Superman-like X-ray vision now a reality through Wi-Fi technology

We could all now have Superman-like X-ray vision - thanks to researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

Researchers have long attempted to build a device capable of seeing people through walls. However, previous efforts to develop such a system have involved the use of expensive and bulky radar technology that uses a part of the electromagnetic spectrum only available to the military.

Now a system being developed by Dina Katabi, a professor in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and her graduate student Fadel Adib, could give all of us the ability to spot people in different rooms using low-cost Wi-Fi technology.

“We wanted to create a device that is low-power, portable and simple enough for anyone to use, to give people the ability to see through walls and closed doors,” Katabi said.

The system, called “Wi-Vi,” is based on a concept similar to radar and sonar imaging.

But in contrast to radar and sonar, it transmits a low-power Wi-Fi signal and uses its reflections to track moving humans. It can do so even if the humans are in closed rooms or hiding behind a wall.

To do this, the system uses two transmit antennas and a single receiver.

The two antennas transmit almost identical signals, except that the signal from the second receiver is the inverse of the first.

As a result, the two signals interfere with each other in such a way as to cancel each other out.

Since any static objects that the signals hit — including the wall — create identical reflections, they too are cancelled out by this nulling effect.

In this way, only those reflections that change between the two signals, such as those from a moving object, arrive back at the receiver, Adib said. 

Microsoft's 'MoodScope' Phone Software Senses Your Mood

IDG News Service — your phone is there, always watching. It's your life companion, according to one manufacturer. So shouldn't it be able to tell your mood, too? Microsoft thinks so.

In a research paper, Microsoft said that by analyzing phone calls, texts, the browser history, and other common smartphone interactions, a new MoodScope service it developed could accurately predict the user's mood 93 percent of the time after a two-month period. This was after the phone was "trained" to sense the user's mood.

So what good is it? After all, you don't need your phone to tell you how you feel. Instead, the idea is that your phone's new "mood sensor" will tell others how you feel--social networks, your friends, even your mom.

Furthermore, that information could be passed along to services like Spotify, which could curate an emo-weighted playlist for when you're down in the dumps. Microsoft even created a "MoodScope social-sharing application" to share user’s moods to their Facebook Timelines.

Yes, this is for oversharers. Microsoft isn't proposing that all phones should sense your mood, automatically, but that it would be based with an app and tapped into via an API.

Somewhat ironically, researchers have never tested the technology with a Windows Phone; they used a combination of Android phones and iPhones for the study, using 32 participants from the United States and China.

"We foresee mood inference as a vital next step for application context-awareness," wrote Robert LiKamWa, Yunxin Liu,A Nicholas D. Lane,andA Lin Zhong, the co-authors of the study. All, except for Rice University's Zhong, worked for Microsoft Research. "Such inference would improve the utility of the smartphone and lower the social barrier for sharing mood."

How does it work?

Specifically, the researchers used SMS, email, phone call, application usage, web browsing, and location to determine mood, defined as a persistent emotional state, rather than flashes of one emotion or another. Microsoft naturally used both the phone and a cloud service to collaboratively produce its MoodScope responses.

What the researchers found is that determining mood wasn't easy; they first had to ask the users to record what their moods were every four hours, and use that to determine a general mood model.

Over time, however, the general mood model cut down the training time to about ten days, during which moods were sensed with 72 percent accuracy.

The paper does not draw any specific conclusions about how smartphone use is tied to mood, such as happy users frequently accessing their phones. But the paper does conclude that phone calls, certain categories of applications, and locations are often tied to a pleasurable mood.

As academic papers often do, the authors are conservative in their conclusions, noting avenues for further research--such as, for example, rises in frustration levels tied to heavy traffic.

MoodScope sound innocent enough. But also keep in mind that gauging emotional response is a key component of assessing the effectiveness of advertising. In 2012, Microsoft filed for this patent on using sensors to assess emotion --imagine that a Web page that knew you were sad might target you for an ad pushing comfort food, for example.

Yes, mood and emotion are two different things, as the paper points out. But there's always a tradeoff; on one hand, knowing your mood may provide better recommendations for music and other services. But they can also be used against you.

