Month: February 2016

GOP presidential contender Donald Trump is urging his followers to boycott Apple until it complies with the US government in its ongoing encryption battle. Apple is currently facing a court order requiring the company to assist authorities in unlocking an iPhone used by one of the two killers involved in a San Bernardino mass shooting that killed 14 and injured two dozen others in December 2015.

"First of all, Apple ought to give [authorities] the security to that phone," Trump told the crowd at a South Carolina rally on Friday. "What I think you ought to do is boycott Apple until they give that security number. I just thought of that—boycott Apple.”

Trump was initially discussing how he believes the US needs to bring back jobs from China before he stumbled into his Apple position. The comments come as the debate about encryption reached a fever pitch this week. On Friday, the Justice Department demanded that a federal judge make Apple comply with a Tuesday court order requiring Apple to create a custom firmware in the seized iPhone 5C used by Syed Rizwan Farook. That firmware would remove a possible automatic wipe feature on the phone if a passcode is incorrectly entered 10 times.

An Oregon man has admitted he tricked hundreds of people into divulging their Apple and Gmail passwords in a scheme that allowed him to steal nude images of more than a dozen victims, some of them celebrities.

Andrew Helton, 29, of Portland, entered the plea on Thursday to one felony count of unauthorized access to a protected computer to obtain information, according to documents filed in federal court in Los Angeles. Prosecutors said he gained illegal access to 363 Apple and Gmail accounts, including those belonging to members of the entertainment industry in Los Angeles. He then used the access to obtain data stored in the online accounts, including 161 sexually explicit, nude, or partially nude images of 13 people, some who were unidentified celebrities.

According to a plea agreement unsealed Friday, Helton engaged in a fraud campaign from March 2011 to May 2013 in which he sent e-mails that falsely claimed to come from Apple or Google. The phishing e-mails asked victims to verify their accounts by clicking on links that led to what looked like authentic Apple or Google login pages. When targets complied, their passwords were transmitted to Helton, who used them to illegally access account data.

(credit: Tavis Ormandy)

A reasonable expectation of security software is that at worst it should make your system no less secure than would be without the software. Sadly, it often seems that such hardware fails to meet even this low bar.

Comodo Internet Security is a security suite that includes anti-virus, firewalling, and sandboxing to allow applications to be run in a notionally secure unprivileged environment. By default, it also includes a component called GeekBuddy. GeekBuddy is a VNC server, providing full remote access to your system. In May of 2015 it was pointed out that this VNC server was running without a password—yes, really—providing, at the very least, local privilege escalation. Sandboxed applications such as Google Chrome, or even those running in Comodo's own sandbox, could connect to this VNC server and have full access to your system.

With the right (or rather, in this case, wrong) network configuration, the VNC server might even be exposed to remote attackers.

Vishal Mathur

This is what was sent to journalists... is that Wite-Out?

5 more images in gallery

A few days ago, an Indian device called the "Freedom 251" surfaced, so named because it only cost Rs. 251 (About $3.64), making it the "world's cheapest smartphone." If you thought a $4 smartphone seemed a little too good to be true, you may be right. There are now all sorts of questionable issues popping up with this device.

First up, it looks like the company might have done at least a visual switcheroo. When the product site first launched, it looked like this, showing a modern, high-end looking phone with very thin side bezels and three capacitive buttons on the bottom. After news coverage of the phone spread, the site was updated and all the phone images were replaced with a much uglier, much cheaper looking device with thick bezels and a single hardware home button.

Testers in India have gotten their hands on the device, and sure enough, it sports the newer, uglier design. The oddities don't stop there. The company selling the Freedom 251 is called "Ringing Bells" but the hardware sent to testers was actually built by Adcom and carries Adcom branding. On the front of the device is an Adcom logo, which was obscured with...Wite-Out? The the Adcom logo is actually covered up with a white blob right on top of the bezel. This editing can be easily removed to show the logo beneath.

