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New Mac Trojan uses the Russian space program as a front

Security researchers have found a new Mac OS X malware that appears to be targeting the aerospace industry.The Trojan, called Komplex, can download, execute, and delete files from an infected Mac, according to security firm Palo Alto Networks. Interestingly, the Trojan will also save a PDF document to the infected system concerning the Russian space program.The PDF document details planned Russian space projects from 2016 to 2025, but it acts as a decoy, Palo Alto Networks said in Monday blog post.In reality, the Trojan is a package of tools that will attempt to secretly communicate with its creators' command-and-control servers. This includes sending back data on the version, username, and process list running on the infected system. The Trojan can also receive instructions, and it will forward the results to the control servers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New Mac Trojan uses the Russian space program as a front

Security researchers have found a new Mac OS X malware that appears to be targeting the aerospace industry.The Trojan, called Komplex, can download, execute, and delete files from an infected Mac, according to security firm Palo Alto Networks. Interestingly, the Trojan will also save a PDF document to the infected system concerning the Russian space program.The PDF document details planned Russian space projects from 2016 to 2025, but it acts as a decoy, Palo Alto Networks said in Monday blog post.In reality, the Trojan is a package of tools that will attempt to secretly communicate with its creators' command-and-control servers. This includes sending back data on the version, username, and process list running on the infected system. The Trojan can also receive instructions, and it will forward the results to the control servers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

42% off Corsair Waterproof Shockproof 256GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive – Deal Alert

Military-style data transportation. That's how Corsair describes their Flash Survivor Stealth series of USB flash drives. Its anodized, aircraft-grade aluminum housing is waterproof to 200 meters, vibration-resistant, and shock-resistant while small enough to fit on your keychain. USB 3.0 offers read speeds up to four times faster than traditional USB 2.0 drives, so it's fast enough to play most videos directly from it, without having to transfer to a hard drive first. The drive is backwards compatible to 2.0 as well. Just plug it in, and it works with Windows, Mac OS and Linux without any additional software or drivers. This product also comes with a limited 5 year warranty. It averages 4.5 out of 5 stars from over 170 people on Amazon (read reviews), many of which report it's still alive after years of hard use. The 256GB model's list price of $156 has been reduced 42% to $91.30. If 256GB is more storage than you need, they have a 32GB model that's currently discounted 25% ($20.73 -- See it on Amazon).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Auto-Adding Routes When Mac PPTP Connection Comes Up

Before you read this post, understand that PPTP is insecure. Don’t use PPTP to create a VPN to anything you care about.

TL;DR

Skip to Solution #3.

Problem

When successfully making a PPTP connection to a remote VPN server with the built-in Mac OS X client, you find that you can’t connect to hosts on the other side of the VPN tunnel. You can still connect to the Internet and LAN hosts.

The root issue is that, by default, OS X has no reason to send traffic across the VPN tunnel. A reason must be provided.

Solution #1 – Setting Service Order

In System Preferences > Network, perform “Set Service Order” (the drop down gear icon), and move the PPTP connection to the top of the list.

This means that when the PPTP tunnel is up, traffic will flow through it before other network connections. This will gain you access to hosts on the other side of the VPN tunnel. It will also break everything else, unless the network on the other side of the PPTP tunnel can also service your Internet traffic. This is going to be a function of the VPN termination device as well as the firewall configuration at the remote site.

The issue here Continue reading

MIT Twitter dashboard muffles election news echo chamber

The Twitter dashboard Electome project at MIT, which charts Twitter in unique detail for journalists, announced its collaboration with the Commission on Presidential Debates. Electome will give journalists covering the debates near real-time feedback about the sentiments of people in the Twitter-sphere. It is a feedback loop for journalists to measure public sentiment to balance the attention given to subjects that sometimes receive copy-cat coverage of a lead story by a major news outlet in which the public has little interest.Electome was produced by Deb Roy, director and chief scientist at the MIT Media Lab, Laboratory for Social Machines; William Powers, longtime journalist and author turned Media Lab Electome research scientist; and Russell Stevens, project leader. Roy is also Twitter’s chief media scientist. He came to Twitter through the acquisition of Bluefin Labs, a social TV analytics company he co-founded.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Forget the robocalypse — ‘Homo connecticus’ may be what’s coming

Robots' potential to take over the world is a commonly expressed fear in the world of AI, but at least one Turing Award winner doesn't see it happening that way. Rather than replacing mankind, technology will create a new kind of human that will coexist with its predecessors while taking advantage of new tech-enabled tools.So argued Raj Reddy, former founding director of Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute and 1994 winner of the Turing Award, at the Heidelberg Laureate Forum in Germany last week.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

39% off iClever Backlight Bluetooth Folding Keyboard for Smartphone, PC, or Tablet – Deal Alert

