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When plugged in, this weaponized USB stick can destroy laptops, kiosks, ATMs, cars, and more. (Image: USBKill) Remember that USB stick that would destroy almost anything in its path, from laptops, photo booths, kiosks, to even cars? Now there's a new version, and it's even more dangerous than before. In case you missed it the first time around, a Hong Kong-based company built a weaponized pocket-sized USB stick, which when plugged into a device, will rapidly charge its capacitors from the USB power supply and then discharge, frying the affected device's circuits. Dubbed the USB Kill stick, it fries almost...

A new study has found that almost half the people who pick up a USB stick they happen across in a parking lot plug said drives into their PCs.Researchers from Google, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and the University of Michigan, spread 297 USB drives around the Urbana-Champaign campus. They found that 48 percent of the drives were picked up and plugged into a computer, some within minutes of being dropped. "The security community has long held the belief that users can be socially engineered into picking up and plugging in seemingly lost USB flash drives they find," the researchers...

Donations to the Clinton Foundation by Swiss bank UBS increased tenfold after Hillary Clinton intervened to settle a dispute with the IRS early in her tenure as secretary of state, according to a published report. According to the Wall Street Journal, total donations by UBS to the foundation grew from less than $60,000 at the end of 2008 to approximately $600,000 by the end of 2014. The Journal reports that the bank also lent $32 million through entrepreneurship and inner-city loan programs it launched in association with the foundation, while paying former President Bill Clinton $1.5 million to participate in...

Quick! The bad guy/super villain has left the room! Plug in a mysterious device that’ll hack up their computer while an on-screen progress bar ticks forward to convey to the audience that things are working! It’s a classic scene from basically every spy movie in history. In this case, however, that mystery device is real. Samy Kamkar — developer of projects like that massive worm that conquered MySpace back in 2006, or SkyJack, the drone that hijacks other drones — has released a video demonstrating the abilities of a particularly ridiculous “necklace” he sometimes wears around. Called USBdriveby, it’s a...

We can make a computer fit in an envelope, but I guess we’re still working out the kinks on the charger.

Image by :  Opensource.com Maybe you’ve heard about Linux and are intrigued by it. So intrigued that you want to give it a try. But you might not know where to begin.You’ve probably done a bit of research online and have run across terms like dual booting and virtualization. Those terms might mean nothing to you, and you’re definitely not ready to sacrifice the operating system that you’re currently using to give Linux a try. So what can you do? If you have a USB flash drive lying around, you can test drive Linux by creating a live USB....

Because we just don't already have enough tech security problems to worry about, computer science researchers have just published a potentially catastrophic security exploit.

This thumbdrive hacks computers. “BadUSB” exploit makes devices turn “evil” Per FR posting rules, ars technica can not be posted, so a link to the article referring to USB thumbdrives hacking computers is listed instead. Ignore the "source url", it just points back to the FR website. Article here: http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/07/this-thumbdrive-hacks-computers-badusb-exploit-makes-devices-turn-evil/

A revolution is about to come to the most unlikely of places: those hundreds, maybe thousands, of USB ports scattered throughout your company. This revolution will be all about power distribution and management, the stuff that only interests IT infrastructure staff. But there are wider implications that should make the entire IT organization take notice. The specification for USB Power Delivery (USB PD) was released nearly two years ago, but devices designed around this standard will only start to appear later this year. The new spec turns the capabilities of the USB port on their head. What was a data...

A man was arrested in New York City's international airport with uranium destined for Iran hidden in the soles of his shoes, the US Justice Department said. Patrick Campbell, 33, who was arrested Wednesday as he arrived at the John F Kennedy airport from Paris, is accused of trying to act as an intermediary to sell Iran 1,000 tons of purified uranium, in violation of US law. The Sierra Leone-based Campbell had been under surveillance since May 2012, when he responded to an ad on the site Alibaba.com by someone looking to buy uranium 308, or yellow cake. The buyer...

