A Few Months Back, Microsoft impressed the world with 'Microsoft loves Linux' announcements, including, development of a custom Linux-based OS for running Azure Cloud Switch and selecting Ubuntu as the operating system for its Cloud-based Big Data services.
Now, a renowned Windows Hacker and computer expert, who goes by the name ‘WalkingCat’, discovered that the latest version of Windows 10 may have a Linux subsystem secretly installed inside.
According to his tweets, hacker spotted two mysterious files, LXss.sys and LXCore.sys, in the most latest Windows 10 Redstone Build 14251, which are suspected to be part of Microsoft’s Project Astoria.
Project Astoria, also known as Windows Bridge for Android, is a toolkit that allows running Android apps on Windows 10 Mobile devices.
The naming convention for latest discovered files is very similar to the Android Subsystem files from Project Astoria, i.e. ADss.sys.
So, the "LX" in these name, however, can only be taken for one thing, and that is LINUX, which suggests the Windows 10 will have access to a Linux subsystem also.
Why a Linux Subsystem?
Since Windows 10 has been introduced as a Universal Operating system for all devices, so it might be possible that Microsoft wants to expand Project Astoria from mobile devices to desktop users.
If this comes to be true, adding a Linux subsystem will be beneficial in case Microsoft has plans to offer support for Linux applications, especially servers related technology and software.
Have you Safeguarded your PC with a Comodo Antivirus? Then you need to inspect your system for privacy and security concerns.
First of all, make sure whether your default browser had been changed to "Chromodo" -- a free browser offered by Comodo Antivirus.
If your head nod is "Yes," then you could be at risk!
Chromodo browser, which is supplied along with the installation of Comodo Anti-Virus Software and marketed as 'Private Internet Browser' for better security and privacy, automatically overrides system settings to set itself as your 'Default Browser.'
And secondly, the main security concern about Comodo Antivirus is that the Chromodo browser has 'Same Origin Policy' (SOP) disabled by default.
Google's security researcher Tavis Ormandy, recently shouted at Comodo for disabling SOP by default in its browser settings that violates one of the strongest browser security policy.
Ormandy notes that "all shortcuts are replaced with Chromodo links and all settings, cookies, etc are imported from Chrome. They also hijack DNS settings, among other shady practices."
Moreover, this is a total unethical movement to change default browser settings without users' knowledge.
Same Origin Policy (SOP) is one of the browser security policies that permits scripts running in a web browser to only make requests to pages on the same domain.
If enabled, Same Origin Policy will prevent malicious scripts on one page from obtaining access to sensitive data on another web page.
What If, Same Origin Policy is Disabled
To understand this, assume you are logged into Facebook and somehow visits a malicious website in another tab.
With SOP disabled, various malicious script files on that website could take over the control of your Facebook profile, allowing malicious actors to compromise your account with access to your private messages, post status updates, etc.
The same thing Comodo is doing with its users, by default disabling SOP in Chromodo that could allow attackers to:
Steal session authentication cookies.
Perform malicious actions through script code.
Even Replace trusted websites with attacker-created HTML design.
How to Check, If your Browser has SOP Enabled/Disabled
If you are still unsure whether your browser is SOP disabled, then visit this link.
If you are getting a prompt as "Browser appears to be fine," then you are out of danger.
But, if you are getting a negative approach such as "Your browser is not enforcing the SOP," you are advised to migrate to other browsers such as Chrome or Firefox for your self-defense against any malicious attack.
Where tech companies like Facebook and Google prefer to move their data centers to colder countries to reduce their air conditioning bill, Microsoft has come up with an even better home for data centers while cutting high energy costs for cooling them: Under the Sea.
Here's what Microsoft says:
"50% of us live near the coast. Why doesn't our data?"
Building massive data centers underwater might sound crazy, but it is exactly something Microsoft is testing with its first submarine data center, dubbed Leona Philpot.
World's First Underwater Data Center
The testing is part of Microsoft’s plan dubbed Project Natick — an ongoing research project to build and run a data center that is submerged in the ocean, which the company believes, could make data centers faster, cost-effective, environmentally friendly and easier to set up.
Leona Philpot (named after the Halo character from Microsoft's Xbox) was tested last August, when engineers placed an enormous steel capsule a kilometer off the California coast, 30 feet underwater in the Pacific Ocean.
A single datacenter computing rack was placed in an eight-foot-wide steel capsule, which was covered in around 100 sensors to monitor every aspect of the underwater conditions: pressure, humidity, and, most importantly, motion.
The test ran from August to November last year (exactly 105 days) and the engineers said it was more successful than expected.
Why Underwater Data Center?
According to Microsoft, these are the main reasons for experimenting with underwater data centers:
1. Air conditioning cost is one of the biggest pain in running data centers. Traditional data centers are believed to consume up to 3 percent of the world's electricity.
So, placing the data centers in the ocean eliminated the need for cooling and will highly cut energy costs required to cool the heat generated by the racks upon racks of servers that process and store the world's digital lives.
2. Half of the world's population is located within 200 kilometers of the coast, so placing data centers in the sea would reduce latency – the time data takes to travel from its source to customers, which simply means faster delivery of data.
3. Reduce the time to build a data center from 2 Years to 90 Days. Microsoft believes that if it can mass produce the steel capsules, the company could build data centers in just 90 days.
This would make its operations cheaper and much quicker than the time needed to set a data center up on land.
Moreover, the capsules designed by the company would also adopt new, innovative rack designs that do not even need to consider human interaction.
4. Use of Renewable Energy. The project's engineers even believe that in future, underwater data centers might be able to power themselves by renewable energy, as in this case, perhaps underwater turbines or tidal power to generate electricity.
