Have you ever wondered why ATM PINs have 4 digit Code? Here is why!

The really interesting reason why ATM PINs have a 4 digit code

You walk into your friendly neighborhood ATM kiosk and swipe your card. You then punch in a 4 PIN code to authenticate yourself and proceed to withdraw money. You may have been doing this mechanically since the day ATM was introduced but have you given a thought why ATM PINs have a 4 digit code?  No! Then read on..

Automated Teller Machines (ATM) were first introduced in 1967 and now have emerged as a best option to disburse cash. Instead of visiting your bank and waiting in a long queue to withdraw money, you just have to swipe your ATM card, punch in your secret 4 digit PIN and take away the money you require.

But if someone was to find or steal your card, the only barrier protecting your money is your 4-digit ATM PIN. Ever wondered why most PINs have only 4 digits? Given that an ATM dishes out money wouldnt the manufacturers of ATMS have been wiser to introduce a longish PIN say six digit or eight digit one. Isn’t that why our email passwords are also expected to be 6 letters or more?

You see there is a bit of story behind it. ATM was invented by a wellknown Scottish inventor John Adrian Shepherd-Barron, the man who pioneered the development of the ATM machine. Barron was born in Shillong and was son to a Wimbledon ladies doubles champion, Dorothy Barron. When testing out his invention, Barron had also proposed a 6-digit PIN.

However, the first person to use his invention was his wife, Caroline. We all know that behind every successful man is a woman, and Caroline apparently rejected the idea of using a six code PIN for her husband’s invention because she could only remember the numbers up to four.

When Barron came up with the idea when he realised that he could remember his six-figure army number. But he decided to check that with his wife, Caroline.

“Over the kitchen table, she said she could only remember four figures, so because of her, four figures became the world standard,” he laughs.

Reportedly, 6 numbers stringed together were too much information for her to recall.

Although, there are many banks nowadays that offer 6 digit PINs for security purposes, shouldn’t those of us using 4 digit PINs be thanking Caroline? It gets tough to recall those 4 digits at times, imagine what 6 or more would do to us?

SOURCE: TECHWORM

Russian Government Planning To Replace All Of Its Windows Computers With Linux

Short Bytes: The Russian government is planning to replace all of its Windows-powered computers with some Linux distribution. The government has justified this decision by stating that American technology companies like Google and Microsoft need to pay more taxes.

It seems that Russian government is planning to switch over to the Linux-powered computers in all of its government offices. The government probably is making this move betting on an unknown GNU/Linux distribution.
This was revealed during a recent interview when Russian government’s German Klimenko targeted American companies like Microsoft and Google, demanding that they should pay more taxes. During the interview, Mr. Klimenko said that now is the right time to replace Microsoft Windows with Linux operating system.

Microsoft’s Windows is the most used operating system in Russia. The government is planning to paint about 22,000 municipal authorities in the color of Linux. While Windows 10 was already facing flak in Russia over privacy issues, adoption of an open source alternative to Microsoft Windows is expected to deliver a big blow to the big guys at Redmond.

In the past, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has expressed his wish to move to open source software and adoption of a Linux-based operating system by 2015.

It would be interesting to see which Linux OS Russia is planning to adopt. Stay tuned with us, we’ll be keeping you updated about this big win of the open source philosophy.

Also Read: Meet The Fast And Beautiful Cub Linux 1.0

SOURCES: FOSSBYTES

NATIONAL SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR APPRECIATION DAY – Last Friday in July

NATIONAL SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR APPRECIATION DAY

Each year, on the last Friday in July, it is National System Administrator Appreciation Day.  This day is also known as Sysadmin Day, SysAdminDay, SAD or SAAD.

National System Administrator Day was created to show appreciation for the work of sysadmins and other IT workers.  The official SysAdmin Daywebsite includes suggestions for the proper observation of this day.

There are some geek and Internet culture businesses, like ThinkGeek and CafePress, that honor this holiday with special product offerings, discounts and contests and various folk songs have been written to commemorate System Administrator Day.  E-cards are available to be sent to celebrate this special occasion.

