bit

1024-bit RSA encryption cracked by carefully starving CPU of electricity

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/1024-bit-rsa-encryption-cracked-by-carefully-starving-cpu-of-ele/

Since 1977, RSA public-key encryption has protected privacy and verified authenticity when using computers, gadgets and web browsers around the globe, with only the most brutish of brute force efforts (and 1,500 years of processing time) felling its 768-bit variety earlier this year. Now, three eggheads (or Wolverines, as it were) at the University of Michigan claim they can break it simply by tweaking a device’s power supply. By fluctuating the voltage to the CPU such that it generated a single hardware error per clock cycle, they found that they could cause the server to flip single bits of the private key at a time, allowing them to slowly piece together the password. With a small cluster of 81 Pentium 4 chips and 104 hours of processing time, they were able to successfully hack 1024-bit encryption in OpenSSL on a SPARC-based system, without damaging the computer, leaving a single trace or ending human life as we know it. That’s why they’re presenting a paper at the Design, Automation and Test conference this week in Europe, and that’s why — until RSA hopefully fixes the flaw — you should keep a close eye on your server room’s power supply.

1024-bit RSA encryption cracked by carefully starving CPU of electricity originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 02:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink p://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/04/severe_openssl_vulnerability/“>The Register, TechWorld  |  sourceUniversity of Michigan  | Email this | Comments

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Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 Uncategorized No Comments

Twenty-four telecom operators unite to form Wholesale Applications Community

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/15/twenty-four-telecom-operators-unite-to-form-wholesale-applicatio/

Big doings over in Barcelona today. Twenty-four telecom operators, with the support of the GSMA and three major hardware manufacturers, have formally announced they will come together to form the Wholesale Applications Community. Essentially, the goal of the alliance will be to create a viable, cohesive and open industry platform for mobile app developers. Members of the Community will include AT&T, China Mobile, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, NTT DoCoMo, Orange, TeliaSonera, Sprint, Verizon Wireless, and Vodafone among others, and they’ll be supported in their endeavors by LG, Samsung and Sony Ericsson. The total customers of the group is about 3 billion, giving WAC (our name) some considerable — albeit theoretical for the moment — power. The group plans to work on coming up with a standard for working across platforms over the next twelve months. WAC’s website just went live a bit ago — there’s a link to it below — and the full press release is after the break.

Continue reading Twenty-four telecom operators unite to form Wholesale Applications Community

Twenty-four telecom operators unite to form Wholesale Applications Community originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 15 Feb 2010 05:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Monday, February 15th, 2010 Uncategorized No Comments

HP Mini 311 Nvidia ION Netbook Hackintosh’ed

screenshots to come

Source: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=189621&pid=1296786

Specifications pertinent to Mac OS X:
Memory – 1024MB onboard with one open DDR3 SO-DIMM slot for up to 2048MB expansion, giving 3072MB total memory – Postpunk confirmed
Chipset – STATUSNVIDIA ION LE
Graphics – STATUSNVIDIA GeForce 9400M based (NVEnabler, LCD, 1366×768, QE/CI) – adachis/supervisa confirmed DSDT may be an option
HDMI Port – UNKNOWNTESTING NEEDED
VGA Port – UNKNOWNTESTING NEEDED
Universal Serial Bus – STATUSNVIDIA ION LE
Microprocessor – STATUSIntel Atom N270/N280 – Researching better fixes to remove need for NullCPUPowerManagement
Keyboard – STATUSPS/2 based – ApplePS2Old – adachis confirmed
Trackpad – STATUSAlps Electric – PS/2 based – ApplePS2Old – adachis confirmed
Local Storage – STATUSNVIDIA nForce Serial ATA Controller
Wireless – G-STATUS / N-STATUSBCM4312(G) (adachis confirmed) and BCM943224(N) (PZZ confirmed)
Network – STATUS10/100 NVIDIA nForce MCP79
Wireless WAN – UNKNOWNHP un2420 Mobile Broadband (Qualcom2000)
Bluetooth – STATUSUSB/PCIe Broadcom based – superviza confirmed
Audio – STATUSNVIDIA HDA (VoodooHDA works large amount of static overlay, try 16-bit – adachis confirmed) DSDT may be an option
Webcam – STATUSUSB Based HP Webcam-50 – superviza confirmed
External Optical – STATUSHP External 556s Optical Drive – theproto confirmed

