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Atari Online News, Etc. Volume 16 Issue 07
Volume 16, Issue 07 Atari Online News, Etc. February 14, 2014
Published and Copyright (c) 1999 - 2014
All Rights Reserved
Atari Online News, Etc.
A-ONE Online Magazine
Dana P. Jacobson, Publisher/Managing Editor
Joseph Mirando, Managing Editor
Rob Mahlert, Associate Editor
Atari Online News, Etc. Staff
Dana P. Jacobson -- Editor
Joe Mirando -- "People Are Talking"
Michael Burkley -- "Unabashed Atariophile"
Albert Dayes -- "CC: Classic Chips"
Rob Mahlert -- Web site
Thomas J. Andrews -- "Keeper of the Flame"
With Contributions by:
Fred Horvat
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=~=~=~=
A-ONE #1607 02/14/14
~ Steve Jobs Time Capsule! ~ People Are Talking! ~ Microsoft's New CEO!
~ Tempest 2000 Remake TxK! ~ Child Named 'Facebook' ~ PS4 Tops Sales List!
~ Berners-Lee Views on Web ~ Sony: No More PC Sales ~ Fix Your Passwords!
~ N Korea OS, Likens OS X ~ ~ FCC on Net Neutrality
-* Why Bad Guys Want Your Email *-
-* Internet Explorer Suffers Major Hack *-
-* Feds Launch Some Cyber Security Guidelines *-
=~=~=~=
->From the Editor's Keyboard "Saying it like it is!"
""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Happy day of cupids! It's been a very long week here, with a couple of
nasty storms hitting the area this week, and another one forecast for the
weekend. I'm not ashamed to say it, but I'm tired of it all for this
season - I give up!! So, while we rest up here in the Northeast, let's
get right to this week's issue!
Until next time...
=~=~=~=
->In This Week's Gaming Section - PS4 Tops List As US Videogame Console Sales Climb!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" Tempest 2000 Remake TxK Blasts Its Way Onto PS Vita
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE's Game Console Industry News - The Latest Gaming News!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
PS4 Tops List As US Videogame Console Sales Climb
US videogame hardware sales surged in January, with Sonys new-generation
PlayStation 4 consoles leading the charge, according to figures released
on Thursday.
People spent $241 million on videogame hardware, predominately consoles,
in January compared to $205 million in the same month a year earlier,
when a fifth leap week gave figures a particular boost, according to
industry tracker NPD Group. Sonys PS4 led overall hardware sales,
followed by Microsoft new-generation Xbox One consoles, NPD reported.
PS4 sales were nearly double that of Xbox One in the month, Sony said
citing the NPD report.
Demand for PlayStation 4 remains incredibly strong, Sony PlayStation
brand marketing senior VP Guy Longworth said in a release.
Its clear gamers are choosing PlayStation as the best place to play.
Membership in the PlayStation Plus subscription service for games, films,
and other digital entertainment has nearly doubled since the PS4
launched in November, according to Sony.
Meanwhile, videogame software sales sank about 40 percent in November to
$224 million, down from $373 million in January of 2013.
The decline was due to a big drop in the number of new titles released
for play, said NPD analyst Liam Callahan.
Activisions military shooter game Call of Duty: Ghosts was the best
selling game on a top 10 list that included Assassins Creed IV:
Black Flag and Grand Theft Auto V.
Traditional format videogame sales overall for January were $664 million,
down 21 percent from the prior January but nearly flat if the extra
leap week is factored in, according to NPD.
When money spent on mobile games, rentals, digital downloads,
subscriptions and social network play are added in, sales for January
tallied $1.05 billion, NPD reported.
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE Gaming Online - Online Users Growl & Purr!
"""""""""""""""""""
Tempest 2000 Remake TxK Blasts Its Way Onto PS Vita
TxK, Jeff Minter's remake of the Atari Jaguar game Tempest 2000, will be
available on PS Vita alongside the PlayStation Store update. In TxK,
players travel down a corridor while shooting obstacles; special musical
bonus stages, which players cannot fail, are scattered throughout TxK.
"We've tried to create something that is pure and beautiful in the same
way as the old abstract vector-graphics arcade games, but vibrant and
modern in aspect and effects as you play," Minter wrote on the
PlayStation Blog. "You'll blast your way through 100 levels and 3
different game modes to keep you challenged whether you want a long
session or a quick 5 minutes of gaming on the go."