This holiday has been recognized and has been promoted by many IT professional organizations, the League of Professional System Administrators and Sage/Usenix.

HOW TO OBSERVE

Thank a system administrator that has helped you out. Post on social media using #SysAdminDay and encourage others to join in.

HISTORY

National System Administrator Appreciation Day was created by Ted Kekatos.  Kekatos was inspired by a Hewlett-Packard magazine advertisement in which a system administrator was given flowers and fruit baskets by grateful co-workers as a ‘thank-you’ for installing new printers.  Prior to seeing this advertisement, Kekatos had just installed several of the same models of printers at his place of work.   The first System Administrator Appreciation Day was celebrated on July 28, 2000.

There are over 1,200 national days. Don’t miss a single one. Celebrate Every Day with National Day Calendar!

DATES

July 29, 2016

July 28, 2017

July 27, 2018

July 26, 2019

SOURCES: NATIONALDAYCALENDER

Hackers can crash your Chrome and Firefox browser remotely using search suggestions

Researchers discover a way to crash Chrome and Firefox browsers on Linux PCs and Android smartphones

Imagine you are searching for a keyword on Google search using Chrome browser on your Android smartphone. The Chrome browser will immediately return the most plausible suggestions matching your search. Click on one of these search suggestions and suddenly you will find your Chrome browser has crashed.

This is due to a bug found out by security researchers from Nightwatch Cybersecurity. The researchers discovered that they can manipulate the search suggestions in a way to send big files to the browser and crash it. Their method relies on using the search suggestions feature that these browsers support. The researchers noted that the issue is not a software bug, but a design implementation that allows their attack to be executed.

Almost all of the current browsers have a search field or allow users to search via the URL address bar. Based on the search engines supported inside the browser, search suggestions can be shown as the user types their query. Nightwatch security researchers say that if the browser’s search engine provider doesn’t protect these search suggestions via an encrypted HTTPS channel, an attacker on the local network can intercept search suggestions queries and answer before the search provider.

PoC

Because browsers include multiple non-HTTPS search engines with insecure search suggestions endpoints, it would be possible for an attacker on the network level to intercept the traffic flowing between the browser and the search engine endpoints, and substitute their own. If a very large response is returned (2+ GBs), the browser can run out of memory and crash. This is due to the fact that browsers do not check for sizes in the search suggestions responses. Obviously, this is more of an issue for mobile devices which have lower memory than desktops.

For Android AOSP browser and Chromium, this issue appears to be directly tied to the processing code of search engine responses. For FireFox, this is a more generic issue around large XMLHTTPRequest responses, which is what the browser is using internally for search suggestions. Our bug reports with the vendors provide more details on which code is causing this. This re-enforces the fact network traffic SHOULD NEVER be trusted.

No malware

The researchers stated that though they could crash the browsers using the above method, they were unable to execute any malicious payload using this method. This means that the bug is more of a nuisance value than a threat.

Test results

The researchers tested their PoC on various devices using Chrome and Firefox and the results are give below :

• Android AOSP stock browser on Android (v4.4) – application crashes
• Chrome v51 on Android (v6.01) – application crashes
• Chrome v51 on desktop Linux (Ubuntu v16.04) – the entire computer freezes requires a reboot (this maybe to due to swapping being disabled with an SSD drive)
• FireFox v47 on desktop Linux (Ubuntu v16.04) and Android (v6.01) – application crashes

The researchers found that their exploit doesn’t affect Apple’s Safari v9.1 browser or Microsoft’s Edge and Internet Explorer 11.

The bug can be exploited in the wild providing a potential hacker has the following at his/her service

• The attacker must have control over DNS and the network traffic of the victim machine. This is most likely in cases of a rogue WiFi hotspot or a hacked router.
• Most browsers have rather short timeout for search engine suggestions response, not allowing sufficient time for the large response packet to be transferred over network
• Due to the very large response size needed to trigger this issue, it is only exploitable over broadband or local networks such as rogue WiFi hotspot

The researchers informed the respective browser developers about the flaw. However, the Android, Chrome, and Firefox security teams declined to classify this bug as a security issue.