Feature status:
Battery Status – STATUS VoodooBattery shows some functions – (adachis confirmed) so does AppleACPIBatteryManager (superviza confirmed)
Sleep/Hibernate/Suspend – STATUS MORE TESTING NEEDED – Not looking good OOB (superviza confirmed)
Trackpad Options – STATUS VoodooPS2 not recognizing trackpad – adachis confirmed
Shutdown/Reboot – STATUS superviza confirmed
Clamshell Switch – STATUS superviza confirmed
Power Button – STATUS superviza confirmed
SpeedStep or P/C-States – STATUS AppleLPC loaded and P/C-States are present -superviza/theproto confirmed

Status legend:
VANILLANo fixes needed or DSDT/EFI fixes used only
EXTRASExtra KEXTs needed but not located in /S/L/E
MODIFICATIONSModifications or additions to /S/L/E or any other system file
UNSUPPORTEDNo useable driver exists for the device/chipset
UNKNOWNInitial status indicating further testing/verification is needed

For download packages see:

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=189621&pid=1296786

Another thread making progress:

http://myhpmini.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=2402

source: http://www.liliputing.com/2009/10/hp-mini-311-ram-can-be-upgraded.html

HP Mini 311 RAM can be upgraded

hp mini 311 ram upgrade

The HP Mini 311 (or Compaq Mini 311C in Europe) comes with 1GB of RAM soldered to the motherboard. At first glance, that might make this NVIDIA ION-powered laptop a bit less attractive, since it somewhat limits your upgrade options. But Blogeee reports there’s good news: There is another RAM slot that users can take advantage of to upgrade the RAM.

All you have to do is pop open the back and slide in a 2GB module to upgrade the memory to 3GB.

Source: http://www.liliputing.com/2009/10/hp-mini-311-with-ion-graphics-can-run-os-x.html

HP Mini 311 with ION graphics can run OS X

311 osx

Want an 11.6 inch mini-laptop with high performance graphics, and the ability to run OS X? It looks like the HP Mini 311 fits the bill.

ASRock ION 330 hackintosh

Source: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=178372&st=0#entry1217787

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Monday, October 12th, 2009 Uncategorized No Comments

Your Data’s Probably Gone Forever [Outages]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/BtPKBvdhhc8/t+mobile-sidekick-outrage-your-datas-probably-gone-forever

T-Mobile Sidekick users have been holding out hope that their data might be recovered after T-Mo issued an optimistic message of hope. But the carrier just updated users and admitted the truth: Your shit’s gone. Sorry, guys.

It’s been more than two weeks without data for Sidekick users, and T-Mobile finally bit the bullet and announced that it probably isn’t coming back. The quote:

Regrettably, based on Microsoft/Danger’s latest recovery assessment of their systems, we must now inform you that personal information stored on your device – such as contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists or photos – that is no longer on your Sidekick almost certainly has been lost as a result of a server failure at Microsoft/Danger. That said, our teams continue to work around-the-clock in hopes of discovering some way to recover this information. However, the likelihood of a successful outcome is extremely low.

This is pretty crappy of T-Mobile and Danger, and while it’s probably unfair to make this connection, doesn’t give us any new confidence in Project Pink, developed by the remnants of Danger after Microsoft acquired it. (After all, Microsoft bought Danger specifically because of their software services. And now, it just goes kablooey?) Renowned Sidekick user and a-hole Perez Hilton, while normally hysteric about just about everything, has the right tone here:

To add insult to injury, the ONLY thing T-Mobile is offering their customers, whom they obviously don’t value or respect, is one month of free data service.

That’s shit!

One month of free data service (which is not the same thing as one month of free phone use) for SEVEN DAYS of heartache and no access to contacts????

That’s fucked!!!!

