Reseachers discovered a trove of stolen e-mail passwords and FTP credentials. – Last year, Microsoft made a
splash when it led a legal charge against Waledacs operators and gained
control of 276 domains belonging to the botnet. But Waledac does not die easily,
something
underscored recently by researchers at The Last Line of Defense, which
uncovered a trove of nearly 124…
A new paper by researchers at the University of Twente in the Netherlands shows the tool being used in denial-of-service attacks does not hide users’ IP addresses. – Those participating in denial-of-service attacks in support of WikiLeaks may
not be as anonymous as they think.
According to an
analysis (PDF) of the Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC) tool by researchers from
the University of Twente
in the Netherlands,
the tool does not protect the Internet Protoco…
A team of researchers from the University of California, San Diego, are spotlighting the use of "history sniffing" to track user activity online. – Researchers at the University of California,
San Diego, have shined a light
on the way some popular Websites sniff browser histories to
track user activity.
In a paper titled quot;An Empirical Study of
Privacy-Violating Information Flows in JavaScript Web Applications quot; (PDF),
the …
Academic researchers think the best way to implement the "Do Not Track" controls proposed by the FTC is by using the HTTP headers. – While there are several potential methods to implementing the Federal Trade
Commissions proposed quot;Do Not Track quot; mechanism, the most effective method is to
have the browser append quot;Do Not Track quot; to its header messages, according to
several software developers.
The consensus se…
A slew of Zeus Trojan variants and a merger between the two largest botnets have security researchers worried about future banking malware attacks. – The developers behind the Zeus and SpyEye Trojans have joined forces to
create one major botnet, with sophisticated capabilities to attack user bank
accounts, according to security researchers.
Malware authors aren’t sitting still as law enforcement
officials arrest
cyber-gangs stealing milli…
Security researchers have uncovered three flaws in the Linux-based webOS platform used in Palm devices. – Security researchers uncovered critical flaws in webOS, including a cross-site scripting issue that could be used to gain remote control of devices and possibly build a botnet.
WebOS is the operating system used in Palm smartphones. The issues were uncovered by Orlando Barrera and Daniel Herrera of…
HIGHLIGHTS
Kirk Skaugen, Intel vice-president and general manager of the Data Center Group poses with a New Orleans Saints football helmet.
NEW ORLEANS, Nov. 15, 2010 – Intel Corporation today announced that it is collaborating with industry experts and several universities to tackle the issue of football-related head injuries.
Using supercomputers and workstations based on present and future Intel processor technology, researchers are simulating collisions to study the impact on the brain, and use that information to design new football helmets that reduce the risk of short- and long-term injuries.
Intel, working with Riddell, the premier designer and developer of helmets and protective equipment, and researchers from the Thayer School of Engineering (Dartmouth), Wayne State University, University of Northern Colorado and Texas State University-San Marcos, demonstrated simulations during an event at the SC10 conference in New Orleans.
In this demonstration, simulated impacts are processed on Intel® Xeon® Processor-based Workstations and Clusters, or a group of linked computers, to rapidly compute, visualize and assess the risk of injury in an impact event. The simulations are based on computer models from partner universities, some of which include actual data from on-field impacts using the Riddell HITS (Head Impact Telemetry System), a proprietary in-helmet technology that provides real-time data regarding head impacts. These models show visualization of the stresses on the brain and can allow for comparisons between impacts that are found to result in a concussion and similar impacts that cause no injury.
“Computer simulations have been instrumental in designing improved brain injury criteria,” said Dr. Igor Szczyrba with the University of Northern Colorado. “In the near future, they can also help doctors diagnose actual brain injuries.”
Separately, attending the event and discussing the importance of using safe equipment to prevent injuries, was Drew Brees, quarterback of the New Orleans Saints and Super Bowl XLIV MVP.
While no equipment can prevent 100 percent of injuries, Intel is also working with Mayo Clinic to accelerate the ability to process medical scans. In this application, cranial scans running on Intel® Many Integrated Core (MIC) architecture co-processors were accelerated by up to 18 times.
During the event, Intel also discussed future technologies, based on its Intel® Atom™ processors, which could be embedded in helmets and wirelessly feed data into servers and cloud networks that measure injury risk and impact in real-time. When combined with impact simulation, this could better safeguard players by identifying potential injuries quickly so that medical personnel can respond faster and have information as soon as they reach the player on the field.
Intel, with its top-ranked Intel® Xeon® chip-based supercomputers, has been a leader in using parallel processing to solve complex problems. Some of this urgent and groundbreaking research is made possible by Intel® MIC architecture, which could run up to trillions of calculations per second, and includes in its targets high-performance computing segments such as scientific research, exploration and climate modeling. The first Intel MIC product, codenamed “Knights Corner,” will be made on Intel’s 22-nanometer (nm) manufacturing process – transistor structures packed as small as 22 billionths of a meter — and will use Moore’s Law to scale tens of Intel processing cores on a single chip. While the vast majority of workloads will still run best on award-winning Intel Xeon processors, Intel MIC architecture will add more business opportunities for highly parallel applications.
Video: Football Player Collision Simulation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xf709iMptp8
Click on the images below to view larger versions.
This image shows a simulation of the stresses on the brain based on game data captured using Riddell’s HITS* system of helmet sensors. This data shows an impact that resulted in a concussion for the player. The image and simulation model was provided by the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth, and was rendered using supercomputers based on Intel Xeon processors.
This image show a simulation of the stresses on the brain during an actual impact in an NFL game. This impact did not result in a concussion for the player. The image and simulation model was provided courtesy of Wayne State University, and was rendered using supercomputers based on Intel Xeon processors.
