Author: Madhu Reddy

OpenEars Bluetooth headphones promise quick and easy binaural recording

• Binaural recordings are different to regular stereo recordings for a number of reasons. The sound perceived by the ear/microphone closer to the sound source arrives earlier (inter-aural time difference or ITD) and is louder (inter-aural level difference or ILD) than that further away from the sound source. Additionally, the sound arriving at the furthermost ear will be slightly modified as a result of traveling around the head and being reflected off surfaces around the head (masking and head-related transfer functions or HRTFs).Since, binaural recordings don’t offer much of an advantage for studio recordings since studios aren’t that interesting spatially, the technology never really took off for musical artists. However, its ability to provide the acoustic impression of another space makes it more applicable to recordings in the outdoors or locations with interesting acoustic spatial qualities, such as concert halls. It is these markets Binauric is targeting with its OpenEars headphones that are the subject of a crowdfunding campaign.

  In addition to the 25 Hz to 22 kHz in-ear speakers, the headphones feature MEMs condenser microphones with a frequency range of 18 Hz to 23 kHz. The wireless units feature an inline volume control connect to iOS or Android devices via Bluetooth and boast a play and record time of 6 hours on a single charge. They can be fully recharged in under an hour, with a 15 minute fast charge providing 1.5 hours of playback time. The headphones are also designed to be water repellent and dust- and sweat-proof.

  One group of prolific video content creators whose work Binauric believes could benefit from binaural recordings are GoPro aficionados. To this end, the company has developed OpenMics, a pair of optional standalone microphones that can be attached to a helmet (or drone) and wirelessly relay the sound to a connected GoPro via 2.4 GHz radio frequency.

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• OpenEars can of course be used as regular Bluetooth headphones for listening to music or for hands-free calls. Thanks to the “Hear Through” functionality users are able to listen to music and their surroundings at the same time and customize how much ambient sound they want to hear, which is a big plus for safety-conscious cyclists and pedestrians.However, you don’t have to be a skater or a bungee jumper to use OpenEars. Binauric wants users to record binaural sound with every video or photo they take and start using spatial sounds to help someone viewing the material feel like they were there with you. The headphones could also appeal to ASMR devotees, many of which have already embraced the technology.

  The companion app for iOS and Android lets users share recordings via Dropbox, email or SoundCloud, or stream them in real time.

  Binauric has taken to Kickstarter to raise funds to get the OpenEars headphones into production. If all goes well, the company expects the headphones to retail for €199 (US$222), but early bird backers can stake a claim for a pair at €119 (US$133). Delivery is estimated for November, but the team is still some way off the €125,000 goal with just over two weeks left to run.

  You can check out a binaural recording of some New York City sightseeing below, but just be sure to use headphones to get the effect.

References:http://www.gizmag.com/

A conference of Internet security experts is not for the faint of heart.

Hallway chatter and keynote speeches are peppered with scary stories of increasingly sophisticated hackers siphoning off valuable personal and corporate data.
In the words of one expert, the bad guys are outmaneuvering those charged with keeping the wired world safe. This despite repeated vows from CEOs and government officials to tighten security after high-profile breaches at Sony Pictures, health insurer Anthem and retailers Target and Home Depot.
The recent wave of corporate data breaches and cyber-attacks provided plenty of fodder for a weeklong cyber-security conference in San Francisco. Some 28,000 threat analysts, security vendors and corporate IT administrators gathered to talk about malicious software, spear-phishing and other attacks that can steal money or secrets from companies and consumers.
Growing concern over cyber-threats has been good for business, driving up revenue and stock prices for many security firms. But researchers say the dangers are real: Last year saw a record number of commercial data breaches and “denial-of-service” attacks, aimed at shutting down websites by flooding them with bogus traffic.
Here are some highlights from this year’s RSA conference, named for its chief sponsor, the RSA security division of tech company EMC Inc.