This lightweight and super portable keyboard from iClever features a compact design with full standard-size keys, but folds down into ⅓ of the size. This model has a convenient backlight feature with red, blue, or green selectable at two brightness levels, so you can type in every environment from a dimly-lit classroom to a dark airplane cabin. Its Broadcom Bluetooth module has a generous operating range of 30 feet, and connects quickly with your devices when you simply unfold the keyboard. The iClever backlit folding keyboard averages 4.5 out of 5 stars from nearly 150 people (read reviews) and its typical list price of $89.99 has been reduced 39% to $54.99. See it now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

A shout out to Akamai for candor in IoT botnet attack

Akamai deserves credit for the way it disclosed why it stopped protecting the Krebs on Security Web site last week after defending it for three days from the largest botnet it had ever encountered.It must have been embarrassing for the company to acknowledge that it was a business decision it was forced to make because of the expense and consumption of resources to keep the site up was too great.But the company did so and addressed a more important issue, namely that the attack was generated by a botnet of Internet of Things devices, mainly cameras, routers and DVRs, according to Krebs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

A shout out to Akamai for candor in IoT botnet attack

Akamai deserves credit for the way it disclosed why it stopped protecting the Krebs on Security Web site last week after defending it for three days from the largest botnet it had ever encountered.It must have been embarrassing for the company to acknowledge that it was a business decision it was forced to make because of the expense and consumption of resources to keep the site up was too great.But the company did so and addressed a more important issue, namely that the attack was generated by a botnet of Internet of Things devices, mainly cameras, routers and DVRs, according to Krebs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The IoT is uranium

Does the thought of 600 Gbps-plus of traffic hitting your URLs excite you? Do you get tingles up and down your spine thinking about watching your line of business apps frying? Perhaps that wonderful text, where an alert from you financial processor says “We’ve gone black, again, and expect to be back online perhaps maybe possibly tonight” thrills you.The Internet of Thingies (IoT) is actually nuclear, and we’ve witnessed the first use of a nuclear internet weapon. Brian Krebs’ Krebs on Security site was smashed. It could happen to you. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The IoT is uranium

Does the thought of 600 Gbps-plus of traffic hitting your URLs excite you? Do you get tingles up and down your spine thinking about watching your line of business apps frying? Perhaps that wonderful text, where an alert from you financial processor says “We’ve gone black, again, and expect to be back online perhaps maybe possibly tonight” thrills you.The Internet of Thingies (IoT) is actually nuclear, and we’ve witnessed the first use of a nuclear internet weapon. Brian Krebs’ Krebs on Security site was smashed. It could happen to you. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

snaproute Go BGP Code Dive (11): Moving to Open Confirm

In the last post in this series, we began considering the bgp code that handles the open message that begins moving a new peer to open confirmed state. This is the particular bit of code of interest—

case BGPEventBGPOpen:
  st.fsm.StopConnectRetryTimer()
  bgpMsg := data.(*packet.BGPMessage)
  if st.fsm.ProcessOpenMessage(bgpMsg) {
    st.fsm.sendKeepAliveMessage()
    st.fsm.StartHoldTimer()
    st.fsm.ChangeState(NewOpenConfirmState(st.fsm))
  }

We looked at how this code assigns the contents of the received packet to bgpMsg; now we need to look at how this information is actually processed. bgpMsg is passed to st.fsm.ProcessOpenMessage() in the next line. This call is preceded by the st.fsm, which means this function is going to be found in the FSM, which means fsm.go. Indeed, func (fsm *FSM) ProcessOpenMessage... is around line 1172 in fsm.go—

func (fsm *FSM) ProcessOpenMessage(pkt *packet.BGPMessage) bool {
 body := pkt.Body.(*packet.BGPOpen)

 if uint32(body.HoldTime) < fsm.holdTime {
  fsm.SetHoldTime(uint32(body.HoldTime), uint32(body.HoldTime/3))
 }

 if body.MyAS == fsm.Manager.gConf.AS {
  fsm.peerType = config.PeerTypeInternal—
 } else {
  fsm.peerType = config.PeerTypeExternal
 }

 afiSafiMap := packet.GetProtocolFromOpenMsg(body)
 for protoFamily, _ := range afiSafiMap {
  if fsm. Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: Sensors come home

For hundreds of years, engineers have built sensors into systems and devices to gather information from the physical world. Sensors have done much to automate systems, make the world smarter and advance our way of life, but only recently have consumers engaged with sensor information in personal ways.+ Also on Network World: Homeland Security issues call to action on IoT security +The sensor industry is growing at a very healthy pace. “The IoT (Internet of Things) is impacting growth across many market sectors, including sensors, where the number of units produced and employed will exceed 35 billion units by 2018,” according to Semico Research & Consulting Group. Vendors are shipping discrete sensors, as well as combo sensors that incorporate more than one function.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

22% off ThermaCELL Mosquito Repellent Pest Control Outdoor and Camping Lantern – Deal Alert

The Thermacell Mosquito Repellent Lantern effectively repels mosquitoes and other biting insects in a 15 x 15-foot zone. It has no open flames, operates on a single butane cartridge, and is perfect for a deck, porch or campsite. It averages 4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon and is currently discounted to $31.02. See it now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here