here's what's coming up in the category
five TV newsroom Microsoft no longer
sees PlayStation maker Sony and Nintendo
is the biggest competition for its Xbox
platform and you won't believe who they
see as their biggest threat an artist
trick Google into thinking that they
were met there were major traffic jams
by pulling a wagon filled with
smartphones down empty streets arm is
getting edgy with two new processor
designs which bring swimline AI
workloads to smart speakers and other
Internet of Things devices and Windows
trust an abandoned driver code lets
ransomware burrow deep into targeted
machine stick around the full details
are coming up later in the show this is
the category 5.2 newsroom
covering a week's
with a slight linux bias
I'm Sasha Rickman joined this week by
Jeff Weston and Robbie fer defense some
quick honourable mentions this week a
hacker crew managed to temporarily take
control of Facebook's official Twitter
account the irony in a tweet posted on
February 7th at 3:50 p.m. on the
official at Facebook Twitter feed the
attacker posted hi we are our mine well
even Facebook is hackable but at least
their security better than Twitter they
then went on to advertise their services
saying to contact them in order to quote
improve your account security unquote
our mind did not say how they got into
the social networks Twitter account but
no self-respecting hacker could would
ever take pass up the opportunity to
blast Facebook's security practices
according to a draft research paper from
the astronomers who are analyzing it a
mysterious radio signal from space that
was first detected in Canada appears to
repeat at regular 16 day intervals the
unusual signal which has been traced
back to a spiral galaxy roughly 500
million light-years from Earth is known
as a fast radio bursts aka FRB it has
been fascinating astronomers since
Canada's chime telescope first detected
it in 2018 scientists have discovered
hundreds of seemingly random one-off
FRBS over the last decade but only a
handful of them have been found to
repeat now here's the thing this
particular signal is not only repeating
but it appears to be sent out at regular
intervals the signal starts and let me
just say this is not sci-fi this is
really reality the signal starts every
16.3 five days it lasts four
or days and then fall silent for 12 days
before starting up again according to
the paper that is a recurring schedule
the number of births within each four
day blast varied each time according to
409 days worth of data that was compiled
by chime the study authors say in their
abstract quote our results suggest a
mechanism for periodic modulation and
disfavor
models invoking purely sporadic
processes in other words and this is a
not a quote so the quote is over but in
other words the signal is not repeating
at random okay so they say that the
source may be flickering at regular
intervals or some other factor might be
interrupting the signal blasts in a
consistent pattern orbits come to mind
for me like that could be part of it for
sure but if their findings are confirmed
the discovery would be another first in
the early study of F R bees which have
only been known to science for a
relatively short period of time called
the ultimate arm powered Nass Helios 64
is accepting pre-orders discounted for
the first 500 Helios 64 is a full
fledged linux powered Nath solution that
offers built-in features that you will
not find in any other product at this
price point it supports up to 80
terabytes of data storage in five hot
swappable drive bays plus support for a
single m dot two for applications that
demand extra performance for
connectivity it uses the new multi
gigabit speed standard on dual land
ports they offer up to 2.5 gigabits per
second throughput the NASS uses an arm
64 hexa core SOC it features 4 gigabytes
of RAM and a 16 gigabyte EMM
for OS storage and booting now it's an
ass that's basically behaving like a
Linux computer so because the helio 64
is open-source once it's released we're
going to begin seeing distributions
created specifically for this hardware
the Helios 64 was slated for release as
early as next month but with factory
shutdowns due to the corona virus the
first shipments will be delayed an ETA
update will be provided by the company
once factory lines are allowed to reopen
in China but we estimate it to be late
spring or possibly early summer
pre-orders are discounted to just are
you ready for this
$285 to the first 500 orders and you can
place that order now at COBOL dot IO
let's get into the top stories we're
following this week
Microsoft no longer sees PlayStation
Maker Sony and Nintendo as the biggest
competition for its Xbox platform Phil
Spencer Microsoft's head of gaming said
he now considered Amazon and Google as
his top rivals because of their cloud
computing infrastructure
he believes their transitional rivals
Nintendo and traditional rivals Nintendo
and Sony are out of step with the future
of gaming he said quote when you talk
about Nintendo and Sony we have a ton of
respect for them but we see Amazon and
Google as the main competitors going
forward that's not to disrespect
Nintendo and Sony but the traditional
gaming companies are somewhat out of
position end quote
with cloud gaming players don't need to
buy a games console instead the games
