Shell-shocked from the startling Brexit vote, followed by back-to-back political convention diatribes coddling Twitter streams and big screens, one could ask—surfacing briefly from a media device—have elections changed all that much over the years?The answer must be yes, and that’s partly because of the speed at which public opinion gets spread by social media. We all knew the Brits regretted Brexit within moments of the result being called. And we haven’t needed journalists to tell us what some, collectively, think of Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.+ Also on Network World: Google wants you to be able to vote online +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Smart fitness device makers Xiaomi and Microsoft are among those making products that are susceptible to man-in-the-middle (MiM) attacks, says AV-Test, the German independent IT security institute.MiM attacks are where a hacker intercepts and changes communications between parties who think they are communicating with each other.“Some manufacturers are continuing to make disappointing errors,” the lab, which tested seven fitness bands and the Apple watch, says in its report, published last week.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Smart fitness device makers Xiaomi and Microsoft are among those making products that are susceptible to man-in-the-middle (MiM) attacks, says AV-Test, the German independent IT security institute.MiM attacks are where a hacker intercepts and changes communications between parties who think they are communicating with each other.“Some manufacturers are continuing to make disappointing errors,” the lab, which tested seven fitness bands and the Apple watch, says in its report, published last week.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Globally, 63 percent of companies involved in Internet of Things projects are “seeing significant returns on investment,” says Britain-based telco Vodafone.The supplier and network recently published its annual state-of-the-IoT industry report that it calls an IoT barometer. Vodafone interviewed 1,100 business executives around the world via Machina Research to try to gauge companies’ participation in IoT.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: 12 most powerful Internet of Things companies
Budgets are increasing, the vendor says. Almost all companies (89 percent) say they are increasing IoT spend, with many (76 percent) believing the tech genre “will be critical to their success,” the report says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Globally, 63 percent of companies involved in Internet of Things projects are “seeing significant returns on investment,” says Britain-based telco Vodafone.The supplier and network recently published its annual state-of-the-IoT industry report that it calls an IoT barometer. Vodafone interviewed 1,100 business executives around the world via Machina Research to try to gauge companies’ participation in IoT.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: 12 most powerful Internet of Things companies
Budgets are increasing, the vendor says. Almost all companies (89 percent) say they are increasing IoT spend, with many (76 percent) believing the tech genre “will be critical to their success,” the report says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Ants figure out details related to the size of their colonies by bumping into fellow ants while they randomly explore. But the ants don’t have to traverse the entire colony to know how many fellow ants they’re living with. The insects can figure it out through the number of nearby encounters they have.Ad hoc wireless networks could use the same technique, say scientists from MIT. Just like ants learning about population densities help the creatures decide communally whether they need to build a new nest or not, the same could be true for sensors strewn around IoT environments.+ Also on Network World: Using IoT-enabled microscopes to fight epidemic outbreaks +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Ants figure out details related to the size of their colonies by bumping into fellow ants while they randomly explore. But the ants don’t have to traverse the entire colony to know how many fellow ants they’re living with. The insects can figure it out through the number of nearby encounters they have.Ad hoc wireless networks could use the same technique, say scientists from MIT. Just like ants learning about population densities help the creatures decide communally whether they need to build a new nest or not, the same could be true for sensors strewn around IoT environments.+ Also on Network World: Using IoT-enabled microscopes to fight epidemic outbreaks +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Experts say spectrum pilfering is going to become a major industrial problem as software-defined radio becomes more prevalent. Software-defined radio allows frequencies and bands to be simply altered in a device through coding rather than via expensive hardware changes.Locating and detecting thieves who are looting bandwidth on radio spectrum could become easier, however, once a crowdsourcing project gets going.+ Also on Network World: Auto thieves adopting cybercrime-like tactics +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Experts say spectrum pilfering is going to become a major industrial problem as software-defined radio becomes more prevalent. Software-defined radio allows frequencies and bands to be simply altered in a device through coding rather than via expensive hardware changes.Locating and detecting thieves who are looting bandwidth on radio spectrum could become easier, however, once a crowdsourcing project gets going.+ Also on Network World: Auto thieves adopting cybercrime-like tactics +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Experts say spectrum pilfering is going to become a major industrial problem as software-defined radio becomes more prevalent. Software-defined radio allows frequencies and bands to be simply altered in a device through coding rather than via expensive hardware changes.Locating and detecting thieves who are looting bandwidth on radio spectrum could become easier, however, once a crowdsourcing project gets going.