Month: January 2025

Laut Linus Neumann vom Chaos Computer Club hat ein anonymer Forscher die Daten von D-Trust abgegriffen. Es bestand wohl keinerlei Zugriffsschutz. (Cybercrime, Datenschutz)

Die Dyn-Preiserhöhung bei monatlicher Abrechnung fällt doppelt so hoch aus wie beim Jahresabo. Wer den neuen Preisen nicht zustimmt, verliert das Abo. (Dyn, Streaming)

Tesla hat sein erfolgreichstes Elektroauto in vielen Punkten überarbeitet. Beim neuen Model Y ist der Facelift besser gelungen als beim Model 3. Ein Bericht von Friedhelm Greis (Tesla, Elektroauto)

Sicherheitslücken in Webanwendungen sind eine häufige Angriffsfläche für Cyberkriminelle. Ein umfassendes Training zeigt Webdevs, wie sie effektive Sicherheitsmaßnahmen integrieren und ihre Projekte gegen Angriffe absichern. (Golem Karrierewelt, Security)

When threat actors use backdoor malware to gain access to a network, they want to make sure all their hard work can’t be leveraged by competing groups or detected by defenders. One countermeasure is to equip the backdoor with a passive agent that remains dormant until it receives what’s known in the business as a “magic packet.” On Thursday, researchers revealed that a never-before-seen backdoor that quietly took hold of dozens of enterprise VPNs running Juniper Network’s Junos OS has been doing just that.

J-Magic, the tracking name for the backdoor, goes one step further to prevent unauthorized access. After receiving a magic packet hidden in the normal flow of TCP traffic, it relays a challenge to the device that sent it. The challenge comes in the form of a string of text that’s encrypted using the public portion of an RSA key. The initiating party must then respond with the corresponding plaintext, proving it has access to the secret key.

Open sesame

The lightweight backdoor is also notable because it resided only in memory, a trait that makes detection harder for defenders. The combination prompted researchers at Lumin Technology’s Black Lotus Lab to sit up and take notice.

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Google introduced Android XR in December, an upcoming platform for virtual and augmented reality. Today the company announced it’s acquiring part of the team that works on the HTC Vive line of VR devices. In other tech news from around the web, Windows Central reports that Microsoft could introduce smaller versions of its Surface Pro […]

The post Lilbits: Sony exits the Blu-Ray business, Google acquires part of HTC’s XR team, and a smaller Surface Pro and Surface Laptop on the way? appeared first on Liliputing.

The first beta of Android 16 is now available for recent Pixel devices, and it’s the first publicly available version of Android 16 that can be installed via an over-the-air update. As usual, Google has announced the release with a blog post aimed at developers that highlights features that app makers should be aware of, […]

The post The first Android 16 Beta brings Live Updates to notifications, lossless video recording, and better big screen support appeared first on Liliputing.

Four out of five game developers are currently working on a project for the PC, a sizable increase from 66 percent of developers a year ago. That's according to Informa's latest State of the Game Industry survey, which partnered with Omdia to ask over 3,000 game industry professionals about their work in advance of March's Game Developers Conference.

The 80 percent of developers working on PC projects in this year's survey is by far the highest mark for any platform dating back to at least 2018, when 60 percent of surveyed developers were working on a PC game. In the years since, the ratio of game developers working on the PC has hovered between 56 and 66 percent before this year's unexpected jump. The number of game developers saying they were interested in the PC as a platform also increased substantially, from 62 percent last year to 74 percent this year.

While the PC has long been the most popular platform in this survey, the sudden jump in the last year was rather large. Credit: Kyle Orland / Informa

The PC has long been the most popular platform for developers to work on in the annual State of the Game Industry survey, easily outpacing consoles and mobile platforms that generally see active work from anywhere between 12 to 36 percent of developer respondents, depending on the year. In its report, Informa notes this surge as a "passion for PC development explod[ing]" among developers, and mentions that while "PC has consistently been the platform of choice... this year saw its dominance increase even more."

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On Thursday, OpenAI released a research preview of "Operator," a web automation tool that uses a new AI model called Computer-Using Agent (CUA) to control computers through a visual interface. The system performs tasks by viewing and interacting with on-screen elements like buttons and text fields similar to how a human would.

Operator is available today for subscribers of the $200 per month ChatGPT Pro plan at operator.chatgpt.com. The company plans to expand to Plus, Team, and Enterprise users later. OpenAI intends to integrate these capabilities directly into ChatGPT and later release CUA through its API for developers.

Operator watches on-screen content while you use your computer and executes tasks through simulated keyboard and mouse inputs. The Computer-Using Agent processes screenshots to understand the computer's state and then makes decisions about clicking, typing, and scrolling based on its observations.

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All federal agencies received a memo Wednesday requiring the termination of remote work options, with return-to-office plans due by end of day Friday.

In the memo, the acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, Charles Ezell, told the heads and acting heads of all departments and agencies that the change is due to Donald Trump's Return to In-Person Work presidential memorandum, which carved out space for some exemptions and ordered:

Heads of all departments and agencies in the executive branch of Government shall, as soon as practicable, take all necessary steps to terminate remote work arrangements and require employees to return to work in-person at their respective duty stations on a full-time basis, provided that the department and agency heads shall make exemptions they deem necessary.

Empty offices a “national embarrassment”

According to the memo, "most federal offices presently are virtually abandoned," with "the vast majority of federal office workers" having "not returned to in-person work" after transitioning to remote work during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only has this "devastated" the local economy in Washington, D.C., the memo said, but having so many federal offices sitting empty also serves as a "national embarrassment."

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