are run on servers and huge data centers
with the footage streamed over the
Internet to a TV computer smartphone or
a tablet
it means players don't need to buy discs
or download games and software updates
which can take a long time
Google entered the home gaming market in
2019 with its stadia streaming service
the company's vast cloud computing
business
means that it has the necessary
infrastructure in place but critics say
the lineup of games on stadia stadia is
currently sparse while Amazon and Apple
offer games on their app stores and
Apple offers a monthly subscription they
don't currently offer a cloud gaming
service however Amazon also operates an
enormous cloud computing business and is
rumored to be developing a game service
Sony has offered its PlayStation now
cloud gaming service since 2014
letting gamers stream more than 700
titles to a ps4 console or PC however it
currently streams games in 720p
resolution by contrast Google stadia can
stream its games at up to 4k resolution
NVIDIA has officially launched its
GeForce now streaming service after
months of testing and both Sony and
Microsoft have already announced that
they are still working on new games
consoles for home totally demonstrates
the shift
yeah and how things are being how
technology is being provisioned I feel
old I guess in the fact that my brain
doesn't get it like I don't understa
locked into Congress mind-bending yeah
well we've been sold for so many years
that the biggest most powerful console
is gonna give you the best gaming
experience now we're being told oh well
you can do it on your phone you can do
it on this little $100 device you can do
it on anything oh and then you can
transition over to your computer which
doesn't even have to be a good computer
it can be a Chromebook yeah what I think
the difference though and I mean
admittedly I have not explored Google
and Amazon gaming services so I can't
speak from first-hand knowledge but the
ability to go offline is what separates
the two oh yeah yeah but but maybe
that's the ideas that were never offline
anymore well sure we are but do we
really but when we're at that point
aren't it's just we're always connected
Jeff but that always connected you're
right we are always connected but dives
860
that's an assumption of necessary
connectivity I like we see this with our
kids all the time they play games that
are not online it's downloaded and
that's it like sure minecraft is a great
one for kids that are younger where
they're playing Minecraft it's not going
online I mean you could go to realms and
stuff see the difference here is yeah if
you're gonna go with the cloud-based
computer gaming services you're stuck to
a couple of things you're stuck to what
they offer from the choices and the
graphics and all that kind of stuff
which I think again I don't know from
firsthand would be subpar compared to
what you can pull out of say you know an
Xbox one ass or you know PlayStation 5
with with their graphics I mean I can't
see playing like Red Dead Redemption 2
on my phone you can't you're still it's
from a technological perspective
everything's going club yes but the the
quality so you're saying will it look as
good so the quality is not the video the
video is your my TV is 1080p so it's
1920 by 1080p regardless of how powerful
my system is or not so yet for some
reason if I use a first gen we versus a
PlayStation 4 I'm going to notice a
quality difference in the placing and
ensure it's a different system and so it
is apples to oranges but what I mean is
the power of that more powerful system
even though my TV never changed
resolution it's still the same
resolution the video quality is still
the same right okay but it looks so much
better because that one is so much more
powerful so now take that and put it
into a cloud server where this cloud
server is still streaming 1920 by 1080 P
2 to my 1080p TV and yet it has so much
power yes it's a multibillion-dollar
system
versus my little $400 right console
right so so the the the resolution is
not the bottleneck now our our Internet
is capable of streaming 4k video in real
time with no latency right that's
incredible mm-hmm so now put it back and
in there that is so powerful that I can
do that on my cheap device yeah and on
any device and I can transition from
device to device I don't have to buy
anything in particular to be able to use
my games and the transition is happening
but the transitions gonna be difficult
for people like me who still like to go
to the store and buy a game and you and
I actually kind of and if they business
you take it with you and put it up I
hesitate even buying digital copies of
games like I like to have the actual
game but I understand that the future is
is coming up quick and I'm still gonna
buy a PS 5 but I'm gonna also likely
play games on stadia right yeah and
that's that's an interesting point I
want to just reiterate what you just
said which is I'm going to also play
video games on stadia stadia so I don't
think that we're replacing that offline
phone device
I think we're supplementing it and say
enhance hey now okay you can you can
also when you're connected to the
internet play games that you can't play
when you're offline that are like
high-end yeah and that's where okay
maybe this is just another another
platform and we all have multiple plans
I wonder if they'll have it like now
