August 2017 – Page 84 – news.buyenne.com

Remotelock LS-6i: Firmware-Update zerstört smarte Türschlösser dauerhaft

Ein Hersteller smarter Türschlösser hat mindestens 500 Geräte von Kunden durch ein falsches Firmwareupdate dauerhaft zerstört. Betroffen sind vor allem viele Airbnb-Vermieter, ein Austauschprogramm ist gestartet. (Smartlock, Firmware)

Ryzen 7 1800X: AMD bestätigt Compiler-Fehler unter Linux

Unter Linux treten beim Kompilieren auf AM4-Mainboards mit Ryzen-Prozessoren Fehler auf. AMD hat das Problem jetzt bestätigt und arbeitet mit Entwicklern und Anwendern zusammen, um das Problem zu lösen. (AMD Zen, Prozessor)

Dota 2: Deutscher “KuroKy” gewinnt The International mit Team Liquid

Das am höchsten dotierte eSport-Turnier endet mit einem deutschen Sieger. Team Liquid gewinnt 10 Millionen US-Dollar. Valve hat außerdem zwei neue Helden angekündigt und Elon Musk sorgte ebenfalls für eine Überraschung. (Dota 2, Valve)

Weekly News Roundup (August 13, 2017)

From an unorthodox leak to an not unexpected move, read the news roundup for the week ending August 13, 2017
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From an unorthodox leak to an not unexpected move, read the news roundup for the week ending August 13, 2017

Analogabschaltung: Unitymedia ändert alle Sendeplätze und bringt neue Sender

Sendersuchlauf und künftig schnelleres Internet. Das bringt die Analogabschaltung bei Unitymedia. Auch neue Sender kommen beim zweitgrößten Kabelnetzbetreiber hinzu. (Unitymedia, Telekommunikation)

Popcorn Time Devs Help Streaming Aggregator Reelgood to ‘Fix Piracy’

A group of developers, who previously were the masterminds behind one of the most-used Popcorn Time forks, are now trying to meet people’s streaming needs legally. After being shut down by the MPAA, they joined streaming aggregator Reelgood. One of the goals is to provide a “pirate site” interface to easily access the fragmented streaming landscape.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

During the fall of 2015, the MPAA shut down one of the most prominent pirate streaming services, Popcorn Time fork PopcornTime.io.

While the service was found to be clearly infringing, many of the developers didn’t set out to break the law. Most of all, they wanted to provide the public with easy access to their favorite movies and TV-shows.

Fast forward nearly two years and several of these Popcorn Time developers are still on the same quest. The main difference is that they now operate on the safe side of the law.

The startup they’re working with is called Reelgood, which can be best described as a streaming service aggregator. The San-Francisco based company, founded by ex-Facebook employee David Sanderson, recently raised $3.5 million and has opened its doors to the public.

The goal of Reelgood is similar to Popcorn Time in the way that it aims to be the go-to tool for people to access their entertainment. Instead of using pirate sources, however, Reelgood stitches together content from various legal platforms, both paid and free.

Reelgood

TorrentFreak spoke to former Popcorn Time developer Luigi Poole, who’s leading the charge on the development of Reelgood’s web app. He stresses that the increasing fragmentation of streaming services, which drives some people to pirate sites, is one of the problems Reelgood hopes to fix.

“There’s a misconception that torrenting is done by bad people who don’t want to pay for content. I’d say, in the vast majority of cases, torrenting is a symptom of the massive fragmentation that’s been given as the only legal option to the consumer,” Poole says.

While people have many reasons to pirate, some stick to unauthorized services because it’s simply too cumbersome to dig through all the legal options. Pirate sites have a single interface to all popular movies and TV-shows and legal platforms don’t.

“The modern TV/movie ecosystem is made up of an increasing number of different services. This makes finding content like changing channels, only more complicated. Is that movie you’re about to buy or rent on a service you already pay for? Right now there’s no way to do this other than a cumbersome search using each service’s individual search. Time to go digging,” Poole says.

“We believe this is the main reason people torrent — it’s just easier, given that the legal options presented to us are essentially a ‘go fetch’ treasure hunt,” he adds.

Flipping that channel on an old school television often beats the online streaming experience. That is, for those who want more than Netflix alone.

And the problem isn’t going away anytime soon. As we reported earlier this week, there’s a trend towards more fragmentation, instead of less. Disney is pulling some of its most popular content from the US Netflix in 2019, keeping piracy relevant.

“The untold story is that consumers are throwing up their hands with all this fragmentation, and turning to torrenting not because it’s free, but because it’s intuitive and easy,” Poole says.