Really, that’s kind of putting it lightly. [T-Mobile via Boy Genius Report]


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Saturday, October 10th, 2009 Uncategorized No Comments

Two viral campaigns – one drove sales, the other probably didn’t

Samsung’s extreme sheep LED art video went viral and was definitely passed along as the bit.ly stats show below, but whether it drove sales for Samsung, or whether people even knew what it meant (Samsung makes LED lit LCD TVs), no one will really know.

Whereas JetBlue’s All-You-Can-Jet Pass also went viral (similar order of magnitude of shares, again by way of the bit.ly stats) and it led straight to the page about the All-You-Can-Jet Pass where users could then go on to buy it.

In the case of Samsung, the video was cool, entertaining, and unexpected and went viral. But the link to sales was tenuous at best. In the case of JetBlue, the product itself went viral and the link to sales was direct.

Hmm…  which had a larger business impact?  you tell me.

samsung-extreme-sheep-LED-art

jetblue-all-you-can-jet

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Friday, September 11th, 2009 Uncategorized No Comments

The JKWeddingDance video was real; the viral effect was MANUFACTURED – Post 1 of 2

originally investigated and reported on Friday July 31, 2009 by Augustine Fou, with Tugce Esener @tesener

Several friends and colleagues had the same reaction when they found out about this video — that it was at such a high view count already and we were late to the party of finding out.  Then we did some more digging — digital forensics  :-)  And this is a case where a viral hit was indeed successfully manufactured.  There’s something to be learned from all this – how to successfully manufacture a viral video sensation and make viral profits.

Related: How to manufacture a viral video sensation and make viral profits – Post 2 of 2

Chris Brown is successfully tapping into the viral halo of a funny video that coincidentally used his song.

ReadWriteWeb article on how rights owners (Sony, Chris Brown) can make viral profits on other people using their work instead of suing them - http://bit.ly/KA3HI

The video was real. But promotional activities (possibly/likely paid) created the initial viral effect (led to the tipping point of the viral effect) which then got carried a further by people thinking they were simply late to the party, including myself (e.g. 440k bit.ly clicks and 3k detectable retweets out of the 13M views). The numbers don’t jive.

The viral halo has added 1 million more views to the video from August 1 – August 2.  (13.1 M to 14.5 M)


Ten ELEVEN TWELVE THIRTEEN proof points to follow, each with screen shot to illustrate.

1a. anyone notice that the “Forever” soundtrack is remarkably consistent throughout the video as if it were dubbed or added in after the original footage was shot. The sound is too consistent in volume and loudness to have come from a built-in, on-camera microphone. At the very end of the video, once it cuts back to the couple at the altar the sound quality goes back to the echo-y, tinny sound of an on-camera mic.

1b. The “TheKHeinz” user on YouTube was registered on July 19, 2009, the day the video was posted. We usually look for clues like this to detect “plants” by PR agencies.  This is an issue of trust — a user “CmdrTaco” on Slashdot has been around the forums for years, made hundreds of posts, and was rated by the community very highly. PR agencies trying to seed stories have to create new user accounts during the PR campaign (recent registration date) and have made no other posts or uploads before (no history).

thekheinz-user-info-on-youtube

2. The social intensity detected in all of the top social venues like Technorai, Delicious, Reddit, Digg, etc. indicate there was not enough organic sharing to support a view count of 13 million views in 11 days (updated: 14.6 million today August 2, 2009).

a) Bit.ly shows only 447k clicks on the shortened URL

bitly-statistics-on-jkwedding-video

“At Fortune’s Brainstorm:Tech conference Ashton Kutcher effectively took credit for boosting the views from – in his words – 12,500 views before he tweeted the link – to some 1.2 million views 12 hours later…”

Well, unfortunately he used a bit.ly link which provides public analytics on how many people clicked. Most tweets result in immediate traffic, which then tails off immediately after the tweet falls off the first page. In his case, look at the following bit.ly stats URL and click “past month” to see the peak clicks on July 23. All he can actually claim is that his tweet drove a peak of about 100,000 clicks on that day not 1.2 million :-(

http://bit.ly/info/Z7vMw

too bad Ashton. next time you make a BMOC claim, be sure to use a non trackable method, so analytics won’t “out” you so easily.