Minter's TxK was originally due to launch last year. A lengthy gameplay
video of TxK, available (see link below), should give you an idea of what
to expect: an explosion of color set to a thumping techno soundtrack. And
perhaps a llama or two.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2TTa0z2o0M
=~=~=~=
A-ONE's Headline News
The Latest in Computer Technology News
Compiled by: Dana P. Jacobson
Feds Launch Cyber Security Guidelines For US Infrastructure Providers
The White House on Wednesday released the first version of its cyber
security framework for protecting critical infrastructure. Critics say
these voluntary guidelines enshrine the status quo.
The White House on Wednesday released the first version of its cyber
security framework for protecting critical infrastructure. It's a catalog
of industry best-practices and standards that creates a voluntary
template for companies to use in developing better security programs.
The Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity
"enables organizations - regardless of size, degree of cybersecurity
risk, or cybersecurity sophistication - to apply the principles and
best-practices of risk management to improving the security and
resilience of critical infrastructure," the White House said in a
statement.
Although the document was hailed by administration officials as a "major
turning point" in cybersecurity, it contains little that is revolutionary
or even new. The National Institute of Standards and Technology, working
with the Homeland Security Department and industry stakeholders, has
compiled a set of known, publicly vetted standards that can be applied
to identify, protect from, detect, respond to, and recover from risks.
The framework is technology-neutral and does not specify tools or
applications to be used. Choices of technology are left to the user in
addressing each category of risk management.
The framework is built on three basic components:
Core. A set of common activities that should be used in all programs,
providing a high-level view of risk management.
Profiles. These help each organization align cybersecurity activities
with its own business requirements, and to evaluate current risk management
activities and prioritize improvements.
Tiers. Tiers allow users to evaluate cybersecurity implementations and
manage risk. Four tiers describe the rigor of risk management and how
closely it is aligned with business requirements.
The framework is one leg of a three-pronged program set out in a
presidential executive order on protecting privately-owned critical
infrastructure, issued one year ago in response to Congress's failure to
pass cybersecurity legislation. The second leg involves information
sharing among companies and between the public and private sectors. The
third leg attempts to address the protection of privacy and civil
liberties.
Privacy was a difficult area for stakeholders to come to a consensus on
during the five public workshops and multiple iterations of the document.
Some protections are incorporated in instructions for using the
framework, but privacy was identified as an area that needs to be better
addressed in future versions.
Although it would be difficult today for any attack to cause widespread,
long-lasting damage to the nation's critical infrastructures,
cyberattacks are becoming more effective. Demonstrated weaknesses in the
IT systems that control and support the energy, transportation, financial
services industries, and others leave them vulnerable to these attacks.
Although the framework is voluntary and will depend primarily on
"enlightened self-interest" to drive its use, it is not entirely without
teeth. Regulatory agencies are working to harmonize existing regulations
with the document, and government procurement requirements are likely to
include conformance to the framework for contractors and suppliers.
But one White House official said during a briefing, "The goal is not to
expand regulation."
Other incentives for adoption are expected to include public
recognition, cyber insurance and cost recovery programs, all of which can
be implemented without legislation. Administration officials said they
will ask Congress for additional authority as needed, for protections
such as limitations on liability for companies adopting the framework.
But given the slow pace of legislation in the current Congress the
administration's goal is to convince companies operating critical
infrastructure that using the framework would be a good business
decision.
Drafters said the framework creates a shared vocabulary for discussing
and describing cybersecurity that can be used by a broad range of
companies in different industries to create and evaluate risk-management
programs. Gaps in programs can be identified and plans tailored to meet
the specific needs for each user.
In an effort to support adoption of the framework by the private sector,
the Department of Homeland Security is also launching a voluntary
Critical Infrastructure Cyber Community program. According to DHS
Secretary Jeh Johnson, the program will provide a "single point of
access" to the department's cybersecurity experts for anyone needing
help or advice.
Although the program is just getting underway, one of its services, the
Cyber Resilience Review, has already been widely used by industry. The
review lets organizations assess their current programs and determine how
well they are aligned with the practices and standards of the framework.
More than 300 of the reviews have been carried out.
President Obama, in a prepared statement, called the framework a turning
point, but added, "It's clear that much more work needs to be done," a
sentiment shared by the document's supporters and detractors alike.
Bob Dix, VP of global government affairs and public policy for Juniper
Networks, called it "a laudable first step," but said "there is more
that government and industry must do together to address basic cyber
hygiene as well as the most sophisticated and persistent threats to
critical infrastructure."
