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Oracle has released new Java installers to fix a well-known security issue (CVE-2016-0603) that also affects a plethora of other applications, from Web browsers to antivirus products, and from file compressors to home cinema software. The problem is called DLL hijacking (or DLL side-loading) and refers to the fact that malware authors can place DLLs of the same name in specific locations on the target's filesystem and have it inadvertently load the malicious DLL instead of the safe one. DLL hijacking is a very well-known issue This type of attack is very old and has been known to many software...

A San Francisco startup has created a $15 computer. Pine 64 is now taking pre-orders for its Quad core 64-Bit expandable single board supercomputer, which will ship in May. The product can be combined with a keyboard and mouse to function as a full Android 5.1 computer. The company recently raised $1,731,465 on a Kickstarter campaign that had a goal of $31,416.

Are there any Linux gurus here? I've looked around online and asked some questions in various forums, but I'm not getting anywhere. I've found explanations of how to set it up, but no examples. I have yet to get it working. I am trying to configure an environment with several Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 virtual machines. All of these machines need to be NTP clients of my NTP server. The NTP server uses MD5 authentication, and I need to have the Linux clients authenticate the NTP traffic. Can someone please post a working "ntp.conf" and "keys" file so that...

Already at the age of 12 I was dreaming of making a machine which could make things! A machine which would give me the opportunity to create products for in and around the house. Two years later I stumbled ont the words 'Computer Numerical Control' or more specifically the CNC milling machine. After I found out people were able to build one themselves in their own shed, I knew it! I had to build one, I yearned to have it!! For three months I tried to find the proper parts (A dremeltool, drawer slides, pieces of wood, etc.), but I...

Intel has patched a major flaw in its driver utility tool that could allow attackers to install malware on victim PCs remotely. The chipmaker has issued a patch advisory for its Driver Update Utility, urging customers to download the new version of the software. The tool analyses system drivers on a user's computer and reports on and downloads any new drivers that are available. The flaw - which exists because the software requests new drivers from Intel servers over an unencrypted connection - allows attackers to instigate man-in-the-middle attacks and cause the download of malicious files and software on victim...

The Novena Heirloom is a limited edition custom enclosure system I built for use with the open-source Novena computer designed by Bunnie Huang and Sean Cross. It was crowd funded in cooperation with Portland, Oregon-based Crowd Supply. Several prototype concepts were developed for the campaign. After consulting with Huang, we decided to forgo an easel design in favor of a more traditional clam shell laptop. The requirement for user access to the internal components argued for a removable keypad and drove the final result. The thrust of the design concept is informed by, and hopefully serves as homage to, the...

OpenSSH developers have patched a serious flaw in the popular open source remote access protocol that could compromise encryption keys, with users urged to upgrade their OpenSSH installations straight away. According to the advisory, the vulnerability has been blamed on an experimental roaming feature, aimed at resuming SSH connections, in OpenSSH versions 5.4 to 7.1. Attackers who control servers could use the vulnerability to discover a client's private encryption keys, the OpenSSH developers said. "The matching server code has never been shipped, but the client code was enabled by default and could be tricked by a malicious server into leaking...

Linksys has just revealed at CES 2016 that all the WRT routers now have DD-WRT support, making this the first company of its type to fully embrace an open source solution.Linksys is one of the most important companies that builds networking hardware, and it's known for its quality hardware. In this case we're talking about routers in the WRT series, which are already very good. The company decided to partner up with DD-WRT in order to provide better support for their products.Many Linksys users were already installing DD-WRT and other similar products on their routers, so the company figured out...

The era of the $5 computer has arrived.The latest version of the Raspberry Pi is even being given away free with a magazine. Not a subscription. Just buy the single issue of Magpi and you get a free computer.The devices have hobbyists and entrepreneurs excited about the possibilities of Pi. Raspberry Pi Zero $5 computer unveiledThe Next Thing unveils $9 computer, CHIP Ben Z. Cooper is using one as the brains behind a spectacular light show at Vancouver's VanDusen Gardens."You wave your hand in the air and control a whole grove of maple trees lighting up," Cooper told CBC News...

State AG sues major tech support provider alleging deceptive scam By Connie Thompson Wednesday, December 16th 2015 State investigators just sued one of the rising stars in the tech-support industry claiming part of the operation is based on a scam. The company, called iYogi, is accused of tricking people into paying for tech support services they don't need. According to investigators iYogi engaged in a different twist on the notorious tech support scams where someone call you claiming your computer has problems. What's significant in this case is workers don't call you, you call them. And iYogi is one of...

