Hasta La Gadget!

The latest generation of gaming gadgets do some nifty tricks, and one of the niftiest they might perform is assisting the realm of medicine. Microsoft’s Kinect sounded like a candidate for surgery, and this month real-life surgeons have actually put it to use — Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto, Canada rigged the Xbox 360 depth camera to its medical imaging computer. Now, doctors don’t have to scrub out to manipulate an MRI scan, or even appoint a peon to the task — rather, they simply raise their bloodied glove, and dive into the digital imagery with a wave of a dextrous hand.

Meanwhile, the American Optometric Association has expanded upon its initial praise of Nintendo’s 3DS, saying the autostereoscopic 3D handheld “could be a godsend for identifying kids under 6 who need vision therapy.” Though Nintendo’s warning labels had originally incited a bit of fear among parents, the organization says that kids who can’t experience the 3DS to its full potential may have amblyopia (or other vision disorders) that can be more easily treated the earlier it’s caught, though one doctor interviewed by the Associated Press contends that kids with amblyopia may not know what they’re missing to begin with — so don’t necessarily expect a panacea, folks.

Kinect keeps surgeons on task, Nintendo 3DS might assist optometrists with diagnoses originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Mar 2011 07:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The front and back of Apple's iPhone 4 are composed of glass. Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

With some unauthorized hacks, you can share your smartphone’s internet connection with other devices, free of charge — and AT&T has had enough of that.

On the iPhone, for example, the hack MyWi has been a popular tool for “tethering” the handset’s internet connection for free, and just recently users of MyWi reported receiving text messages and e-mails from AT&T requiring them to “update” their plans.

“Well, that was fun while it lasted,” a MyWi user posted in a forum. “It was a good 3 years. Goodbye iPhone tethering.”

AT&T is telling users of free tethering that they have three options:

1. Stop using free tethering.
2. Contact AT&T to activate a legitimate tethering plan and start paying up.
3. Go ahead and keep tethering, and AT&T will automatically sign you up for a tethering plan and bill you.

Also known as mobile hot-spotting, the official tethering service provided by both AT&T and Verizon costs an additional $20 per month on top of data and voice plans. Free, unauthorized tethering has been accessible on the iPhone for years, and AT&T is only now beginning to crack down on people using the service without paying.

“We’ve just begun sending letters, e-mails, and text messages to a small number of smartphone customers who use their devices for tethering but aren’t on our required tethering plan,” an AT&T spokesman told Wired.com. “Our goal here is fairness for all of our customers.”

AT&T told Wired.com that it’s “able to determine if a smartphone customer is using the device as a broadband connection for other devices,” which isn’t surprising, because telecom carriers carefully monitor our mobile activities, counting the number of texts we send, voice-call minutes placed, and data used per month.

It’s unclear whether Verizon will take similar action on smartphone customers using free tethering tools. Verizon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Wired readers: Take our poll below! If you’re an AT&T customer and you’ve been tethering with your phone, we want to know whether you’ve heard from the carrier about it.

See Also:

• AT&T Adds iPhone Tethering, Kills Unlimited Data for iPad. Smartphones
• Verizon Denies Tethering, Hot Spot Features to Droid Customers
• Apple Approves, Pulls Flashlight App with Hidden Tethering Mode
• Verizon iPhone Tethering Plan: $20 and Two Extra Gigabytes
• AT&T Copies Verizon iPhone’s Tethering, Hot-Spot Plans

This article was written on December 05, 2007 by CyberNet.

We all know about hackers stealing data from wireless networks by breaking their encryption, but has the security of your wireless keyboard ever concerned you? If you think about it your keyboard sends anything you type (websites, passwords, instant messenger conversations, etc…) to your computer. What’s stopping hackers from tapping into your keyboard’s wireless stream and gathering data that could potentially compromise your security?

As expected wireless keyboard vendors like Microsoft and Logitech provide encryption techniques to prevent this kind of stuff from happening. One group of researchers, however, were able to crack Microsoft’s wireless security scheme (PDF report) and intercept any of the text that was being sent. According them even very slow computers would be able to brute force the encryption key because of how insecure it is:

To our surprise, only the actual keystroke data seems to be encrypted. The Metaflags and identifier bits aren’t encrypted or obfuscated. The one byte USB Hid code is encrypted using a simple XOR mechanism with a single byte of random data generated during the association procedure.

This means that there are only 256 different key values possible per keyboard and receiver pair. We did not notice any automated key change interval and therefore assume that the encryption key stays the same until the user reassociates the keyboard. 256 key combination can be brute forced even with very slow computers today.
…
Using simple wordlist checking in combination with a weightening algorythm, every data in range can be decrypted within only a few keystrokes.

They tested this technique on the Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop 1000 and 2000 keyboards, but they assume that other Microsoft wireless keyboards would produce the same results. As for Logitech they say that they have “additional software that seems to add another layer of encrpytion on top of the communication channel.”

For the sake of security the researches are withholding how to do this yourself, but they have submitted the information to Microsoft in hopes of seeing a patch soon. Good thing I’m still using an old fashioned wired keyboard.

[via The Register & CrunchGear]

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:

Turn a Windows Mobile Device into a Wireless RouterWhy Our Computers Are Not Fully WirelessMyFive: Reasons to Love Microsoft Office 2007Microsoft Office 2007 for $59 – "The Ultimate Steal"Default Router Passwords Expose Users to External Attacks, Duh!

Google Chrome may have come out of Pwn2Own unscathed, but you can rip through any website it (or another HTML5-compliant browser) displays — just pull out your handy Katamari Damacy ball and wreak havok on the page. Na NAaaa, na na na na na na na, na na na na na naaaa…

Alternatively, paste the following Javascript into a bookmark, and then click it when you’re tiring of a page.

javascript:var i,s,ss=[‘http://kathack.com/js/kh.js’,’http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.5.1/jquery.min.js’];
for(i=0;i!=ss.length;i++){s=document.createElement(‘script’);s.src=ss[i];document.body.appendChild(s);}void(0);

Katamari Hack rolls across your favorite websites, leaving swath of HTML5 destruction in its wake originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 13 Mar 2011 16:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft’s Kinect has become quite the hacking hotbed — the fields of medicine, music, and even shadow puppeteering have all benefitted from the peripheral’s incredible versatility. And now, to the delight of home automation nerds everywhere, an enterprising young hacker has rigged a Kinect to automate the lighting in his home. By positioning the camera bar in a corner to track his movements, connecting it to the automation controller, and coding on / off commands, he’s able to control the lights throughout his geektastic domicile. The automation logic then turns on the lights when entering the room, localizes them according to location, and turns them off upon leaving. One less thing to worry about — here’s hoping a method for spotting our perpetually misplaced keys is in version 2.0. Vid’s after the break.

Continue reading Kinect hacked for home automation, does your mood lighting for you (video)

Kinect hacked for home automation, does your mood lighting for you (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 Mar 2011 11:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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