Many data breaches are the result of human error, especially people falling for bogus phishing emails, text messages or websites that appear to come from acquaintances or trusted companies.
Phishing attacks are a favored tactic of hackers working for foreign governments and criminal groups because they trick their targets into handing over passwords or clicking on links that install malicious programs. Verizon researchers estimate one in five phishing emails were read by their targets and one in 10 persuaded someone to open an attached file. Security firm Proofpoint says middle managers are increasingly being targeted with emails containing seemingly “official” attachments such as fax or voicemail alerts.
“It only takes one person to click” on a link or attachment and put their employer’s entire network at risk, said Verizon senior analyst Marc Spitler. As for hackers, “they don’t need a high rate of clicking because they can just churn out the emails.”
CONNECTED DEVICES, EASY TARGETS
As more home appliances are connected to the Internet, experts warn they are vulnerable to hackers intending mischief or worse. While actual hacking incidents have been rare, researchers warn that manufacturers aren’t considering security in connected devices.
In separate reports, experts at security firms Veracode and Laconicly said they found vulnerabilities in home systems that control lights, thermostats and garage door openers from a smartphone or other device. While some systems use encryption and other safeguards, the tests found others were vulnerable to hackers eavesdropping on data signals and learning residents’ habits, such as what time they leave the house and when they come home.

HACKERS GETTING MORE SOPHISTICATED
Hackers are sharing information about software vulnerabilities in a variety of industries, faster than many companies install “patches” to repair them, several researchers said. Cyber-attackers are also increasingly using programs that can scout a computer network and change behavior depending on what defenses they encounter.

Even novice hackers can get their hands on tools to carry out sophisticated attacks. “Writing malware is not the hard part anymore. You can buy it” from other hackers online, said Ryan Olson, intelligence director at Palo Alto Networks.
One common refrain at the conference is that companies must get better at detecting and containing computer breaches once they occur, since old methods of prevention aren’t working. The breaches of 2014 showed “that we’re losing this contest,” RSA president Amit Yoran said in a keynote speech. “The adversaries are outmaneuvering this industry.”
The conference also drew federal officials who urged more sharing of information about hacking attacks. U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said his department will open a Silicon Valley office to build partnerships and recruit government workers with cyber-skills.

References:http://phys.org/

Business owners don’t need IT skills to understand that data breaches are serious. Certainly big names in retail and health care know by experience that such breaches have serious after-effects. Breaches have an impact on customer trust and in turn threaten profits.

