Recent Cyber-Attacks Slows Down Global Internet, Said Experts

The internet IS said to be currently facing what experts would call “the biggest cyber-attack in history.” Spamhaus, a non-profit spam-fighting group, is reportedly the primary target of the attack. While no solid evidences have been presented for the public eye to see, the group alleged that Cyberbunker (a Dutch webhost), in association with other cyber-criminal groups in Russia and Eastern Europe, is said to be the one behind cyber-attacks that are affecting the global internet.

The conflict between Spamhaus and Cyberbunker reportedly started when the former blocked some servers maintained by the latter. Sven Olaf Kamphuis who claimed to be the spokesperson of the web host said Spamhaus is abusing its position in terms of blocking servers, they think are hosting web services  used to spam the web. They neither denied nor confirmed if they were, indeed, the group behind the most recent cyber-attacks pointed at the anti-spam organization.

Spamhaus’ Chief Executive Steve Linford assured internet users that despite the attacks done to its servers, their engineers were able to deflect most of them keeping their services active an uninterrupted. He revealed, however, that the tactic used by attackers is the Distributed Denial of Services, otherwise known to users are DDoS.

In 2010, the biggest DDoS attack ever recorded peaked at 100 gb/s (100 giga bits per second). This year, there is a 200% increase. Spamhaus’ director of security research Dan Holden said recent attacks are actually peaking at 300 gb/s. Had these attacks directed at government or financial servers, they would be brought down almost immediately.

The company already expected this kind of attacks when it started fighting against spams. So, its services are distributed to, at least, 80 servers around the world. No one knows what the future holds for the organization’s stance against spams. But if attacks like these continue, they might become unstoppable in the next couple of years.

Google allegedly made some of its resources available to help absorb the traffic built by the most recent attacks. At least five cyber-police forces are currently investigating the case. If they can prove Cyberbunk is behind all these, the company might be facing criminal liabilities plus its license revoked.

Chinese Hackers Hack India’s Defense System

According to “Times of India”, the Chinese hackers have reportedly broken into the top secret files of Indian Defense system. So far it has been acknowledged that it is the biggest security breach in the history of Indian Defense System. Due to this successful hacking attempt, major Indian missile and armament systems may have compromised been compromised.

According to the report, this cyber attack has resulted the leakage of “Shakti” (the newly introduced advanced artillery combat and control system of the Indian Army) and the new mobile missile defense system called the Iron Dome. These leaks were detected in the first week of March. Canadian and American researchers at University of Toronto have published their report called ’Shadow in the Clouds’. This report has explained the spy operation called ‘Shadow Network’ operated out of China, which has tapped the top secret files of the Indian government. Researchers have also claimed that these Chinese cyber spies have also tapped into the Indian embassies in Belgium, Serbia, Germany, Italy, Kuwait and the United States. The tap is aimed to assess the Indian government’s relations with other countries throughout the world. Follow-up investigations into report have confirmed that these cyber attacks were carried out from the servers located in China. The report claimed that the cyber attack has compromised Indian defense, business, academic and government systems.

Earlier this year, the US government claimed that they have averted an attack on US defense system by the Chinese hackers.

Benchmark Scores Show Galaxy S4 Will Rule The Smartphone Industry

Ever since the Samsung Galaxy S4 was officially announced, the web has been flooded with comparison articles placing the flagship head-to-head with smartphones from other manufacturers. Of course, benchmark scores were part of such hype and just recently, Geekbench scores emerged showing the device being on the top spot.

Among other devices compared in the benchmark test are HTC One, LG Nexus 4, Samsung Galaxy S3 (quad-core variant), iPhone 5, Blackberry Z10 and Galaxy S3 (dual-core variant).

The Galaxy S4, with Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor, sits comfortably in the first place with an overall score of 3164 (the higher, the better). It was followed by HTC One, with 2687. Considering both devices use the same processor with a slight difference on the clock-speed, there is a huge gap between their performances.

On the third place LG Nexus 4 with an overall score of 2040, then the Exynos 4-powered Galaxy S3 with 1717. Between these devices, we could see that there is a considerable difference in their performance, which adds to speculations that Qualcomm chipset are always better than Samsung’s.

In the fifth place was Apple’s iPhone 5 with 1596. Apple devices are not really known to sport too high specifications, rather they are more balanced in both software and hardware. However, the score showed the Galaxy S4 is twice as fast as it is. Or, at least, it implies Apple would have to build iPhone 5S twice as fast as the iPhone 5 to be able to equal with the power of the S4.

The sixth and sevenths spots were occupied by BlackBerry Z10 and Galaxy S3 (dual-core variant), which got scores of 1480 and 1410, respectively.

The result could have been interesting if the variant of the Galaxy S4, the one with octa-core processor, were included. Which do you think would have better benchmark score, the quad-core Galaxy S4 (with Qualcomm chipset) or the octa-core Galaxy S4 (with Exynos 5)?

Design Concept: Cutting Board with Embedded Scale

First Robotic LEGO Band Made Its Hit

Italian music producer Giuseppe Acito may have found his job a little boring after years and years of doing musical productions for known personalities in the music industry. This time he dedicated his time to a newly-found group known as “Toa Mata Band” that just made its first hit.

The Toa Mata Band is a quartet composed of several robotic figures made from blocks of LEGO programmed to play electronic instruments. Many would think, especially those who haven’t seen the video, that the music produced by these LEGO figures was just some kind of a beat without clear dynamics. That could have been the case if the production weren’t backed by a known musical producer.

Each band memer was built from LEGO Bionicle pieces and has its own instrument to play and rhythm to follow. Acito did a great job in arranging the musical piece starting with drums. Other band members play different synthesizers and for a band that has, at least, ten members, you’ll know the music is not as simple especially when it has to follow a beat and all are required to sync with it.

Basically, the LEGO band was made possible by a circuit that was laid on a breadboard plus a microcontroller known as Arduino Uno, connected to an iPad with a MIDI sequencer app known as Nord Beat. Each figure would have to follow a beat and has its own sequence to follow for pre-programmed music beats. They could also play live performances if an engineer is there to queue each figure.