New Security Method Sends Codes through Your BODY

Low Frequency Transmission

Wi-Fi together with Bluetooth are said to be areas for hackers since these techniques enables easy and anonymous stealing of passwords. In order to stall these activities, a group of students have come out with a system which tends to utilise low frequency transmission to send passwords via the human body.

On reversing the same system utilised by fingerprint sensors, they have achieved a method to generate wireless data transmission between the smartphones and the other devices. Senior author Shyam Gollakota, assistant professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Washington (UW) stated that till now, fingerprint sensors had been utilised as input devices.

He further added that for the first time that fingerprint sensors can be re-purposed to send out information that is confined to the body. Fingerprint sensors had been designed for the purpose of receiving data about one’s finger which is utilised to authenticate identity. However, the UW team inverted the procedurealtering the technology into an output which tends to push the data comprising of a password or access code from the smartphone to the other device.

Works in Various Postures

Co-lead author Mehrdad Hessar, a UW electrical engineering doctoral student explain that if one intends to open a door utilising an electronic smart lock he can touch the doorknob and touch the fingerprint sensor on the phone and transmit secret credentials via the body to open the door without leaking the personal information over the air.

In experiments, the researchers had demonstrated this system utilising the Touch ID sensor of an iPhone 5s and iPhone 6s, together with the trackpad of a Lenovo laptop as well as other fingerprint scanners. During the evaluation, around ten subjects had been utilised and varied in height, weight and body type, which were capable of generating usable on-body transmissions.

The team also envisaged positive results even when the participants were moving, like walking around or moving their arms. Co-lead author, Vikram Iyer, a UW electrical engineering doctoral student commented that they had shown that it works in various postures like sitting, standing and sleeping. Good strong signal is obtained throughout the body. The receivers could be anywhere, either on the chest, hands or legs and still tends to function.

Generate Low Frequency

This ground-breaking project began by analysing smartphone sensors by the team in order to detect which one tends to generate low-frequency less than 30 megahertz and travels well through the body though does not propagate over the air. It was only fingerprint sensors and touchpads which were found to meet up with all these requirements.

These methods tend to generate signals in the 2 to 10 megahertz range and transfers energy in an electric network to sense where in the space your finger would be. Moreover, it also identifies the ridges as well as valley which form the unique fingerprint patterns. The procedure which the UW utilised is a sequence of finger scans to encode and to transmit data.

With a finger scan it tends to correlate to a 1-bit of digital data and without the scan correlates to a 0-bit. The team had also succeeded in bit rates of 50 bits per second on laptop touchpads and 25 bits per second with fingerprint sensors which were adequately fast in sending a simple password or numerical code through the body and to a receiver in seconds.

This Year’s Paris Auto Show is Très Électrisant

Electric Car Market – Tesla Motors

The electric car market is dominated by Tesla Motors with regards to the attention the small-scale car builder tends to get. In a world of contraction emission criteria as well as city-wide prohibitions of internal combustion engines, it has been jointly decided that the electric cars seems to be the solution. This has been obvious during the recent Paris Auto Show.

The Mondial de l’Automobile seems to have the usual extreme French concepts though is close-to-production EVs like those of Volkswagen, Mercedes and Porsche.Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen AG have been leading enormous changes in the approach to electric cars in the auto industry with ambitious intentions focused in ending the indifference of consumer for battery powered vehicles.

The automakers from General Motors Co.’s Opel to Renault SA, at the Paris Motor Show had been announcing their contributions on latest electric car. In contrast to the earlier years where the focus was on viability, the exhibition this year had been focused in generating mass appeal addressing concerns regarding range as well as widening the selection of options.

The I.D. concept vehicle had been unveiled by Volkswagen that had been set to create a sensation in the market by 2020. Moreover it could drive almost double as far as the future Model 3 sedan on a charge of Tesla Motors Inc.

Car - a Revolutionary

Though only a model, the VW hatchback would kick off the roll-out of 30 battery powered car in the near future since the German manufacturer intends to alter an image tarnished by the emission-cheating outrage and Volkswagen seems to have high hopes for the vehicle.

Head of the VW brand, Herbert Diess commented in a Bloomberg TV interview with Caroline Hyde, that this car would possibly be revolutionary. It would possibly have the same importance which the Beetle had in its age or the Golf and the next generation will be I.D.Mercedes on the other hand is being likewise aggressive.