SOURCE : TECHWORM

Hackers can bypass HTTPS protection on Windows, Linux and Mac PCs

HTTPS bypass allows hackers to snoop on Windows, Linux, and Mac users’ browsing habits

One of the main reason why all of us trust websites with HTTPS is because the surfing on such sites is invisible to hackers. Most of us are taught to believe that websites with HTTPS encryption are hacker and snooping proof. However, researchers have devised an attack that breaks this protection and bypasses the HTTPS protection allowing potential hackers to spy on you.

The attack works by bypassing the HTTPS encryption which is supposed to prevent this happening. HTTPS would normally prevent the operator seeing the URLs visited by users, but a new technique abuses Web Proxy Autodiscovery  and exposes browser requests to any code the network owner wants plug in. The bypass attack is specifically dangerous for those Windows, Linux and Mac users who use public Wi-Fi and public hotspots. The HTTPS bypass can also be used by your ISP provider to snoop directly on you without your knowledge.

Itzik Kotler, CTO and co-founder, and Amit Klein, VP of security research, at security firm SafeBreach will demonstrate how the attack works at next week’s Black Hat conference in a talk entitled Crippling HTTPS with Unholy PAC.

“People rely on HTTPS to secure their communication even when the LAN/Wi-Fi cannot be trusted (think public Wi-Fi/hotels/cafes/airports/restaurants, or compromised LAN in an organization),” Itzik Kotler, cofounder and CTO of security firm SafeBreach and one of the scheduled speakers, wrote in an e-mail. “We show that HTTPS cannot provide security when WPAD is enabled. Therefore, a lot of people are actually exposed to this attack when they engage in browsing via non-trusted networks.”

So next time you think browsing on a HTTPS-enabled website makes your browsing safe and private, do give this post a thought!

SOURCES: TECHWORM

More than 100 Tor nodes have been snooping on you!!!

Researchers find more than 100 Tor nodes that are snooping on users

The Tor browser which users use to keep away snoopers may actually be snooping on them!

Tor aka“The Onion Router” is a famous weapon to beat censorship laws around the world. It also provides a private method of communication for journalists, activists, dissidents, students etc. If you are worried about government snooping on your online behaviour, Tor is the answer. But this seems to be a false hope as two researchers say they’ve uncovered snoops inside the Tor network that may be listening in on what you’re doing.

Tor works by bouncing your connection between multiple encrypted nodes or “relays” before you reach your destination. Your identity is preserved on Tor because the relays are all encrypted, and only know where a connection just was and where it’s going next. After a few jumps, your true location is lost. The end user only sees the tor exit relay which can in no way identify you or your online activities.

To protect your anonymity, Tor relies on thousands of such nodes spread over the world and hosted by good samaritans. However, the researchers have not found that nearly a 100 or so of the above nodes may have been compromised. The issue spotted by Amirali Sanatinia and Guevara Noubir from Northeastern University seems to suggest that there is plenty of snooping going on this compromised nodes.

The researchers report that 110 live nodes in Tor are “misbehaving” by collecting data on the connections that pass through it. While the researchers have found that these 110 nodes have been collecting information, they could not find why the nodes were collecting it. They found that the information collected could identify the final user sitting behind all Tor mask while the other information was just tracking statistics. The most likely scenario is that some computer science researchers are running studies on Tor, which involve collecting some data. At the same time, law enforcement is running similar nodes that are trying to unmask users of illegal “hidden services” that are hosted in Tor. The Silk Road was one such hidden service.

The researchers say that the data mining has two plausible reasons. The most plausible reason seems to be that some computer science researchers are running studies on Tor, which involve collecting some data. A bit far fetched yet possible reason is that FBI or some other government agency may be running these 110 nodes to unmask users of illegal “hidden services” like pedophile or drug distribution network run on Tor.

The researchers are set to detail their investigation at a hacking conference in August. For its part, the Tor Foundation says it is aware of the compromised nodes discussed by the researchers. A future version of the system should be able to lock these nodes out.