Because the framework is based on existing practices and standards, it
has been criticized as enshrining the status quo rather than advancing
cybersecurity. NIST officials said it is a living document that will be
regularly updated.
A preliminary draft of the framework laid out areas for improvement to be
addressed in future versions. These include authentication, automated
information sharing, assessing compliance with standards, workforce
development, big data analytics, international impacts, privacy
standards, and supply chain management.
Why The Bad Guys Want Your Email
Your email just got broken into? Sorry, its not personal. Its business.
That may not console you much when you realize that your email account
was pwned through malware or deceit. But, really, the hackers who went
after it probably had nothing against you personally. They were instead
focused on potentially profitable uses of your email.
This is a point that can easily get lost in the coverage of nightmare
hacking scenarios like the 2012 instance in which Wired writer Mat Honan
had his Gmail and iCloud accounts hijacked, then saw his iPhone, iPad
and MacBook remotely wiped, all so a teenage guy could have fun
broadcasting inanities from his three-character Twitter handle @mat.
But, most of the time, crooks going after your email have nothing more
ambitious in mind than using it to spam people about fraudulent offers or
malicious downloads.
For the most part, compromised webmail accounts are used to send spam
(some of which may contain links to malware), writes Johannes Ullrich,
chief research officer at the SANS Institute.
In a subsequent conversation, he said that not only has the use of hacked
email addresses for spam stayed pretty much constant, but in some ways
such addresses have become more valuable. How so? Stronger authentication
systems deployed by major mail services have made it harder to send a
spoofed message one that looks like its from a legitimate address when
it isnt. So, since email impersonation is harder, the bad guys need to
take over accounts to send messages that look real.
What else can a hacker do with a hijacked account? McAfee public-sector
chief technical officer Scott Montgomery sketched out one easy
possibility: Lets say I compromise your Yahoo mail, your Google mail,
whatever what is the likelihood that you have reused that same
password at multiple locations?
Thats right. Stealing one password can open up access to a multitude of
a users accounts. So take this opportunity to redo yours; for the most
security, use a service like LastPass, 1Password or Dashlane to generate
and store random passwords for you.
But even if a victim was smart enough to use different passwords for
anything of serious value, it wont matter if an attacker can reset them
online with the only needed confirmation being a click on an email sent
to an inbox that the attacker already controls.
Or, as Brian Krebs reported last March, the attacker can skip even that
minimal step by asking the bank nicely via email for help completing a
wire transfer.
Ullrich said SANS hasnt seen too many instances of this, thanks mainly
to the fact that its more profitable to confine that particular scam to
cases where they know that this person deals with large amounts of
money.
In one particularly ambitious attack SANS is investigating, the scammer
steps into existing business correspondence to try to fool a customer
into sending money to the wrong place. It appears to happen quite a bit
with real estate, Ullrich observed.
Montgomery suggested one last, still uglier use for a hijacked email:
Instead of just spamming friends with some bogus offer, they try to get
them to click and install ransomware that then locks them out of their
own files unless they pay off the scammer.
A site password plus an email address that itself is secured with only a
password shouldnt open the door to moving money around. But while most
Web-mail services now offer two-step verification yes, you should turn
it on only a handful of name-brand banks and other financial
institutions also do.
I dont think you can legislate a requirement for two-step verification,
but having to reimburse enough customers for losses ought to have an
educational effect on banks that havent let customers lock their
accounts with more than a username and password.
That doesnt mean the folks in Washington have nothing at all to do on
this front. Beyond the absence of a national law requiring companies to
notify you if they lose your data, the primary law aimed at networked
crime the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act needs a rewrite of its own.
Thats not because its too tolerant of hacking attempts; its because it
now defines them so broadly that it can be used to target legitimate
security research. In an upcoming column, Ill explain why the CFAA has
become many techies least favorite law.
Internet Explorer Suffers Major Hacking Attack
A previously unknown flaw in a recent version of Microsoft Corp.s
Internet Explorer web browser is being used to attack Internet users,
including some visitors to a major site for U.S. military veterans,
researchers said Thursday.
Security firm FireEye Inc. discovered the attacks against IE 10 this
week, saying that hundreds or thousands of machines have been infected.
It said the culprits broke into the website of U.S. Veterans of Foreign
Wars and inserted a link that redirected visitors to a malicious web
page that contained the infectious code in Adobe Systems Inc.s Flash
software.
