Month: May 2017

Hands on with the Surface Laptop (video link)

NEW YORK CITY—The Surface Laptop has no gimmicks or novelties. It's a Microsoft PC with Surface branding. But unlike the predecessor systems—the Surface RT and Surface Pro with their convertible tablet and kickstand design, the Surface Book with its hybrid concept and detachable GPU, the Surface Studio with its hinged folding screen, even the Surface Hub with its multiuser touch and integrated video conferencing—the Surface Laptop has no twist, no unique spin that sets it apart from its competition.

It's just a laptop.

Enlarge (credit: Unbiassed)

To understand why Carbanak is one of the Internet's most skilled and successful criminal groups, consider the recent spear-phishing campaign it used to infect computers in the hospitality and restaurant industries with malware that steals banking credentials.

One variation started with an e-mail threatening a lawsuit because a visitor got sick after eating at one of the company's restaurants. To increase the chances the attached Microsoft Word document is opened, the attackers personally follow up with a phone call encouraging the recipient to open the booby-trapped file and click inside. The attacker calls back a half-hour later to check if the recipient has opened the document. The attacker immediately hangs up in the event the answer is yes.

Behind the scenes, macros embedded inside the Word document infect the employee's computer with a trojan that surreptitiously takes screenshots and retrieves credit card data and other sensitive banking credentials. The trojan then attempts to infect other computers on the same network in an attempt to steal additional loot. And all because the attacker, who is halfway around the globe, made a compelling case that it was in the employee's best interests to open the document and allow the embedded macro to run.

Enlarge (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Apple has just released its earnings report for the second quarter of fiscal 2017, which runs from the beginning of January to the end of March. So far, Apple is back to modest growth in 2017: iPhone unit sales are down just a little, and iPad sales continue their precipitous slide. But iPhone revenue is actually up, and the Mac, the Services division, and the Other Products divisions all posted solid growth.

Apple made $11 billion in profit and $52.9 billion in revenue, compared to $10.5 billion in profit and $50.6 billion in revenue in Q2 of 2016. The company's gross margin was 38.9 percent. These results were toward the upper end of Apple's guidance for the quarter, which predicted revenue between $51.5 billion and $53.5 billion and a profit margin between 38 and 39 percent.

The company predicts that it will make between $43.5 and $45.5 billion in the third quarter of fiscal 2017, with profit margins between 37.5 and 38.5 percent. These numbers compare favorably to the $42.4 billion the company made in Q3 of 2016, though they're still well below the $49.6 billion that Apple made in Q3 of 2015.

Enlarge / The bad guys will try to get you with their glowing keyboards and headsets, at least in the classic movie Hackers. (credit: Hackers / United Artists)

Last week we reported on the lives of Google raters, people whose job is to provide Google with data on the usefulness of its algorithms. The 10 anonymous raters we spoke with were all contractors at Leapforce, a staffing firm that provided rater services to Google. Yesterday, one of those raters, Kyle Martin Medeiros, was fired by Leapforce for an unspecified "breach of contract." Every Leapforce rater signs a contract that includes a broad NDA.

After the firing, one of Medeiros' colleagues, who goes by the pseudonym Shelly323, bragged in Leapforce chat rooms about her role in getting Medeiros fired. She said she had turned Medeiros over to Leapforce managers after he confessed to her privately on Facebook that he was speaking with Ars.

"I was the one that told LF what was happening," she wrote in Leapforce chat. "All along I leaked the info to them... He was screwing with ALL OF OUR JOBS!!! I did what I HAD TO DO TO PROTECT LF and ALL OF THE RATERS!!" Other raters congratulated her for being a "double agent" and offered to buy her cake. Leapforce did not respond to a request for comment.

(credit: Open Grid Scheduler / flickr)

The City and County of San Francisco have settled a lawsuit filed by Airbnb, which had sued over the city’s new short-term rental registration law.

As Ars has reported before, the new law expands upon a previous ordinance that Airbnb itself helped initially draft. The earlier law went into effect in February 2015. The law defined and began to regulate short-term rentals, and it required rentals to have registration numbers. The additional legislation, set to take effect in late July 2016, now requires that listings on sites like Airbnb clearly publish this new registration number and holds both the host and the "platform" (Airbnb) potentially civilly and criminally liable for non-compliance.

Airbnb did not like how it potentially could be in legal trouble for the actions of its users, and so the company sued nearly a year ago.

A white South Carolina police officer accused of the video-taped shooting of a fleeing, unarmed suspect pleaded guilty Tuesday to a single federal civil rights violation. A video of Officer Michael Slager shooting and killing 50-year-old Walter Scott was secretly taken in 2015 by a passerby. The video has been viewed millions of times online and on television. It was a key factor in the North Charleston Police Department's decision to abandon its initial backing of the shooting.

The deal with federal and state prosecutors includes Slager's guilty plea to one count of a three-count federal civil rights indictment. (PDF) In exchange, federal prosecutors will drop two lesser charges. South Carolina prosecutors, under the deal, will not retry the 36-year-old Slager. In December, after four days of deliberations, a 12-member Charleston County jury announced it was hopelessly deadlocked, and a mistrial in the state's murder case was declared.

Slager faces a maximum life term when sentenced in federal court later this year, though that length of a term is not likely. In South Carolina's murder case, a murder conviction would have netted Slager a 30-year-to-life term. South Carolina jurors also considered and were deadlocked on a voluntary manslaughter charge, which carries a term of two to 30 years.