This image shows a simulation of stresses on the brain during an actual impact in an NFL game. This impact resulted in a concussion for the player. The area in red color shows an area of high strain from the impact on a specific region of the brain. This image and simulation model was provided courtesy of Wayne State University, and was rendered using supercomputers based on Intel Xeon processors.
This is an image of the Riddell HITS* sensor system outside of a helmet. These sensors are placed inside a helmet and they record the impacts that the player sustains during practice or during games. This image was provided courtesy of Riddell.
This is an image of the Riddell HITS* sensor system installed in a Riddell Revo* helmet. These sensors are placed inside a helmet and they record the impacts that the player sustains during practice or during games. This image was provided courtesy of Riddell.
This is an image of the Sideline Response System* from Riddell, which takes the HITS* data from instrumented helmets and saves the data for later analysis, or alerts sideline staff if a dangerous impact was detected by a player’s helmet. The software can show the angle and force of each impact. This image was provided courtesy of Riddell.
About Intel
Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) is a world leader in computing innovation. The company designs and builds the essential technologies that serve as the foundation for the world’s computing devices. Additional information about Intel is available at newsroom.intel.com and blogs.intel.com.
Intel, Intel Atom, Intel Xeon, Intel MIC and the Intel logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the United States and other countries.
* Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.
Discussion of a honeypot reportedly designed by attackers to snare researchers and rivals has turned the spotlight on techniques malware authors use to protect their business. – Attackers don’t just lay traps for users; they do it for researchers and
rivals as well.
A recent case in point is an exploit toolkit linked to a Zeus malware
campaign that security pros at The Last Line of
Defense report includes a fake administration console that
records information abou…
Google’s Android platform shipped on more than 40 percent of smartphones, trumping Apple iOS and Research In Motion BlackBerry smartphones, said Canalys and the NPD Group. – Google’s Android operating system led Apple iOS, Research In Motion BlackBerry
and others in growth for the third quarter, shipping on more than 40 percent of
new smartphones, according to research from Canalys and the NPD Group.
Android shipped on 44 percent of all smartphones in the United
Sta…
The group behind an attack on Twitter last year is now in the botnet-renting business – a racket security pros say can be very profitable. – From spamming to harvesting data, botnets are a hot commodity for attackers. But as the Iranian Cyber Armys decision to sell access to its botnet shows, hawking access to compromised computers can be profitable too.
The price of a botnet depends on a number of factors. The first is size, noted I…
A report from HP’s TippingPoint DVLabs, Qualys and The SANS Institute finds exploits are getting more complex. – Attackers are changing their tactics and, unsurprisingly, it’s not to the
benefit of users, according to a new security report.
The 2010 Top Cyber
Security Risks Report features data from Hewlett-Packard’s TippingPoint
Digital Vaccine Labs, Qualys and The SANS Institute and notes the
increa…
UPDATE: A team of researchers has demonstrated a new way to crack quantum cryptography using bright light. – A team of researchers has uncovered a new way to crack the security of quantum cryptography.
The researchers hailed from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Norway as well as the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg and Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Germany. Their fi…
IBM and Sophos security pros report observing an uptick in spam with malicious .zip file attachments. – Security researchers are reporting an uptick in malware hidden in .zip files
being sent out in spam to Web users.
According to IBM’s X-Force, there has
been a significant increase in the number of spam messages with malicious .zip
file attachments during the past few weeks.
quot;Normally we s…
In a paper, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania revealed how the smudge marks left on your smartphones touch screen can be used to guess your password. – Security researchers from the University of Pennsylvania
have highlighted a potential attack vector for accessing your mobile devices–the smudges from your fingertips.
In a paper (PDF) presented this week at the USENIX Security Symposium in
Washington, D.C., the researchers revealed that oily re…
Security researchers say they have found the first SMS Trojan targeting Google Android-based devices. According to Kaspersky Lab, the malware, once installed, will send expensive text messages that will pad your bill. – Security researchers are warning users of Google
Android-based devices about the appearance of what may be the first Short Message
Service Trojan targeting their devices. It was originally discovered on a
Russian smartphone news site.
Dubbed Trojan-SMS.AndroidOS.FakePlayer.a, the malware is
bei…
Several anonymous security researchers announced last week that they found a bug in unpatched Windows which negatively contributed to greater vulnerability of the operating system. They claimed that hackers and other attackers will easily receive unauthorized PC access or crash the system using the identified flow in Server 2008 and Windows Vista. So, it happens [...]
A study by Secunia finds that many popular third-party applications, such as Sun Java JRE, Apple QuickTime and Google Picasa, are not taking advantage of the protections offered by two security features built into Microsoft Windows. – Danish security company Secunia revealed July 1 that many popular
third-party Windows applications are not taking advantage of two built-in
Windows security measures that could help defend against code execution attacks.
According to Secunia, applications such as Sun Java JRE, Apple QuickTime and…
BKIS reports that Adobe’s fix for the launch action exploit affecting PDF-viewing software such as Adobe Reader and Acrobat can be circumvented. – A security researcher has found a way to circumvent Adobe Systems’ effort to
address the /Launch action issue that made headlines a few months ago.
In the recent
update for Adobe Acrobat and Reader, the company sought to thwart any
attempts to use a PDF reader’s quot;launch quot; command to run…
Four researchers from Stanford and Carnegie Mellon outlined how frame busting, a protection meant to defeat clickjacking, can be circumvented on Twitter and other popular sites. – New research has found a common defense used by Websites to prevent clickjacking attacks can be broken.
Clickjacking uses malicious iframes
to take control of a Web surfers clicks and hijack their Web session.
The term clickjacking was first used in 2008 by WhiteHat Security CTO
Jeremiah Gross…