Sponsored by IBM, the Ponemon Institute’s “2015 Cost of Data Breach Study: Global Analysis,” reported that the average total cost of a data breach for the 350 companies participating in the research increased from 3.52 to $3.79 million.
“In the past, senior executives and boards of directors may have been complacent about the risks posed by data breaches and cyber attacks. However, there is a growing concern about the potential damage to reputation, class action lawsuits and costly downtime that is motivating executives to pay greater attention to the security practices of their organizations.”
One company with a solution has a distinct point of view. Terbium Labs said, “We are a different sort of information security company.” Consider this: Critical data and intellectual property are always at risk, they said. Data security does not exist. Maryland-based Terbium Labs said at least it can give you the power to immediately counter data theft. They cannot promise you will never lose data, but they can tell you that they will help to find data that is lost, and quickly.
“We started Terbium with the thesis that defense, while still necessary, is no longer sufficient. In today’s insecure digital world, your organization’s critical data will always be at risk, whether from a sophisticated outside actor or inside threat. That’s why modern organizations are shifting their information security focus from prevention to risk management,” said the team.
Terbium Labs’ Matchlight system enables breach discovery to be immediate and automatic. The company’s “immediate” is a key point, indicating breach discovery within seconds or minutes instead of months. (The average data breach traditionally has taken over 200 days to discover, and 85 percent of those breaches are discovered by external third parties.) The speed-up may enable an organization to start remediation plans before real damage occurs.
“Overall, the system allows companies, such as retailers and financial institutions, to detect whether a criminal has published some of their data on the Dark Web without revealing to anyone the exact nature of the sensitive data,” said MIT Technology Review.
A patent-pending, one-way digital fingerprinting technique is put to work. Matchlight collects fingerprints from across all places on the Internet where stolen information is traded, including Dark Web markets and forums. They monitor for matches. If a match is found you get an alert.
Matchlight could be used by health care providers, banks, payment card providers, payment processors and other financial services and by engineering and manufacturing companies, among other sectors. “Organized crime and foreign nation-states make up a majority of industrial-espionage attacks, and their frequency continues to rise,” said the company.
(The data fingerprinting technique uses “cryptographic hashing.” It makes sure no one including Terbium Labs can decipher the originating data. A cryptographic hash function is described as a hash function which takes an input or message and returns a fixed-size alphanumeric string.)
So what actually happens after a breach is found? With Matchlight, organizations are alerted when elements of their data as short as fourteen bytes appear on the Internet. The alerts are sent immediately. Organizations can begin their remediation plans before any further damage can occur.
A number of companies have been testing Matchlight and now Terbium is inviting further signs of interest. “We have been testing Matchlight with a select number of alpha and beta clients. If your organization would like access to Matchlight, contact us today!” said the company.
What good does it do to help find data that has already been stolen? For companies, it could mean reducing damages. “Already the system has helped companies testing the system find thousands of credit-card numbers that had been put up for sale on the Internet. While the Matchlight system catches attackers only after they post data following a breach and does not prevent the original compromise, it does reduce the time between compromise and discovery,” said MIT Technology Review.
Referring to a major retailer breach incident which cost the company millions, the article said, “Catching the attack as soon as the thieves attempted to sell the data could have given the attackers less time inside the company’s network and the buyers of the data less time to rack up fraudulent charges.”
Jeremy Kirk, IDG News Service, talked about the finding-out process.”Where we’re looking at are places where people are leaking or are trying to monetize data,” CEO Danny Rogers said. Companies using Matchlight can get alerts when a piece of data is found. A fingerprint ID number can be looked up to see what original data it corresponds to. Companies can then potentially start the breach mediation process, Rogers said in the article by Kirk. Signs of success so far? According to Kirk: “Rogers said the first day Terbium turned Matchlight on, it found in a single 24-hour period 20,000 to 30,000 credit card numbers and 600 leaked email addresses and passwords. Both sets of data were detected minutes after being posted, Rogers said.”

References:http://phys.org/

Researchers in UC Santa Barbara professor Yasamin Mostofi’s lab are proving that wireless signals can do more than provide Internet access. They have demonstrated that a WiFi signal can be used to count the number of people in a given space, leading to diverse applications, from energy efficiency to search-and-rescue

‘Our approach can estimate the number of people walking in an area, based on only the received power measurements of a WiFi link,’ said Mostofi, a professor of electrical and computer engineering. This approach does not require people to carry WiFi-enabled telecommunications devices for them to be counted, Mostofi emphasized.
To accomplish this feat of people-counting, the researchers put two WiFi cards at opposite ends of a target area, a roughly 70-square-meter space. Using only the received power measurements of the link between the two cards, their approach can estimate the number of people walking in that area. So far, they have successfully tested with up to and including nine people in both indoor and outdoor settings. The findings of Mostofi’s research group are scheduled for publication in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Journal on selected areas in Communications’ special issue on location-awareness for radios and networks.
‘This is about counting walking people, which is very challenging,’ said Mostofi. ‘Counting this many people in such a small area with only WiFi power measurements of one link is a hard problem, and the main motivation for this work.’
This people-counting method relies in large part on the changes of the received wireless signal, according to the researchers. The presence of people attenuates the signal in the direct line of sight between the WiFi cards if a person crosses the line of sight, and human bodies also scatter the signal—resulting in a phenomenon called multi-path fading—when they are not in the direct line of sight path. By developing a probabilistic mathematical framework based on these two key phenomena, the researchers have then proposed a way of estimating the number of people walking in the space.
With the near-ubiquity of WiFi in many settings, the researchers’ findings have the potential for many diverse applications. For instance, the ability to estimate the number of people in a given space could be used in smart homes and buildings, so air conditioning and heating could be adjusted according to the level of occupancy. ‘Stores can benefit from counting the number of shoppers for better business planning,’ noted Mostofi.
Security and search-and-rescue operations could also take advantage of occupancy estimation. Previous work in the research lab involved imaging stationary objects/humans through walls with WiFi signals, and Mostofi plans to eventually bring the two projects together in the future.

References:http://phys.org/