Bangalore Treated to Free Wi-Fi for Users

Here's a treat for all you internet geeks out there in Bangalore. According to reports, the Karnataka government has started offering free Wi-Fi to citizens in the city to remain connected with their friends and family, apart from the freedom to browse the web at any given time.

The facility - called Namma Wi-Fi - tagged as the first of its kind in the country, will look to allow the public to use different devices like smartphones, tablets, laptops and others that can be connected to internet when they are in and around MG Road and Brigade Road or even at Shantinagar or Yeshwantpur bus terminals, apart from offering the service in Indiranagar as well, which is located in the city's eastern suburb.

The facility is a first step to make Bangalore a smart and connected city," internet and Wi-Fi service provider D-VoiS Broadband Ltd managing director Ramesh Satya told IANS. Started as an initiative via the state IT department and the state government's ICT (information and communications technologies) group, the new free internet facility is currently aiming at extending to up to 10 other hotspots across the city later in 2014. 

Winners of 59th Idea Filmfare Awards

Best Film - Bhaag Milkha Bhaag
Best Director - Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra (Bhaag Milkha Bhaag)
Best Actor - Farhan Akhtar (Bhaag Milkha Bhaag)
Best Actress - Deepika PAdukone - Goliyon Ki Raasleela Ram-leela

Best Actress in a Supporting Role - Supriya Pathak Kapur (Goliyon Ki Raasleela Ram-leela)
Best Actor in a Supporting Role - Nawazuddin Siddiqui (The Lunchbox)

Best Music - Mithhoon, Ankit Tiwari, Jeet Ganguly (Aashiqui 2)
Best Playback Singer (Male) - Arjit Singh - Tum hi ho - (Aashiqui 2)
Best Playback Singer (Female) - Monali Thakur - Sawaar (Lootera)
Best Lyrics - Prasoon Joshi - Zinda (Bhaag Milkha Bhaag)


Best Debut (Male) - Dhanush (Raanjhanaa)
Best Debut (Female) - Vaani Kapoor (Shuddh Desi Romance)
Best Debut Director - Ritesh Batra (The Lunchbox)

Best Actor (Critics) - Rajkumar Rao (Shahid)
Best Actress (Critics) - Shilpa Shukla (BA Pass)
Best Film (Critics) - The Lunchbox


Lifetime Achievement Award - Tanuja
RD Burman Award - Sidharth Mahadevan

Best Action - Thomas Struthers and Guru Bachchan (D Day) 
Best Background Score - Hitesh Sonik (Kai Po Che)
Best Choreogrpahy - Samir and Arsh Tanna – Lahu muh lag gaya (Goliyon Ki Raasleel Ram-leela) 
Best Cinematography - Kamaljit Negi (Madras Cafe) 
Best Costume - Dolly Ahluwalia (Bhaag Milkha Bhaag) 
Best Dialogue - Subhash Kapoor (Jolly LLB) 
Best Editing - Aarif Sheikh (D-Day)
Best Production Design- Acropolis Design (Bhaag Milkha Bhaag) 
Best Story - Subhash Kapoor (Jolly LLB) 
Best Sound Design - Bishwadeep Chatterjee and Nohar Rajan Samal (Madras Café) 
Best Screenplay - Chetan Bhagat, Abhishe Kapoor, Supratik Sen and Pubali Chaudhari (Kai Po Che)

Bieber Claims Michael Jackson's Throne via Instagram

The 19-year-old singer made his first public comment since being arrested Thursday on charges of driving under the influence, resisting arrest and driving with an expired license. Bieber chose to speak out on Instagram, where he has more than 13 million followers.

Bieber posted an image of himself, taken outside the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center in Miami, Fla., after being released on $2,500 bail, next to a picture of Michael Jackson. The caption read "What more can they say" with an emoji of a crown.

The picture, posted around 1:30 p.m. ET, has more than 700,000 likes at time of publishing.

The image of Jackson was taken in 2004 outside of a California courthouse after he pleaded not guilty to seven counts of child molestation. The Instagram picture's caption is supposedly a lyric from Jay Z's The Black Album.

While it seems odd for Bieber to compare his driving arrest to Jackson's legal troubles, the unapologetic nature of the image and comment does seem in line with the smug mugshot Miami Beach police tweeted after the pop star's arrest.

Google Responds to Massive Gmail Outage

"An internal system that generates configurations — essentially, information that tells other systems how to behave — encountered a software bug and generated an incorrect configuration," said Ben Treynor, Google's VP of Engineering, on the company's blog. "The incorrect configuration was sent to live services over the next 15 minutes, caused users’ requests for their data to be ignored, and those services, in turn, generated errors."

Google apologized for the outage, which, it reported, lasted 25 to 55 minutes and affected as many as 10% of users. The company also said they are in the process of putting systems in place to prevent any similar problems in the future.