+ Also on Network World: Auto thieves adopting cybercrime-like tactics +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Storing all of the books ever written on media the size of a postage stamp is possible with atom-based memory, say scientists.Five hundred terabits per square inch is doable, in fact. That would be 500 times more efficient than current state-of-the-art commercial hard drives, say the researchers from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.To prove the feat could be accomplished, the scientists created an 8,000 bit memory “where each bit is represented by the position of one single chlorine atom,” the university says in a press release.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Storing all of the books ever written on media the size of a postage stamp is possible with atom-based memory, say scientists.Five hundred terabits per square inch is doable, in fact. That would be 500 times more efficient than current state-of-the-art commercial hard drives, say the researchers from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.To prove the feat could be accomplished, the scientists created an 8,000 bit memory “where each bit is represented by the position of one single chlorine atom,” the university says in a press release.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Allowing ransomware to enter a computer and corrupt a few files before being stomped on is the way to arrest the forward march of an attack, say computer scientists.The key is to not to stop ransomware getting into the system, which is hard, but to simply identify when files are beginning to be encrypted, assume something’s amiss, and then kill anything that’s causing the anomaly, researchers from the University of Florida (UF) and Villanova University say.+ Also on Network World: Who is a target for ransomware? Everyone +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Some banking software is so old that programmers have had to come out of retirement to fix glitches in the code and integrate it into mobile phone device interfaces. That’s if the banks could find the poor guy, who's probably out fishing somewhere, or if he’s still alive.Yet banks haven’t wanted to invest in from-scratch, well-documented re-engineering. It’s too expensive—bankers prefer to count money than spend it—and it’s difficult to justify a new back end to owners because code is so invisible. Banking code has thus stagnated and gotten patched when necessary, or possible, despite fraud and cyber theft.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Some banking software is so old that programmers have had to come out of retirement to fix glitches in the code and integrate it into mobile phone device interfaces. That’s if the banks could find the poor guy, who's probably out fishing somewhere, or if he’s still alive.Yet banks haven’t wanted to invest in from-scratch, well-documented re-engineering. It’s too expensive—bankers prefer to count money than spend it—and it’s difficult to justify a new back end to owners because code is so invisible. Banking code has thus stagnated and gotten patched when necessary, or possible, despite fraud and cyber theft.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Similar-looking ecommerce and media-oriented apps, like Facebook, are causing consumers to donate the same amount of attention to both kinds of apps. And that’s not very much, says Jampp, an ad placement network.So much so, that the firm says there’s been an 88 percent reduction in ecommerce app attention span year over year, based on the first quarter of 2016. Session length for ecommerce apps is down 35 percent.+ Also on Network World: Ecommerce needs to up its game, says UPS +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
External storage cards that read more than five-times faster than normal microSD cards are being released by Samsung, the company announced.The cards, using the Universal Flash Storage (UFS) standard read at 530 megabytes per second. That read speed is comparable to SATA Solid State Drives or Disks (SSDs).Write speeds are about double the fastest microSD cards, with sequential write speeds of 170 megabytes per second, Samsung claims in a press release.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
System authentication could one day be widely achieved through brainwaves, scientists say. Simply thinking of certain things, such as a person's face, or a rotating displayed cube would be enough to unlock a device.Electro-encephalography (EEC) sensors are behind the technique. That’s where electrical activity in certain parts of the brain is recorded. We know it as the wavy, graphical lines on charts created from wired electrodes placed on the scalp, as seen in hospitals and TV shows. They're used in that environment to diagnose epilepsy, among other things.+ Also on Network World: 5 things you should know about two-factor authentication +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In addition to recently publicized hacks of electronic auto ignitions with laptops, car thieves have several other high-tech techniques they’ve put to use—or will soon unleash upon their victims, according to stolen vehicle recovery firm CalAmp LoJack Corp.The lawlessness includes portable scanner boxes that exploit electronic key fobs; identity theft, where the Personally Identifiable Information data stored within the vehicle and in the vehicle computer is stolen; and car cloning, which is when a Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) is faked, allowing new documents to be produced.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In addition to recently publicized hacks of electronic auto ignitions with laptops, car thieves have several other high-tech techniques they’ve put to use—or will soon unleash upon their victims, according to stolen vehicle recovery firm CalAmp LoJack Corp.The lawlessness includes portable scanner boxes that exploit electronic key fobs; identity theft, where the Personally Identifiable Information data stored within the vehicle and in the vehicle computer is stolen; and car cloning, which is when a Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) is faked, allowing new documents to be produced.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Patrick Nelson