FireEye researcher Darien Kindlund said the attackers were probably
seeking information from the machines of former and current military
personnel and that the campaign shared some infrastructure and
techniques previously attributed to groups in mainland China.
He said planting backdoors on the machines of VFW members and site
visitors to collect military intelligence was a possible goal.
A VFW spokeswoman didnt immediately respond to requests for comment.
A Microsoft spokesman said the company was aware of the targeted attacks
and was investigating. We will take action to help protect customers,
spokesman Scott Whiteaker said.
The latest version of the browser is IE 11, which is unaffected, and a
Microsoft security tool called the Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit
also protects users who have installed that.
Previously unknown flaws in popular software are a key weapon for hackers
and are sold by the researchers who discover them for $50,000 or more,
brokers say.
They are most often bought by defense contractors and intelligence
agencies in multiple countries, but some of the best-funded criminal
groups buy them as well.
FCC Head Says He'll Preserve Open Internet
The Federal Communications Commission is plotting to restore the net
neutrality rules that were invalidated by an appellate court last month,
Chairman Tom Wheeler said this week.
In a speech delivered on Monday at the University of Colorado Law School,
Wheeler said he intends to preserve a free and open Internet. The FCC
head has yet to provide specifics. Instead, he said only that he intends
soon to outline how he wants to proceed.
In January, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals gutted the FCC's net
neutrality rules, which prohibited broadband providers from blocking
lawful content or apps. The court ruled that the FCC couldn't impose
common carrier regulations on broadband providers, given that the agency
classified broadband as an information service in 2002.
Neutrality advocates now say the FCC must first reclassify broadband as a
telecommunication service if the agency wants to impose neutrality rules
that will stand up in court. That way, broadband providers will be
subject to the same common carrier rules that require telephone companies
to put through all calls.
If Wheeler intends to take that route, he's keeping it a secret - to the
dismay of advocates. On Friday, the group Free Press made another push to
convince Wheeler to reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service.
If the Commission fails to restore common carriage to our nations
central communications network, we are ensuring that future generations
of Americans will not be able to send the information of their choosing,
between points of their choosing, without undue discrimination, the
group says in a letter to Wheeler. Is the Commission really prepared to
tell our children that if they want to act like their parents and
grandparents and make a voice call using a landline or wireless phone,
they know that call will connect and wont be of inferior quality, and
they wont be price gouged for it; but if they instead choose to
communicate through their natural medium of data, they get no legal
protections against undue discrimination?
Free Press isn't the only one urging the FCC to move on neutrality. Five
Democratic senators warned Wheeler this week that the recent appellate
court ruling gutting neutrality rules threatens the freedom of
innovators to compete on an open, neutral platform.
We urge you to quickly adopt enforceable rules to prevent the blocking
and discrimination of Internet traffic, the lawmakers say in a letter to
Wheeler. Without such rules in place, Internet service providers are
prone to act as gatekeepers of the Internet, controlling access by
blocking or throttling certain content and thereby limiting the
opportunities for innovation, speech and commerce.
The letter was signed by Sens. Al Franken (D-Minn.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.),
Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), and Richard Blumenthal
(D-Conn.).
Tim Berners-Lee: We Need To Re-decentralise The Web
Twenty-five years on from the web's inception, its creator has urged the
public to re-engage with its original design: a decentralised internet
that at its very core, remains open to all.
Speaking with Wired editor David Rowan at an event launching the
magazine's March issue, Tim Berners-Lee said that although part of this is
about keeping an eye on for-profit internet monopolies such as search
engines and social networks, the greatest danger is the emergence of a
balkanised web.
"I want a web that's open, works internationally, works as well as
possible and is not nation-based," Berners-Lee told the audience, which
included Martha Lane Fox, Jake Davis (AKA Topiary) and Lily Cole. He
suggested one example to the contrary: "What I don't want is a web where
the Brazilian government has every social network's data stored on
servers on Brazilian soil. That would make it so difficult to set one up."
It's the role of governments, startups and journalists to keep that
conversation at the fore, he added, because the pace of change is not
slowing - it's going faster than ever before. For his part Berners-Lee
drives the issue through his work at the Open Data Institute, World Wide
Web Consortium and World Wide Web Foundation, but also as an MIT
professor whose students are "building new architectures for the web
where it's decentralised". On the issue of monopolies, Berners-Lee did
say it's concerning to be "reliant on big companies, and one big
server", something that stalls innovation, but that competition has
historically resolved these issues and will continue to do so.