Texas Instruments just put a chip through the heart of Intel’s Thunderbolt folly with their new HD3SS2521 DockPort controller. This little $1.85 chip both vastly simplifies the user experience and shines a harsh light on what Intel can’t do with a closed and 75x more expensive solution. If you haven’t been paying attention, DockPort is the sane and open answer to Intel’s still broken and anti-user Light Peak/Thunderbolt interface. Formerly called Lightning Bolt, DockPort was AMD’s answer to the non-solution that Intel tried to spin Thunderbolt as. Several years in Thunderbolt is achieving some of the features promised at release...

I have an upcoming discussion I want to document, risked 11 bucks on one of the little thumb drive recorders from Ebay. The durn thing is clear as a bell, not hifi of course but clear and strong enough for the mission ahead!Next I will get my super spy camera!!

Recently I had a problem with Comcast's cloud backup. Then, I went to MyPC Backup Premium, and I started a year of their Premium program. Everything appeared to go well until this past week. I couldn't back up my files, and the system wanted me to go into a new package. Finally, after several days, I got a response re what to do, and it didn't work. I went on line and checked out their ratings. Once you got past the bs, there appeared to be a lot of people having similiar problems as I had. I really don't want...

SNIPPET - quote: Mohammed Abu Hasnath, 19,  of Blair Street E14, has been jailed at the Old Bailey for 14 months after he admitted being in possession of Al Qaeda’s on-line terrorist magazine “Inspire.” The young perfume salesman was arrested by detectives from the Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command on October 13 last year as he was cycling along the East India Dock Road. Hasnath pleaded guilty to four charges of having copies of the magazine on his computer memory USB stick. The Central Criminal Court heard that he had also painted burqas on scantily clad women featured on advertising posters in the local area. As...

One of President Obama’s largest financial backers is a key executive at the largest Swiss bank in the world, complicating his criticism of presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney. Robert Wolf is president of Swiss financial giant UBS Investment Bank and chairman of UBS Americas. He has been one of Obama’s most prolific fundraisers dating back to 2006, when the former Senator from Illinois initiated his run for the White House. Wolf has bundled more than $500,000 for the president’s reelection, campaign records show. He is but one of many wealthy bankers Obama has turned to in an effort to win...

Mohammed Merah belonged to extreme Salafi group that works to topple French democracy • Group’s website shut down with homepage reading: “Due to great pressures brought upon us, we have dismantled the Forsane al-Izza movement.” Mohammed Merah, the confessed murderer of three children and a rabbi at a Toulouse Jewish school this week, was not a lone wolf, and on Wednesday the testimonies poured in about his involvement with a Salafi (extreme strand of Sunni Islam) group named Forsane al-Izza (FA). The “Knights of Pride”- as the group’s name means in English - was founded in France about a year...

Pure Gold USB Memory Stick from the Middle East October 17th 2011 | Posted in Gadgets Having just written about the nearly million dollars that a Kate Moss statue in gold sold for, its almost as if yellow Gold just came back into fashion. What else can explain this pure gold USB memory drive from Jamil Pure Gold ? Its not the first USB memory stick in a gold bar form, but it is definitely the first one to be made from 24 karat gold that is 999.9 percent pure gold leaf. Also, unlike the memory sticks of yore ,...

David Braben is a very well-known game developer who runs the UK development studio Frontier Developments, but is just as well known for being the co-developer of Elite. Over his career his studio has brought us the Rollercoaster Tycoon series, Thrillville, Lost Winds, and most recently Kinectimals. In the background, however, Braben has been trying to tackle another problem: getting programming and general learning of how computers work back into schools. Braben argues that education since we entered the 2000s has turned towards ICT which teaches useful skills such as writing documents in a word processor, how to create presentations,...

If you are among the growing legion of porn addicts that spend your employer’s time or resources viewing and downloading graphic images, be very afraid. There is a new tool your boss (or spouse) can use to catch you.

Stop. Take a deep breath. Before my headline gets you all worked up, consider what I'm saying here. The CD and other optical discs, like DVDs and Blu-rays, are obviously going to live on for a while as a way to transport media. But make no mistake that today, with two unveilings, Apple has effectively sealed the fate of the optical disc in the computer industry. Soon, it will go the way of the floppy disk... First of all, the first-generation Airs were a bad combination of underpowered and overpriced. That is no longer the case. Second, they required some...