Vulnerability Allows Attackers to Modify Android Apps Without Breaking Their Signatures

IDG News Service — a vulnerability that has existed in Android for the past four years can allow hackers to modify any legitimate and digitally signed application in order to transform it into a Trojan program that can be used to steal data or take control of the OS.

Researchers from San Francisco mobile security startup firm Bluebox Security found the flaw and plan to present it in greater detail at the Black Hat USA security conference in Las Vegas later this month.

The vulnerability stems from discrepancies in how Android apps are cryptographically verified, allowing an attacker to modify application packages (APKs) without breaking their cryptographic signatures.

When an application is installed and a sandbox is created for it, Android records the application's digital signature, said Bluebox Chief Technology Officer Jeff Forristal. All subsequent updates for that application need to match its signature in order to verify that they came from the same author, he said.

This is important for the Android security model because it ensures that sensitive data stored by one application in its sandbox can only be accessed by new versions of that application that are signed with the original author's key.

The vulnerability identified by the Bluebox researchers effectively allows attackers to add malicious code to already signed APKs without breaking their signatures.

The vulnerability has existed since at least Android 1.6, code named Donut, which means that it potentially affects any Android device released during the last four years, the Bluebox researchers said Wednesday in a blog post.

"Depending on the type of application, a hacker can exploit the vulnerability for anything from data theft to creation of a mobile botnet," they said.

The vulnerability can also be exploited to gain full system access if the attacker modifies and distributes an app originally developed by the device manufacturer that's signed with the platform key -- the key that manufacturers use to sign the device firmware.

"You can update system components if the update has the same signature as the platform," Forristal said. The malicious code would then gain access to everything -- all applications, data, accounts, passwords and networks. It would basically control the whole device, he said.

Attackers can use a variety of methods to distribute such Trojan apps, including sending them via email, uploading them to a third-party app store, hosting them on any website, copying them to the targeted devices via USB and more.

Some of these methods, especially the one involving third-party app stores, are already being used to distribute Android malware.

Using Google Play to distribute apps that have been modified to exploit this flaw is not possible because Google updated the app store's application entry process in order to block apps that contain this problem, Forristal said. The information received by Bluebox from Google also suggests that no existing apps from the app store have this problem, he said.

However, if an attacker tricks a user to manually install a malicious update for an app originally installed through Google Play, the app will be replaced and the new version will no longer interact with the app store. That's the case for all applications or new versions of applications, malicious or non-malicious, that are not installed through Google Play, Forristal said.

Google was notified of the vulnerability in February and the company shared the information with their partners, including the members of the Open Handset Alliance, at the beginning of March, Forristal said. It is now up to those partners to decide what their update release plans will be, he said.

Forristal confirmed that one third party device, the Samsung Galaxy S4, already has the fix, which indicates that some device manufacturers have already started releasing patches. Google has not released patches for its Nexus devices yet, but the company is working on them, he said.

Google declined to comment on the matter and the Open Handset Alliance did not respond to a request for comment.

The availability of firmware updates for this issue will differ across device models, manufacturers and mobile carriers.

Whether a combination of device manufacturers and carriers, which play an important role in the distribution of updates, coincide to believe that there is justification for a firmware update is extremely variable and depends on their business needs, Forristal said. "Ideally it would be great if everyone, everywhere, would release an update for a security problem, but the practical reality is that it doesn't quite work that way, he said."

The slow distribution of patches in the Android ecosystem has long been criticized by both security researchers and Android users. Mobile security firm Duo Security estimated last September, based on statistics gathered through its X-Ray Android vulnerability assessment app, that more than half of Android devices are vulnerable to at least one of the known Android security flaws.

Judging by Android's patch distribution history so far, the vulnerability found by the Bluebox researchers will probably linger on many devices for a long time, especially since it likely affects a lot of models that have reached end-of-life and are no longer supported.

The Future of Civil Disobedience Online

                        

Familiar political tools like petitions, fundraisers, mass letter-writing, call-in campaigns now have online equivalents. But what about protest tactics like street marches, picket lines, sit-ins, and occupations? Where is the room on the internet for civil disobedience?

