Attack on Bitcoin easier than expected

From calculations made by the University of Twente, it appears that an attack on Bitcoin is easier to carry out than what has generally been accepted. If a group of Bitcoin users, who collectively have over 20 percent of the computing power, unite, then this group can carry out an attack over a few days and force other users to accept a new standard for Bitcoin. Th researchers published their results yesterday at a scientific conference organised by NASA in the United States.

The increasingly sophisticated use of automation (with machinery, industrial processes, chemical industry, power generation / distribution and vehicular applications) has led to the rise of increasingly complex control and protection systems in recent years. The individual elements and system components are now more commonly networked and communicate with external systems outside the immediate application environment. This creates potential security threats to the system and makes it vulnerable to external attacks.

Now available in the Elektor Store is the brand new title: The Car Hacker's Handbook. This book aims to give you a deeper understanding of the computer systems and embedded software in modern vehicles, examining vehicle vulnerabilities and providing detailed explanations of communications over the CAN bus as well as between devices.

Multimeters are nice and useful tools and you probably own at least one. Most of them have a large display to show the value, but no serial port outputting the measurements, making data logging tedious work as you have to write down the values yourself. You could invest in a more expensive multimeter with more options, but there are other, cheaper solutions as long as you are ready to spend a few hours on reverse engineering what you already own.

Finally, Elektor are bringing you the essential guide of what to do should a Zombie Apocalypse hit. This indispensable guide to survival after Z-day, written by hardware hacker and zombie anthropologist Simon Monk, will teach you how to generate your own electricity, salvage parts, craft essential electronics and out-survive the undead.

Chaos Communication Congress: Engaging Technology and Its Impact on Society High-level talks about technology as well as reflections on the impact of that technology on society are the backbone of the Chaos Communication Congress (CCC), the annual four-day hacker gathering between Christmas and New Years held in Hamburg, Germany.

Unless a geomagnetic storm throws us back into the pre-electronic age, communication networks will play an ever larger role in humanity's development. Yet too few people posses knowledge about how information technology works and the political impact these technological systems have on our societies, eroding one of the primary conditions for a good working democracy: a well-informed people. The Chaos Communication Congress, the annual hacker get-together in Germany organized by the Chaos Com...

Armed with a Raspberry Pi and a wireless adapter extension two hackers show how surprisingly easy it is for an attacker to take control of a Home Automation System and disable the motion detector or unlock doors. More than one of the many lists predicting the tech trends of 2014 forecasts that this year the Internet of Things will finally really burst on the scene. They're probably wrong. The IoT is not like the smartphone, a concept that struggled for years until the launch of the right device...