Bridgefy, a popular messaging app for conversing with one another when internet connections are heavily congested or completely shut down, is a privacy disaster that can allow moderately-skilled hackers to take a host of nefarious actions against users, according to a paper published on Monday. The findings come after the company has for months touted the app as a safe and…
Tag: id
You Can Now Play an Ultra-Rare Quake Arcade Cabinet at Home
Since its 1996 PC release, id’s seminal shooter Quake has been ported to everything from flip phones and smartphones to game consoles and Web browsers. But even many serious fans of the series don’t know about Quake Arcade Tournament Edition (Quake ATE), an officially licensed version of the game that ran on custom arcade cabinets. From a report: Even among those…
Decades-Old Email Flaws Could Let Attackers Mask Their Identities
At the Black Hat security conference on Thursday, researchers will present “darn subtle” flaws in industry-wide protections used to ensure that emails come from the address they claim to. From a report: The study looked at the big three protocols used in email sender authentication — Sender Policy Framework (SPF), Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM), and Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and…
Chinese Games Will Force Players To Use Their Real Names
The Chinese government will soon require video game users to log in with their real names. According to the South China Morning Post, the government is rolling out a state-run authentication system that will ask game makers to join the system in batches. From the report: The plan has been in the works for some time, with the government pushing for…
Will China’s AI Surveillance State Go Global?
China already has hundreds of millions of surveillance cameras in place, reports the Atlantic’s deputy editor, and “because a new regulation requires telecom firms to scan the face of anyone who signs up for cellphone services, phones’ data can now be attached to a specific person’s face.” But the article also warns that when it comes to AI-powered surveillance, China “could…
New technique enables mineral ID of precious Antarctic micrometeorites
The composition of Antarctic micrometeorites and other tiny but precious rocks such as those from space missions—is really hard to analyze without some sample loss. But a new technique should make it easier, cheaper and faster to characterize them while preserving more of the sample. The findings were published on the peer reviewed journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science on May 21….
CBS’ Overzealous Copyright Bots HIt Star Trek Virtual Comic-Con Panel
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: San Diego Comic-Con — like just about every large conference, convention, and gathering in 2020 — has had to switch to an online-only virtual format this year due to the continuing pandemic. Media companies that usually have a large presence at events like SDCC worked hard to create streaming alternative content –…
Google Campus Security Singled Out Black, Latinx Employees
Google’s campus security system subjected Black and Latinx workers to bias and prompted complaints to management, Bloomberg News reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the situation, leading the company to scrap a key part of the approach. From a report: The internet giant encouraged employees to check colleagues’ ID badges on campus, and asked security staff to do the same. This…
NASA announces Venus rover challenge winners
The Venus rover challenge – called “Exploring Hell” – received a great response from countries around the world. NASA said the design ideas submitted will help advance the final design of a mechanical rover that might one day explore the hellish surface of Venus. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/nasas-venus-rover-challenge-winners-announced…
Ask Slashdot: Could We Not Use DNS For a Certificate Revocation Mechanism?
Long-time Slashdot reader dhammabum writes: As reported in the recent slashdot story, starting in September we system admins will be forced into annually updating TLS certificates because of a decision by Apple, abetted by Google and Mozilla. Supposedly this measure somewhat rectifies the current ineffective certificate revocation list system by limiting the use of compromised certificates to one year… But in…