(credit: Richard Masoner @ Flickr)

Individual tax credits and rebates aren't the only policy levers we use to try and increase the adoption of electric cars and other alternative fuel vehicles. The Environmental Protection Agency and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration both have quite a lot to say about the matter as well, especially through rules that set fleet-wide standards for both fuel efficiency (the Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency, or CAFE standards) and an associated Greenhouse Gas Emission standard. But a new paper from Jeremy Michalek and colleagues suggests that the incentives built into those standards—meant to encourage the uptake of alternative fuel vehicles—might actually increase fuel consumption and CO₂ emissions.

New CAFE standards that get stricter over time were announced by the NHTSA in 2015. CAFE mandates fleet-wide targets for car makers, with a formula that takes into account the footprint of each model. Bigger cars or light trucks are allowed to get lower fuel efficiency than smaller models, and a car maker's total sales are taken into account to calculate the average across their model range.

At the same time, the EPA has another set of standards for the amount of greenhouse gas emissions across a manufacturer's range (this is separate from the EPA fuel efficiency rating that new cars get, which also differs quite a bit from the CAFE numbers). Failing to meet these targets comes with a set of different consequences. OEMs that don't meet their CAFE target have to pay a fine ($5.50 per 0.1mpg per vehicle sold), which several car makers have historically chosen to accept as cheaper than the alternative. The EPA's emissions standards aren't quite as lenient, however; it's within the agency's power to revoke one's license to sell vehicles inside the US.

LARP archers accused of patent infringement. (credit: Larping.org)

When Jordan Gwyther started Larping.org, a website that promotes his favorite hobby, he didn't expect it would lead to him being sued for patent infringement over foam arrows. And when he spoke out about the lawsuit, neither he nor his attorney saw what was coming next: the patent-owner filed papers in court last week asking for a temporary restraining order (TRO) that would keep Gwyther quiet.

Live-action role-playing (aka LARPing) is an increasingly popular pastime in which ordinary folks transform into medieval weekend warriors, donning armor and using foam weapons to duke it out in local fields and parks.

Gwyther founded Larping.org five years ago as a community hub where LARPers could talk to each other and find local events. Over time, he also started selling certain items useful to LARPers, like leather and metal armor, latex weapons, and foam arrows. "It's a hobby that grew into a side business," Gwyther told Ars in a phone interview this morning.

(credit: Kārlis Dambrāns)

On Friday, prosecutors asked a federal court in Riverside, California to force Apple to comply with a court order issued earlier this week to assist the FBI’s investigation of the 2015 San Bernardino terrorist attack.

Apple has been ordered specifically to create a custom firmware in the seized iPhone 5C that was used by Syed Rizwan Farook, which would remove a possible automatic wipe feature on the phone if a passcode is incorrectly entered 10 times. If Apple does comply, it would allow the government to brute force access to the phone.

The 35-page motion to compel is a clear repudiation of Apple’s public position, which has been to wholly resist the court order. Earlier this week, Apple CEO Tim Cook called the court order an “overreach by the US government.”

Finally... I have destroyed every other type of game that might stand in my way.

LAS VEGAS—In the Academy Awards season, the term "Oscar bait" has developed as a somewhat derogatory term for the kind of overwrought period dramas that seem tailor-made to take home a Best Picture statuette. After attending last night's DICE Awards ceremony in Las Vegas (put on by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences for 19 years now), I'm beginning to think we should start similarly referring to a certain type of open-world role-playing and adventure game as "DICE bait."

Fallout 4's Game of the Year win last night (and the strong performance of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt in other categories) cements the open-world, single-player RPG as the genre to beat at the DICE Awards. Four of the last seven DICE Game of the Year recipients have fit that same broad gameplay mold: Dragon Age: Inquisition in 2014, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in 2011, and Mass Effect 2 in 2010. All four games also won in the Best Role-playing Game category, and these games tended to clean up in the less specific categories focused on general art and design, too.

If you expand the definition of DICE bait slightly to include more linear (but equally cinematic and character-driven) adventure games, you'll find two more recent DICE Game of the Year winners: Naughty Dog's Uncharted 2 in 2009 and The Last of Us in 2013. It's not just limited to DICE either; top picks at ceremonies like the Game Developers Choice Awards and The Game Awards show a similar bias to just a couple genres.