"It's important to have the geek community as a whole think about
its responsibility and what it can do"
Sir Tim Berners-Lee
The kind of balkanised web he spoke about, as typified by Brazil's
home-soil servers argument or Iran's emerging intranet, is partially
being driven by revelations of NSA and GCHQ mass surveillance. The
distrust that it has brewed, from a political level right down to the
threat of self-censorship among ordinary citizens, threatens an open web
and is, said Berners-Lee, a greater threat than censorship. Knowing the
NSA may be breaking commercial encryption services could result in the
emergence of more networks like China's Great Firewall, to "protect"
citizens. This is why we need a bit of anti-establishment push back,
alluded to by Berners-Lee.
He reiterated the need to protect whistleblowers like Edward Snowden that
leak information only in extreme circumstances "because they have this
role in society". But more than this, he noted the need for hackers.
"It's a really important culture, it's important to have the geek
community as a whole think about its responsibility and what it can do.
We need various alternative voices pushing back on conventional
government sometimes."
In the midst of so much political and social disruption, the man who
changed the course of communication, education, activism and so much
more, and in so many ways, remains dedicated to fighting for a web
founded in freedom and openness. But when asked what he would have done
differently, the answer was easy. "I would have got rid of the slash
slash after the colon. You don't really need it. It just seemed like a
good idea at the time."
Microsofts New CEO: We Have the Best Platform to Change the World
On Tuesday morning, Microsoft unveiled its new CEO: Satya Nadella, its
former executive vice president of cloud and enterprise. Though Nadella
has spent 22 years at Microsoft, there are not many outside of Microsoft
who are familiar with the new CEO.
So consider the video -
(https://www.yahoo.com/tech/meet-microsofts-new-ceo-satya-nadella-75089257289.html)
as well as our own primer on Nadella an introduction. With its
announcement, Microsoft included Nadellas first interview as CEO of
Microsoft, a video conversation with fellow Microsoft executive Steve
Clayton. Not surprisingly, Clayton doesnt have many hard-hitting
questions for his new boss. The video plays more as an attempt to
humanize a man we know little about while assuring the viewer that, in
spite of the perception of Nadella as a company man, he may be looking
to rock the boat a bit.
Asked what he actually plans on doing in the new role, Nadella suggests
that hes going to come out swinging: First thing I want to do and focus
on is ruthlessly remove any obstacles that allow us to innovate every
individual in our organization to innovate and then focus all of that
innovation on things that Microsoft can uniquely do.
As to what it is that Microsoft can actually do, the new CEOs answer
unsurprisingly focused on mobile and cloud solutions the latter his own
area of expertise, and the former an area in which the company has lost a
fair amount of footing in recent years, with a late entry into
smartphones and the continued struggles of its Windows Phone operating
system against Apples iPhone and Googles Android phones.
Its a mobile-first, cloud-first world, Nadella explains in the video.
Everything is becoming digital and software-driven. And so I think of
the opportunities being unbounded. We need to be able to pick the unique
contribution that we want to bring. And thats where our heritage of
having been the productivity company to now being the do-more company,
where we get ever individual and every organization to get more out of
every moment of their life, is what we want to get focused on.
Actually, Nadella uses the phrase the do-more company multiple times
in the video, suggesting that its a motto Microsoft has been using
internally to describe itself.
The new CEO is certainly right when he suggests that this is a
software-powered world. Nadella doesnt have a lot to say yet with
regard to the companys recent inability to take advantage of that fact,
but no one reasonably expected him to take his predecessor Steve Ballmer
down a peg in his entrance interview particularly in light of the fact
that reports pointed to a close working relationship between Nadella and
Ballmer.
In the video, Nadella is, not surprisingly, bullish about MSs prospects,
saying, We have the talent, the resources and perseverance like no one
else has. And then you take that and combine it with the fact that the
world going forward is more of a software-powered world, delivered in
devices and services I think we have the best platform to change the
world.
That might be true. But now the real hard work will begin.
Sony Will No Longer Sell Personal Computers
Sony, like the rest of the industry, has seen its PC sales tumble as
people rely more and more on the tiny computers they carry around in
their pockets. On Tuesday that reality led to a huge shift in Sonys
business: The company will be selling off its Vaio PC line. Sony
confirmed that it has found a buyer for its branded Vaio computers in
Japan Industrial Partners, a Japanese investment group.
