Month: March 2018

Enlarge (credit: Elembis)

Attackers have generated $3,900 so far in an ongoing campaign that's exploiting the popular rTorrent application to install currency-mining software on computers running Unix-like operating systems, researchers said Thursday.

The misconfiguration vulnerabilities are similar in some respects to ones Google Project Zero researcher Tavis Ormandy reported recently in the uTorrent and Transmission BitTorrent apps. Proof-of-concept attacks Ormandy developed exploited weaknesses in the programs' JSON-RPC interface, which allows websites a user is visiting to initiate downloads and control other key functions. Ormandy's exploits demonstrated how malicious sites could abuse the interface to run malicious code on vulnerable computers.

The in-the-wild attacks targeting rTorrent are exploiting XML-RPC, an rTorrent interface that uses HTTP and the more-powerful XML to receive input from remote computers. rTorrent doesn't require any authentication for XML-RPC to work. Even worse, the interface can execute shell commands directly on the OS rTorrent runs on.

Enlarge / Employees work at the Youtube headquarters in San Bruno, California, on May, 26, 2010. (credit: GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP/Getty Images)

A former YouTube employee has sued Google—the video site’s parent company—alleging that he was wrongfully terminated from his position after he complained against hiring practices that he claimed were discriminatory against white and Asian men.

The lawsuit, which was filed in late January in San Mateo Superior Court but wasn’t reported in the media until Thursday, comes at a time when many Silicon Valley companies (including Google) are becoming increasingly cognizant of a largely male, white, and Asian workforce. Some companies have publicly said that they are trying to rectify this situation by working harder to find candidates who can do the job and who are also traditionally underrepresented minorities.

The civil complaint explains that Arne Wilberg, who is described as a 40-year-old white man by the Wall Street Journal, worked as recruiter for YouTube for seven years. In his job, Wilberg was tasked with helping to select engineering and tech talent for YouTube and Google.

Enlarge (credit: Ron Amadeo)

Samsung’s next big phone is nearly upon us. At first blush, the Galaxy S9 looks to be a decent, if unremarkable, update. The fingerprint scanner isn’t as awkward to reach as it was on the Galaxy S8, the speakers should be louder, and the adjustable aperture of the new camera could allow for better photos in low light. The Galaxy S9 won’t be a revelation when it arrives on March 16, but then again the Galaxy S8 wasn’t exactly a bad phone to begin with.

One thing that’s all but guaranteed, though, is that the Galaxy S9 will be very popular. The reach of Samsung’s advertising and sales channel in America remains unmatched by any smartphone maker that isn’t named Apple. Given the modest sales of Google’s Pixel phones, there’s little reason to think the Galaxy S9 won’t be far and away the highest-selling Android flagship of 2018, just as the last several Galaxy S phones have been.

That means plenty of people will be looking to get the new phone when pre-orders go live at 12am EST on Friday, March 2. The good news is that many of those Samsung fans will be able to save a little bit of cash by ordering early. The bad news is that, per usual, the mobile carriers of America haven’t made buying the phone an entirely uniform process. Shocking, I know.

Enlarge / Russian President Vladimir Putin addresses the Federal Assembly at Moscow's Manezh exhibition centre on March 01, 2018. He announced a plethora of new strategic weapons that challenge the US' ballistic missile defenses. (credit: YURI KADOBNOV/AFP/Getty Images)

In his State of the Nation speech today, Russian president Vladimir Putin showed computer animations and videos demonstrating three new classes of strategic weapons under development that are specifically intended to defeat the United States' ballistic missile defenses. Among them were two weapons powered by miniaturized nuclear reactors: a drone submarine "torpedo" previously revealed in a Russian news leak and a cruise "missile" drone with what Putin described as a virtually unlimited range. The third was a new non-ballistic, hypersonic ICBM capable of evading US missile interceptors.

The weapons, Putin said, were a direct response to the US's withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and its continued development of ballistic missile defenses—which the Russian government has argued undermine the strategic deterrent value of Russia's existing nuclear force. "No one has listened to us," said Putin. "Listen to us now."

A little something extra for the fallout

Putin reveals the submarine drone torpedo, officially.

Putin claimed that the cruise missile's miniaturized nuclear power plant had been successfully tested last fall and that, when built, the weapon would have a "practically unlimited" range. An animation showed a computer-generated image of the weapon flying close to the ground, following terrain contours, flying over mountains, and out to sea, avoiding seaborne air defense radars on its way to a virtual target. A similar animation showed nuclear-powered torpedoes launched from a submarine, traveling "intercontinental" distances, and striking a US aircraft carrier and exploding near a shore facility. This was the first official public announcement of both weapons.

Enlarge / Trump as he appears in a satirical, video-game-styled animation Donald Trump: Fired Up! (credit: Mashed / YouTube)

Presidential Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced at a briefing Thursday that President Trump plans to meet with members of the video game industry next week "to see what they can do" on the issue of gun violence.

Details on specific timing and attendance for the meeting weren't immediately available, but Sanders cast the meeting as of a piece with multiple others that have already taken place between the president and "a number of stakeholders" in the gun violence debate. "This is going to be an ongoing process and something that we don't expect to happen overnight, but something we're going to continue to be engaged in and continue to look for the best ways possible to protect schools across the country," Sanders said.

The announcement comes after multiple statements in recent days in which the president called out the "incredible" level of violence in video games and other media while publicly mulling changes to the existing voluntary rating systems that help guide parental media purchases.

(credit: Paul Goddin)

After a night of drinking, Kenny Bachman called an Uber to take him to his home in the New Jersey suburbs of Philadelphia. There was just one problem: he wasn't in the Philadelphia area. He was in Morgantown, West Virginia, more than 300 miles away from home.

The cost of the ride: $1,635.93.

"I just woke up," Bachman told NJ.com. "And I'm thinking, 'Why the f--- am I in the car next to some random-ass dude I don't even know?"

Greetings, Arsians! Courtesy of our friends at TechBargains, we have another round of deals to share. Today's list is highlighted by a deal on Amazon's trusty Fire TV Stick, which is now down to $30. That's $10 off its usual going rate.

While the Fire TV Stick doesn't do 4K or HDR—look to something like Roku's Streaming Stick+ if you want that on the cheap—and you'll have to use a Web browser to access YouTube (yay corporate slap fights!), it's still fairly speedy, and it doesn't force you to use a phone as a remote a la Google's Chromecast. It's also catered directly to people who've invested heavily in Amazon's world of services: you can use an Echo to control the device hands-free, and Prime Video is front and center. But most of all, it's really affordable.

If you don't need a new way to put streaming apps on your TV, though, we've also got discounts on Dell laptops, various 4K TVs, a nifty wireless charging pad, and more. Take a look for yourself below.