However,  a warning from Techworm, next time you surf using Tor, dont assume that your browsing is all that private or anonymous!

SOURCES: TECHWORM

There was a time when Yahoo refused to buy Google for $1 million

Yahoo Sold for $4.83 billion to Verizon, Sergey Brin and Larry Page approached Yahoo to sell Google for $1 million

The very Yahoo which was sold to Verizon for $4.83 billion was offered Google on the platter by its founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page for a measly $1 million. And today while Yahoo is nowhere in the Internet landscape save its email and some other services, Google and its parent company, Alphabet are valued at nearly $500 billion.

You can call it an irony of sorts but Yahoo is responsible for its own demise. After making several attempts to reinvent itself since it lost relevance, Yahoo has finally announced that it is selling most of its core services to US telecommunications giant Verizon.

Yahoo was one of the companies that defined Internet. In fact, in some ways, Yahoo was the harbinger of the famous Dot.com era when it was valued at over $100 billion. Yahoo was the king of search and mail in 1990s but failing to adapt to the new changes contributed to its downfall.

A few insiders know that Yahoo missed several big ticket opportunities to make it to the big league. One such opportunity came to it on a platter in 1998 when Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin had approached Yahoo with an offer to sell their PageRank system for as little as $1 million. At that time both Page and Brin had just developed PageRank but wanted to focus on their studies at Stanford. Yahoo being dimwitted or extra smart refused their offer because it wanted to develop its own platform.

PageRank is the very same algorithm that powers Google search today. PageRank algorithm was designed by Brin and Page that ranked websites in the order they are displayed in Google search results. Brin and Page named it after Larry Page and first proposed the idea of codifying how a search engine measures the importance of websites. While PageRank helped in showing up search results of relevant third-party sites based on keywords. Yahoo did not want users to leave their platform at all. It had directories that were designed to answer questions, view email, shop and even play games on its platform – something that seemed to work well for them at that time.

Yahoo at that time had other ideas. Brin and Page’s PageRank took visitors away from the page once the results were displayed but Yahoo executives did not want users to leave their platform at all. It had directories that were designed to answer questions, view email, shop and even play games on its platform. This all in one technique worked well in 1990s but with time, Internet users demanded specialised websites for each feature and Yahoo fell to the wayside.

That is not all. In 2002, Brin and Page again approached Yahoo. This time to raise funds for Google’s expansion. Giving $3 billion to Brin and Page would have meant Yahoo getting a substantial pie of Google but Yahoo refused. Then Yahoo Chief Terry Semel refused the offer as it looked to again build its own search engine to compete with Google. Yahoo acquired search engine Inktomi and ad revenue maker Overture in its mission to build the search engine that would topple Google.

Again, Yahoo failed in execution while Brin and Page brilliantly took Google to new heights. It all started with Yahoo being valued at $100 billion its heydays and ended with it being sold for just $4.83billion to Verizon while Google is giving its stakeholder the best value for money on Nasdaq.

SOURCE: TECHWORM

Vaio reveals C15 series laptop with striking colours

VAIO’s New ‘Fashionable’ Laptops Launched In Striking Colors

VAIO has announced a new range of mid-range ‘C15’ laptops that distinguish themselves by being “fashionable PCs.” The C15 series’ main selling point is its bright two-tone colour options, including white and copper, navy and grey, yellow and black, and orange and khaki.

Straying from its typical business audience, VAIO’s C15 line-up is targeted more at consumers who are looking for a distinctive device, The Verge reports.

Especially compared to other VAIO models, the laptop’s hardware is rather low-end. The basic model has a 15.5-inch 1366 x 768 display, an Intel Celeron 3215U processor along with 4GB of RAM on a 2016 VAIO laptop. The basic model costs 66,800 yen from the Sony store (around $640), while other stores will be selling it at 94,800 yen (around $900). For the above specifications, the model is rather highly priced, and one could consider probably getting something better for the same price.