here's the latency is too high for VR
here's an island I've got to be able
it's gotta be able to track you with
this right now so I mean like you've
brought up VR which you know totally
makes up our future yes what about
things like framerate
because you said p4k that's pretty good
to me no but no I I hear you you're
talking about the screen resolution I
mean if your internet can't keep up it's
gonna impact your gameplay sure do you
remember when we used to be like oh I'm
like I'm so bad yeah like in order to go
back to lagging or my car my kids gonna
go yes however consider this as and I
know we do need to move on to the next
story but consider that the very
companies that are pushing the
technology shift are the same companies
who are controlling the introduction of
like Google's gigabit fiber to the home
right right so yeah if that's the case
oh you know it's gonna perform well it's
like you you you just know that that's
what they're driving toward and and
they're not gonna build a service that's
gonna fail based on that this latency is
a big thing sure sure and because this
is internet-based it's going to be it's
gonna resolve the cross-platform
compatibility issues it's an interesting
thing though because you have to
remember that this is not game streaming
this is video streaming we've already
proven through YouTube and through
everything else that video streaming is
great these days yep there's no latency
on videos like it was like really in
real time if it was real time so they've
created real time video streaming
service that has the interactivity of
controls and control doesn't take a lot
of bandwidth no so it's like it's
instant as long as you don't have high
pings right as long as you don't have
latency on your internet connection and
that's the key thing and so they'll be
driving ISPs to support their codecs and
you'll see an evolution in that kind of
thing very cool if you've tried stadia
or any other cloud-based service comment
below let us know if you've been
contemplating it maybe post why you
haven't tried it you know what's holding
you up artist Simon wacker noticed
something unusual at a made a
demonstration in Berlin
Google Maps showed that there was a
massive traffic jam even though there
were zero cars on the road soon enough
wicket realized that it was the mass of
people or
specifically their smartphones that had
inadvertently tricked Google into seeing
gridlock on an empty street and then he
decided to do it himself where Kurt says
quote the question was if it might be
possible to generate something like this
in a much simpler way I don't need the
people I just need their smart phones
end quote
so he borrowed phones from friends and
rental companies until he had acquired
99 devices which he piled into a little
red wagon the plan was simple over the
course of a day a worker would walk up
and down a given Street mostly at random
towing his smartphone packed wagon
behind him the effect wasn't
instantaneous it took Google Maps about
an hour to catch up but eventually
inevitably wiper had said that his wagon
would create a huge long red line in the
app indicating that a traffic had slowed
to a crawl even though there wasn't too
any traffic at all he had effectively
tricked the system into thinking a
series of large buses was crawling back
and forth Google said in a statement
quote traffic data in Google Maps is
refreshed continuously at thanks to
information from a variety of sources
including aggregated and anonymized the
data from people who have location
services turned on and contributions
from the Google Maps community end quote
they note that while it had figured out
how to distinguish between cars and
motorcycles it does not yet have any way
to filter for a wecord set up wecord
says quote what I'm really interested in
generally is the connection between
technology and society and the impact of
technology how it shapes us end quote
the hack is getting attention not only
because it's fun but also serves as a
necessary reminder that the system's
people take for granted involve inputs
and outputs and that they themselves are
sometimes both
it shows how simple it is to be it's how
simple it is to fool a product in which
people place a trim
Bendis amounts of trust how does
interesting there's a lot of fun but I
love how the artist has found the spin
to say hey maybe we're trusting the
technology a little too much that uh so
much so that anyone looking at their app
or using their GPS that's powered by
Google services yes is avoiding those
areas based on his little experiment
right so when when I had first heard
this story I thought to myself okay
so four people are in a car like if
you're carpooling and you're stuck in a
slow section of the highway is it gonna
show up way busier on the highway than
it actually is it's yeah I I personally
use Waze which is owned by Google it
it's yeah it's I think it's the exact
same well no there's some enhanced
features that Google Maps doesn't he'll
differently yeah but what I like about
Waze is is that it is user input unlike
a lot of Google Maps that is drawn by
anonymous unit user data and things
happening in the backend so ways builds
off Google Maps but then you can add
your individual components into it but I
have at times had a phone call or text
or something come in where it's like I
