Month: August 2016

(credit: Cyber Security Labs @ Ben Gurion University)

Researchers have devised a new way to siphon data out of an infected computer even when it has been physically disconnected from the Internet to prevent the leakage of sensitive information it stores.

The method has been dubbed "DiskFiltration" by its creators because it uses acoustic signals emitted from the hard drive of the air-gapped computer being targeted. It works by manipulating the movements of the hard drive's actuator, which is the mechanical arm that accesses specific parts of disk platter so heads attached to the actuator can read or write data. By using so-called seek operations that move the actuator in very specific ways, it can generate sounds that transfer passwords, cryptographic keys, and other sensitive data stored on the computer to a nearby microphone. The technique has a range of six feet and a speed of 180 bits per second, fast enough to steal a 4096-bit key in about 25 minutes.

"An air-gap isolation is considered to be a hermetic security measure which can prevent data leakage," Mordechai Guri, a security researcher and the head of research and development in the cyber security labs at Israel's Ben-Gurion University, told Ars. "Confidential data, personal information, financial records and other type of sensitive information is stored within isolated networks. We show that despite the degree of isolation, the data can be exfiltrated (for example, to a nearby smart phone)."

Amazon and Google now have company in the game-streaming wars—in the form of a major game publisher, no less. On Thursday, Microsoft announced its acquisition of a burgeoning game-streaming service called Beam, and its mix of unique features and exclusive game integration should get the attention of the streaming world's current leaders.

Beam, which is headquartered down the road from Microsoft in Redmond, WA, is built around gamification features that encourage and reward active participation. The more you watch and interact with Beam, the more Beam XP you earn, which can be spent on in-game votes, cosmetic boosts, and other perks within the Beam interface. (Some of these boosts can only be earned when Beam doesn't recognize the use of ad-blocking services.) Like Twitch, Beam offers an SDK to game developers for integration with their games, but Beam's interface has been built from the ground up to display tappable icons on both desktop and mobile platforms to alter or influence a myriad of factors in a given game. We imagine that will make "Beam Plays" sessions smoother to build, even for game fans who are inserting crowd-participation experiments into existing games.

Spend Beam XP to cast votes for a given game's various options.

Microsoft apparently won't waste much time jumping on this interactive aspect, as its announcements talked a lot about how Minecraft games can be altered by Beam's audience-participation systems—the company showed some video proof, to boot. Viewers can spawn bad guys, make volcanoes erupt, and do more via a clean, button-controlled interface. Beam will also support team-based streaming, which Microsoft has begun advertising by talking about its not-yet-released Xbox and PC game Sea of Thieves. (That game revolves around teams of players talking to each other while managing parallel objectives, including the simultaneous piloting, repair, and combat systems in its zany pirate ships.)

(credit: Paul Scherrer Institute)

Although tiny, a proton takes up a finite amount of space, enough to fit three quarks, a host of virtual particles, and their associated gluons. The size of a proton's radius is determined by these particles and their interactions, and so is fundamentally tied in to theories like the Standard Model and quantum chromodynamics.

We can measure the radius because the proton's charge is spread across it, which influences the orbit of any electrons that might be circling it. Measurements with electrons produce a value that's easily in agreement with existing theories. But a few years back, researchers put a heavier version of the electron, called a muon, in orbit around a proton. This formed an exotic, heavier version of the hydrogen atom. And here, measuring the proton's radius produced an entirely different value—something that shouldn't have happened.

This “proton radius puzzle” suggests there may be something fundamentally wrong with our physics models. And the researchers who discovered it have now moved on to put a muon in orbit around deuterium, a heavier isotope of hydrogen. They confirm that the problem still exists, and there's no way of solving it with existing theories.