North Korea Is Using Infected Mobile Games To Hack The Phones Of South Koreans

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/north-korea-used-mobile-games-to-hack-20000-south-koreans-2014-10

South Korea's spy agency claimed on Wednesday that North Korea used infected mobile games to hack the phones of over 20,000 South Koreans. 

The Korea times reports that the National Intelligence Service has accused the North Korean government of using its hacker army to disguise spying software as mobile apps. The games were linked to on websites popular in South Korea, and people then downloaded the apps.

The South Korean government hasn't released details on the hacked apps, which it now claims to have removed.

However, nknews.org recently reported on a mobile game which does originate from North Korea. Nice Pigs is alleged to have been created by a North Korean citizen living abroad to gain IT training that will help the country. There's no suggestion that Nice Pigs contained malware, but it does show that there are app developers working for the North Korea government.

North Korea has consistently denied launching cyber attacks on South Korea. Instead, it claims, that any reports of the country's hacker army are fabrications intended to increase tension on the border between the two countries.

SEE ALSO: How North Korea Became A Hacking Superpower

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Chinese artists create counterfeit stock images of artists

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/10/29/chinese-artists-create-counterfeit-stock-images-of-artists/

Stock Photos are glorious things. Yes, they're an important tool for sites such as our own, but they're also, perhaps more often than not, unintentionally hilarious. Services like Thinkstock, Shutterstock and Getty Images have birthed fantastic Tumblrs and Twitter accounts like StockFinds, Completely Unusable Stock Photos, and the somewhat-NSFW Porncomnents. They're solidly embedded in internet culture, and they're now also the inspiration behind A Contemporary Portrait of the Internet Artist, a collection of hand-painted copies of stock images of artists created by "underpaid Chinese painters."

The artworks are essentially counterfeits of Getty Images, and in an accompanying press release the team behind the project -- the IOCOSE collective -- explains the methodology by which they were created will be naturally replicated. "The digital images of the portraits will circulate online, be copied, posted and tweeted by journalists and bloggers. The portraits might be bought and become private property, but also continue being exhibited and photographed." IOCOSE's copyright-skirting sourcing of these images, and their intent for them to be replicated, is conceived as a subversive commentary on exploitation, outsourcing, and copyright issues surrounding modern creative industries. You can see the collection below, and if you're intrigued as to what the originals look like, you can follow the link in each image.

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Source: IOCOSE

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Vimeo plans to offer video subscriptions

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/10/29/vimeo-plans-subscriptions/

You'd think that YouTube would launch a subscription video service ahead of its rivals given its love of original content, but someone might just beat it to the punch. Vimeo's Kerry Trainor tells Recode that his company already has a subscription option in development. He's not providing details of how it will work, but it would be a logical extension of Vimeo's successful On Demand option. Viewers want to pay for a "whole world of content" that wouldn't reach them any other way, he says. However it pans out, Vimeo might want to hurry -- YouTube is openly toying with the idea of its own subscription service, and it could easily steal the thunder from competitors if it's first out of the gate.

[Image credit: Brian Crano, Vimeo]

Filed under: Internet, Google

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Source: Recode (1), (2)

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At just 4.85mm, Oppo R5 is the world's slimmest smartphone

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/10/29/oppo-r5/

Step aside, Gionee, as your record for the world's slimmest smartphone has just been beaten by a fellow Chinese manufacturer. Oppo's R5, the successor to the Asia-only R3, comes in at just 4.85mm thick, thus beating the 5.15mm-thick Elife S5.1 from Gionee. Despite the crazy thin metallic body, the R5 still packs a handful of goodies: a 5.2-inch full HD AMOLED screen, an octa-core (quad 2.1GHz and quad 1.5GHz), 64-bit Snapdragon 615 SoC, 2GB of RAM, 5MP/13MP cameras (both with f/2.0 aperture), LTE radio and a 2,000 mAh battery. All of this comes in at just 155g heavy. Of course, there's bound to be a trade-off: You only get 16GB of internal storage, no microSD expansion and, unlike the Elife S5.1, no 3.5mm headphone connector here -- you'll need to use the bundled micro-USB adapter or Bluetooth (there's an optional O-Music Bluetooth clip for your headphones and for triggering the camera).

Build quality and body strength aren't an issue on the pre-production unit we played with in Shenzhen. The metallic frame is nicely chamfered and manually polished to give a comfortable grip. What's more, while most slim phones are known to expose more heat to the surface, the R5 uses a phase-shifting material -- as featured on modern PC motherboards -- to help cool the internal components; but we'll need to probably test the phone to see if this works as well as it claims. If we must pick a fault at this stage, it'd be the main camera module that sticks out a little on the back, which can be forgiven for the sake of maintaining image quality.

Much like the N3 announced alongside it, the R5 comes with Color OS 2.0 (based on Android 4.4) which packs some handy features plus a few new ones. For one, the old gesture panel can now be toggled by dragging up from the Home button, thus letting you draw customized gestures to launch apps or open contacts. By default, you can draw a "V" to turn on the flashlight, draw a circle to launch the camera, or draw a "W" to launch WeChat.

As for the new camera app, you get a greater freedom of customization by installing your desired features as plug-ins: "HD Picture" (to make super detailed 64-megapixel images), "Slow Shutter," "Beautify," "Professional," "Super Macro," "GIF mode" and more. These are also featured on the N3, naturally.

Another common feature shared between the R5 and the N3 is the VOOC rapid charging. Using the bundled charger, the 2,000 mAh cell can go from zero to well above 75 percent in just half an hour, though the exact charging time is yet to be determined. We should know soon, anyway, as the R5 is slated for the global market this December, and it'll come in silver, gold and grey with an off-contract price of $499.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

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âSecurity researcher uses radio frequencies to smuggle data out of isolated network

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/10/29/fm-data-leaking/

Think your completely isolated, internet-disconnected "air gap" computer network is secure from wireless infiltration? Think again -- security researchers at Ben-Gurion University in Israel have found a way to lift data from closed networks using little more than a standard computer monitor and FM radio waves. It's a pretty clever trick: researchers have created a keylogging app called AirHopper that can transmit radio frequencies by exploiting the PC's display. A companion app on an FM-equipped smartphone can decode those transmissions and record the host machine's keystrokes in real-time.

It's not the first time FM radio waves have been used to smuggle data out of an air gap network, but this method can be done without PC connected speakers and without either device being connected to an outside network. Like previous methods, it doesn't it has a fairly short range (about 7 meters) and can't transmit more than a few bytes a second, but that's more than enough to nab passwords or other sensitive text data. The group has already released a short video of the exploit in action, and intends to publish a more detailed paper on the subject at Malcon 2014 later this week.

[Image credit: Dimitri Otis]

Filed under: Desktops, Misc

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Source: Ben Gurion University

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