Further, there are options to upgrade to a Full HD 1920×1080 display, an Intel Core i3 processor and 8GB of RAM for an unknown and probably huge amount of money. Connectivity is typical of a 15-inch notebook including HDMI, Ethernet and USB 3.0 ports. There is also a DVD drive, a media-focused speaker system with subwoofer, and a full-size keyboard with numeric keypad.

Currently, the C15 is exclusive to VAIO’s native region only. Also, there is no word yet on whether the company will launch the C15 in markets outside of Japan.

SOURCES: VAIO,TECHWORM

KickassTorrents Community Site Return Online Admins Vow to Bounce Back

The arrest of Artem Vaulin the leader of KickassTorrents (KAT) in Poland by the United States’ Justice Department last week was an internet sensation. The website KAT was shut down but now it is slowly coming back to life.

The admins of KAT and also thousands of its members have regrouped to resurrect their community by launching the katcr.co website and vowed to bounce back soon.

Torrent Freak quoted KAT forum admin, Black “We should remember that Kickass Torrents is not just about uploading, but the heart and soul of KickassTorrents is our members, they are family and family is important as we know. Nothing can take that away and whatever happens we will never let our community down,”. He

added “We guarantee that KAT will continue in one form or another and we will come back stronger than ever”.

At present, the official KickassTorrents website with .cr domain is not up yet, but various clone sites have emerged on the Internet, tricking the torrent users by charging them fees for downloading the files. We urge you to be  very cautious about such fake websites.

The very popular BitTorrent site, IsoHunt also launched a mirror site of KAT with name  KickassTorrents.website the design layout of the page is looking very similar to the original. It is now hosting files that date back to the last one-and-a-half years, and urged people to archive more files.

Until the KickassTorrents makes a complete return, here are six best alternatives to fill the void.

Torrentz

2. RARBG

3. Extra Torrent

4.1337X.to

5. ISOHUNT.TO

6. Lime Torrent

SOURCES: CODINGSEC.NET

Google’s new Play Store algorithm to halve size of updates

The amount of data required for updating Google Play apps can really send your mobile bill through the roof, especially if you aren’t using Wi-Fi. Fortunately, Google has heard your concerns, and rolled out a new Delta algorithm, bsdiff, which reduces the app update size and lets you save on the data required for updating them.

Google’s new algorithm does this by further compressing the size of patches for apps and games. According to a blog post by Anthony Morris, SWE Google Play, for about 98 percent of app updates from the Play Store, only deltas to APK files are downloaded and merged with the existing files to reduce the size of the updates. Now, Google’s new algorithm will further reduce the patches by up to 50 percent. As he explains in the post,

“For approximately 98 percent of app updates from the Play Store, only changes (deltas) to APK files are downloaded and merged with the existing files, reducing the size of updates. We recently rolled out a delta algorithm, bsdiff, that further reduces patches by up to 50 percent or more compared to the previous algorithm. Bsdiff is specifically targeted to produce more efficient deltas of native libraries by taking advantage of the specific ways in which compiled native code changes between versions. To be most effective, native libraries should be stored uncompressed (compression interferes with delta algorithms).”

Google has also applied the new algorithm to APK Expansion Files to allow users to include additional large files of up to 2GB in size with their apps. This means that the download size of your initial installs will now be lower by about 12 percent, and your updates by approximately 65 percent.

“APK Expansion Files allow you to include additional large files up to 2GB in size (e.g. high resolution graphics or media files) with your app, which is especially popular with games. We have recently expanded our delta and compression algorithms to apply to these APK Expansion Files in addition to APKs, reducing the download size of initial installs by 12 percent, and updates by 65 percent on average.”

Google really cares about you and doesn’t want you to pay unnecessarily high data charges when you update your favorite apps. So it has also updated the Play Store descriptions to include the actual download size of the apps instead of the size of their APKs. So instead of seeing just the app size earlier on Google Play and remaining in the dark about how much data and storage the update would actually consume, you’ll now get to see the precise size of the app you want to install or update. Cool, huh?

If the changes made to Google Play aren’t reflecting on your screen yet, don’t panic because, as always, they are being rolled out to all users and should reach you sometime in the coming weeks.

