johnson and The Pearson Foundation, who have pledged $500,000. The Fistula Foundation will receive the Johnson & Johnson donations and Room to Read will receive The Pearson Foundation funds.

Half The Sky Movement: The Game was developed with the support of Games for Change, Frima, Show of Force, the Ford Foundation and Zynga.org

In conjunction with Games For Change, game developer Mudlark and game publisher E-Line Media, the movement is set to launch three educational mobile games in India, Kenya and Tanzania, starting in late 2012.

The games include: 9 Minutes, an adventure game to teach young girls and women about healthy pregnancy; Worm Attack! a game for boys and girls about intestinal parasites; and Family Values, a choose your own adventure game aimed to "enhance the perception of a girl's value to a family."

The movement includes other media such as the Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwidebook and the four-hour television series of the same name.

• Source
• Half the Sky Movement

Speaking of eyeballing, Matthias Wandel took a break from woodworking long enough to create The Eyeballing Game. It's a simple, in-browser test of visual acuity that rates both your eyeballing accuracy and your speed.

Anyone from carpenters to designers to architects—basically anyone who deals with creating lines for a living—ought give it a go. Warning: A subset of you are going to find it extremely addictive and/or become hellbent on improving your score. (I thought I was pretty good, but I'm consistently getting in the 4.- range. I also discovered that I rock at determining a dead-accurate right angle and suck at parallelograms, as I keep subconsciously trying to turn them into planes with accurate two-point perspective.)

Play it here.

(more...)

sfcrazy writes "Mark Shuttleworth has for the first time talked about the privacy issues in Ubuntu Dash after being criticized by EFF and FSF. He mentioned some changes in the way use can 'disable' the search results. However the company has showed that under no circumstances they will disable the online search by default as demanded by EFF and FSF. Shuttleworth was simply spinning the wheel moving things around to give an impression that something has been done where as the core problem remains — Dash sends keystrokes by default and legally every user agrees to send such keystrokes to PRODUCT.canonical.com server to be shared with partners like Facebook."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dr Simon Monk (who has written a book on the Pi and Python – check it out on Amazon) has come up with a really useful idea: a bit of paper you can install over the GPIO pins of your prototyping Pi (and leave there) to remind you which pin is which.

The simplest ideas are the best, aren’t they? Visit Simon’s site to download and print your own version for free.

Subway, 1934 - Lily Furedi

NEWS.com.au

Police: News anchor arrested after domestic incident with news anchor wife CNN New York (CNN) -- WCBS news anchor Rob Morrison is facing charges of allegedly choking his wife, CBS MoneyWatch anchor Ashley Morrison, according to Connecticut authorities. Rob Morrison was taken into custody early Sunday at the couple's Darien ... NY TV anchor accused of choking wife at Conn. homeSan Jose Mercury News Robert Morrison, WCBS anchor, accused of choking wifeNewsday CBS 2 anchor arrested on domestic abuse rapamNY Hartford Courant -KPHO Phoenix all 35 news articles »

Okc_ebooks: Pick-up artists trying to chat up a robot horse:

therapsida:

pua-txt:

I wrote a piece for Slacktory about PUAs desperately hitting on an OkCupid account that spits back meaningless @horse_ebooks quotes. Okc_ebooks (a Tumblr you should follow right away) provides an excellent case study for how scripted PUA routines by design objectify women. When PUAs plow through scripts written by other PUAs with women whose responses are irrelevant, how is that in any way actual interhuman communication? Replace the woman with @horse_ebooks, and you’re left with two robots talking to each other.

oh my GOD

AMAZING

Windows RT, the version of Windows being loaded onto ARM-powered tablets and netbooks such as the new Microsoft Surface, has one drawback: there are tens of thousands of apps written for x86 hardware that simply won’t run on this new ARM-powered architecture. While this may present a problem for hospitals, banks, and other institutions needing a proper Wintel platform, we’re wondering how to get classic games such as Civ III and Age of Empires running on these new tablets.

It seems with a lot of black magic, [mamaich] over at the XDA Developers forum has a solution for us. He’s created a tool for running x86 Win32 apps on Windows RT. Basically, he’s created an x86 emulator for ARM devices that also passes Windows API calls to Windows RT.

So far, [mamaich] has been playing some classic Windows games on his Windows RT box, including Heroes of Might and Magic 3 and Space Cadet Pinball from Windows 95. A few utility apps such as 7Zip and WinRAR also work.

[mamaich]‘s plans for his build are to make x86 emulation more automatic without the need for a separate launcher tool. Then, finally, we’ll have the perfect portable platform for RTS games.

