The Category5.TV Newsroom

Here are the stories we're following for the week of Wednesday November 20, 2019

Thousands Of Disney+ Accounts Are Already Up For Sale On Hacking Forums.

Thousands Of Disney+ Accounts Are Already Up For Sale On Hacking Forums.

Disney’s hotly-anticipated streaming service Disney+ finally launched this week. Despite being open to the public for just a few days, hackers have already hijacked thousands of accounts and put them up for sale on the Dark Web.

The going rate for a hacked account appears to be somewhere between $3 and $5.

That’s three to four times more than the asking price for a hacked Netflix account. Logical enough, given the excitement around the Disney+ launch.

Source: www.forbes.com

Sent to us by: Bekah Ferguson

A new AI is combining machine learning and computer vision to detect drowning people in real time. By using object recognition, it's able to tell if a person is swimming normally, or if they are at risk of drowning. What's best is that Drowning-Detector is open source, and can run on a single board computer such as the Raspberry Pi.

A new AI is combining machine learning and computer vision to detect drowning people in real time. By using object recognition, it's able to tell if a person is swimming normally, or if they are at risk of drowning. What's best is that Drowning-Detector is open source, and can run on a single board computer such as the Raspberry Pi.

Source: www.linkedin.com

Sent to us by: Robbie Ferguson

IoT doorbell, Ring, had a bug in its configuration app which sent Wi-Fi setup information unencrypted to some doorbell devices, exposing customers' home networks.

IoT doorbell, Ring, had a bug in its configuration app which sent Wi-Fi setup information unencrypted to some doorbell devices, exposing customers' home networks.

Researchers from Bitdefender notified Ring in June of a flaw in Ring Video Doorbell Pro cameras' software that made it possible for wireless eavesdroppers to grab the Wi-Fi credentials of customers during the device's setup—because those credentials were sent over an unsecured Wi-Fi connection to the device using unencrypted HTTP.

An attacker could take advantage of this bug by forcing a victim to reconfigure the doorbell. The attacker could use a Wi-Fi deauthorization ("deauth") attack against the device to make it re-enter configuration mode and could use a malicious Wi-Fi device to make the Ring doorbell drop off its network.

The doorbell's owner would then have to notice that the doorbell is disconnected, which may require the attacker or someone else to ring the doorbell before the targeted owner realizes the doorbell is offline. When the doorbell is put back into configuration mode, the app will offer to reconnect the doorbell to the Wi-Fi network—and then resend the credentials to the doorbell in an HTTP message encoded in XML.

The attacker would then be able to connect to the victim's home Wi-Fi network if there are no other security measures in place to stop them (such as device white-listing or partitioning of the Wi-Fi network).

All affected devices should now be patched, according to Ring and Bitdefender. But this is another example of why owners of "Internet of Things" devices should consider using Wi-Fi routers capable of segmenting networks or offering "guest" Wi-Fi networks that restrict access by connected devices to the Internet only. And deauth attacks can still be used to knock these devices offline—allowing a burglar or "porch pirate" to cover their tracks by disabling video recording.

Source: arstechnica.com

Sent to us by: Roy W. Nash

GitHub Will Preserve Open Source Code In An Arctic Vault.

GitHub Will Preserve Open Source Code In An Arctic Vault.

GitHub has announced its plans to launch the Archive Code Vault with the aim to preserve open-source software for future generations for at least 1,000 years.

The code-sharing site is partnering with the Long Now Foundation, the Internet Archive, the Software Heritage Foundation, Arctic World Archive, Microsoft Research, the Bodleian Library, and Stanford Libraries to ensure the long-term preservation of the world’s open-source software.

The GitHub announcement states, "There is a long history of lost technologies from which the world would have benefited, as well as abandoned technologies which found unexpected new uses."

The company plans to store and preserve open-source software like Flutter and TensorFlow in an abandoned coal mine in Norway, 250 meters deep in the permafrost of an Arctic mountain.

GitHub stores its data on specialized ultra-durable film, which is coated in iron oxide powder. This data can be read by a computer or a human with a magnifying glass in case of a global power outage. Remarkably, this film is said to last for 1,000 years.

The Norwegian tech company that makes the special film said that they might even last for up to 2,000 years if stored in a cold, dry, and low-oxygen cave.

Among the first data deposit, open-source software codes to be stored at the vault included the Linux and Android operating systems and 6,000 other important open source applications.

GitHub is planning to capture a snapshot of every active public repository on February 2, 2020 and preserve that data in the Arctic Code Vault. The snapshot will include public code repositories as well as significant dormant repositories.

As if that's not impressive enough, GitHub is also working on Microsoft’s Project Silica to archive all active public repositories for over 10,000 years, by writing them into quartz glass platters with lasers.

Source: www.techworm.net

Sent to us by: Robbie Ferguson

A secretive clean energy company backed by Bill Gates has created a way to use mirrors and artificial intelligence to harness the heat of the sun, replacing the need to use fossil fuels industrial heat applications, cut back on CO2 emissions. Their invention creates concentrated solar energy so hot that they can manufacture steel, glass and cement with a carbon-free source that had not been available before.

A secretive clean energy company backed by Bill Gates has created a way to use mirrors and artificial intelligence to harness the heat of the sun, replacing the need to use fossil fuels industrial heat applications, cut back on CO2 emissions. Their invention creates concentrated solar energy so hot that they can manufacture steel, glass and cement with a carbon-free source that had not been available before.

Source: www.newsmax.com

Sent to us by: Robbie Ferguson