august-21-bitly-intensity-update

after only 3.5 days of retweets the twitter intensity died off to next-to-nothing; if this were a truly viral video, carried forth by real people (and not by paid PR support and paid media) the retweet intensity would remain high. As of August 21, there are over 21M views on the video and the 505k retweets does not show actual organic support for that number.

ashton-kutcher-promote-viral-video


b) Twitturly shows only 3 thousand retweets on the YouTube URL itself

updated-twitturly-stats-for-video

c) Delicious shows only 447 bookmarks of the video itself

delicious-bookmarks-jkwedding

delicious-bookmarks-jkweddingdance

d) Reddit only shows 673 thumbs up for the video itself

reddit-results-for-jkweddingvideo

e) Technorati shows only 277 blog mentions of the video itself — this could be undercounting if blogs used URL shorteners. But if you look at the blog intensity results (below) sorted by blogs with most authority the blogs have very little authority (i.e. influence or size of audience).

technorati-blog-posts-on-jkwedding

– these are real indications of interest by real people. The social intensity of the passalong for this video does not substantiate the huge number of views in 11 days.

What we are seeing now is the additional viral halo, as the momentum is sustained by large media outlets reporting on the story — even Google Blog blogged about it (boasting about the success of YouTube advertising in driving revenues). Of course TechCrunch is right that viral videos can be monetized: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/30/youtube-viral-wedding-videos-are-great-for-advertising/ )


3. Twitter shows nothing in the top “trending topics” related to this video – indicating few people are actually tweeting about it — if this video is SO viral (13M views in 11 days) then it has GOT to show up on a scan of social intensity. (see screen capture below)

July 31 (Friday)                 August 2 (Sunday)

twitter-trending-topics-455pm-july-31-2009August-2-trending-twitter-topics

4. The original video was posted July 19, 2009. The people from the video appeared on NBC’s Today Show and danced around Rockerfeller Center on July 25th (6 calendar days after posting). Today Show staff may be great at spotting news, but to get all the wedding party from the wedding to re-enact the dance on the Today Show in 6 calendar days — too good to be true?  Hmm…

today-show-appearance


5. Out of all the wedding videos on YouTube, how did Chris Brown detect this particular one that used his song. @glenngabe noted that there are song detection mechanisms  - ContentID - which detect the pattern of the copyrighted song and report that to the rights owners. We know there are hundreds, if not thousaands, or really funny wedding home videos — America’s Funniest Videos has been running for years and years on TV showing funny wedding blooper videos that people submitted to them.


6. ALL TEN of the top viral videos on AdAge’s Viral Video Chart took around 3 – 6 months to achieve full viral effect — not 6 days.  See all 10 videos’ stats, as reported by YouTube at the following link. This video has not shown up at all on the list of Adage viral videos.

AdAge Top Viral Videos all take 3 – 6 months to reach full viral effect



7. From @RedW0rm – YouTube Declares Wedding Video a Financial Success http://bit.ly/9ZUtu


8. also check the velocity of this http://twitter.com/#search?q=jkwedding or this http://twitter.com/#search?q=jkweddingdance notice the tweets are not seconds apart but hours apart. Something that achieved 13M views in the 11 days since posting would show far higher velocity or twitter intensity.

twitter-1-jkwedding

twitter-1-jkwedding

9.  For a top-trending topic on twitter, there is usually correspondingly high search volume that is detectable.  At first glance, terms related to this viral video like “jkwedding” or “jk wedding dance” all seem to spike.  But if you put it against even “Corazon Aquino” (one of the top trending topics NOW on Twitter) those JK wedding search volumes are dwarfed.  (see chart below).

corazon-aquino-search-volume

10.  Google only reports 366 links to the video and most of them are not even important websites (see Alexa blue bar)

google-in-links-for-jkwedding-video

11.  The video itself has no honors and no stats (yet); YouTube stats are conveniently turned off. Other videos have their stats graphs publicly available.