Let us know in the comments below if you think Google Play’s new algorithm will help reduce your data usage!

SOURCES: ANDROIDAUTHORITY.COM

Google launches new API to help understand machine language

Google launches new cloud service that will help you parse natural language

Google launched a new open beta Cloud Natural Language API on Wednesday to expand its intelligent cloud developer tools and help developers create applications that understand human language. This new API will give developers entrance to Google-powered view analysis, syntax analysis, and entity recognition.

This new API joins Google’s other pre-trained machine-learning APIs like a Cloud Speech API, that is now also accessible in open beta, a Vision API and a Translate API.

Currently, the new Cloud Natural Language API supports texts in English, Japanese and Spanish. Google here is looking to offer a service “that can meet a scale and opening needs of developers and enterprises in an extended operation of industries.”

It’s an important move for Google, as public cloud providers are competing to host new applications put together with intelligent capabilities. Natural language processing allows developers to build apps that can tackle the challenging task of understanding how humans communicate, and it is important for things like building intelligent assistants and chat bots.

The new API as previously stated will support three different types of analysis. Sentiment analysis will help you understand the overall sentiment of a block of text, entity recognition will allow you to identify the most relevant entities for a block of text and label them with types such as person, organization, location, events, products and media and will perform the basic function of identifying parts of speech and creating dependency parse trees for each sentence to disclose the structure and meaning of text.

The natural language API entered public beta along with Google’s already-announced Speech API, which allows applications take in recorded voice clips and get text back. It is possible for developers to build an app by connecting the two APIs that can listen to a user’s voice and then understand what that person is saying. The service is available in 80 different languages and it is the core that powers products such as Google Search and Google Now. Apparently, more than 5,000 companies signed up for Speech API alpha.

By launching these two services in beta, Google carries on its competition against the Amazon, Microsoft, and IBM, which are also introducing intelligent capabilities in their public cloud platforms.

SOURCES: TECHWORM

Google Uses AI To Cut Energy Used To Cool Its Data Centers

Google uses AI to cool data centers, save energy

Data centers are a large group of networked computer servers typically used by organizations for the remote storage, processing, or distribution of large amounts of data. They power most of our day-to-day life services, apps and systems that we depend upon. However, running thousands of hard drives, processors, networking equipment and magnetic tapes takes a real toll on the grid, which results in poor energy efficiency in data centers. To make things worse, all of that equipment also needs a powerful cooling system to keep it running.

However, Google has found a way to ease that problem. For the last few months, Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) division, DeepMind, has been using machine-learning algorithm at its two datacentres, which has helped the search giant reduce the energy used for data center cooling by 40% and overall energy usage by 15% in power usage efficiency (PUE).

“We accomplished this by taking the historical data that had already been collected by thousands of sensors within the data center – data such as temperatures, power, pump speeds, setpoints, etc. – and using it to train an ensemble of deep neural networks. Since our objective was to improve data center energy efficiency, we trained the neural networks on the average future PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness), which is defined as the ratio of the total building energy usage to the IT energy usage. We then trained two additional ensembles of deep neural networks to predict the future temperature and pressure of the data center over the next hour. The purpose of these predictions is to simulate the recommended actions from the PUE model, to ensure that we do not go beyond any operating constraints,” Google explained in a blogpost.

It resulted in a 40 percent reduction in the amount of energy used for cooling, which was equal to a 15 percent reduction in overall PUE after accounting for electrical losses and other non-cooling inefficiencies. The results were so impressive that Google plans to deploy the system inside all of its data centers by the end of the year.

The use of the AI technology is “a phenomenal step forward” to help cut down energy usage in data centers, DeepMind research engineer Rich Evans and Google data center engineer Jim Gao said on Google’s blog.

According to Evans and Gao, the energy reduction was realized by training DeepMind’s self-learning algorithms to predict how hot data centers were going to get within the next hour. Equipped with that data, the coolers were only able to run at the maximum temperature necessary to keep the servers sufficiently cool. Google’s data centers are used to run such services as Search, YouTube and Gmail.

