For sale: 70k hacked government and corporate servers—for as little as $6 apiece

Newly revealed bazaar is a hacker’s dream and makes attacks cheaper and faster.

Underscoring the flourishing world of for-profit hacking, researchers have uncovered a thriving marketplace that sells access to more than 70,000 previously compromised servers, in some cases for as little as $6 apiece.

As of last month, the xDedic trading platform catalogued 70,624 servers, many belonging to government agencies or corporations from 173 countries, according to a report published Wednesday by researchers from antivirus provider Kaspersky Lab. That number was up from 55,000 servers in March, a sign that the marketplace operators carefully maintain and update the listed inventory.

"From government networks to corporations, from Web servers to databases, xDedic provides a marketplace for buyers to find anything," Kaspersky researchers wrote in a separate blog post. "And the best thing about it—it's cheap! Purchasing access to a server located in a European Union country government network can cost as little as $6." The post continued:

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Convicted of hacking-related crimes, reporter will stay out of prison for now

Matthew Keys’ legal team filed emergency motion to 9th Circuit late Tuesday.

Matthew Keys talks to reporters after he was sentenced to two years in prison. (credit: Cyrus Farivar)

Reporter Matthew Keys will not be going to federal prison today as he was scheduled to. His attorney, Jay Leiderman, tweeted the news today after he and the other lawyers on Keys’ legal team filed an emergency motion with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals last night.

The Tuesday filing automatically triggers a temporary stay, according to the 9th Circuit’s Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure. So the California journalist convicted in 2015 of hacking-related crimes will remain out of custody for now.

Keys was convicted at trial under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), the notorious anti-hacking federal law that dates back to the 1980s. An effort to reform that law has languished in Congress. The 29-year-old was scheduled to begin serving his two-year sentence beginning Wednesday at 2pm Pacific Time at a federal prison camp in Atwater, California, about 120 miles east of San Francisco.

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DARPA program seeks to give subs and undersea drones an acoustic GPS

BAE’s POSYDON team aims to use acoustic beacons to provide location fix.

A conceptual illustration of how POSYDON will work. (credit: BAE Systems)

A technology being developed under a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program could soon bring GPS-like navigation below the waves. The POSYDON program seeks to create a network of acoustic underwater beacons that act like GPS satellites—broadcasting a burst of data encoded into sound waves that underwater craft can use to get a fix on their location.

GPS uses radio signals from satellites carrying time and position data, allowing a receiver to passively pick up that data and calculate its position. But while GPS works well for ships, ground vehicles, and aircraft, the radio signal from GPS satellites doesn't penetrate very far below the ocean's surface. It’s a technical problem that submarines have dealt with since long before GPS was available. It has forced subs to come close to the surface and raise an antenna mast if crews want to figure out where they are.

During the Cold War, the US developed an incredibly accurate—and expensive—technology for helping submarines navigate the seas without surfacing. The solution was based on inertial sensors: gyroscopes measured acceleration and movement relative to the Earth in a fashion similar to the guidance systems used for ballistic missiles. Gyroscopes have since gotten a lot smaller, and the fundamental parts of inertial navigation are now part of most smartphones. But precise inertial systems are still very expensive and not easy to miniaturize. Really accurate inertial navigation has continued to be a problem for undersea drones.

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LIGO data includes at least one more black hole merger

Gravitational waves capture a full second of the holes’ death spiral.

(credit: NASA)

When the LIGO collaboration announced the first, unambiguous detection of the gravitational waves produced by a black hole merger, several of the researchers hinted that there would be further news emerging from the mass of data obtained during the first run of Advanced LIGO. That news has now arrived in the form of GW151226, a merger of two black holes roughly seven and 14 times the mass of our Sun.

Because of their small size, the black holes spent more time producing gravitational waves prior to their collision. In some ways, this gives us more information, but the lower intensity of the waves mean that there are much larger errors attached to most of its properties.

For physicists, GW151226 was a slightly delayed Christmas gift: it arrived at 3:40 in the morning UTC on December 26, 2015. LIGO has automated software systems that scan the data to look for events quickly enough to notify astronomers, who can turn conventional instruments in the direction of the detection. These systems realized there was something interesting going on 70 seconds after the gravitational waves hit Earth. The preliminary estimate was that random noise should produce an event like this only once every 1,000 years, so the astronomers (or, as the paper puts it, "electromagnetic partners") got sent an alert.

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Deals of the Day (6-15-2016)

Deals of the Day (6-15-2016)

Not every computer needs a big, high-resolution screen, support for 4K video playback and enough horsepower to handle a high-end virtual reality headset. Sometimes you just want something to check your email and watch YouTube videos… and a dirt cheap Chromebook’ll do the trick.

