Gearfuse

Two doctoral students, Martin Vuagnoux and Sylvain Pasini from the Security and Cryptography Laboratory at the Swiss Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, have discovered a potential threat to security that declares keyboards “unsafe to transmit sensitive information”.

By monitoring signals produced by keystrokes, the researchers were able to reproduce what had been typed on 11 different keyboards using a variety of different attacks. One specific attack worked as far away as 20 meters from the keyboard. The next time you find yourself exchanging top secret information with someone on the Internet, you best watch what you type; the KGB could be monitoring your keystrokes.

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What better way to translate audio signals into light patterns than with this DIY project from Electronicpeasant.com. Throwing a few parties at your house while your rents are in Tahiti? Build a bunch of these, throw on some jam band music and take some hallucinogens to pay tribute to the late great Albert Hoffman. Perhaps some of your friends could bring over their DIY E-bolas to turn the party into a real rave that’ll have the police there (partying with you) in hours (they were busy).  With LEDs for lights, the color organ was designed for extended battery use and doesn’t burn too much power. After all, no one wants to change a battery whilst under the influence.

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TENS is Transcutaneous Electric Nerve Stimulation for short. It works by disrupting the pain signals originating from the nerves near the pain spot, so the area that would normally be in pain is reduced to a mere tingling sensation. It’s like having a constant little massage at the point that causes you the most discomfort.

You can’t get one of these godsends without a prescription from your doctor. Further more, you can’t use the TENS unit to charge a battery or jump a car. It’s wise to only be used for two hour intervals at a time. A break must be taken in between, otherwise the electrode pads would get too hot, then you’d really have something to cry about.

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Unsecured networks, get ready for your worst nightmare (if you imagine this said in the voice of the movie trailer voice-over guy it’s much more funny.) No signal is safe from… The WiFi Predator.

The Predator is basically a modified wireless router connected to a high powered antennae, which runs off of a custom honed firmware, scoping out Wifi signals from a distance, and tapping into any unsecured wireless connections. If more than one signal is found, the Predator automatically chooses the one with the highest signal. This summer… no Starbucks is safe. (more…)