Thursday, 9 March 2017

Wikileaks is offering tech firms CIA files first

Technology firms will get "exclusive access" to details of the CIA's cyber-warfare programme, Wikileaks has said.

The anti-secrecy website has published thousands of the US spy agency's secret documents, including what it says are the CIA's hacking tools.

Founder Julian Assange said that, after some thought, he had decided to give the tech community further leaks first.

"Once the material is effectively disarmed, we will publish additional details," Mr Assange said.

Tuesday, 7 March 2017

Inside the TalkTalk 'Indian scam call centre'

TalkTalk customers are being targeted by an industrial-scale fraud network in India, according to whistleblowers who say they were among hundreds of staff hired to scam customers of the British telecoms giant.

The scale of the criminal operation has been detailed by the three sources, who say they were employed by two front-companies set up by a gang of professional fraudsters.

The sources describe working in "call centres" in two Indian cities.

They say as many as 60 "employees" work in shifts in each office, phoning TalkTalk customers and duping them into giving access to their bank accounts.

The whistleblowers say they were given a script in which they were told to claim they were calling from TalkTalk.

Monday, 6 March 2017

IBM's online quantum machine gets faster

IBM has made its quantum computing system commercially available to businesses and beefed up an existing system used by the research community.

The firm is hoping to boost the numbers of people able to use such computers.

The machine, based in New York, has been available via the internet since May last year.

Future applications include the discovery of new materials and medicines as well as making artificial intelligence much more powerful.

Thursday, 2 March 2017

Manchester's cold war

It is a wet winter Saturday on a muddy playing field in an unprepossessing part of south Manchester. The river Mersey slides past behind a row of trees planted to provide shelter from the wind, chill gusts cutting through the gaps where saplings were torn out by local kids to sell on elsewhere.

On the pitches, children of every size are playing football: four- and five-year-olds being taught the game, three teams of under-nines, the same again of under-10s. Dogs are being walked, and dogs are being allowed to do what dogs naturally do. By the changing rooms, a woman collects subs of 2 a child, less if they have brothers or sisters playing and the extra cost would mean one of them missing out.

The post Manchester's cold war appeared first on Miami Restoration Pros.

Wednesday, 1 March 2017

How India uses recycled pipes to detect ferocious solar storms

How India uses recycled pipes to detect ferocious solar storms

What does a sensational scientific discovery about asolarstorm in the Earth's magnetic fieldhave to do with old, recycled steel pipes which lay buried for more than a decade under a now-defunct gold mine in India?

Almost everything.

More than 3,700 such pipes are actually at the heart of a most significant scientific finding.

A team of Indian and Japanese scientists recently published aninternationally-fetedpaperwhich recorded the events that unfolded after a breach in the Earth's magnetic shield.

Using the GRAPES-3 muon (a sub-atomic particle) telescope - the world's largest of its kind - at the Cosmic Ray Laboratory in Ooty, a hill station in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, the scientistsrecorded a two-hour burst of galactic cosmic rays that invaded the atmosphere on 22 June 2015.

Children's messages in CloudPets data breach

An open database containing links to more than 2 million voice messages recorded on cuddly toys has been discovered, cybersecurity researcher Troy Hunt has revealed.

The messages were created by owners of CloudPets soft toys.

At one point, the dat a was even held to ransom, Mr Hunt says.

The animals are advertised as being toys that enable people to record and send greetings via a phone app and the toy itself.

Children's messages in CloudPets data breach

An open database containing links to more than 2 million voice messages recorded on cuddly toys has been discovered, cybersecurity researcher Troy Hunt has revealed.

The messages were created by owners of CloudPets soft toys.

At one point, the dat a was even held to ransom, Mr Hunt says.

The animals are advertised as being toys that enable people to record and send greetings via a phone app and the toy itself.