In the offline United States, civil disobedience is widely respected as a valid form of political activism. It also has a widely recognized form. Indelible images of Rosa Parks, lunch counter sit-ins, and street marches from the 1950s and 60s civil rights era established what civil disobedience looked like. Civil disobedience looked like an embattled minority bravely standing up in face of clear injustice. It looked like people taking a stand with their bodies and their identities, and often getting arrested.

This pattern of public, performative defiance of injustice, followed by arrest, has become part of the recognized script for political activism in the United States. It's how we expect activism to happen: on the streets, in public, where everyone can see your face. Adhering to a recognized script is essential to political activism that is reliant on the attention of the media to be effective.

But today, civil disobedience often looks very different. Networked technologies mean our opportunities for effective political activism have increased exponentially. Where activists once put their physical bodies on the line to fight for their causes, online activists can engage in digitally-based acts of civil disobedience from their keyboards. There are three major lines along which digitally-based civil disobedience is developing: disruption, information distribution, and infrastructure. Each has its own particular challenges and benefits.

Disruption

Disruptive tactics like distributed denial of service (DDOS) actions and website defacements have a fairly long history in internet terms. Activists groups like the Electronic Disturbance Theater, the Strano Network, pro-Palestinian groups, and many others used DDOS and website defacements in their campaigns as early as the mid-1990s. These tactics aim to upset the status quo by disrupting the normal flow of information, thereby attracting attention to their cause and message.

Disruptive tactics are focused on the public: they aim to deliver their message to as many people as possible, either through exposing them to the disruption and dissent, recruiting them to take part, or both. To be effective, this type of civil disobedience needs to attract the attention of masses of people, typically through the mainstream media. If the media doesn't recognize or cover the actions as acts of protest, then the activist message will fall flat. (If an activist defaces a corporate website, and no one sees it, does it have political impact? Probably not.)

Information Distribution

Information distribution-based tactics are built around the acquisition and release of hidden or secret information. In the past three years, we've seen this kind of protest take the form of whistleblowing, information exfiltration, doxxing (posting the names and personal information of targets online), and crowd-sourced vigilante investigations. These tactics are used by groups like Wikileaks and Anonymous. The idea is to move information from states of low visibility to high visibility, putting injustices in the public eye when traditional law enforcement avenues seem to have failed.

Anonymous has been developing crowd-sourced vigilante investigations in the US and Canada with Steubenville, #JusticeforReteah, and other ops. ""Human flesh search"" message boards are already popular in China, giving netizens the chance to bring formerly untouchable corrupt officials to justice. The FindtheBostonBombers subreddit was a home-grown example of this kind of crowd-sourced vigilante investigation. The goal of this class of tactics is to empower people to take action by adding to the information landscape.

Whistleblowers and leakers rely on the cooperation of the mainstream media to publicize, contextualize, and analyze the information they release. However, this may become easier as more news organization recognize open paths for whistleblowers and leakers. Wikileaks' five media partners for the Cablegate documents, the New Yorker's Strongbox program, and theGuardian's extensive work with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden are all examples of how cooperation between whistleblowers and news organizations is growing.

Infrastructure

Infrastructure-based activism involves the creation of alternate systems to replace those that have been compromised by state or corporate information-gathering schemes. In other words, if the government is snooping on the internet, activists build a tool to make it harder for them to see everything. Tor, Diaspora, and indenti.ca are some examples of these projects, as are the guerrilla VPNs and network connections that often spring up to serve embattled areas, provided by activists in other countries.

Similar to living off the grid, these projects provide people with options beyond the default. Open source or FLOSS software and Creative Commons use a similar tactic: when the system stops working, create a new system. The challenge is to bring these new systems into widespread use without allowing them to be compromised, either politically or technically. However, these new systems often have to fight network effects as they struggle to attract users away from dominant systems. Diaspora faced this issue with Facebook. Without being able to disrupt dominant systems, user migration is often slow and piecemeal, lacking the impact activists hope for.

