Ransomware is software that encrypts a victim's entire hard drive, blocking access to their files unless they pay a ransom to the attacker to get the decryption key. In this tutorial, you'll learn how easy it is to use the USB Rubber Ducky, which is disguised as an ordinary flash drive, to deploy ransomware on a victim's computer within seconds. With an attack that only takes a moment, you'll need to know how to defend yourself.
Google just released the second developer preview of the Android 8.1 update for Nexus and Pixel devices, and even though it's just a point-one release, there are lots of cool changes. Before you run off to join the Android beta program and try the new version, it's worth reading up on what's new.
In the previous section of this series on dynamic user interfaces for HoloLens, we learned about delegates and events. At the same time we used those delegates and events to not only attach our menu system to the users gaze, but also to enable and disable the menu based on certain conditions. Now let's take that knowledge and build on it to make our menu system a bit more comfortable.
The pictures we upload online are something we tend to think of as self-expression, but these very images can carry code to steal our passwords and data. Profile pictures, avatars, and image galleries are used all over the internet. While all images carry digital picture data — and many also carry metadata regarding camera or photo edits — it's far less expected that an image might actually be hiding malicious code.
It's no secret that devices leak data, but sometimes they do so in ways you may not expect. Your phone, laptop, printer, and IOT devices leak Wi-Fi information that can (and is) used to track you.
Quanergy CEO and founder Louay Eldada is, by any standard of measure, a pioneer in the development of LiDARs for driverless vehicles.
One major component of Level 4 and Level 5 driverless cars is in very short supply. Venture capitalists and engineers from around the world are racing to fill the LiDAR production, price, and performance void.
For years, smartphone makers have been caught up in a megapixel spec race to prove that their camera is better than the next guy's. But we've finally come to a point where even the lower-end camera phones are packing more megapixels than they need, so it's getting harder to differentiate camera hardware.
The start of a new year is generally thought of as a chance to start over, a time to improve or "fix" things in your life. Yet most people who set stringent New Year's resolutions find themselves failing within weeks—or even days—of setting their lofty goals.
There are over 1.6 million apps on the Google Play Store, which makes it the largest collection of mobile apps on the planet. However, a large portion of this total is occupied by apps with overlapping functions—think social media, news, weather, music players, and various other categories where developers compete against one another to garner the largest user base.
These days, that pocket-sized computer we call a smartphone is home to your entire digital life. But with the onset of mobile payments and online banking, the line between your virtual world and the physical realm is becoming increasingly blurred.
In order to make your food taste good, your favorite restaurant is most likely using way more salt than you think they are (among other pro secrets). Which is why when you ask just about any professional cook what the biggest problem with most home-cooked meals are, they almost always answer that they're "undersalted" or "underseasoned." (In cooking lingo, to "season" food means to salt it.)
Aluminum foil is one of those things that every cook, experienced or just starting out, has in their kitchen. And while we may think we know how useful this handy material can be, there are hundreds of ways we could be utilizing tinfoil to make our lives a whole lot easier.
Climbing into bed and shutting your eyes each night is heavenly—but waking up the next morning isn't. We all hate dragging ourselves out of the comfort of sleep and into the groggy, exhausting work day. Yet starting your day doesn't have to be awful if you know how to hack your sleep cycles and get the most out of your shut-eye.
Canvas fingerprinting is the web's trickiest privacy threat, but it's not impossible to stop. With all the media attention it's gotten lately, it's time we lay out exactly how to detect and prevent this invasive tracking technique.
I grew up in a household where bacon was considered its own necessary food group. My mom saved the bacon fat in a jar and reused it in other dishes, which my friends considered vile, unless they were also from immigrant families or the American South, where saving bacon fat has never gone out of style.
Welcome back, my hacker trainees! A score of my readers have been begging for tutorials on how to hack Wi-Fi, so with this article, I'm initiating a new series dedicated to Wi-Fi hacks. This will probably be around 6-9 articles, starting with the basics of the technologies. I can hear you all groan, but you need to know the basics before you get into more advanced hacking. Then hopefully, developing your own hacks.
With warm weather comes bugs, and with bugs come bites, and with bites come itches. From ticks and spiders to mosquitoes and bees, insect bites come in sundry shapes and sizes, but they all commonly pull an itchy, red reaction out of our bodies.
A typical resistance spot welder can range in price from about $200-$800, but with a little resourcefulness and a bit of free time, you can make one like this for about $10 or less.
Few brands have been more enthusiastic about augmented reality than Lego, which has now expanded its AR experiences from toys to theme parks.
Many of us choose to use an iPhone — as well as other devices in the Apple ecosystem — because of the company's dedication to user privacy and security. If you need more proof of that commitment, look no further than iOS 14.5, released April 26, which adds new tools to protect our data while browsing the web and more control over the data installed apps collect on us.
