A man accused of being one of the "most prolific sellers" of counterfeit electronics in the UK has just been sent down for two and a half years. Over 4,000 KiRFs, mainly consisting of knock-off Sennheiser and Monster headphones, were found at Michael Reeder's address, with a value of around £250,000 ($400,000). However, Sennheiser claims this is just 1 percent of $40 million worth of items Reeder has sold online, which is why the German manufacturer has taken a keen interest in his prosecution. Last year, Sennheiser introduced a series of authentication technologies to prevent counterfeiting that was mainly originating in China -- including QR codes on product packaging that customers can verify online. If Sennheiser's estimate of 400,000 fake items is accurate, then it makes the UK's recent Microsoft Windows scandal look almost like small fry.
Update: Apologies for the earlier stumble with missing zeroes on this post.
Filed under: Misc, Home Entertainment, Portable Audio/Video
If a payment terminal could be forced into servitude as a crude handheld gaming device, what else could it be made to do? Researchers at the Black Hat conference showed just what mischief a commonly used UK PoS terminal could get up to when they inserted a chip-and-pin card crafted with malicious code. That enabled them to install a racing game and play it, using the machine's pin pad and screen. With the same hack, they were able to install a far less whimsical program as well -- a Trojan that could record card numbers and PINs, which could be extracted later by inserting another rogue card. On top of that, criminals could use the same method to fool the terminal into thinking a transaction was bank-approved, allowing them to walk out of a store with goods they hadn't paid for. Finally, the security gurus took a device popular in the US, and used non-encrypted ethernet communication between the terminal and other peripherals to hack into the payment device and take root control. Makes you want to put those credit cards (and NFC devices) away and stick to cash -- at least you can see who's robbing you blind.
[Original image credit: Shutterstock]
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
Security experts hack payment terminals to steal credit card info, play games originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Jul 2012 06:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Those interested in criminology, forensics or the basics of voyeurism probably have a decent grasp on what a camera obscura is. For everyone else in the audience, allow us to explain. Used since way before your birth, these chambers are designed with an optical device that projects an image of its surroundings on a screen; you just need a room with a hole in one side, which allows a fine amount of light to pass through. If you've ever watched [insert crime drama here], you've probably seen those magical investigators take a blurred shot of a room wall, zoom it in and somehow draw conclusions about the origins of life. Now, MIT's own Antonio Torralba and William Freeman have developed a method that can "transform the entire setting into a pinhole camera." In other words, any room with a window can be repurposed for forensics. On that note, you should probably consider moving your... operations center to a windowless bunker, STAT.
MIT thaumaturges work to turn any windowed room into a camera obscura originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Jun 2012 03:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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US Court: Code isn't property, therefore it can't be stolen originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 Apr 2012 09:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Digg | Wired, Decision (PDF) | Email this | Comments