need to respond to this so I'll pull
over on the side of the road do the
thing that I need to do and all sudden I
get an alert on my phone we're detecting
a slowdown oh you know are you in
traffic how heavy is the traffic and I'm
like pulled over and so I'll say no and
move on this is this is odd Jeff is not
texting while driving this is out of
character for you but what what I could
have done is gone yes heavy traffic sure
traffic's flowing beside me well so I
mean if there is that user element so
I've never fully trusted the information
I see on those services because I know
that there is that user input data right
actually today on my way to the studio I
always use Google Maps I even though I
know how to get here I always use it I
like I like to be told what to do but
Google told me to take the highway and I
looked at the highway and I thought ah
that's a dead stop
and Google was pretty mad at me like
they kept trying to drive me back to the
highway but I was like I am taking the
main road was it just that one spot and
then I was fine after yeah there's one
spot on the highway right now okay so
this this opens up something though
interesting about and I know we need to
move to the next story but about
proximity how specific is location-based
services on the phone cuz like my kids
play pokemon go yeah so when they're at
home if they move from one side of the
living room to the next their character
moves with them yeah but when I'm
sitting in the car I'm getting a bigger
blip on the map and so I don't know if
it can update it as quick to my precise
location it's probably lulling you into
a false sense of like anonymity it knows
exactly where you ain't know exactly
where your park so then Google have not
built something into the programming
that it watches for the collection of
devices and it goes there are 99 within
this box that's not actual I think they
will okay we have got to take a quick
break more of this week's top tech
stories are coming up don't go anywhere
[Music]
welcome back has announced the Evo's
view 55 and the cortex-m 55 for edge
devices bringing an AI neural network
accelerators to futures car speakers
light bulbs fridges and other IOT
devices the more powerful of the two
known as the cortex-m 55 is a general
microcontroller grade CPU blueprint well
the other names ethos u 55 is
essentially an AI accelerator the
cortex-m 55 is based on arms helium
technology the ethos u 55 on the other
hand is a novel architecture forearm and
has been described as a micro neural
processing unit or micro NPU for short
both processors are available now to
license and are intended to be used
together the m55 running application
code the u 55 doing all the neural
network mathematics in fast Hardware the
senior director of the IOT and embedded
team at arm says quote the micro NPU
cannot be used on its own it needs to be
paired with a CPU like the cortex m55
together the system delivers 480 times
the performance compared to previous
cortex-m generations working on their
own end quote
we expect to see chips using these
blueprints early next year
awesome I can't believe this is real
life that neural processing units are
now I heart of an SOC like this is so
it's just signed by - my what exactly an
eighties mind like I remember when which
Star Trek was it where they use the
neuro packs what are they called
oh my gosh one of the Star Trek's was an
enterprise maybe where there's like how
to have like telepresence yeah within
the the ship and like they would blow
out and they'd have to replace them and
there
these gel pack things and I'm like that
would never happen I think it was Star
Trek I understand that what I remember
watching that I think I'm Star Trek
Enterprise and I was like there's no way
we're gonna have that kind of advanced
technology it's not possible this is
like 15 20 years ago and now I'm
watching stuff like this come it's like
neuro-networks I'm like oh my goodness
every year there's a new possibility and
I never would have expected this this is
yeah yeah like so we're talking like the
next gen of yes AI which is so crazy
that these little chips can now process
teraflops worth of information like it's
I don't know what it really is but it's
like ridiculous amounts of data having
to do with AI right so that so the the
next thing is that the you know coders
will be able to make thinking devices so
those smart speakers with this and with
this technology will be smarter is the
fact that there are two separate things
like I'm surprised that well you have to
have a CPU you have to have the ability
to run traditional code yeah otherwise
you wouldn't be able to like you
wouldn't be able to as a human interact
with it there has to be a layer for
humans to be able to access the NPU yeah
hmm otherwise it just blow our minds how
quickly before this would be adapted for
phones and technology in phones right
but I mean at this level
I don't know like because that could
change mobile computing sure it's gonna
change a lot of thoughts the idea is
that it's getting faster smaller yeah
and more integrated that's the way
technology goes and so we're seeing a
massive shift in how data is processed
because we're specifically looking
toward AI not far in machine learning or
Arvest there are little pluses attackers
behind one of the world's most more