The plan to exit the PC market has been in the works for a while,
according to the company. Back in 2012, Sony began aggressively
employing a restructuring that designated imaging (cameras), gaming
(PlayStation) and mobile (phones/tablets) as the foundation of its
electronics business. The move left two major categories out on the
fringes: TVs and PCs.
While the company notes that the TV business wont become profitable by
the time the fiscal year ends next month, it happily noted that it has
managed to significantly enhance its operational structure and product
competitiveness. Indeed, any reporter who has attended a Sony event in
the past year can tell you that TV namely 4K is still a major focus
for the company.
Sony will be spinning its TV division off as its own business. The Vaio
line, on the other hand, will be sold, after 17 years within Sony. There
arent any specific numbers on the proposed deal, but Sony noted that
between 250 and 300 employees will likely be hired by Vaios new owners.
Others will be transferred to different divisions in Sony, and the rest
will be offered early retirement plans.
The Vaio sale comes amid news that the company will be shedding 5,000
jobs or around 3 percent of its full staff.
Here in the States, at least, the Vaio never really became the major
player Sony hoped it would. Still, the company won fans among tech
reviewers, and some PC shoppers, for its innovative and lightweight
laptop. A recent story even noted that Apples late founder Steve Jobs
counted himself a fan, once suggesting that Sony become the sole
third-party manufacturer building devices to run OS X, Apples desktop
operating system.
While Sony never achieved the sales of some of the top PC makers, its
hard not to see such a sale as a sign of the times for the computing
industry. It would be going too far to suggest that this marks the
beginning of the end for laptops and the like, but it certainly doesnt
bode well when a company as large and innovative as Sony sees the
writing on the wall.
North Korea's Home-grown OS Looks A Lot Like Apple's OS X
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, might the folks in
Cupertino be pleased when they see the latest version of North Koreas
home-grown operating system?
Version 3.0 of Red Star Linux presents users with a radical refresh of
its desktop design, one that closely resembles Mac OS X. The new look
replaces the Windows 7-like desktop that was used in version 2.0 of the
software.
The Korea Computer Center (KCC), a major software development center in
Pyongyang, began developing Red Star about a decade ago. Version 2 is
3 years old and version 3 appears to have been released in the middle of
last year.
140130 redstar background
The world has gotten its first look at version 3 thanks to Will Scott, a
computer scientist who recently spent a semester teaching at the
Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST). The school is
North Koreas first foreign-funded university and many of the lecturers
come from overseas.
Scott said he bought the operating system at a KCC dealer in the capital
city and the screenshots he provided were of the basic version 3 software
without any modifications.
While most North Koreans are restricted from accessing the Internet, many
can get access to a nationwide intranet through universities and public
libraries. The intranet offers websites for domestic institutions and is
heavily skewed towards offering information, educational materials such
as PDF versions of books and scientific papers, and government
propaganda.
Red Star Linux includes a web browser based on Mozilla that has been
re-branded Naenara, or My country.
It also includes a copy of Wine, a Linux application that provides an
environment under which Windows software can be run.
'Steve Jobs Time Capsule' Discovered
In 1983, Steve Jobs, the late co-founder and CEO of Apple Inc., gave a
speech to a small audience at the International Design Conference in
Aspen, Colo. The Macintosh computer hadnt been introduced yet, but Jobs
was already predicting the rise of the personal computer, wireless
networking, an easy-to-use and portable computer, and the ability to sell
software without a brick-and-mortar store.
The speech has since become a part of the Steve Jobs legend as evidence of
how visionary he was. At the end, Jobs added the Apple Lisa mouse he used
during the talk to a time capsule full of objects donated by conference
attendees.
Apple Lisa Mouse The "Steve Jobs Times Capsule" containing the Lisa mouse
Jobs used during a legendary speech in Colorado, was found after 30
years.
The inclusion of the Lisa mouse gave the capsule the name of The Steve
Job Time Capsule, and after a failed attempt to unearth it in 2000, the
priceless piece of tech history was thought to be lost forever.
Until September, when a crew working National Geographic Channels
Diggers discovered and dug up the Steve Jobs Time Capsule. Protected in
a plastic bag among a six-pack of beer, a Moody Blues cassette and a
Rubiks cube, the crew found Jobs personal Lisa mouse.
The discovery will kick of the latest season off Diggers, which
premieres on the National Geographic Channel on Feb 25.
