James Gilboy, writing at The Drive: Over the week spanning Jan. 4-10, 1998, a trio of massive ice storms wracked the northeastern United States and parts of Canada. Knocking over transmission towers, the storms deprived up to 1.35 million people of electricity, in some cases for weeks (sound familiar?). Rather than leave town, though, one Canadian mayor stepped up to bring…
Tag: hands on
Some Ransomware Gangs Are Going After Top Execs To Pressure Companies Into Paying
A new trend is emerging among ransomware groups where they prioritize stealing data from workstations used by top executives and managers in order to obtain “juicy” information that they can later use to pressure and extort a company’s top brass into approving large ransom payouts. From a report: ZDNet first learned of this new tactic last week during a phone call…
New Side-Channel Attack Can Recover Encryption Keys From Google Titan Security Keys
A duo of French security researchers has discovered a vulnerability impacting chips used inside Google Titan and YubiKey hardware security keys. From a report: The vulnerability allows threat actors to recover the primary encryption key used by the hardware security key to generate cryptographic tokens for two-factor authentication (2FA) operations. Once obtained, the two security researchers say the encryption key, an…
Italian Mobile Operator Offers To Replace SIM Cards After Massive Data Breach
Ho Mobile, an Italian mobile operator, owned by Vodafone, has confirmed a massive data breach on Monday and is now taking the rare step of offering to replace the SIM cards of all affected customers. From a report: The breach is believed to have impacted roughly 2.5 million customers. It first came to light last month on December 28 when a…
JavaScript Turns 25
The programming language JavaScript emerged 25 years ago and has grown to become one of the most important pieces of the web and browser applications we use today. From a report: JavaScript is the go-to language for front-end development and has spawned Microsoft’s Typescript, a superset of JavaScript with a stronger optional type system for developers that compiles to JavaScript when…
China Built the First Electric Car Designed Exclusively For Ride-Hailing
Two of China’s top companies have joined forces to design, develop, and build an electric car for the express purpose of ride-hailing. The Verge reports: The vehicle is an adorable green hatchback called the D1, and it was developed by Didi Chuxing, the top ride-hailing company in China that notoriously defeated Uber in 2016, and BYD, one of the leading electric…
‘I’m Not Drunk, It’s My Car.’ Tesla’s ‘Full Self-Driving’ Gets Mixed Reviews
CNN describes the reactions posted online by six beta testers of Tesla’s “full self-driving” software, saying they “appear to be both delighted and alarmed by what they’ve experienced so far.” “Turn left. Come on. What are you doing?” said one frustrated Tesla owner as his car appeared slow to change lanes during a trip he posted on YouTube last week. “I…
Split-Second ‘Phantom’ Images Can Fool Tesla’s Autopilot
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Researchers at Israel’s Ben Gurion University of the Negev have spent the last two years experimenting with “phantom” images to trick semi-autonomous driving systems. They previously revealed that they could use split-second light projections on roads to successfully trick Tesla’s driver-assistance systems into automatically stopping without warning when its camera sees spoofed images…
Learn how Vishnu went from small village tech hobbyist to IT professional
We’d like you to meet Vishnu Mohankumar from Kerala, India. A tech enthusiast from a young age, Vishnu has always loved helping neighbors in his village by fixing any and all technology-related issues. Today, he is a Desktop Support Engineer at Astreya Consultancy. Below, he shares his learning journey and discusses how earning his Google […]
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Anti-Piracy Outfit Hires VPN Expert To Help Track Down The Pirate Bay
Movie companies and their anti-piracy partners are pressing ahead with their legal action to track down The Pirate Bay. The site reportedly used VPN provider OVPN, which carries no logs, but a security expert — one that regularly penetration tests several major VPN providers — believes that information about the notorious site could still be obtained. TorrentFreak reports: After a period…