from PC World
Nick Breese, a senior security consultant at Auckland-based Security-assessment.com, has come up with a way to drastically increase the processing capability of cracking passwords, using a PS3.
By implementing common ciphers and hash functions using vector computing, Breese has pushed the current upper limit of 10–15 million cycles per second — in Intel-based architecture — up to 1.4 billion cycles per second.
Breese, who has been working on the project, called “Crackstation”, for the past six months, used the Sony PlayStation 3 gaming console for his break-through research. PS3s Cell Broadband Engine technology was created by IBM, Toshiba and Sony. The companies collaborated to create the CBE, commonly known as Cell, processor, which consists of one scalar processor and eight vector processors.
By design, PS3 is very suitable for cryptography, says Breese. Intel processors are designed to do all kinds of complex calculations, whereas the PS3 is good at doing simple things very quickly. “And believe it or not, cryptography really is simple,” he says. “Lots of simple operations being done one at the time.”
from eff.org
San Francisco - In the wake of the detection and reporting of Comcast Corporation’s controversial interference with Internet traffic, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has published a comprehensive account of Comcast’s packet-forging activities and has released software and documentation instructing Internet users on how to test for packet forgery or other forms of interference by their own ISPs.
(more…)
from blog.wired.com
One of the nation’s largest telecommunications companies is using a controversial technique to cripple certain kinds of Internet traffic traveling across its networks, says a new report from the digital rigthts group the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco.
“Comcast is essentially deploying against their own customers techniques more typically used by malicious hackers (this is doubtless how Comcast would characterize other parties that forged traffic to make it appear that it came from Comcast or its subscribers,)” write the authors of the new report. “In other words, Comcast is essentially behaving like a telephone operator that interrupts a phone conversation, impersonating the voice of one party to tell the other that this call is over, I’m hanging up.”
The nine-page investigation was conducted by EFF staff technologists Peter Eckersley, Seth Schoen and senior intellectual property attorney Fred von Lohmann.
The investigators say that their tests confirmed an earlier one conducted by the Associated Press that showed that Comcast is interfering with BitTorrent traffic. BitTorrent is a protocol used to efficiently distribute the online transmission of large files, and some entertainment companies have partnered with its creators to distribute its content online.
Comcast has said that it doesn’t block BitTorrent, or any kind of content.
(more…)
from CNET News.com
Vista’s first service pack, to be released early next year, is intended to boost the operating system’s performance. However, when Vista with the Service Pack 1 (SP1) beta was put through benchmark testing by researchers at Florida-based software development company Devil Mountain Software, the improvement was not overwhelming, leaving the latest Windows iteration outshined by its predecessor.
Vista, both with and without SP1, performed notably slower than XP with SP3 in the test, taking over 80 seconds to complete the test, compared to the beta SP3-enhanced XP’s 35 seconds.
Vista’s performance with the service pack increased less than 2 percent compared to performance without SP1–much lower than XP’s SP3 improvement of 10 percent. The tests, run on a Dell XPS M1710 test bed with a 2GHz Core 2 Duo CPU and 1GB of RAM, put Microsoft Office 2007 through a set of productivity tasks, including creating a compound document and supporting workbooks and presentation materials.
from lifehacker
Your internet connection is an indispensable part of your life, but between BitTorrent, Xbox Live, web browsing, and VoIP, sometimes there’s not enough bandwidth to go around. But rather than running around the house shutting down all of your computers next time you’re experiencing a little lag on Xbox Live or Skype is breaking up on you, you can set up Quality of Service (QoS) rules on your router to distribute bandwidth to your different gadgets and applications based on your priorities. Today I’ll show you how.
from techcrunch.com
A pact between the French Government, French ISP’s and the local music and film industry will see French users who download material from P2P networks losing their internet access.
French internet users will face a three strikes and you’re out policy, according to the NY Times. Users will receive a warning for each illegal download before losing their service on the third infringement.
French president Nicolas Sarkozy endorsed the deal with rhetoric that is bound to win him an Honorary Life Membership of both the RIAA and MPAA: “We run the risk of witnessing a genuine destruction of culture…The Internet must not become a high-tech Far West, a lawless zone where outlaws can pillage works with abandon or, worse, trade in them in total impunity. And on whose backs? On artists’ backs.”
The Far West of where? Perhaps I’m mistaken in believing that the far East (ie China) is the global hotbed of Internet piracy…or did he mean the wild west? lost in translation perhaps.
An independent authority supervised by a judge will manage the scheme and decide if and when users should lose their internet access.
Not surprisingly the recording and music industry loves the move, with the head of the IFPI (the international recording industry body) John Kennedy telling the Times that “this is the single most important initiative to help win the war on online piracy that we have seen so far..President Sarkozy has shown leadership and vision. He has recognized the importance that the creative industries play in contemporary western economies.”
from ubuntuhomeserver.org
This site has been established to facilitate a new Home Server Edition of Ubuntu.
The idea of a Home Server Edition of Ubuntu was recently outlined in this thread on the official Ubuntu forums:
Ubuntu is a leading free operating system for use on personal computer and servers: Ubuntu.com
The UHS project is community driven. It is not yet an official Ubuntu project.
Goals:
Ubuntu Home Server UHS will be an edition of the Ubuntu operating system which allows users to administer their home network. With Ubuntu Home Server you will be able to store all your music, songs and pictures in one central location, to access your files over the internet and to backup all the computers in your house.
The goal is to have a working release available with the upcoming Gutsy Gibbon release of Ubuntu or perhaps Gutsy 1 at the latest.
Something to take on the Windows Home Server release!
from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)
Conceited Software/TouchFree has just released its GUI jailbreak. This is the “final bit” that performs the jailbreak after you run OktoPrep in 1.1.1 and then upgrade to 1.1.2. The Software runs under OS X and Windows, grabs the data off your iPod touch or iPhone, upgrades it with the Jailbreak, installs Installer.app and SSH.app, and reloads it back to your unit. The whole procedure takes about 10 minutes and after, you have a fully updated 1.1.2 jailbroken system.
You will need to downgrade to 1.1.1 if you bought a system with 1.1.2 already installed. This is discussed in the README.txt file in the zip and at the this jailbreakme.com webpage. This procedure is only for iTunes-activated iTunes and iPod touches–”hactivated” iPhones need not apply. That’s because once you upgrade to 1.1.2, you’ll need to be able to have a phone that’s activated before running the program.
from Wired.com
Hushmail, a longtime provider of encrypted web-based email, markets itself by saying that “not even a Hushmail employee with access to our servers can read your encrypted e-mail, since each message is uniquely encoded before it leaves your computer.”
But it turns out that statement seems not to apply to individuals targeted by government agencies that are able to convince a Canadian court to serve a court order on the company.
A September court document .pdf from a federal prosecution of alleged steroid dealers reveals the Canadian company turned over 12 CDs worth of e-mails from three Hushmail accounts, following a court order obtained through a mutual assistance treaty between the U.S. and Canada. The charging document alleges that many Chinese wholesale steroid chemical providers, underground laboratories and steroid retailers do business over Hushmail.