destructive pieces of ransomware have
found a new way to defeat defenses that
that might otherwise prevent the attack
from encrypted encrypting data
installing a buggy driver first and then
hacking it to burrow deeper into the
targeted computer the ransomware in this
case is Robin Hood known for taking down
the city of Baltimore networks and
systems in Greenville North Carolina
Robin Hood can easily encrypt sensitive
files once a vulnerability has allowed
the malware to gain a toehold
for networks that are better fortified
the ransomware ax has a harder time
breaking in now Robin Hood has found a
way to defeat these defenses in two
recent attacks researchers from security
firm Sophos said the ransomware has used
its access to a targeted machine to
install a driver from taiwan-based
motherboard manufacturer gigabyte that
has a known vulnerability in it it's the
same vulnerability that led to gigabyte
officials discontinuing the use of the
driver but since it contains gigabytes
cryptographic signature the Windows
operating system
trusts it and allows it it allows it to
run in the highly sensitive Windows
kernel region of the OS without question
with the benign but buggy driver
installed Robin Hood then exploited the
vulnerability to gain the ability to
read and write to virtually any memory
region chosen by the attacker the Robin
Hood exploit changed a single byte to
disable the windows requirement that
drivers be signed
with that Robin Hood installed its own
unsigned driver that used its highly
privileged kernel access to kill
processes and files belonging to
endpoint security products the advanced
status of the driver gave it greater
ability than other techniques to ensure
that the targeted processes are
permanently stopped there are other
windows trusted drivers with known
vulnerabilities that could be used in
the same way of gigabytes drivers these
include sign drivers from VirtualBox
novel cpu-z and asus and while the
gigabyte driver may be the first known
instance of this type of hack it is it
very well may not be the last and points
to a need for Microsoft to reassess the
way their certificate revocation
procedures hmm
that's tough mm-hmm because the part of
me wants to say Oh we'll just revoke the
certificate anytime there's an exploit
but remember that then that would
nullify everybody's drivers right so
this is all mole I mean as I'm hearing
it this is like a new wave of Trojan
attack so to speak yeah that's what it
feels like like you're coming in through
yeah trusted source to get access is
that not the basic principle of behind
it or is it a whole different wave just
feels like so they're using it as an
elevated privilege tactic so they're
using a driver that windows trusts
because of the signature being valid so
it's not a fake driver it's not like a
malware it is a legitimate driver but it
has a bug in it mm-hmm that caused it to
be recalled basically but the Windows
operating system no matter what version
you're running still trusts the
Installer for that driver because of the
certificate that is applied to it
and so the hackers are using that to
then be able to elevate their privileges
and do whatever the heck they want and
that's the scary thing because how do
you stop that how can you possibly stop
that I think it comes down to where's
your first line of defense I think the
only thing you have to that you can look
at is how did they get in in the first
place was it a phishing scam was it
somebody clicked on an email that had
some file list malware that allowed
somebody to run something resident in
their computer is it that you have
Remote Desktop turned on on one of your
computers on your network and that's
really easy to hack now I don't know how
certificates work just because I haven't
delved into that but does each
certificate you need to drive or have
its own like a certificate identifier no
the driver doesn't have its own
certificate but the company that
manufactures the driver does so that
certificate says yes to Microsoft this
is a gigabyte driver provided by
gigabyte because it contains the
certificate that proves that this is a
legitimate driver from gigabyte so what
if the certificate system changed in
such a way that you have your your main
certificate say for gigabyte but then
you have your sub certificates for each
driver roll out so that
it identifies this drivers this subset
yeah developer I feel like that's your
you're giving me nightmares right now
Jeff like where you're going but it just
sounds like a logistical nightmare as
far as managing those certificates like
it could just be a nightmare I think
maybe some kind of an aristocrat is able
to identify maybe it's a checksum that
identifies known faulty drivers or
deprecated drivers so that windows could
say yes this is a valid certificate
however gigabyte has marked this
certificate or this installer as bad
it's got to be some kind of an
identifier yeah yeah that's the answer
go wonderful big thanks to Ray W Nash
and our community of viewers for
submitting stories to us this week
thanks for watching the category-five TV
newsroom don't forget to Like and
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slight lytx bias and if you appreciate
what we do become a patron at
patreon.com slash newsroom from the
category-five TV newsroom i'm sasha
Rickman and I'm Robbie Ferguson