TechEye |  |
- BDSM porn downloads traced back to Vatican
- MS Office for iOS, Android delayed
- LG Display to ship first flexible panel this year
- Obama promises more cash for cyber war
- LulzSec hacker admits attacks
- Hijack your plane with an Android phone
- Iran wants 'Islamic' Google Earth
- Windows 8 destroyed PC sales
- Radeon HD 7990 GPU information leaked
- Tablets start to dominate Taiwanese ODM production
| BDSM porn downloads traced back to Vatican Posted: 11 Apr 2013 04:54 AM PDT The Vatican is the only country on the planet with zero live births. However that doesn’t mean that the residents of this tiny city state, which was granted independence by Benito Mussolini in 1929, do not indulge in sexually explicit shenanigans. TorrentFreak and ScanEye have established that Holy See computers were involved in some rather unholy practices, downloading bondage, domination, sadism and masochism torrents, CBS reports. Of course, this does not mean that cardinals are downloading BDSM porn, with titles such as “BDSM Sklavin Zuchtigung im Dunklen Hobbykeller teen fesselspiele,” which sound pretty nasty even by German standards. Plenty of lay people work for the Vatican and have access to computers located in the city. It does not, however, mean that cardinals aren’t downloading BDSM videos. So all we can say is that someone in Vatican City enjoyed the works of Lea Lexis, Krissy Lynn, Tiffany Starr and Sheena Shaw, along with sitcoms such as Touch, The Americans and The Neighbors. The downloads were tracked in the first three months of 2013. It should be noted that the Vatican does not have its own mobile carrier, so we will never know whether some residents accessed porn and torrent sites using mobile gear. The list only covers illegal torrent downloads. After a series of particularly nasty scandals involving the church, it is rather comforting and to some extent surprising to see Vatican residents are 'just' downloading lesbian and BDSM porn. |
| MS Office for iOS, Android delayed Posted: 11 Apr 2013 02:56 AM PDT Microsoft has apparently been forced to delay the rollout of Microsoft Office for iOS and Android by almost a year. Punters were expecting to see Office on iPads later this year, but if a leaked roadmap is to be believed, it will launch in late 2014 instead. Although this is bad news for Android and iOS users, it might not be so bad for Microsoft. Office on iOS and Android sounds like yet another nail in the coffin for Windows tablets. But there is some bad news on the Windows front, too. Outlook for Windows RT has also been delayed. Windows RT already has Office and it is its main selling point. Well, to be quite honest it is its only selling point. However, it still does not have Outlook, which is a must in many corporate environments. The roadmap, as seen by ZDnet, seems to indicate Microsoft will refresh Office RT in April 2014. However, it appears the update does not include Outlook. For some reason Outlook RT will appear in October 2014, by which time Windows RT will probably be a footnote in tablet history. As for Office for iOS and Android, it should also appear in October, as part of the Gemini Wave 2.0 update. |
| LG Display to ship first flexible panel this year Posted: 11 Apr 2013 02:54 AM PDT LG Display is apparently gearing up to ship its first flexible displays later this year. The company has already outpaced Samsung in the OLED and 4K space, and now it seems bent on doing the same with bendy panels. Both Samsung and LG have already showcased flexible displays in recent months, but it appears LG will ship them first. According to the Korea Times, LG is widening its lead over rivals such as Samsung. It shipped 218 million LCDs over 9.1 inches last year, while Samsung Display shipped 163 million units. Chimei Innolux and AU Optronics came in third and second. LG Display’s IPS LCDs are used by a number of global tech brands, including Chinese smartphone makers who are going from strength to strength. The company has stepped up its R&D spending and it is pushing a number of new technologies, such as W-RGB OLED TV panels and IGZO TFT backpanels. It is also betting big on UHD, or 4K panels. Flexible displays for phones and tablets are just one cog in the LG juggernaut. LG Display wants to outpace Samsung in all display technologies and so far it seems the approach is working. |
| Obama promises more cash for cyber war Posted: 11 Apr 2013 12:37 AM PDT US president Barack Obama has promised to increase spending to protect US computer networks from internet based attacks. This is despite making a lot of cutbacks in other areas of the budget and indicates that a nuclear arms race has been replaced by one which uses software instead of nukes. Obama's budget proposal for the 2014 fiscal year, which begins 1 October, calls for more military "hackers" to head off escalating cyber threats from China, Iran, Russia and other countries. According to Reuters, there will be extra cash to bolster defences for government and private-sector computer networks. The announcement follows calls from intelligence officials who claimed that cyber attacks and espionage have supplanted terrorism as the top security threat facing the United States. Air Force general Robert Kehler told space and cyber industry executives at a conference in Colorado that it was time the US locked its doors because someone from halfway around the world is trying to get into its networks. The Pentagon said the spending would beef