5. Environment-Friendly. Microsoft will also be tackling environmental concerns related to underwater data centers. The company says its current underwater data center prototype emits an "extremely" small amount of heat energy into the surrounding waters.
A Few Limitations:
Data centers on land are open for IT engineers to fix issues and replace servers whenever required, but the company wants its undersea data centers to go without maintenance for years at a time.
Since Microsoft doesn't have a team of Scuba engineers, each Natick data center unit would operate for over 5 years without maintenance and then it would be dragged up to the surface to have its internal parts replaced.
Other obvious risks for submarine data centers could be saltwater that is corrosive and weather that can also be a problem, to name just two potential hurdles.
Future Of The Data Center
The company started working on this idea in 2013, but the development of a physical prototype began in 2014 and August last year with its first ever submarine data server, Leona Philpot.
Since Microsoft's Project Natick has been in its "early days," it is hard to say when underwater data centers can actually adopted. However, Microsoft has plans to design a new version of underwater data centers that's three times larger than Leona Philpot.
It is not just Microsoft; many tech companies are considering new ways of housing data. In 2013, Facebook located one of its latest state-of-the-art data centers in Luleå, the far north of Sweden, to make use of cheap, renewable energy generated by hydroelectric schemes and outside air for cooling.
The decision of the United Nations investigation into the Julian Assange case is set to be revealed and could order the release of Wikileaks founder on February 5.
"BREAKING: UN set to announce decision on #Assange's release on Friday,"BREAKING: UN set to announce decision on #Assange's release on Friday," Wikileaks has tweeted.
Assange has been living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for over 3 years, after being granted political asylum by the Ecuadorian government of the South American country.
Assange has been residing in the embassy since 2012 to avoid extradition:
First to Sweden where he is facing sexual assault allegations, which he has always denied.
Ultimately to the United States where he could face cyber espionage charges for publishing classified US military and diplomat documents via his website Wikileaks.
The leak of publishing secret documents has amounted to the largest information leak in United States history. The US also launched a criminal case against Assange following the leak.
However, Assange filed a complaint against Sweden and the United Kingdom in September 2014 that has been considered by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.
The decision on the case will be published on Friday, and if the group concludes that Assange is being illegally detained, the UN is expected to call on the UK and Sweden to release him.
Once again the Red Alarm had been long wailed in the Security Desk of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
Yes! This time, a serious hacktivism had been triggered by the Hacking group named "AnonSec" who made their presence in the cyber universe by previous NASA Hacks.
The AnonSec Members had allegedly released 276 GB of sensitive data which includes 631 video feeds from the Aircraft & Weather Radars; 2,143 Flight Logs and credentials of 2,414 NASA employees, including e-mail addresses and contact numbers.
The hacking group has released a self-published paper named "Zine" that explains the magnitude of the major network breach that compromised NASA systems and their motives behind the leak.
Here’s How AnonSec Hacked into NASA
The original cyber attack against NASA was not initially planned by AnonSec Members, but the attack went insidious soon after the Gozi Virus Spread that affected millions of systems a year ago.
After purchasing an "initial foothold" in 2013 from a hacker with the knowledge of NASA Servers, AnonSec group of hackers claimed to pentested the NASA network to figure out how many systems are penetrable, the group told InfoWar.
Bruteforcing Admin's SSH Password only took 0.32 seconds due to the weak password policy, and the group gained further indoor access that allowed it to grab more login information with a hidden packet sniffing tool.
They also claimed to infiltrate successfully into the Goddard Space Flight Center, the Glenn Research Center, and the Dryden Research Center.
Hacker Attempted to Crash $222 Million Drone into the Pacific Ocean
Three NAS Devices (Network Attached Storage) which gathers aircraft flight log backups were also compromised, rapidly opening a new room for the extended hack:
Hackers have tried to gain the control over the drone by re-routing the flight path (by Man-in-the-Middle or MitM strategy) to crash it in the Pacific Ocean, but…
…the sudden notification of a security glitch in the unusual flight plan made the NASA engineers to take the control manually that saved their $222.7 Million drone from drowning in the ocean.
This hacking attempt had happened due to the trivial routine of drone operators of uploading the drone flight paths for the next fly, soon after a drone session ends.
After this final episode, AnonSec lost their control over the compromised NASA servers and everything was set to normal by NASA engineers as before.
This marked the attack's magnitude at a steep height by infecting into other pipelines of NASA, leading to this nasty situation.
However, in a statement emailed to Forbes, NASA has denied alleged hacking incident, says leaked information could be part of freely available datasets, and there is no proof that a drone was hijacked.
“Control of our Global Hawk aircraft was not compromised. NASA has no evidence to indicate the alleged hacked data are anything other than already publicly available data. NASA takes cybersecurity very seriously and will continue to fully investigate all of these allegations.”
Why Did AnonSec Hack into NASA?
If you are going to point your fingers against the AnonSec Hackers, then Wait! Here's what the group of hackers wants to highlight:
"One of the main purposes of the Operation was to bring awareness to the reality of Chemtrails/CloudSeeding/Geoengineering/Weather Modification, whatever you want to call it, they all represent the same thing."
"NASA even has several missions dedicated to studying Aerosols and their affects (sic) on the environment and weather, so we targeted their systems."
And Here's What NASA was actually doing:
Cloud seeding: A weather alteration method that uses silver iodide to create precipitation in clouds which results to cause more rainfall to fight carbon emission which ultimately manipulates the nature.
Geoengineering: Geoengineering aims to tackle climate change by removing CO2 from the air or limiting the sunlight reaching the planet.
Similar projects are running on behalf of the US Government such as Operation Icebridge [OIB], Aerosol-Cloud-Ecosystem (ACE) which are dedicated to climate modeling.
This security breach would be a black label for the Security Advisory Team of NASA and became a warning bell to beef up the security.
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