Working Title: Samsung Battery Fries your USB with Credit Card Netflix Downloads. Updates on USB fob that burns your computer, Galaxy Note 7 reasons, ransomware hack-back, Ben and his father’s off-line app design, Netflix has Downloads, and Miles is still not happy!
Last year we wrote about the “USB Killer”—a DIY USB stick that fried almost everything (laptops, smartphones, consoles, cars) that it was plugged into. Now the USB Killer has been mass produced—you can buy it online for about £50/$50. Now everyone can destroy just about every computer that has a USB port. Hooray.
In September, the first reports of Samsung Galaxy Note 7 batteries exploding hit social media. At first, Samsung identified the issue as one relating to the lithium polymer battery manufacturing process by Samsung SDI, where too much tension was used in manufacturing, and offered to repair affected phones. But several weeks later, some of the batteries in those replacement units also exploded once they were in the hands of customers — causing Samsung to make the bold decision to not only recall everything, but to cancel the entire product line.
The city’s light rail system, MUNI, was compromised in what appears to be a non-targeted ransomware attack, and riders were given free transit on Saturday until the issue was resolved. The attacker claimed that MUNI’s data was encrypted and demanded a ransom in bitcoin.
Revenge is sweet, but irony is sweeter. Apparently, the hacker who infiltrated San Francisco’s Muni transportation system late last week fell victim to his own horrible personal cyber hygiene.
According to security reporter Brian Krebs, a separate individual infiltrated the Muni hacker’s own email using nothing more than the ransom note provided by the hacker himself. And he pulled it off using the oldest trick in the book.
High School teacher and Ben’s father, Roger Jaffe, joins us for this fun episode of GeekSpeek.
Experts from Newcastle University said it was “frighteningly easy” to do with a laptop and an internet connection.
It only takes small modifications to equipment to bypass the chip-and-PIN protections and enable unauthorized payments, multiple researchers at the Black Hat convention in Las Vegas, Nevada demonstrated on Wednesday.
The new cards, which began rolling out in the US in October 2015, use technology ‒ called Europay, MasterCard and Visa (EMV) ‒ that has long been standard in Europe. It’s designed to prevent the duplication of cards and crack down on cards that have been stolen. The tech works by inserting the chip into a card reader, then entering a personal identification number, or PIN. However, in the US, the financial industry only requires a signature after the chip is read, which is less secure. Some retailers have ignored the new technology altogether, and just ask customers to swipe their chip cards, the same as a traditional credit or debit card. At Black Hat 2016, as in past conferences, hackers focused on the more secure chip-and-PIN requirements.
The Geeks interview Andy Denmark of TripIt and cover the Week in Geek News.
Last week Netflix debuted offline viewing mode, something that subscribers have been wanting for a long time. With the offline mode, users were allowed to download shows and movies directly to their device to watch on the go without having to stream using WiFi or data connections. Netflix has taken steps to ensure that the downloads are as small and as efficient as possible using VP9 content encoding for downloaded content.
Although artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and other emerging technologies may reshape the world as we know it, a new global study has revealed that the majority of CEOs now value technology over people when it comes to the future of their businesses.
Interns at tech companies make more money on an annualized basis than workers in the vast majority of occupations, according to a new online survey. A lot more.
A new study from The Citizen Lab, a research group at the University of Toronto, reveals that censorship on WeChat occurs primarily in group chats rather than one-on-one chats between two people, and often in such a way where the sender of a text isn’t even aware a piece of text has been scrubbed. The discoveries illuminates how China’s government attempts to keep its citizens blind to the scope of its censorship regime.
The first few characters of the card number describe the type of card.
Visa 4-, Mastercard 51-, 52-, 53-, 54-, 55-, Diners Club 36-, Discover 6011-, 65-, American Express 34-, 37-.
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