Right now Walmart is running a few Chromebook sales, letting you pick up an 11.6 inch model for just $129, or buy a Chromebook + laptop bundle for $136 and up.

Continue reading Deals of the Day (6-15-2016) at Liliputing.

Deals of the Day (6-15-2016)

Not every computer needs a big, high-resolution screen, support for 4K video playback and enough horsepower to handle a high-end virtual reality headset. Sometimes you just want something to check your email and watch YouTube videos… and a dirt cheap Chromebook’ll do the trick.

Right now Walmart is running a few Chromebook sales, letting you pick up an 11.6 inch model for just $129, or buy a Chromebook + laptop bundle for $136 and up.

Continue reading Deals of the Day (6-15-2016) at Liliputing.

Microsoft: Xbox One mouse and keyboard support is “months away”

Company’s efforts to link PC and console gaming get even more explicit.

Pictures: A future Xbox One controller.

PC gamers may not be able to lord their preferred control scheme over their console brethren for much longer. Microsoft is promising that Xbox One developers will be able to easily integrate mouse and keyboard controls for their console games in a matter of months.

"Truthfully in our dev kit modes now keyboard works, mouse support is a little bit further away," Microsoft's Phil Spencer said in an interview with PCGamesN. "I say it because I know it’s not years away, it’s more like months away, but we don’t have an exact date yet."

Based on the quote, it's hard to say if that means full keyboard-and-mouse Xbox One games are just months away from market or if that's just when developers will be able to start work on adding such support for future games. Either way, it's a clear sign that Microsoft is speeding along in bridging gaming's decades-long PC-vs-console control scheme gap.

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VG Augsburg: Presserecht gilt nicht für Neonazi-Watchblog einer Zeitung

Das Verwaltungsgericht Augsburg sieht in einem Blog zum Thema Rechtsextremismus einer großen deutschen Zeitung kein Presseorgan. Zudem sei der Autor in dem Fall kein Redakteur einer Zeitung oder Zeitschrift und habe damit keine Auskunftsrechte. (Politik/Recht, Web2.0)

Das Verwaltungsgericht Augsburg sieht in einem Blog zum Thema Rechtsextremismus einer großen deutschen Zeitung kein Presseorgan. Zudem sei der Autor in dem Fall kein Redakteur einer Zeitung oder Zeitschrift und habe damit keine Auskunftsrechte. (Politik/Recht, Web2.0)

Netzallianz: Regierung stellt 350 Millionen Euro für Glasfaser bereit

Wenn es um Gewerbegebiete geht, gibt es schon mal 350 Millionen von der Regierung für den direkten Glasfaseranschluss. Die Netzallianz verständigte sich auch auf ein neues Kursbuch, das laut einer Kritikerin keine neuen Ansätze liefert. (Glasfaser, Breko)

Wenn es um Gewerbegebiete geht, gibt es schon mal 350 Millionen von der Regierung für den direkten Glasfaseranschluss. Die Netzallianz verständigte sich auch auf ein neues Kursbuch, das laut einer Kritikerin keine neuen Ansätze liefert. (Glasfaser, Breko)

Oh, there’s my hand: Testing out the latest Oculus Touch prototypes

As planned release approaches, we look at Oculus hand-tracking solution.

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LOS ANGELES—We first tried Oculus' hand-tracking Touch controller at E3 2015. At this year's show, we had another chance to use the company's crucial new control solution before its planned release later this year (We're hearing a possible November date through the grapevine but nothing reliable enough to be certain).

Overall, the latest prototype feels pretty similar to the controllers we first tried at last year's E3, but a few small refinements make it feel closer to a retail product. The triggers are especially easy to push now, requiring a very light touch compared to the thick, springy resistance on something like the HTC Vive's triggers. The thumbsticks seem improved with additional resistance and a rubberized grip.

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Runcible: Stummes und nachhaltiges Smartphone sucht Finanzierer

Runcible soll die Art und Weise, wie digitale Medien konsumiert werden, von Grund auf ändern – indem das Smartphone weder piept noch klingelt. Über ein Jahr nach dem ersten Prototypen sucht der Hersteller jetzt Unterstützer, um Runcible herzustellen. (Smartphone, Android)

Runcible soll die Art und Weise, wie digitale Medien konsumiert werden, von Grund auf ändern - indem das Smartphone weder piept noch klingelt. Über ein Jahr nach dem ersten Prototypen sucht der Hersteller jetzt Unterstützer, um Runcible herzustellen. (Smartphone, Android)