11Mar 2018 by richard@baronsoftware.com

Ethereum’s smart contracts are full of holes

Software Events
Ethereum’s smart contracts are full of holes Computer programs that run on blockchains are shaking up the financial system. But much of the hype around what are called smart contracts is just that. It’s a brand-new field. Technologists are just beginning to figure out how to design them so they can be relied on not to lose people’s money, and—as a new survey of Ethereum smart contracts illustrates—security researchers are only now coming to terms with what a smart-contract vulnerability even looks like. Digital vending machines: The term “smart contract” comes from digital currency pioneer Nick Szabo, who coined it more than 20 years ago. The basic idea, he wrote, is that “many kinds of contractual clauses (such as collateral, bonding, delineation of property rights, etc.) can be embedded in the hardware and…
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08Mar 2018 by richard@baronsoftware.com

GitHub DDoS attack put them offline for 10 minutes

News Items
GitHub DDoS attack put them offline for 10 minutes GitHub recently revealed that the web site was crippled for a full 10 minutes forcing it to be offline for 10 minutes while the engineers recovered the systems.  This is one of the largest-known DDoS attack in history. DDoS or distributed denial of service in full is a cyber attack that aims to bring websites and web-based services down by bombarding them with so much traffic that their services and infrastructure are unable to handle it all. It’s a fairly common tactic used to force targets offline. The Chinese government was widely suspected to be behind a five-day-long attack in 2015 and this newest assault tipped the scales at an incredible 1.35Tbps at peak.  This time there has been no culprit discovered but this…
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07Mar 2018 by richard@baronsoftware.com

Google reports that Flash Usage Declines from 80% in 2014 to Under 8% Today

Computer PC Tips - bits and bytes, News Items
Google reports that Flash Usage Declines from 80% in 2014 to Under 8% Today The percentage of daily Chrome users who've loaded at least one page containing Flash content per day has gone down from around 80% in 2014 to under 8% in early 2018. These statistics on Flash's declining numbers were shared with the public by Parisa Tabriz, Director of Engineering at Google, during a keynote speech at Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS) which was held recently in San Diego. Flash's demise was to be expected, though. Adobe announced last year plans to stop supporting the Adobe Flash Media Player by the end of 2020.  But while Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and all major browsers have already moved from a Flash-enabled-by-default to a Flash-click-to-play policy since last year, the massive…
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07Mar 2018 by richard@baronsoftware.com

How to Secure and increase performance on your WordPress Blog

Computer PC Tips - bits and bytes
How to Secure and increase performance on your WordPress Blog To secure your wordpress blog it is an extremely good idea to follow some of the steps located below as well as increasing performance for your readers. SSD-Powered Storage Delivers Content Up to 20x Faster Hosting providers that include high-performance, solid-state drives signal to site owners that the company invests in modern infrastructure and doing whatever it takes to help customers’ sites load quickly. There will be network farms that have older equipment will continue to use that until they replace it or failure occurs.  There are some host providers that provide this service but it may be at a higher cost. SSL Certificates Boost Security Without Slowing Down Your Site Speed means nothing if you expose sensitive data to…
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06Mar 2018 by richard@baronsoftware.com

Bitcoin creator slapped with $10 billion lawsuit

News Items
Bitcoin creator slapped with $10 billion lawsuit Craig Wright, the Australian who has previously claimed to be Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, is the subject of a multi billion dollar lawsuit. Wright is being sued by the estate of David Kleiman, who was thought to have co-created the cryptocurrency with the Australian. Kleiman passed away in 2013, but Kleiman's brother Ira claims that Wright somehow appropriated his former partner's bitcoin hoard. According to Motherboard, either Wright and Kleiman were involved in the creation of Bitcoin, or were there moments after the platform was created. Consequently, they apparently had access to mining tools at its earliest time, enabling them to rack up a small fortune in cryptocurrency. The pair are thought to have controlled anything up to 1.1 million BTC, although it's clear that nobody…
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