Using a system of neural networks that zero in on different operating scenarios and limits within the data centers allows DeepMind to make a more efficient and adaptive framework to comprehend data center dynamics and enhance efficiency, according to Evans and Gao.

“The implications are significant for Google’s data centers, given its potential to greatly improve energy efficiency and reduce emissions overall,” Evans and Gao said. “This will also help other companies who run on Google’s cloud to improve their own energy efficiency.”

However, the best thing about the system is it can be deployed in other data centers and environments with no changes, according to Evans. It can even be applied to other domains like the national energy grid, or optimizing water usage.

Google claims that its data centers are already among the most energy-efficient in the world. The company has claimed that its data centers use hardly 50 percent of the energy consumed by most other data centers of comparable size.

“I really think this is just the beginning. There are lots more opportunities to find efficiencies in data centre infrastructure,” said DeepMind’s co-founder, Mustafa Suleyman. “One of the most exciting things is the kind of algorithms we develop are inherently general … that means the same machine learning system should be able to perform well in a wide variety of environments [such as power generation facilities and energy networks].”

With its algorithm being a perfect candidate for many industrial facilities, Suleyman explained that the team is already in talks with interested parties outside of Google.

The team announced it would be releasing a white paper describing its results and how the system was built and implemented in the near future.

SOURCES: TECHWORM

The Pirate Bay down, Is it next after Kickass Torrents demis

Following KickassTorrents, The Pirate Bay website down; TPB suffering a worldwide outage

Torrent lovers are in for a bad week. First, the news about the arrest of one of the members ofKickassTorrents admin in Poland and then the news that a federal court in Chicago ordered the seizure of several KAT domain names such as kickasstorrents.com,kastatic.com, thekat.tv, kat.cr, kickass.to,kat.ph and kickass.cr.

Now another big unfortunate news awaits them. ThePirateBay is down and it has been suffering a worldwide outage since past four hours. The TPB status website shows that ThePirateBay has been down since 10.30 am, the same time the news of KickassTorrents admins arrest percolated to mainstream news websites. The TPB status website shows that the Tor version of TPB was also down but has been restored and is working as of now

Interesting thing about ThePirateBay this time instead of showing a CloudFlare messages, the website shows a cached version of the website. This is strange coming on the back of the news of KickassTorrents meeting a very sad fate with the authorities.

Reports indicate that the arrested KickassTorrents admin was caught due to his own mistake by not using a VPN for transacting on iTunes. The authorities were able to track his IP address through the iTune stores purchase done by Artem Vaulin, the alleged admin of Kat.cr.

With the torrents community yet to emerge from the sad demise of YIFY/YTS earlier, the news of possible closure of KickassTorrents is just bad news. And to aggravate the matters, ThePirateBay also seems to be playing truant since this morning.

We are reaching out to TPB admin and will update the report as and when we receive their comments.

Update: The Pirate Bay is up and running now

Also read> Top 10 Most Popular Torrent Sites Of 2016

SOURCES: TECHWORM

9 days to go, Windows 10 gets a timer to alert users about impending deadline

Windows 7/8.1 users get an ‘Alert Icon’ notifying of free Windows 10 scheme ending on July 29

If you are a Windows 7/8.1 user, you must be getting a familiar with a yellow triangle with an exclamation mark inside of it when the Windows 10 upgrade window pops up. It means “alert” or “warning”, and that the next thing you should do is click on it to fix it.

With only 9 days left to avail Windows 10 free upgrade offer for Windows 7/8.1 users, Microsoft is now giving all the familiar ‘Alert Icon’ with Get Windows 10 (GWX) app. This looks like Microsoft’s last ditch attempt to make Windows 7/8.1 users upgrade to Windows 10 before the July, 29 deadline.

If you click on the GWX it will open with a countdown timer to July 29 at midnight. The time zone appears to be local.

Looks like the users who didn’t want Windows 10 will now breathe a heave of sigh after July 29, when Microsoft stops pushing Windows 10 down their throat.