Weekend Project: Fix Your Passwords
By now you know that the only thing keeping your online accounts safe is
the thin wall known as the password. On most sites, if your password is
stolen, your account is wide open. Whoever gets your password can
impersonate you, steal money from you and erase your valuable digital
assets, like your photos.
It matters what you choose as a password. If bad guys are attacking a
site you use, or have gotten a list of encrypted passwords from a site,
then the longer and more random the password, the harder it will be to
discover. So you want your passwords to be as strong as possible. Whats
a strong password? Not password, or 123456, or anything else on the
list of dumbest passwords people use; those are the ones hackers will try
on your accounts first.
You also need your passwords to be different on each site. That way, if a
password to one site is stolen, the damage will be contained. The last
thing you want is for one site you use to get hacked, exposing your data
to criminals not just there, but everywhere.
The problem, of course, is that while everyone knows what a strong
password looks like a long string of random letters, numbers and
symbols nobody wants to come up with strong passwords, and no normal
person could possibly memorize dozens of strong, random passwords for
the sites they use.
But doing just that is the only safe thing to do. Anything less using
weak passwords, or the same password in multiple places is asking for
trouble.
So, to summarize: Only absurd, un-memorizable passwords are safe. You
cant write them down. And you need a different password on each site. No
wonder nobody practices good password hygiene. Its just not possible.
At least, not without help. There is a solution, one that we at Yahoo
Tech cannot recommend highly enough: Use a password manager. Thats a
program that memorizes all your complicated passwords for you.
So lets get your passwords into shape, shall we? Welcome to the weekend
project: fixing your passwords (with a password manager).
Step 1: Get started with a password manager.
There are several competing password managers. These apps will create
good passwords, remember them for you, store them safely, synchronize
them across your computers and mobile devices, and even enter passwords
into your login forms so you dont have to type them. If you need good
passwords and you do then using a password manager is the best way to
fly.
Now, one warning: All the passwords you store in a password manager are
protected by
a password. So you have to be sure that the password you
choose to protect your vault is a good one. But at least it will be the
only one you need to remember. And remembering one long password once is
a lot easier than remembering a hundred of them. Or worse, storing them
someplace insecure.
There are alternatives to these password managers. In particular, if you
use nothing but Apple products, and only Apples Safari browser, then
Apples iCloud Keychain, a part of the latest operating systems for Macs,
iPhones and iPads, can do a lot of what a password manager does.
And then theres the trick that a lot of people use to keep dozens or
hundreds of passwords in their heads: They use a cipher for generating
their own unique passwords for each account, by combining a strong
password with a method of substituting the name of the site theyre
visiting into it. For example, lets say my core password is
Fi33ykit10s!, and my cipher is to use the second letter of a site Im
visiting at the beginning of the password, and the number of characters
in it as the second-to-last character. So my password for Yahoo would be
aFi33ykit10s5!. No dictionary lookup will find that.
The cipher method works until you come across a site where the
password rules obviate your system, like not allowing special
characters, or a minimum or maximum password length that doesnt work for
your password.
So use a password manager. Here are some of the best ones out there:
1Password: My preferred system. Nice interface. Remembers credit-card
numbers. Auto-enters passwords in websites. Synchronizes a highly
encrypted database of your passwords over either iCloud or Dropbox (or
some other homebrew system, if you want). But its expensive: $49.99 for
the Mac or Windows version, plus $17.99 for the iPhone version. Bundles
and deals are sometimes available.
Password managers like 1Password (shown) will remember all your passwords
and automatically put them into Web login forms.
LastPass: Does pretty much everything 1Password does, but its not as
pretty. Has finer-grained security controls, including two-factor
authentication (so even if someone learns your password, she cant get
into your account unless she has your phone, too) and restrictions by
country. A good free version, and a decent deal at $12 a year for mobile
access.
LastPass (shown) and other password managers can tell when you enter
passwords into Web sites and will offer to remember them for you.
Dashlane: Probably the most beautiful of the password managers. David
Pogues choice (he also uses Apples Keychain in parallel). Works across
computers and mobile devices. Free on one computer, $29.99 a year for
syncing across devices.
A good password manager, like Dashlane (shown) will look at all your
passwords and tell you where youre reusing them a very unsafe
practice!
Other password managers include KeePass, Roboform, Norton Identity Safe,
DirectPass, Kaspersky Password Manager and SplashID. If you have one of
these, great. Use it.
Step 2: Set it up with a really, really strong password.