up US defences against increasing cyber attacks, as well as boosting its offensive capabilities. Obama's budget proposes to boost Defense Department spending on cyber efforts to $4.7 billion which is $800 million more than current levels. The rest of the Pentagon's overall spending budget has been cut by $3.9 billion. The Pentagon wants to expand its Cyber Command which is a team of military hackers conducting what it calls "reconnaissance, surveillance, development, maintenance and analysis". The Pentagon also said it would expand efforts to protect its own computer networks. The Department of Homeland Security would spend $44 million more on a government-wide information-sharing effort even though its overall budget will shrink by $615 million, or 1.5 percent. Some of this cash will fund more cybersecurity research and help private businesses and local governments to bolster their online defences. |
| Posted: 11 Apr 2013 12:32 AM PDT A UK-based computer hacker who worked under the LulzSec banner has admitted attacking Sony, Nintendo, Rupert Murdoch's News International and the Arizona State Police. Ryan Ackroyd's plea meant the court did not hear any evidence on the motivation behind the attacks. Ackroyd used the fake persona of a 16-year-old girl named Kayla. According to Gmanetwork, Ackroyd, 26, spoke only to identify himself and to enter his plea. He was arrested in 2011 with three other British young men after a series of LulzSec attacks. LulzSec made international headlines in late 2010 when they launched what they called the "first cyber war" in retaliation for attempts to shut down the WikiLeaks website. Mustafa Al-Bassam, 18, and Jake Davis, 20, had both pleaded guilty to two counts while Ryan Cleary, 21, had pleaded guilty to six counts including that he attacked Pentagon computers operated by the US Air Force. Ackroyd faced four charges but pleaded guilty to just one. Prosecutors said they would not pursue the other charges. Ackroyd and his three fellow hackers will be sentenced on May 14, Judge Deborah Taylor said. Cleary, Al-Bassam and Davis admitted to launching a so-called distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks - something that Ackroyd denied. He admitted to hacking into computer systems, obtaining confidential data and redirecting legitimate website visitors to sites hosted by the hackers. Ackroyd pleaded guilty to also hacking Britain's National Health Service, the US public broadcaster PBS and 20th Century Fox. The three are bailed on the condition that they do not access the internet. Cleary was indicted by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles last June, but US authorities have indicated they would not seek his extradition as he was being prosecuted in Britain on the same charges. |
| Hijack your plane with an Android phone Posted: 11 Apr 2013 12:30 AM PDT Anyone who thought that airport security would allow smartphone use on a plane in the future might be a little worried to know that it is possible to hijack a plane with one. Hugo Teso, a security consultant at n.runs in Germany, told the Hack In The Box Conference in Amsterdam that it was completely realistic to hijack a plane using Android. Teso, who has been working in IT for the last eleven years and has been a trained commercial pilot said that the security of aviation computer systems and communication protocols was pants. According to Security, Teso built an exploit framework dubbed SIMON and an Android app (PlaneSploit) that delivers attack messages to the airplanes' Flight Management System. He demonstrated how it was possible to take complete control of an aircraft. His hack targeted the Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B), which sends information about each aircraft through an on-board transmitter to air traffic controllers. This allows aircraft equipped with the technology to receive flight, traffic and weather information about other planes nearby. The other hack was of the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS), which is used to exchange messages between the plane and air traffic controllers via radio or satellite, as well as to automatically deliver information about each flight phase. He said that both technologies were massively insecure and are susceptible to a number of passive and active attacks. In the attack, Teso misused the ADS-B to select targets, and the ACARS to gather information about the onboard computer as well as to exploit its vulnerabilities by delivering spoofed malicious messages that affect the "behaviour" of the plane. Teso has developed the SIMON framework that is deliberately made only to work in a virtual environment and currently cannot be used on real-life aircraft. He said it is nearly impossible to detect the framework once deployed on the Flight Management System, there is no need to disguise it like a rootkit. |
