Top Stories for the Week of August 30, 2016

  • From Category5 Technology TV S09E49
  • August 30, 2016
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Here are the stories we're following for the week of Tuesday August 30, 2016


A successful experiment has transferred an entire DVD wirelessly in less than 10 seconds over more than 30 kilometers.

A successful experiment has transferred an entire DVD wirelessly in less than 10 seconds over more than 30 kilometers.

Transmitting the contents of a DVD in under ten seconds by radio transmission is incredibly fast – and a new world record in wireless data transmission.

With a data rate of 6 Gigabit per second over a distance of 37 kilometers, a collaborative project with the participation of researchers from the University of Stuttgart and the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics IAF exceeded the state of the art by a factor of 10.

The extremely high data rate was achieved by the group through efficient transmitters and receivers at a radio frequency of 71–76 GHz in the so-called E band, regulated for terrestrial and satellite broadcasting. Only in this frequency range of millimeter waves are the required high effective bandwidths available, and the enormous data rates can be realized. A difficulty is the weakening of the signals over larger distances. The transmission has to be especially powerful, and the amplifiers have to be efficient.

The next generation of satellite communication requires an ever-increasing data offload from earth observation satellites down to earth. Supplying the rural area and remote regions with fast Internet is possible as shown in the trial.

Source: phys.org

Sent to us by: orangeman


Opera's password sync database has been compromized, and they're urging users to change their passwords.

Opera's password sync database has been compromized, and they're urging users to change their passwords.

Opera's web sync feature lets uses synchronize their browser data and settings across multiple devices.

Opera is now warning users of the browser that an unknown hacker has managed to gain access to its sync system, potentially compromising the data of around 1.7 million users.

The Norwegian company said in a blog post, "some of our sync users' passwords and account information, such as login names, may have been compromised" following the hack, and encouraged users to reset passwords for third-party sites.

Although Opera only stores encrypted or hashed and salted passwords in the compromized system, they have reset all the Opera sync account passwords as a precaution.

Source: www.macrumors.com

Sent to us by: Jeff Weston


Google is going to start penalizing web sites who use pop-up ads.

Google is going to start penalizing web sites who use pop-up ads.

Google is to penalise websites that feature intrusive pop-up advertisements.

It is updating the algorithms used to rank its search results so that offending pages are more likely to get lower placings.

Google makes much of its money from placing ads on the mobile web. One expert said the company wanted to give users one less reason to use ad-blockers or search within apps instead.

For its part, Google said the move should make using some of its results less frustrating.

The change is due to come into effect on 10 January.

Source: www.bbc.com

Sent to us by: Roy W. Nash


A piece of software allows a standard, unmodified USB flash drive to transmit data covertly to a nearby system, even if the systems are air-gapped.

A piece of software allows a standard, unmodified USB flash drive to transmit data covertly to a nearby system, even if the systems are air-gapped.

Researchers have developed software that turns unmodified USB devices into covert transmitters that can funnel large amounts of information out of "air-gapped" PCs.

The USBee—so named because it behaves like a bee that flies through the air taking bits from one place to another—is in many respects a significant improvement over the NSA-developed USB exfiltrator known as CottonMouth. That tool had to be outfitted with a hardware implant in advance and then required someone to smuggle it into the facility housing the locked-down computer being targeted. USBee, by contrast, turns USB devices already inside the targeted facility into a transmitter with no hardware modification required at all.

The researchers say, "We introduce a software-only method for short-range data exfiltration using electromagnetic emissions from a USB dongle. Unlike other methods, our method doesn't require any transmitting hardware since it uses the USB's internal data bus."

The software works on just about any storage device that's compliant with the USB 2.0 specification. Some USB devices such as certain types of cameras that don't receive a stream of bits from the infected computer, aren't suitable. USBee transmits data at about 80 bytes per second, fast enough to pilfer a 4096-bit decryption key in less than 10 seconds.

Source: arstechnica.com

Sent to us by: Roy W. Nash


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