Category: Uncategorised

An image sent by DNC staffer Alexandra Chalupa shows a warning message she received from Yahoo Mail. (credit: Alexandra Chalupa)

An e-mail message within the Wikileaks dump of Democratic National Committee data suggests that the Yahoo account of one DNC staffer may have been specifically targeted by Russian hackers. The leaked message from DNC staffer Alexandra Chalupa includes a photo of a screen displaying a pop-up alert in Yahoo Mail warning, "We strongly suspect that your account has been the target of state-sponsored actors."

"Since I started digging into [Trump campaign chairman Paul] Manafort, these messages have been a daily occurrence on my Yahoo account despite changing my password often," Chalupa reported in the message. Chalupa was looking into Manafort's work in Ukraine, where Manafort managed the campaign of former Ukraine President Viktor F. Yanukovych (who fled to Russia after violent protests against his regime) and worked with pro-Russian and Communist Party politicians forming an opposition block to the current government.

The detail, spotted by cybersecurity researcher Matt Tait and posted to the Twitter account @pwnallthethings, offers another hint at the scope of the campaign to collect intelligence on DNC operations by what appears to be Russia-based "actors" operating on the behalf of Russian intelligence. Earlier evidence collected by SecureWorks detected phishing attacks against the personal Gmail accounts of some DNC staffers as well as attacks on DNC and Clinton campaign e-mail addresses.

A TP-Link router. (credit: TP-Link.)

Networking hardware vendor TP-Link today admitted violating US radio frequency rules by selling routers that could operate at power levels higher than their approved limits. In a settlement with the Federal Communications Commission, TP-Link agreed to pay a $200,000 fine, comply with the rules going forward, and to let customers install open source firmware on routers.

The open source requirement is a unique one, as it isn't directly related to TP-Link's violation. Moreover, FCC rules don't require router makers to allow loading of third-party, open source firmware. In fact, recent changes to FCC rules made it more difficult for router makers to allow open source software.

The TP-Link settlement was announced in the midst of a controversy spurred by those new FCC rules. The new rules for the 5GHz band require router makers to prevent third-party firmware from changing radio frequency parameters in ways that could cause interference with other devices, such as FAA Doppler weather radar systems.

(credit: Getty x Aurich x GITS:SAC)

Regardless of whether you love cars or not, you probably aren't a fan of the process to actually buy one. Visiting a dealership to purchase a car—new or used—is a gigantic hassle. First, you have to persuade them to let you test-drive one, and success usually means 10 minutes on side streets with a salesperson sitting next to you. Then there are the hours of negotiation, full of obfuscation and upselling. The salesdroid often does their best to get you to sign a finance agreement that's most beneficial to them rather than you, the customer. Unsurprisingly, a recent poll found that most of us are deeply unsatisfied with the entire process.

The poll was commissioned by Beepi, one of a number of startups that's trying to use the Internet to change the way we purchase our vehicles in much the same way Amazon revolutionized the book market. According to Beepi, three in five Americans feel like they're being taken advantage of when it comes to buying a car, and the dissatisfaction is greater the younger you are. Tellingly, 34 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds would rather wait in line at the DMV than go to a dealership; 24 percent say they'd even rather have a root canal.

"For decades now people have been buying a car the same way their grandparents did," said Alex Lloyd, Beepi's head of content. "It's not a very pleasant experience."

Bouncy house ... of danger?! (credit: Mom's Party Rental)

The bouncy house seems like an innocuous childhood delight. What's not to love about a giant, inflatable room where kids can jump and scream in one safely contained location? The problem, recounted in a dubious study by a team of geographers and doctors, is that bouncy houses can cause heat stroke, especially this summer during our hottest year on record.

Researchers from the University of Georgia and the Dell Children’s Medical Center in Austin, Texas knew that bouncy castles caused an enormous number of injuries. But over the past 20 years, the numbers have skyrocketed. As the researchers write in a paper out today in Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, "One of the most staggering findings is that during the period of 1995 to 2010, a 15-fold increase was observed in the rate and number of bounce house injuries (roughly 5.28 injuries per 100 000 children in the United States annually)." Staggering, indeed. Mostly these were fractures, strains, and "other injuries to the upper and lower extremities."

The researchers decided to find out whether heat stroke was another, hidden danger to be found in these funhouses of pain. Though they could find only one reported instance of heat stroke from a bouncy castle, they forged ahead with their quest. Last summer, they spent a single afternoon measuring the "air temperature, humidity, wind speed, and computed heat index values" inside a typical bouncy castle, which they inflated in a grassy plaza on the University of Georgia campus. What they discovered is that these puffy joy rooms are actually heat-trapping danger chambers:

(credit: B Rosen)

Authorities finally arrested an alleged Nigerian online scammer accused of orchestrating schemes totaling more than $60 million, according to Interpol. The 40-year-old man, whom authorities have said is known as “Mike,” is also believed to have convinced one person to pay out $15.4 million. The man was arrested in Port Harcourt, in southern Nigeria

Mike and another unnamed Nigerian now face charges including hacking, conspiracy, and obtaining money under false pretenses.

According to the international law enforcement organization, Mike used “a network of at least 40 individuals across Nigeria, Malaysia, and South Africa which both provided malware and carried out the frauds. The alleged mastermind also had money laundering contacts in China, Europe, and the US who provided bank account details for the illicit cash flow.”