| Iran wants 'Islamic' Google Earth Posted: 11 Apr 2013 12:00 AM PDT The Iranian suspicion of Western mapping systems is getting a little silly. Iran is apparently fed up with using Google Maps and want something more "Islamic". We are not sure what an Islamic mapping system would look like, as getting from point A to point B rarely requires divine intervention unless you are trying to find a park in Rome. But according to the Guardian, Iranian authorities think that Google Earth is a tool of the Satanic western spy agencies. They want to launch an "Islamic" competitor. Iran 's Minister for Communications and Information Technology, Mohammad Hassan Nami, announced that his country was developing an "Islamic Google Earth" to be called Basir which means "spectator" in Farsi. Nami claims that it will be ready within the next four months as preparations have already been made for its launch. Iran is creating an appropriate data centre which could be capable of processing this volume of information, he claimed. Nami is a former deputy chairman of Iran's joint chiefs of staff and the armed forces. He was appointed by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the new technology minister in February. He also holds a prestigious PhD in "country management" from North Korea's Kim Il-sung University so he is super qualified at making mountains out of molehills. Islamic Google Earth will be released in the next four months as an Islamic republic's national portal. But Nami wants to launch the service on a global scale. He believes it will be popular in other countries. After all, while Google Earth was providing a service to users, in reality security and intelligence organisations are behind it in order to obtain information from other countries, Nami said. Experts, however, have serious doubts about the project. After all, a similar attempt to create a religiously orientated, faith based mapping system failed dismally when Apple Maps failed to even find its own offices. Quoting an unnamed IT consultant who worked on Iran's national internet project, the Guardian said the announcement was merely an excuse to obtain funds and secure working contracts for the future. The expert said that claims that Iranian data centre capacity will reach Google's size in three years were just silly. Nami's time in office will also expire in June when Ahmadinejad steps down as president and new elections are scheduled to take place. |
| Posted: 10 Apr 2013 11:53 PM PDT PC sales fell 14 percent in the first three months of the year in what is the biggest decline in two decades. Beancounters at IDC have blamed the fact that users are avoiding Microsoft's Windows 8. Total worldwide PC sales fell 14 percent to 76.3 million units in the first quarter, IDC said exceeding its forecast of a 7.7 per cent drop. It was the fourth consecutive quarter of declines. It is also the lowest level since the middle of 2009, according to competing beancounters at Gartner, which published its own figures showing an 11 percent decline. Gartner and IDC say that the sales drop has been caused by the death of netbooks which seem to have been replaced by tablets. Consumers are now more interested in buying smartphones than owning new PCs. What has propped the PC market up is emerging markets, but even this has not been a strong growth area for PC vendors. IDC claimed that Windows 8 deterred potential PC buyers, because people felt they could not afford touch screen models. This was a mistake because the system runs equally well on standard PCs and laptops, but it looks like Microsoft cocked up by emphasing the use of touch in its designs and adverts, IDC said. Jay Chou, senior research analyst with the IDC unit that tracks PC sales, said that new Microsoft operating systems usually boost PC sales, but the lukewarm reception for Windows 8 will likely mean an even greater drop in the market this year. HP saw a 24 percent decline in sales in the quarter, but narrowly held on to its title of top global PC supplier, with 15.7 percent market share. Lenovo kept sales flat and is now just behind HP with a 15.3 percent global share. Dell, along with rivals Acer and Asustek, all saw double-digit declines in PC sales. Apple's PC sales fell 7.5 percent in the quarter. |
| Radeon HD 7990 GPU information leaked Posted: 10 Apr 2013 09:00 AM PDT A Reddit user who goes by the handle of Repilur has got his paws on AMD's upcoming Radeon HD 7990 GPUs and posted information on them online. Some partners of AMD have released their custom Radeon HD 7990 graphic cards, but it was revealed last month that AMD themselves were also working on a reference board dubbed Malta. AMD revealed that the same GPU was the one that powered DICE's Battlefield 4 17 minutes of gameplay. The Radeon HD 7990 delivered 60 FPS throughout the 17 minutes long trailer and was also mentioned to be running the game at 3000K resolution. When the Radeon HD 7990 was spotted in 2-Way CrossFireX mode so that's a total of 4 GPUs running. No benchmarks or much that was useful there, but there will be more details out soon when the Radeon HD 7990 is expected to launch. Word on the street is that AMD may be bundling the GPU with a copy of Battlefield 4. Given that the card is expected to cost around the $1000 mark this is probably the least significant part of the card's sale. Malta features Dual Tahiti GPU cores clocked around 1000 to 1100 MHz and would feature a six GB VRAM running across a 384 bit x2 interface. It is powered through dual 8-Pin connectors which puts the power draw to around 375W and comes with three fan cooling design. Display connectivity on the Radeon HD 7990 include five Mini Display and a single DVI connector. |
| Tablets start to dominate Taiwanese ODM production Posted: 10 Apr 2013 07:56 AM PDT Taiwanese original design manufacturer (ODM) Compal is one of three or four companies that put together notebooks and now tablets for And according to Taiwanese wire Digitimes, Compal is responding positively to the changes in the device market. |
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