Before you start putting passwords into your new password manager,
configure it with a good, strong master password. In fact, dont think
password, think passphrase. More than one word, a few symbols, all strung
together in a unique order. yuMMy(Fuzzy)9&9baconbits something like
that. Youll be typing it a lot, so give it a few tries with your fingers
before committing (including on your mobile devices keyboard) to make
sure it doesnt force any uncomfortable contortions.
Alternatively, you can come up with a shorter memorable passphrase that
would never appear in a dictionary by using (for example), the first
letters of the words in a sentence or title you wont forget. For
example, IP17KBIMS! (I put 17 kidney beans in my salad!). However,
even nonsense passwords can be hacked if they are short enough. Longer
passwords are always better.
Either way, make sure you pick a passphrase you can remember. If you
dont, youre cooked. A good password manager has no back door that
will let you or the company who made it decrypt your data.
Step 3: Get it working on your computers and your mobile devices.
The idea of having a password manager is that its one system that
remembers your passwords across all your devices: computer, smartphone,
tablet and so on. We recommend that you install it first on one computer,
and in all the browsers you use, and set up the passphrase there, and
then go to your mobile devices and other computers and repeat the
process.
The software should walk you through the process of connecting all your
devices to the same password manager account that stores all your
passwords. Some systems, like LastPass, keep the passwords in their own
system. Others, like 1Password, use somebody elses system, like iCloud
or Dropbox.
Note that in every password manager worth anything at all, the password
data youre storing is highly encrypted. It gets decrypted only on your
devices. But you really want to have a good passphrase so your password
file is protected when its not on your computer.
Step 4: Start replacing your weak, repeating passwords with new ones.
Most good password managers will tell you where you are using duplicate
passwords, which is your biggest vulnerability. Start with those. Look for
high-value sites that are using passwords that youve duplicated
elsewhere, and change them first. Your password manager will be able to
come up with strong passwords for you that dont even look like words.
Thats fine. Youll be using your password manager to enter your
passwords into your accounts anyway.
Your most precious accounts are for banks and financial services, along
with major sites that have financial data, like Amazon and Apple. Again,
make sure you use different passwords for each account. Thats more
important than using strong passwords. But as long as youre using a
password manager, make your passwords strong, too.
Then move on to gateway accounts like Facebook and Twitter, where a
breach could have other ramifications, like identity theft.
Youll get tired of this job pretty quickly and probably wont finish at
one sitting (or ever). Thats why we recommend changing your most
important accounts first, and especially that you decouple them from
potential breaches at other sites by using unique passwords.
Step 5: Start using your password manager.
Try it out. Go to a site with a password you just created and, if youre
logged in, log out. Then either go to the login page again or find the
site through the search feature in your password manager. The manager
plugin might spring into action and log you in itself, or you might have
to press a button or a shortcut key to activate it. One thing you wont
have to do is type in your password.
No password manager works perfectly on all sites, however, so you might
have to copy and paste your password from the manager into your site or
app. In most apps, theres a copy button that will do part of that job
for you. If you have to type in your passwords by hand, then youre not
using the manager to its fullest.
On iPhones and iPads, there is one wrinkle: A password manager cant enter
passwords into apps or into browser fields (except Keychain when youre
using Safari). Youll be using the copy-and-paste method on apps, and if
you want your password manager to enter passwords automatically on mobile
websites, then youll have to use the managers own app to find your site
and then have it log you in on its own built-in browser. Its a drag to
remember to do this, unfortunately.
But you are now more secure! Congratulations.
Step 6. Every now and then, change your password manager passphrase.
Just in case.
Someone in Mexico Named a Child Facebook
Baby names have been getting progressively dumber in past years (maybe
because were now allowing Redditors to choose them). You cant swing a
dead cat without hitting four Olyvyrs and a Daxxon at the local park.
So officials in one state Mexican state have taken matters into their own
hands by banning the 61 names theyve deemed dumbest. Facebook is on
the list and that means at least one kid in Sonora, Mexico, is named
after the social network, because the names were culled from actual civil
registries.
Other questionable names that were banned: Marciana, or Martian, and
Circuncision, or Circumcision, The Associated Press reports. The state
has also seen names like Juan Calzon, or Juan Panties, and a little girl
named Lady Di.
The law is supposed to protect kids from being bullied, Sonora Civil
Registry director Cristinia Ramirez has said, but who could ever even
bother an 8-year-old named Lady Di?
Juan Panties, though, has a lot to live up to. Godspeed, little dude.
=~=~=~=
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