The consumer electronics industry has always fascinated me. I spent my first ten years as an analyst covering the telecom industry, which historically has had very good margins. But, when I started covering the consumer electronics industry, I was struck by the fact the vast majority of players in that market make razor-thin margins, if they’re profitable at all. Even more striking is Apple, which might be described accurately, if incompletely, as a player in the consumer electronics market, makes telecom-like margins while competing with those barely profitable vendors. And just as interesting is the fact that, as players that...

Had to do it. Had to create the thread. The game is too damned good. This thread is reserved for hardcore gamers who play Fallout 4. Norm, KC, TADSLOS and I have hijacked so many threads discussing this game, I felt we needed our own thread.Fallout 4 is amazing. The content is excessively large. There is so much to explore, you could replay this game 10 times and not find every mission or quest. The characters are so much better fleshed out than any other game I have played. Even the radio announcer of Diamond City Radio will have you...

So I have been having some issues with video playback on my laptop. It doesn't happen often, but every once in awhile, I'll try to play a YouTube video or Windows Media Player vid, and the video is green. Audio still plays, but the screen is green. In some cases, WMV's are just a black screen, with audio playing. Any help/suggestions are appreciated. Running Windows 8, BTW. I have 10 downloaded, just haven't upgraded yet

Of course we had to pit the Surface Book vs. the MacBook Pro. It’s like Ford vs. Chevy, or Coke vs. Pepsi. Each side has its diehard fans, plus others who just want to know which is better. Microsoft claims its new Surface Book is “twice” as fast as its equivalent MacBook Pro. Well, we ran some benchmarks, and hate to say it, but Microsoft lied. The Surface Book isn’t twice as fast. It’s three times as fast. Read on for the details. What Microsoft meant First, let’s clarify what Microsoft meant when it said the Surface Book would smoke...

The great mystery since the NSA and other intelligence agencies’ cyber-spying capabilities became watercooler fodder has not been the why of their actions, but the how? For example, how are they breaking crypto to decode secure Internet communication? A team of cryptographers and computer scientists from a handful of academic powerhouses is pretty confident they have the answer after having pieced together a number of clues from the Snowden documents that have been published so far, and giving the math around the Diffie-Hellman protocol a hard look. The answer is an implementation weakness in Diffie-Hellman key exchanges, specifically in the...

Yet another bad new Zero-Day (already exploited) Adobe Flash vulnerability. Time to uninstall Flash from all your computers and keep it off for good! To remove Flash from Windows: Close your browser In Control Panel -> Programs and Features, remove/uninstall all Adobe Flash or Shockwave items. Restart your browser Go to Add-ons/Plugins and confirm there are no Shockwave or Flash plugins. To remove Flash from OS X (10.6 and later): Download and run this Flash uninstaller: http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/current/support/uninstall_flash_player_osx.dmg To remove Flash from Linux: Close your browser Use "apt-get remove", "yum erase", or find the flashplayer .so (e.g. in /usr/lib[64]/mozilla/plugins or ~/.mozilla/plugins)...

FinFETs and SOI working in different environmentsSoitec's CEO and board chairman has raised an eyebrow or two when he said that the iPhone 6s has multiple RF chips built on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrates and that Intel and IBM are using the tech for their silicon photonics push.According to EETimes  Paul Boudre, who claimed that SOI is already being used by Apple and Intel even though neither company is broadcasting it. SOI appears to be on track to major market penetration even while the rest of the industry is talking FinFETs.

The significant advance, by a team at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney appears today in the international journal Nature. "What we have is a game changer," said team leader Andrew Dzurak, Scientia Professor and Director of the Australian National Fabrication Facility at UNSW. "We've demonstrated a two-qubit logic gate - the central building block of a quantum computer - and, significantly, done it in silicon. Because we use essentially the same device technology as existing computer chips, we believe it will be much easier to manufacture a full-scale processor chip than for any of the leading...

Above: IBM's carbon nanotubes have tiny circuits that are fractions of a meter apart.Image Credit: IBM Carbon nanotubes are the leading candidate to replace silicon in semiconductor chips after the decades-long run of silicon electronics runs out. And IBM is hoping to usher along that transition with a new breakthrough being announced today.In the October 2 issue of the journal Science, IBM researchers say they have overcome one of the most daunting challenges around carbon nanotube transistors, which are the building blocks of electronic circuits with dimensions that are measured in billionths of a meter. Carbon nanotubes may be...

Move over, microchip. A random assembly of gold nanoparticles can perform calculations normally reserved for neatly arranged patterns of silicon. Traditional computers rely on ordered circuits that follow preprogrammed rules, but this strategy limits how efficient they can be. “The best microprocessors you can buy in a store now can do 1011 operations per second and use a few hundred watts,” says Wilfred van der Wiel of the University of Twente in the Netherlands. “The human brain can do orders of magnitude more and uses only 10 to 20 watts. That’s a huge gap.” To close that gap, researchers have...