Filed under: ARM, tablet pcs hacks

The Blemish

Alec Bladwin Called Photog a "Coon, a Drug Dealer" The Blemish While walking his dogs outside his apartment this morning, New York Post reporter Tara Palmeri approached Alec Baldwin and asked him to comment on a lawsuit against his wife, Hilaria. Being the levelheaded man that he is (this is the same guy who called ... Photographer says Alec Baldwin called him racial slurToday.com (blog) Alec Baldwin Denies Racial Slur Aimed at PhotographerTheWrap Alec Baldwin vs. 'Post' reporter, photogUSA TODAY Examiner.com -TV Guide -Irish Examiner all 68 news articles »

“Incessant Tumblr archive scrolling is still an unclassified sickness.” - Tim Geoghegan

“It is better to be alone than in bad company.” ― George Washington

Soap, Scent of a Loser

— Ignatius J. Reilly, A Confederacy of Dunces

We’ve been following [CNLohr]‘s process of creating an AVR-powered microscope slide running Linux and interfacing redstone circuits in Minecraft to real world electronic for a while now, but we’re really at a loss for words on how it works. Well, now there’s a video explaining everything you want to know about this amazingly complicated and overwrought thing.

The device is powered by an AVR microcontroller and Ethernet controller running [Fabrice Bellard]‘s JSLinux in a browser. [CNLohr] added a few bits to JSLinux allowing him map the x86 IO ports emulated inside JSLinux to the AVR’s IO ports. This allows him to query the status – both analog and digital – using just a browser. Very cool, but [CNLohr] can also run his Minecraft server optimized for 8-bit devices on this microscope slide server to create a bridge between real electronics and redstone circuits.

To sum up what’s going on here, [Bellard] created an x86 emulator in JavaScript, and put Linux on it. [CNLohr] is serving this from a microcontroller attached to a circuit built on a microscope slide so he can blink an LED from within Minecraft. It’s the most beautifully over engineered and useless thing we’ve ever seen, basically.

In the video after the break, you can see [CNLohr]‘s overly convoluted walk through of what’s going on with this microscope slide server. As a little bonus, you can also catch a glimpse of Hackaday at 00:20 in [CNLohr]‘s most visited / new tab thingy in Firefox. We’re honored, really.

Filed under: linux hacks, Microcontrollers

MojoKid writes "Bungie, the company that brought forth Halo, is embarking on development of a new MMO title called Destiny that is aimed at being unlike any gaming experience we've seen. There are few hard details available, such as a launch date or pricing, but Bungie gave a preview that teases the game and showed off concept art. It's a large-scale MMO set in a post-apocalyptic world, but the gameplay and social interaction is supposed to be far more natural and fluid than previous generation MMOs. There will apparently not be a subscription model, so gamers won't have monthly fees to deal with, either. Bungie plans to develop a complex storyline with Destiny over the course of the next decade. There will be 10 books, complete with a story arc, so it follows that the world will evolve in a manner of speaking even as people participate in activities to change things within it."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

rbrandis writes "Google is in discussions with payment companies including Visa, MasterCard and PayPal to put illegal download websites out of existence by cutting off their funding. If Google goes ahead with the radical move, it would not mark the first time that illegal websites have been diminished or driven out of business by having a block put on their source of money."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ABC News

Playgrounds in storm areas memorialize Newtown victims CNN International New York (CNN) -- A reference to the name "Sandy" can evoke painful reminders of last year's tragedies, be it the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School or an historic storm that wiped out thousands of homes and businesses, and left millions in the dark ... Newtown shooter motivated by Norway massacre, sources sayCBS News Newtown massacre gunman wanted to exceed Norway shooter's death tollNew York Post "There Was A Weirdness" About Young Adam LanzaFRONTLINE all 210 news articles »

Offering proof that executive producer positions begin at conception, the latest input on Up All Night’s ceaseless creative reimagining comes from Maya Rudolph’s unborn fetus, who has now suggested NBC retool the beleaguered sitcom as a show where Maya Rudolph is pregnant so fuck it, everyone should just quit. The Hollywood Reporter notes that the network is “strongly considering” abandoning its plan to press forward with at least one live-audience, multi-camera episode sans departed star Christina Applegate and without its central premise. NBC's newfound thoughtfulness comes in the wake of Rudolph announcing that she's pregnant with her fourth child with director Paul Thomas Anderson, and the show’s writers deciding en masse that being asked to also graft a sudden pregnancy subplot onto the increasingly mangled, nigh-unrecognizable series is the final straw. The writing staff is instead said to be seeking new jobs on shows that ...

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shenaniganswillensue:

Rachel Caldwell