Month: July 2018

A Kentucky man has pleaded guilty to federal charges he developed, marketed, and provided technical support for software he knew customers used illegally to take control of other people’s computers.

Colton Grubbs used the handle KFC Watermelon to advertise the LuminosityLink administrative tool on Hackforums[dot]net, federal prosecutors alleged in an indictment filed last month. The indictment said the tool provided a variety of malicious capabilities including the ability for purchasers to control others’ computers, surreptitiously record users’ activities, and to view their files, login credentials, and personal information. The defendant, prosecutors said, also used the hacker forum and a website located at luminosity[dot]link to teach users how to conceal their identities and prevent antivirus programs from detecting the tool.

On Monday, Grubbs signed a plea agreement that admitted that from 2015 to 2017 he designed LuminosityLink and sold it for $40 apiece to more than 6,000 individuals, knowing that some of them were using it maliciously. While previously claiming the software was a legitimate tool for system administrators, Monday’s plea agreement admitted he knew some customers were using it to control computers without owners’ knowledge or permission. The document, which was signed by Grubbs, stated:

It's Amazon Prime Day, and that means a large collection of deals that may or may not be a great value. We have a big post covering much of the tech stuff, but I wanted to highlight this insane Essential Phone deal that lets you have a 2017 flagship smartphone for $250. Less than a year ago, this phone was $700. A comparable Snapdragon 835 phone from Samsung (the Galaxy S8) is $500. Today, you can buy two Essential Phones for the cost of the Galaxy S8.

We found the Essential Phone to be a very interesting product when we reviewed it last year. It had a new-age notched display, a minimal design, a unique ceramic body, and felt really well made, especially for something from a brand-new company. It ran stock Android and came with a promise of two years of software updates.

Enlarge / US President Donald Trump answers questions about the 2016 US election during a joint press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin after their summit on July 16, 2018 in Helsinki, Finland. (credit: Getty | Chris McGrath)

News reports in January that President Donald Trump passed a widely used test that screens for mild cognitive impairment flung the little-known clinical tool into public focus. Google searches for the test—the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA)—spiked as dozens of media reports shared parts or all of the test and political commentators batted it around.

The president’s supporters proudly played up the test, boasting of Trump’s perfect 30-out-of-30 score and using it to laugh down those who questioned Trump’s mental state. Others snickered over the test’s seemingly straightforward components, such as asking test takers to correctly draw times on a clock and identify animals.

But the laugh may be on all of us, according to a research letter published Monday, July 16 in JAMA Neurology.

(credit: Alex Proimos / Flickr)

Two workers from the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory lost an undisclosed amount of plutonium and cesium from a rental car parked overnight in a San Antonio, Texas, hotel parking lot in a neighborhood known for car break-ins and other crimes, according to an article published Monday by the Center for Public Integrity.

The loss of the highly radioactive material occurred in March 2017 and was discovered when the two workers awoke the next morning to find the window of their Ford Expedition had been smashed. Missing were radiation detectors and small samples of plutonium and cesium used to calibrate them. The workers were transporting the equipment and materials during an assignment to retrieve dangerous nuclear materials from a nonprofit research lab in San Antonio when the theft occurred. The vehicle had been parked in the lot of a Marriott hotel in a San Antonio neighborhood where car break-ins are common.

More than a year later, state and federal officials still don’t know where the substances are. No public announcement of the March 21 incident was ever made by either the San Antonio Police Department or by the FBI, which police consulted. Officials have declined to say how much plutonium and cesium were taken. A spokeswoman with the Idaho lab told reporters Patrick Malone and R. Jeffrey Smith that the amount of plutonium taken wasn’t enough to create a so-called dirty bomb and that there’s little or no danger from either sources being in the public domain.