Month: December 2015

Malware targeting banks, payment card processors, and other financial services has found an effective way to remain largely undetected as it plucks sensitive card data out of computer memory. It hijacks the computer's boot-up routine in a way that allows highly intrusive code to run even before the Windows operating system loads.

The so-called bootkit has been in operation since early this year and is part of "Nemesis," a suite of malware that includes programs for transferring files, capturing screens logging keystrokes, injecting processes, and carrying out other malicious actions on an infected computer. Its ability to modify the legitimate volume boot record makes it possible for the Nemesis components to load before Windows starts. That makes the malware hard to detect and remove using traditional security approaches. Because the infection lives in such a low-level portion of a hard drive, it can also survive when the operating system is completely reinstalled.

"The use of malware that persists outside of the operating system requires a different approach to detection and eradication," researchers from security firm FireEye's Mandiant Consulting wrote in a blog post published Monday. "Malware with bootkit functionality can be installed and executed almost completely independent of the Windows operating system. As a result, incident responders will need tools that can access and search raw disks at scale for evidence of bootkits."

(credit: Sling TV)

Sling TV CEO Roger Lynch accused Comcast of setting its data caps just low enough to prevent customers from replacing cable TV with online video streaming.

In an interview with CordCutting.com today, Lynch said:

I think one of the areas we’re quite focused on is what’s happening in Washington, DC around net neutrality. We see concerning things happening if you look at cable companies like Comcast now instituting data caps that just happen to be at a level at or below what someone would use if they’re watching TV on the Internet—and at the same time launching their own streaming service that they say doesn’t count against the data cap. It’s something we’ve been warning Washington about for years, and it’s a risk to OTT [over-the-top Internet services] in general. We’re net neutrality proponents, and want to make sure that rules are implemented so that it really is a level playing field for new players like us.

Comcast is testing 300GB-per-month data caps in a variety of cities before a potential nationwide rollout. Customers are charged $10 for each additional 50GB, and in all but a few of the cities with data caps, they can pay an extra $30 or $35 per month for unlimited data.

(credit: Valentina Palladino)

InBody, a South Korean company that makes comprehensive body composition machines, is now bringing the core of that technology to your wrist with the InBody Band. The daily activity tracker does the usual things—measuring heart rate and steps and calories burned—but also doubles as a "body composition analyzer," using a quartet of small electrodes to measure body fat. That work has usually been done by bulky smart scales that can measure weight, BMI, and muscle mass; the InBody Band makes body composition measurements mobile.

But the $180 Band isn't perfect—and it raises questions about the usefulness of measuring body fat anywhere and everywhere.

Design: Electrodes all around

The InBody Band looks the way the new Microsoft Band should have looked. It's a completely curved device, with an LCD display that sits on top of your wrist. Two bioelectrical impedance sensors hug the display module; two more sit underneath it. These shiny little strips measure your body fat and heart rate.

Ron Amadeo

Keep clicking for the full list of new and changed emoji, according to unicode.org. How 'bout that new poop emoji?

10 more images in gallery

A small update to Android 6.0—Android 6.0.1—is officially out and (should be) available on the Nexus system image page. 6.0.1's main purpose for existing seems to be a bunch of new Unicode 8 emoji—which we have dutifully covered in the above gallery—along with small tweaks to the tablet layout and the Do Not Disturb mode.

Unicode.org has a full list of all the current emoji complete with what the emoji look like on other platforms, so we used that to create the above list. The site wasn't entirely accurate, but we fixed whatever mistakes we could spot (we think they had an old Android emoji list).

There are a few notable things here. We're really not feeling the redesigned poop emoji (#79 in the list), and Google neglected to implement the middle finger emoji. There also still aren't any fancy emoji "modifiers" for things like skin color—everything gets a yellow skin tone and that's it.

(credit: Army Medicine/Flickr)

A group of doctors at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore are gearing up to offer military men injured in war the country’s first penis transplants. The surgeries could start within a year, and recipients could regain sensation, along with urinary and sexual function, within months, doctors said.

Though it’s unrealistic that they would regain all function, the hope of fathering a child “is a realistic goal,” Dr. W. P. Andrew Lee, the chairman of plastic and reconstructive surgery at Johns Hopkins, told The New York Times. The transplants would only involve the penis, not the testes, so any sired children would be genetically related to recipients.

The group of doctors felt compelled to offer the transplants because of the psychological toll of such injuries, particularly feelings of shame, stigma, and loss of identity. “I think one would agree it is as devastating as anything that our wounded warriors suffer, for a young man to come home in his early 20s with the pelvic area completely destroyed,” Lee said. Another doctor quoted by the Times said that in his experience young veterans would rather lose both legs and an arm than suffer a genital injury.