Earlier depending on converting the present model to electric, the Daimler AG unit intends to now introduce almost 10 new battery-powered vehicles. The vehicles together with the related technology like the charging boxes and energy storage would be promotedunder the EQ panel, providing more visibility.

Meeting Restricted Emissions Standards

Chief Executive Officer of Daimler, Dieter Zetsche had mentioned in Paris that they are now flipping the switch and are ready for the launch of an electric product offensive which would be covering all vehicle segments from the compact to the luxury class.

In particular, European manufacturers seem to be slow in developing a rational electric car strategy with the exception of BMW AG, having two diverse cars built around a carbon-fibre architecture which seems to be on the road already. The appeal of electric cars has been widened with Tesla’s success with the buyers in the U.S. and Norway, though the U.S. manufacturer has faltered while seeking to lift output which its well-established European opponents could have less trouble in achieving.

Though the cost of batteries seemed to have dropped in making electric cars reasonably priced, the turnabout of the industry also comes from stress in meeting the restricted emissions standards. The European Union is in search of efficiency progress in the next five years which would be almost double the gains since 2010.

What is a DDoS attack? And could my computer be a weapon?

Anonymous is a notorious hackers group which has recently caused a massive cyber-attack on a web hosting service provider which offers hosting services to a number of business site in the world. Anonymous has issued a chilling warning about an impending cyber-attack through Distributed Denial of Service through its Twitter handle. DDoS attack are the most favored and common way of launching attack on any website wherein the site is overloaded with service request to such a point wherein it ceases to function.

Its servers buckled down under the pressure and the site goes offline for the users which results in millions of dollars in loss for the business house which operates the site. Furthermore coming from such attack isn’t an easier affair as it requires a lot of time, money and expertise to bring site back to its full functionality coupled with latest security measures.

Quite recently a number of major banks and popular sites & services have taken a hit by Anonymous attack which includes Twitter, Netflix and Spotify. Anonymous has not stated at which establishment or corporate sector or even the site they will be attacking next with their DDoS attack.
Anonymous hackers group has shades of white and black

Over the years Anonymous has been able to get favorable support from the people all round the world through their good work. Anonymous hackers group has launched massive attacks against the Islamic State in the past which has left the notorious terrorist organization in online turmoil.

They launched a DDoS attack against the Australian PM website when Australia was thinking about block the malicious content on the website which was direct attack to user’s online freedom. In similar fashion Anonymous took down as many as eight Tunisian government website with DDoS attacks when they found that it was subduing the freedom of the speech of the people.

Quite recently it launched a massive cyber attack against a little webs hosting service provider which helped in bringing down the Twitter, Netflix, Spotify among others. Anonymous can easily be described as a group of activists which came together in 2003. Since November 2015 when Paris attacks took place Anonymous has declared a cyber war on the ISIS. Most of the time Anonymous takes down the website offline in order to bring focus towards the social justice or censorship present in the nation.

Huge number of popular website goes down

A number of users on global scale ranging from US to European regions are reported that they were inaccessible to the major popular site which includes, AirBnB, Pinterest, PayPal as well as PlayStation’s online service.

This particular DDoS attack was targeted on the Dyn which is a little known hosting service provider for a wide number of popular high traffic websites. Currently US authorities are investing this attack while Dyn has made a statement where it accepted attack on its servers. Dyn is working towards mitigating and monitoring the attack against its Managed DNS infrastructure.

Hackers Used New Weapons to Disrupt Major Websites Across U.S.

Crucial sites were difficult to reach to individuals crosswise over wide swaths of the United States on Friday after an organization that oversees vital parts of the web's framework said it was under assault. Programmers unleashed a mind-boggling operation on the internet through some devices like webcams and computerized recorders and slice access to a portion of the world's best-known sites, a staggering rupture of worldwide web dependability. Clients reported sporadic issues achieving a few sites, including The New York Times, Spotify, Twitter, Reddit, Airbnb,Etsy, SoundCloud, and Netflix. The organization, Dyn, whose servers screen and reroute web activity, said it started encountering what security specialists called a dispersed dissent of-administration assault in the early morning.

Reports that numerous locales were blocked off began on the East Coast, however, spread westbound in three waves as the day wore on and into the night. Also, in an upsetting improvement, the assault seems to have depended on a huge number of web associated gadgets without their proprietors' knowledge — with programming that permits programmers to summon them to surge an objective with overpowering activity.