no-honors-for-jk-wedding-video

12. see the fine print in the YouTube description — For more information or to make a donation towards violence prevention please visit our website: http://www.jkweddingdance.com/ – why would a normal wedding video ask people to make a donation towards violence prevention? (see screen capture below), the WHOIS record shows the domain jkweddingdance.com was created 29-Jul-09 — today is 31-Jul-09

Updated: This was circumstantial evidence. A source confirmed that Jill is studying patterns of violence propagation for her PhD. Their choice of charity was their own choice. And the site was set up to help that cause.

violence-prevention-chris-brown

whois-jkweddingdance-part1

whois-jkweddingdance-part2

Conclusion?  The video itself is real, made by those nice people in the wedding. They may not even realize why or how their wedding video went viral (and the tens of thousands of other wedding videos on YouTube did not). On the Today Show, “The couple told Lauer they were surprised at the video’s popularity” (also see NY Daily News article – http://bit.ly/OA3iG )

Related articles:

ReadWriteWeb – Build Profit Not DMCA Suits

WSJ – YouTube Declares Wedding Video a Financial Success

PSFK – Co-opting Viral Hits to Sell More Music

TechCrunch – YouTube: Viral Wedding Videos Are Great For Advertising

Huffington Post – Viral Wedding on YouTube Drives Buyers to Chris Brown Music

ClickZ – http://blog.clickz.com/090805-160921.html

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Friday, July 31st, 2009 Uncategorized 37 Comments

The Perfect Babe – Megan Fox (pics)

Megan Fox  – The Perfect Babe Product Placement

megan-fox-1 megan-fox-2 megan_fox_covers_june_2009_ellemegan-fox-babemegan-fox-pink-strapless-dress

No, this post is not about Megan Fox. Well, yeah it is.  But it’s about the MARKETING of Megan Fox.

Megan Fox has been around in films and TV since 2001 (see filmography below).  But it wasn’t until 2007 when she starred in the first Transformers movie that she burst on the scene and became an overnight mega celebrity, especially online (see Google Search Volume chart).  If you look at Ford’s search volume during the same period, there was NO lift in search that was detectable — there probably was some lift, but it is simply not detectable.

So Megan Fox went from very very little awareness to not only massive awareness, but also massive demand — people remembered her name and even took action (performed searches on her name). If some product placements would have had only 10% of the success of the “megan fox” product placement, they might actually justify the immense cost a bit better (millions of dollars paid by the advertiser to the movie makers to place products into the storyline of the movie).

And why is she “perfect,” in the marketing sense, of course? Her search volume has not only sustained but also continued to grow. She was not a flash in the pan that went away after the advertising/media dollars stopped or the public interest died off (see the snuggie and etrade search volume charts below).

megan-fox-search

ford-search

snuggie

etrade-baby

megan-fox

transformer girl, second girl in transformers, other girl in transformers – Isabel Lucas

isabel-lucas-transformer-girl

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Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 SEO, Uncategorized, metrics 3 Comments

no wonder banner ads get so few clicks :-)

Add-Art Replaces Advertisements with Artwork

Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): Add-Art is a unique advertisement-blocking solution for Firefox. Instead of simply deleting ads from the page, it replaces them with art by featured artists.

The open-source project was inspired by the popularity of ad-blocking Firefox extensions—Adblock Plus, the perennial Lifehacker favorite, is downloaded over 250,000 times a week—and a desire to put all those blocked pitches to good use. Artists are selected by a team of curators to have their work displayed, and the roster is rotated every two weeks. An interesting twist to the project is that the artists themselves can target sites with their artwork—it’ll be up to you to decide why there are photographs of unicorns wearing party hats during your daily reading of the New York Times. Add-Art won’t be too tempting to those who ad-block to streamline for speed or memory use, but for those tired of seeing “ONE WEIGHT LOSS RULE” and the like might just enjoy the web a bit more. Add-Art is free, works wherever Firefox does.

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Tuesday, February 10th, 2009 digital, marketing No Comments