Hasta La Gadget!

Over 60 Barnes & Noble stores have been used by hackers to gain the credit card data, including the PINs, of customers. The security breach was discovered in the middle of September, but was not revealed per request by government agencies so that the hackers could be identified. The data was gathered via compromised keypads, which recorded each swiped card’s information.

A total of 63 stores had the compromised keypads, and were located around the country, including Chicago, San Diego, New York City, and Miami. Barnes & Noble issued a statement saying that customers who shopped at any of the 63 stores should change their PINs as a precaution, as well as check out their recent bank statements for anything out of the ordinary.

As can be imagined, some customers aren’t terribly happy that they weren’t informed about the security breach. Barnes & Noble says that its decision to withhold the info from customers was due to “the direction of the U.S. government,” which instructed the company to keep quiet. Barnes & Noble says that it notified credit card companies of the breach, however.

It continued to say that the company received two letters from the South District of New York’s attorney’s office stating that it wasn’t obligated to share the security breach with customers while the investigation was ongoing. Barnes & Noble, in an effort to identify and eradicate the compromised hardware, sent all 7,000 of its keypads from every store to a company that checked them out. The result was that one keypad was compromised per store, for a total of 63 hacked devices.

[via New York Times]

Barnes & Noble hackers gain customers’ credit card information is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

As much as we love the Arduino Uno, it’s not the most powerful of hobbyist microcontrollers. Fortunately, the folks in Turin have just put the finishing touches on a 32-bit upgrade with buckets of potential. At the heart of the Arduino Due is an 84MHz Atmel CPU, based on ARM’s Cortex M3 Architecture, which is capable of being the brains inside your own flying drone or homemade 3D printer. It should start trickling out onto shelves from today, setting you back $49, but hey, that’s a small price to pay to automate your drinking adventures.

Continue reading Meet the Arduino Due, the 32-bit board that’ll let your projects fly (really)

Filed under: Misc

Meet the Arduino Due, the 32-bit board that’ll let your projects fly (really) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Oct 2012 09:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Pacemakers save millions of lives, but a security researcher has shown that they can be used to kill on a massive scale as well. Speaking at the Breakpoint security conference, Barnaby Jack of IO Active reverse engineered a pacemaker transmitter – a device like this one used to monitor installed pacemakers – eventually enabling him to wirelessly deliver 830v shocks to a pacemaker using his laptop. Yikes.

Image Credit: Library Mistress

Even worse, Jack warned that a hacked transmitter could control all pacemakers within 30ft. Aside from jolting people, the compromised device could also be used to read and write patient data or load infected firmware into a pacemaker. These infected firmware could even be made to jump and infect other pacemakers, extending a malicious attackers’ range and possibly resulting to mass murder. Jack says he demonstrated this flaw in order to warn pacemaker manufacturers to step up the security of their device. Let’s hope they do.

[via SC Magazine via DVICE]

Ever since my iPhone 5 showed up with its tiny new Lightning connector, I don’t use a dock anymore. Maybe once my overpriced 30-pin adapter shows up, I will, and maybe it’ll be this one.

In one of the more unusual examples of “upcycling” old tech, iasVintage took an old Panasonic Newvicon Omnipro camcorder from the 1980s and transformed it into an iPhone dock. Why? To prove it could be done, I suppose. But wait – there’s more. This thing isn’t just a dock for your iOS device, no. It’s also a lamp! Now all they need to do is turn that weird little fold-out keyboard into a Bluetooth keyboard for the iPhone, and it’ll be perfect.

If you long for the days of camcorders you had to carry on your shoulder, you can grab this oddity over on Etsy for $65(USD). You’ll have to pony up a few more dollars if you want one of those cool vintage filament bulbs like the one in the picture, though.

If you’re trying to get on Facebook at the moment and the site isn’t cooperating, you’re definitely not alone. The Next Web is reporting that throughout the day, Facebook has gone down in places like Austria, Norway, Germany, Greece, France, Italy, and Sweden. Making things much more interesting is Twitter user AnonymousOwn3r, who is claiming to be the one bringing Facebook to its knees.

If AnonymousOwn3r is telling the truth, then that would mean the now-infamous group Anonymous is behind the Facebook outage. Just a few minutes ago, he tweeted that he’d be halting his attack so people could get back on the social network, but it’s hard to tell if he’s telling the truth. As far as we can see, he hasn’t given a reason for his attack on Facebook, only saying that he tried to carry out the attack yesterday but was unsuccessful.

It seems that he has enjoyed plenty of success today, though, apparently bringing Facebook down across Europe. The Next Web reminds us that this is the same Anonymous member who claimed the attack on GoDaddy last month. That attack brought down millions of GoDaddy-hosted sites and kept them down for hours, effectively making millions of site owners angry in the process.

It seems that this was an attack on Facebook’s DNS servers, as trying to access touch.facebook.com brings up the site with no problems. If AnonymousOwn3r is serious when he says that he’s halting his attack on Facebook (and he’s responsible for bringing Facebook down in the first place), then the service should be coming back across Europe soon. If you live in Europe, do you have access to Facebook yet, or is it still down for you?

Facebook goes down around the world in apparent Anonymous attack is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.