Apple just released the third public beta for iOS 14 today, Thursday, July 23. This update comes one day after the company released iOS 14 developer beta 3, and two weeks after the release of iOS 14 public beta 2.
Apple just released iOS 14 developer beta 3 for iPhone today, Wednesday, July 22. The update comes 15 days after Apple released the second developer beta for iOS 14, and 13 days after the release of iOS 14 public beta 2.
With the Wigle WiFi app running on an Android phone, a hacker can discover and map any nearby network, including those created by printers and other insecure devices. The default tools to analyze the resulting data can fall short of what a hacker needs, but by importing wardriving data into Jupyter Notebook, we can map all Wi-Fi devices we encounter and slice through the data with ease.
The Digispark is a low-cost USB development board that's programmable in Arduino and capable of posing as a keyboard, allowing it to deliver a number of payloads. For only a few dollars, we can use the Digispark to deliver a payload to a macOS computer that will track the Mac every 60 seconds, even bypassing security like a VPN.
Router gateways are responsible for protecting every aspect of a network's configuration. With unfettered access to these privileged configurations, an attacker on a compromised Wi-Fi network can perform a wide variety of advanced attacks.
Fireworks are the best part about the Fourth of July and other celebrations, but they can easily cause accidental injuries. It's both safer and more fun to set them off remotely, so we'll hack some standard fireworks with nichrome wire, a relay, and an Arduino to ignite remotely over Wi-Fi using any smartphone or computer.
The hugely successful S10 series of flagships may be a tough act to follow, but Samsung has proven that it's up to the task with the Galaxy Note 10. The latest phablet bearing the Note name is the first of its line to come with an even larger variant, and boasts an eye-pleasing design with impressive performance to boot.
Influencers of augmented reality demonstrate expertise in their fields and outline a strong vision for the future that they evangelize to others. They help define the direction of the industry and identify others who foster and create innovation in the field.
In a surprising twist of expectation management, Magic Leap managed to not only ship but deliver the Magic Leap One I ordered on Wednesday by 4 p.m. PT on the same day.
Right on the heels of the iOS 11.4.1 beta 3 release, Apple pushed out iOS 12 beta 2 to registered developers on Tuesday, June 19. Public beta testers received the same version, labeled as iOS 12 public beta 1, six days later on Monday, June 25. Last year, the iOS 11 public beta opened up just five days after the release of iOS 11 developer beta 2, so iOS 12 is pretty much right on track in that regard.
While there aren't as many ways to customize your iPhone like there is on Android, there are still a lot of apps out there that can help streamline and enhance your experience beyond Apple's own default options — and we've hand-picked over 100 essentials.
The public leaks of NSA tools and information have led to the release of previously secret zero-day exploits such as EternalBlue, which was used in the notorious WannaCry ransomware attack. Despite multiple patches being released, many users have failed to update their systems, so many devices are still vulnerable to these now-public attacks.
Fight me all you want, but it ain't a party without alcohol—whether it's a Halloween party, Christmas party, dinner party, or even a damn wedding. (If you think that people will stick around after dinner for a dry wedding, then you're sorely mistaken.)
What happens when a entrepeneur/theme park creator and special effects artist/magician team up? You get a team crazy enough to create the first true virtual reality theme park (sorry, Six Flags). They only have a single experience so far, but it's already taken a giant leap beyond the wonders we've seen in today's consumer virtual reality headsets.
While you may not have loads of secret files hiding on your computer, there might be one or two items that need a little extra security, like a file of website logins or a folder of risqué photos.
The older I get, the more my Friday nights involve watching Netflix at home with a bottle of Maker's Mark and a box of Oreos. Netflix is a big part of my life, and I'm not alone. YouTube and Netflix make up over 50% of all activity on the Internet, so it might be worth your time to understand why Netflix seems to cause so many headaches and what can be done about it.
As was mentioned by the great OTW last week, TOR, aka The Onion Router, has had its integrity attacked by the NSA. In an attempt to reduce the anonymity granted by the service, the NSA has opened a great many nodes of their own. The purpose is presumably to trace the origin of a communication by compromising some entrance and exit nodes. Once both are compromised, it is much easier to correlate traffic with a particular individual.
Say whatever you want, but Steampunk is primarily a maker culture. Consider that Steampunk has existed since the 1960s and yet more or less languished in obscurity until approximately 2005, which is when it made the leap to costuming. That costuming was what provided the leap to the tangible, despite the fact that Steampunk art had also existed for years.
Apple's upcoming iOS 17 is expected to include many new features first seen on Android, but there are also some exciting, unique features that Android needs to steal pronto.