Source: Neowin , TECHWORM

Dell security software has a hidden backdoor that can give hackers full access

Hidden ‘backdoor’ in Dell security software gives hackers full access

Security researchers from Digital Defense, a Texas-based security firm, have found not one but six critical vulnerabilities in Dell security management software which could allow potential hackers to remotely take over the system.

The researchers said that one of the most “critical” flaws involves a hidden default account aka ‘backdoor’ with an easily-guessable password in Dell’s Sonicwall Global Management System (GMS), a widely-used software used to centrally monitor and manage an enterprise’s array of networked security devices. The researchers found that this password could be easily exploited to gain”full control” of the software and all connected appliances, such as virtual private networking (VPN) appliances and firewalls.

The researchers have put forward their findings in an advisory. The researchers said that these are critical vulnerabilities but they have found no evidence to suggest that these flaws have been exploited by hackers in the wild.

They have already notified Dell who has said that its most recent versions of the GMS software — versions 8.0 and 8.1 are affected. The company has issued patches and a security advisory, in which Dell said that it “highly recommends” that admins install the hotfix, available from its support pages.

A Dell spokesperson was unavailable for comment.

SOURCES: TECHWORM

Apple and Facebook behind the shutting down of KickassTorrents

How Apple and Facebook helped to bust the world’s biggest torrent site, KickassTorrents

KickassTorrents (KAT), one of the most popular websites for illegal file sharing was shut down after the alleged 30-year-old Ukranian owner and operator, Artem “Tirm” Vaulin was arrested in Poland on Wednesday at the behest of the U.S. government. The U.S. authorities also seized seven of the site’s domains, all of which are now offline.

Vaulin has been charged for criminal copyright infringement and money laundering. He has also been accused of illegally reproducing and distributing hundreds of millions of copies of movies, video games, TV shows and music albums totalling more than $1 billion. The U.S. is now waiting to extradite him.

So, what led to the downfall of KickassTorrents? Apparently, it turns out that a couple of purchases on iTunes and email helped to bring down the mastermind behind KickassTorrents. It is also said Apple and Facebook were among the companies that handed over data to the U.S.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security initially exposed information about Vaulin by tracing the IP addresses used to host the KickassTorrents domains, according to a 48-page criminal complaint (PDF) filed with the U.S. District Court in Chicago.

That led investigators to a Canadian ISP (Internet service provider), which turned over server data that disclosed numerous files, including emails and user information about KickassTorrents’ operators.

Not only was he operating a KickasssTorrents Facebook page, but was doing so with a personal email address.

How personal? It was a ‘@me.com’ address, which is owned by Apple (and is the forerunner to @icloud.com). The account was used to make iTunes purchases from two IP addresses — both of which also accessed a Facebook account promoting KickassTorrents.

His email was discovered when authorities sent Facebook a warrant for information having to do with the site’s page. For example, Facebook handed over IP-address logs from the KAT fanpage to the U.S. authorities. From there, the U.S. Government turned to Apple. They were then able to cross-reference this with an IP-address Vaulin used for an iTunes transaction.

“Records provided by Apple showed that tirm@me.com conducted an iTunes transaction using IP Address 109.86.226.203 on or about July 31, 2015. The same IP Address was used on the same day to login into the KAT Facebook Account,” Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agent Jared Der-Yeghiayan said. His IP addresses linked to KAT’s Facebook page was also used to access Vaulin’s Coinbase account, suggesting that the Bitcoin wallet also assisted in the investigation.

By handing over user data to the government, Apple and Facebook were acting within the legal limits, and probably there was nothing about the government’s requests that raised any red flags. It is just a normal routine.

The fact that Vaulin was using a single, personal email address for so many features and services is absurd. To just have one single email linked to something as personal as your Apple ID, which is directly applicable to you is just unbelievably unwise. This is likely going to seal his fate.

While KickassTorrents itself is dead, a clone of the file-sharing site has already appeared online, which may shut down shortly. Whether KickassTorrents or Vaulin will make a Pirate Bay-style comeback, only time will tell.

SOURCES: FOSSBYTES