Illustration by Osmont2

Disruption, information distribution, and infrastructure tactics and strategies are often practiced by separate groups working independently on different issues. Sometimes disparate group interests will overlap, as when Anonymous launched the disruptive Operation Payback in support of Wikileaks during Cablegate, but there is little inter-group organization.

As the practice of civil disobedience develops online, those who favor different styles of activism but who are united in a common cause may begin organizing themselves into affinity group-style coalitions, building alliances for more effective activism. Effective digitally-based civil disobedience needs a diverse, integrated repertoire of contention to draw from. A disruptive action targeting Facebook could drive users towards alternate, more open, social networking services. A leak detailing government intelligence abuses could spur disruptive protests, consumer flight to uncompromised services, or further leaks.

On the street, activists at major events like political conventions or meetings of groups like the WTO or G8 often use a variety of tactics to provide support within affinity groups, and to make it harder for protest to be neutralized by law enforcement. Street marches are counter balanced by occupations and lock-ins. Posters and pamphlets will be augmented by street art, puppets, and ad hoc street theater. Jail solidarity actions are helped by speeches on the courthouse steps. Though one action may get shut down, others can still make an impact. Digital activists will want to emulate this coalition-building in online spaces too.

As digital activism develops, civil disobedience will continue to a be vital tool for expressing dissent. The internet could be the tomorrow's best zone for free speech and activism, a place where protesters can challenge structures of power that threaten human rights and freedoms. The future of digital civil disobedience will grow out of new online tactics, augmented by the internet's ability to bring people together across geographical boundaries.

Protest in the information age may not look exactly like Rosa Parks on that bus half a century ago. But it will still carry on our ongoing struggle to change the world for the better, and to bring justice to the oppressed.

CloudCube

CloudCube is the powerful management tool for browse and sync data with your cloud storages.

Unique features will allow you to do any work with your storages quickly, simply and easy:

• Look through files at once several storages at the same time - forget about "two-panel" modes with unique feature "group viewing" which will allow you to work with any number of storages as though this one.

• Download, modify and upload your files without any delays – application will react to any your actions immediately, no matter if you have internet connection or not.

• Download and upload folders entirely – application will do recursive bypass of folders and will make download/upload of any found files.

• Synchronize any folders on your device with any folders of storages and vice versa – simply connect two folders and forget about any additional actions. If you don't want to forget – your right, use manual start of process of synchronization.

• Get full control of any application activity – any action of application will be queued, where you can always remove or suspend it. Also, you can always suspend or resume work of full queue in case of need.

• Be aware of any problems during the work with storages – at emergence of any problem (for example, the file demands confirmation on rewriting/removal/updating, the storage demands repeated authorization etc.) the application will prompt you to make some choice and you never lose your data.

The following accounts are supported:

1) Google Drive

2) Drop box

3) Box

4) SkyDrive

5) Yandex.Disk

6) Copy

7) SugarSync

8) 4shared

Need to Charge Your Phone Fast? Switch to Airplane Mode

If you've ever needed to charge your phone but known you had to leave an outlet behind in just a few minutes, here's a way to get the most possible charge for your precious time at a charger: Put your phone in Airplane Mode first.

Putting your phone into airplane mode turns off all of the wireless radios inside, so while you won't be able to receive calls, use data, or use GPS, you also won't be fighting background processes that use those radios for power while your phone is plugged in. The end result is your phone will charge a little faster, and you'll walk away with a bit more power in your battery than you would otherwise. Of course, you could get a similar effect by just turning your phone off (sans power required to shut down/start up), but this is a bit easier.

SnapPea - Manage your Android Phone via from your Computer

Manage your phone from the web! It's fast and easy with SnapPea.
Manage photos and contacts. Text message from your computer. 
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Install the mobile app here on Google Play

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✓ Manage your photos and contacts
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Life Hacker: "Think of [SnapPea] as something of an "iTunes for Android," without the terrible performance."
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SnapPea Photos, your Android photos in just one click: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/snappea-photos/epindigjbiphgfhnmlpcocaiafjgbabe?hl=EN
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