The outage began Friday at 10:55 a.m. PST, according to Google. The sudden crash of multiple Google services at once caused an an uproar on Twitter, where affected users quickly pointed the finger at Google.

Yahoo was briefly involved in the Twitter firestorm when it dissed Google in a tweet, which was eventually removed. Yahoo later apologized from the same Twitter account saying the tweet "reflected bad judgment."

Elsewhere on social media, an unfortunately timed Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) with Google's Site Reliability Engineering team was happening during the outage, though the team declined to comment directly on the ongoing outage during the AMA.

Google offers $2.7 million in rewards at Pwnium 4 hacking contest for Chrome OS

Google today announced it is hosting its fourth Pwnium competition, aptly named Pwnium 4, this March. The security contest’s main focus will be Chrome OS, for which the company will be offering up to a total of $2.71828 million in rewards for security researchers (Google loves using geeky numbers for its prizes, such as those related to leet and pi – this one is for the mathematical constant e).

The breakdown for the winnings are the same as last year:

$110,000 USD: Browser or system-level compromise in guest mode or as a logged-in user, delivered via a web page.
$150,000 USD: Compromise with device persistence: guest to guest with interim reboot, delivered via a web page.
Again, just like in 2013, if you can hack Chrome OS, you’ll walk away with a six-figure check. Furthermore, this year Google is also planning to give out significant bonuses for demonstrating “a particularly impressive or surprising exploit.” The company offers three examples: defeating kASLR, exploiting memory corruption in the 64-bit browser process, or exploiting the kernel directly from a renderer process.

Also new in 2014, security researchers can choose between an ARM-based Chromebook (the WiFi-only HP Chromebook 11) or the Acer C720 Chromebook (the WiFi-only 2GB version) that is based on the Intel Haswell microarchitecture. Last year, only Intel-based Chrome OS devices were allowed to be hacked for prize money.

There is one other rule worth emphasizing: the attack must be demonstrated against one of the two aforementioned devices running whatever the Chrome OS stable version is at the time. All software included with the default installation of those devices may be used as part of the attack.

The full exploit must be given to Google, with explanations for all individual bugs used (all of which must be unknown), and exploits should be served from a password-authenticated and HTTPS-supported Google App Engine URL. Last year, no exploits for Chrome OS were found.

Micromax Canvas MAD

Micromax Canvas MAd A94

General
Release date January 2014
Battery capacity (mAh) 1800
Removable battery Yes
SAR value NA
Display
Screen size (inches) 4.50
Touchscreen Yes
Touchscreen type Capacitive
Resolution 480x854 pixels
Colours 16.7M
Hardware
Processor 1.2GHz  quad-core
Processor make BCM23550
RAM 512MB
Internal storage 4GB
Expandable storage Yes
Expandable storage type microSD
Expandable storage up to (GB) 32
Camera
Rear camera 5-megapixel
Flash Yes
Front camera 5-megapixel
Software
Operating System Android
Java support Yes
Browser supports Flash No
Connectivity
Wi-Fi Yes
Wi-Fi standards supported NA
GPS Yes
Bluetooth Yes
NFC No
Infrared No
DLNA No
Wi-Fi Direct No
MHL Out No
HDMI No
Headphones 3.5mm
FM Yes
USB Micro-USB
Charging via Micro-USB Yes
Proprietary charging connector No
Proprietary data connector No
Number of SIMs 2
SIM 1
SIM Type Regular
GSM/ CDMA GSM
2G frequencies supported GSM 900/ 1800
3G Yes
3G frequencies supported 2100
SIM 2
SIM Type Regular
GSM/ CDMA GSM
2G frequencies supported GSM 900/ 1800
3G Yes
3G frequencies supported 2100
Sensors
Compass/ Magnetometer No
Proximity sensor Yes
Accelerometer Yes
Ambient light sensor Yes
Gyroscope No
Barometer No
Temperature sensor No

Syrian Electronic Army hijacks CNN social media accounts

One of the posts on CNN's main Twitter account stated: "Syrian Electronic Army was here...Stop lying... All your reports are fake!"

The group which claims loyalty to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad also posted messages referring to US president Barack Obama as "the lord of terror".

It is understood that the SEA was able to gain access to CNN's Hootsuite account, an online tool used to manage social media accounts. Through this it was able to briefly take control of CNN's main Twitter and Facebook accounts, as well as CNN Politics' Facebook account and several blogs.

Experts believe that the method used to compromise such accounts is through relatively unsophisticated phishing scams that target employee's email addresses.

Rick Ferguson, vice president of security research at  Trend Micro, previously explained to ITProPortal his understanding of how such attacks from the SEA took place.

"Key individuals in the target enterprise would have received well-crafted and convincing emails, either with a malicious file attached, or containing a credible-looking link," Ferguson said.

"Once compromised through either infection or phishing, then the account usernames and passwords would be available to the attacker, allowing further malicious activity."

Unless a way to protect against such attacks is introduced, it is unlikely to be the last