Nightly Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 02:05 AM CET - Feb,12 2003
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- Famous hacker Kevin Mitnick gets hacked - The world's best-known
computer hacker suffered the indignity of
having someone break into his new security consulting company's Web site.
But Kevin Mitnick shrugged it off as "quite amusing," not serious enough for
him to call the FBI. Mitnick, whose federal probation on hacking charges ended
a few weeks ago, acknowledged that this weekend's electronic break-in at
Defensive Thinking Inc. of Los Angeles was actually the second time in weeks
that hackers found a way into the computer running the firm's Web site.
- Cupid stunt sends not-so funny Valentine - Security companies are
currently examining
a suspicious
Valentine's Day email being sent to computer users. The email, from
[email protected], says that the recipient has received an e-card and
invites users to click on a link. The site then asks users to download an
800Kb file that will need Flash to be viewed. Antivirus firms have already
discovered that the software changes the browser's default search engine and
drops an unidentified DLL into Windows. A check on the basic
www.valentines-ecard.com URL reveals that the page has exceeded its monthly
bandwidth limit.
- Broadband over power lines? Technology spurs surging optimism -
St. Louis-based Ameren Corp. and other utilities already are testing the
technology, and many consider it increasingly viable. This truly
plug-and-play technology, if proven safe, has the blessings of federal
regulators looking to bolster broadband competition, lower consumer prices and
bridge the digital divide in rural areas. The technology works like this: data
is carried either by fiber-optic or telephone lines to skip disruptive
high-voltage lines, then is injected into the power grid downstream, onto
medium-voltage wires. Because signals can only make it so far before breaking
apart, special electronic devices on the line catch packets of data, then
reamplify and repackage them before shooting them out again.
- Company develops unbreakable data encryption code - Meganet, an
Israeli-U.S. data security company, has developed
an encryption technology that appears to be unbreakable, enabling
governments and corporations, to keep their data safely out of the hands of
competitors, thieves and saboteurs. Meganet Corporation's founder, Saul
Backal, claims that its solution can put an end to these problems. Meganet
offers a patented non-linear data mapping technology, called VME (Virtual
Matrix Encryption), that creates exceptionally random cipher text and
combines it with a one million-bit key, which is unheard of in today's
data security markets. Competing solutions offer a maximum of 256 bits.
- MS .Net patent--clouding standards? -
Microsoft
is in the process of applying for a wide-ranging patent that covers a
variety of functions related to its .Net initiative. If approved as is,
the patent would cover application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow
actions related to accessing the network, handling Extensible Markup Language
(XML), and managing data from multiple sources. APIs are the hooks in software
that allow applications to work with another system. Microsoft declined
to elaborate on its plans for the patent, but intellectual property attorneys
said that if it's granted, the company could dictate how, or whether,
developers of software and devices can link to the .Net initiative.
- Ericsson demos video calls on dual-mode handsets - Ericsson Mobile
Platforms, a licenser of open-standard 2.5G and 3G technology platforms for
mobile handsets, said Tuesday (Feb. 11) that it could demonstrate video calls
on an integrated, dual-mode W-CDMA and GSM/GPRS mobile platform.
Ericsson's demonstration shows standards-compliant video telephony
operating between two test phones running on the 64-kbit/second circuit switch
bearer to deliver 15 video frames per second. Further, it also shows video
streaming on the 384-kbit/s packet data bearer.
- 3D shooter for Series 60 -
Nokia's
Series 60 platform is rapidly gaining a foothold amongst mobile device
users, as new games and applications are churned out at a rate far exceeding
that of the Series 80 platform, better known as the Nokia 9200 series. 3D
games seem to be in particular demand, and now eager gamers have yet another
alternative in the shape of Netherlands-based
Overloaded's Resistance, where it's
the age old stance of man vs aliens all over again.
More on "Unreal" Security Risk - A slew of vulnerabilities disclosed by
PivX Solutions affect any game running on the Unreal Engine. PivX says the
holes
could let an attacker launch a denial-of-service attack, crash a gaming server,
or even run code on a player's machine. Luigi Auriemma, a security
researcher for PivX Solutions, discovered the holes. "These bugs have been
around for five years," he says. "They could be used by malicious attackers in
worms or large-scale attacks that rival those of Nimda and
Sapphire/Slammer.... Really frightful."
- WD 10,000 RPM HDD - Western Digital Corp. announced today that it
is entering the enterprise hard drive market with an Enterprise Serial ATA
(ESATA) product called WD Raptor. The new hard drive offers systems builders
and storage vendors enterprise-class specifications: 1.2 million hours MTBF
(Mean Time Between Failure), 10,000 RPM, 5.2 milliseconds (ms) average seek
time and a five-year warranty.
- Barton XP 2500+ XP 2800+ XP 3000+ Reviews - AMDBoard has already
more than 30
reviews already stored at their Barton Special page.
- New Motion Tech Muzic AERA -
The New Motion Muzic AERA is looking to be the digital Swiss Army knife of
the geek world. Packing a flash USB disk, MP3 player, voice recorder, plus a
LED flashlight into a single, portable package, the AERA covers a lot of
ground in 29 grams (sans 1 AAA alkaline battery). When I first saw Tom's
Hardware's review of the Creative MuVo, I thought it was a really great idea.
So finding this, with the voice recorder and flashlight at two thirds the
price, I though I'd give it shot. But as convenient as Swiss Army knives are,
they don't necessarily excel at anything they do. How will the AERA do?
- HP iPAQ Pocket PC h5450 First Look -
The HP iPAQ Pocket PC h5450 ($700 street) carries the flag well both for
Hewlett-Packard and the Pocket PC 2002 universe. Sure, the price nearly buys a
notebook PC today, but the h5450's useful features will appeal to both
enterprise and professional users. The assets include integrated 802.11b Wi-Fi
and Bluetooth radios for wireless LAN and PAN connections, plus a fingerprint
reader for bulletproof security. The 7.3-ounce h5450 also features a Secure
Digital slot and a class-leading 65,536-color, 3- by 2.3-inch transflective
display (320-by-240 resolution).
- NVIDIA 3DMark 2003 released - You
probably already noticed that Futuremark has officially released 3DMark 2003
today. On a related note, Nvidia has
contacted GameSpot to say that it doesn't support the use of 3DMark
2003 as a primary benchmark in the evaluation of graphics cards (!), as
the company believes the benchmark doesn't represent how current games are
being designed. Specifically, Nvidia contends that the first test is an
unrealistically simple scene that's primarily single-textured, that the
stencil shadows in the second and third tests are rendered using an
inefficient method that's extremely bottlenecked at the vertex engine, and
that many of the pixel shaders use specific elements of DX8 that are promoted
by ATI but aren't common in current games. In addition, PCExtreme.net
has posted the first
review,
and Beyond3D has posted an article called
"Introduction To 3DMark2003"
- Mozilla 1.3b -
Mozilla is an open-source web browser and toolkit, designed for standards
compliance, performance and portability. Mozilla.org provides binaries for
testing and feedback.
- VisualRoute 7.1b -
VisualRoute (download)
delivers the functionality of key Internet "ping," "whois," and "traceroute"
tools, in a high-speed visually integrated package. VisualRoute automatically
analyzes Internet connectivity and performance problems, displaying the
results in an easy to understand table and on a world map.
- DVD Region-Free 1.36 -
DVD
Region-Free is an unique, effective and easy-to-use DVD tweaking too that
allows you to watch all region DVDs on any DVD drive(especially RPC2) even if
it has been locked.
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Updated:12:40 AM CEST Jun,21
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