The assaults were not just more regular, they were greater and more advanced. The run of the mill assault dramatically increased in size. Besides, the aggressors were all the while utilizing diverse techniques to assault the organization's servers, making them harder to stop. The most successive targets were organizations that give web foundation administrations like Dyn.

The main cause and working of the gadgets-

Jason Read, the creator of the web execution checking firm CloudHarmony, possessed by Gartner Inc., said his organization followed a half-hour-long interruption early Friday influencing access to numerous destinations from the East Coast. Dyn is a New Hampshire-based supplier of administration for overseeing DNS, which goes about as switchboard associating web activity. Krebs, whose site was focused by a comparative assault in September, said the XiongMai gadgets are basically unfixable and will remain a threat to others unless they are completely expelled from the web.

These gadgets are thusly used to make a botnet, or robot system, to send a large number of messages that thumps the out casualties' PC frameworks. The source code for Mirai was discharged on the purported dull web, locales that work as a kind of online underground for programmers, toward the start of the month.

The assault comes during an era of increased open affectability and worry that the country's establishments and framework could confront huge scale hacking assaults. The latest illustration has been the arrival of messages stolen from the servers of the Democratic National Committee, which the USA knowledge sources say was the work of Russian Federation.

The theme has come up often amid the fall's hard-battled presidential crusade. The US Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation both were mutually exploring the late blackout. Dyn authorities wouldn't affirm the figure amid a phone call later Friday with correspondents.

It is too soon to figure out who was behind the assaults, however, it is this kind of assault that has US authorities concerned. They are concerned that an assault could keep nationals from submitting votes.

Computer Engineers Boost App Speeds by More than Nine Percent

New Method of Boosting Speed of Computer Application – 9%

A new method of boosting the speed of computer application by 9% more has been discovered by researchers from North Carolina State University and Samsung Electronics.The developments are the cause of technologies which permit computer processor to recover data much more efficiently.

To perform operations, the computer processors need to recover the data from memory which is stored in off-chip `main’ memory. The data which is utilised the most is also stored temporarily in a die-stacked dynamic random access memory – DRAM cache that is placed nearer to the process which can be recovered much faster.

The data in the store is organized in large blocks or macro-blocks so that the processor identifies where to locate whichever data is required. But for any specified operation, the processor may not need all the data in a macro-block and recovering the non-essential data tends to be time consuming.

For efficiency of the process, researchers have established a procedure wherein the cache learns over a period of time which data the processor would require from each macro-block. This enables the cache to perform two things. Firstly it can compress the macro-block recovering only the relevant data that permits the cache to send data efficiently to the processor.

Dense Footprint Cache

Secondly, since the macro-block has a tendency to be compressed, it tends to free up space in the cache which can be utilised to store the other data that the processor would probably require. This approach had been investigated by the researchers known as Dense Footprint Cache in a processor and memory simulator.

On running 3 billion instructions for each application that had been tested through the simulator, the researchers observed that the Dense Footprint Cache had raced up application by around 9.5% in comparison to the state-of-the-art challenging systems for managing die-stacked DRAM.

Die-stacked DRAM technology permits a huge Last level Cache – LLC which offers high bandwidth data admission to the processor but needs a large tag array. This could take a major amount of space of the on-chip SRAM budget.

 In order to reduce the SRAM overhead, systems such as Intel Haswell tends to depend on huge block –Mblock size. One disadvantage of large Mblock size is that several bytes of Mblock may not be required by the processor though are drawn in the cache.

Last Level Cache Miss Ratios

Dense Footprint Cache utilised 4.3% less energy. The researcher also observed that the Dense Footprint Cache had a substantial enhancement with regards to `last-level cache miss ratios’. Last-level cache misses takes place when the processors attempts to recover the data from the store though the data is not there thereby compelling the processor to recover the data from off-chip main memory.

 These cache misses tend to make the operation far less competent.The Dense Footprint Cache also tends to reduce last-level cache miss ratios by about 43%. The work had been featured in a paper - `Dense Footprint Cache: Capacity-Efficient Die-Stacked DRAM Last Level Cache’ which was presented at the International Symposium on Memory Systems in Washington, D.C. on October 3 – 6.

The lead author of the paper is said to be Seunghee Shin, a Ph.D. student at NC State and the paper had been co-authored by Yan Solihin. Yan Solihin is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at NC State and Sihong Kim of Samsung Electronics.