“Reelgood fixes this problem by acting as a pirate site interface for every legal option, sort of like a TV guide to anything streaming, also giving you notifications anytime something is new, letting you track when certain content becomes available, and not only telling you where it’s available but taking you straight there with one click to play.”

Reelgood can be seen as a defragmentation tool, creating a uniform interface for all the legal platforms people have access to. In addition to paid services such as Netflix and HBO, it also lists free content from Fox, CBS, Crackle, and many other providers.

TorrentFreak took it for a spin and it indeed works as advertised. Simply add your streaming service accounts and all will be bundled into an elegant and uniform interface that allows you to watch and track everything with a single click.

The service is still limited to US libraries but there are already plans to expand it to other countries, which is promising. While it may not eradicate piracy anytime soon, it does a good job of trying to organize the increasingly complex streaming landscape.

Unfortunately, it’s still not cheap to use more than a handful of paid services, but that’s a problem even Reelgood can’t fix. Not even with help from seven former Popcorn Time developers.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Rise of the Empire expands Star Wars: Rebellion in all the right ways

Review: A new hope for the 3-hour board game.

Welcome to Ars Cardboard, our weekend look at tabletop games! Check out our complete board gaming coverage at cardboard.arstechnica.com—and let us know what you think.

2016’s Star Wars: Rebellion was—ahem—a force to be reckoned with. Presenting the original film trilogy within the scope of a three-hour board game is a monumental challenge. But Rebellion succeeded. If the tabletop industry was Yavin IV, Rebellion was the looming Death Star casting its shadow on all competitors.

Now, the definitive Star Wars board game is back with Rise of the Empire. This small-box expansion is all about “more.” More units like the U-Wing and TIE Striker, more leaders like Jyn Erso and Director Krennic, and more missions allowing you to sneak behind enemy lines or hire bounty hunters.

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Android users bombarded with >4,000 spy apps, three land in Google Play

SonicSpy family of apps pose as benign programs. Behind the scenes, they spy on users.

A single threat actor has aggressively bombarded Android users with more than 4,000 spyware apps since February, and in at least three cases the actor snuck the apps into Google's official Play Market, security researchers said Thursday.

Soniac was one of the three apps that made its way into Google Play, according to a blog post published Thursday by a researcher from mobile security firm Lookout. The app, which had from 1,000 to 5,000 downloads before Google removed it, provided messaging functions through a customized version of the Telegram communications program. Behind the scenes, Soniac had the ability to surreptitiously record audio, take phones, make calls, send text messages, and retrieve logs, contacts, and information about Wi-Fi access points. Google ejected the app after Lookout reported it as malicious.

Two other apps—one called Hulk Messenger and the other Troy Chat—were also available in Play but were later removed. It's not clear if the developer withdrew the apps or if Google expelled them after discovering their spying capabilities. The remaining apps—which since February number slightly more than 4,000—are being distributed through other channels that weren't immediately clear. Lookout researcher Michael Flossman said those channels may include alternative markets or targeted text messages that include a download link. The apps are all part of a malware family Lookout calls SonicSpy.

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Researchers encode malware in DNA, compromise DNA sequencing software

It’s a proof-of-principle, done after making DNA analysis software vulnerable.

With everyone from academics to Microsoft looking at the prospect of storing data using DNA, it was probably inevitable that someone would start looking at the security implications. Apparently, they're worse than most people might have expected. It turns out it's possible to encode computer malware in DNA and use it to attack vulnerabilities on the computer that analyzes the sequence of that DNA.

The researchers didn't find an actual vulnerability in DNA analysis software—instead, they specifically made a version of some software with an exploitable vulnerability to show that the risk is more than hypothetical. Still, an audit of some open source DNA analysis software shows that the academics who have been writing it haven't been paying much attention to security best practices.

More like a virus than most

DNA sequencing involves determining the precise order of the bases that make up a DNA strand. While the process that generates the sequence is generally some combination of biology and/or chemistry, once it's read, the sequence is typically stored as an ASCII string of As, Ts, Cs, and Gs. If handled improperly, that chunk of data could exploit vulnerable software to get it to execute arbitrary code. And DNA sequences tend to see a lot of software, which find overlapping sequences, align it to known genomes, look for key differences, and more.

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Android O could be coming the week of August 21st

Google could launch the next version of Android by the end of the month. First unveiled with the launch of a developer preview in March, Android O brings improvements to power management, notifications, and multitasking, among other things. Now Android Police blogger David Ruddock and tech news leak specialist Evan Blass are both reporting that […]

Android O could be coming the week of August 21st is a post from: Liliputing