Posted in Internet

Credits (CRDS) a community-driven cryptographic currency coming 17th June 2017

Credits (CRDS)

Credits (CRDS), a community-driven cryptographic currency, has announced its first public release to take place on the 17th of June, 2017. Designed around accessibility, ease of use, and equality of opportunity, Credits offers people the opportunity to participate in the development of an innovative new cryptocurrency.

Mining
Unlike most other cryptocurrencies, mining Credits is done using a CPU, utilizing the cutting-edge, award-winning Argon2d algorithm. In addition to botnet resistance, the Argon2d algorithm is resistant to both GPU mining and ASICs, meaning that anyone with a computer, the Credits wallet software, and an internet connection can mine Credits without being forced out of the market by the widespread GPU and ASIC farms which are currently monopolizing most cryptocurrency mining. Furthermore, Credits protects against multi-mining and jump-mining
pools through the implementation of Gulden’s latest difficulty retargeting algorithm, DELTA—the most advanced retargeting algorithm available today.

Masternodes
Credits also features Masternodes, which form a 2nd layer of security on the network, process InstantSend transactions, and mix CRDS for PrivateSend transactions. Masternode and PoW (Proof-of-Work) rewards have been mapped for a 36-year period in order to incentivize a continued return on the investments of both Masternode operators and PoW miners alike; over this 36-year coin creation period, Masternode rewards gradually increase and PoW rewards gradually decrease. This 36-year design ensures the longevity of the network.

DAO
In the initial release, the Credits DAO (governance system) will be disabled in order to eliminate the risk of early majority control of the Masternode network. This will prevent malicious parties from creating proposals, voting as a bloc, and subsequently defrauding the network. This governance functionality can be brought online at a later stage, once the Masternode network has grown in size.

Release
Mining will begin at the moment of launch, 10:00PM UTC on the 17th of June. The first block of Credits, containing 475,000 CRDS in total and representing 0.5% of the total coin supply, will be allocated to feature bounties, marketing, hosting costs, and initial development.

Community
As a community-driven project, Credits is completely open source and development will not be centralized in the hands of just one developer—anyone can contribute to the project. The Credits community is currently located on Slack and Bitcointalk (see below), and anyone is welcome to join and participate.

Credits homepage — https://crds.io
Development Roadmap — https://credits.io/roadmap
Slack — https://credits-slack-invite.herokuapp.com
Bitcointalk — https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?Topic=1944858.0

Dream Targeting – You Buy What You Dream in Your Sleep

There are innovations and then there’s Dream Targeting – a digital technology that moves beyond the established understanding of digital media, to help brands better target their customers, and to increase sales.

How did this innovation come about?

We’ve all heard about REM sleep, which accounts for about 20 to 25% of a human beings sleep cycle. This is an intermittent sleep pattern, the cause of which is still being studied all over the world. However, it has been proved that influencing a person in stages of REM sleep is actually possible.

What you read above is what sparked this innovation. Dream Targeting was announced towards the end of October last year, and has been a revelation ever since, taking the advertising industry by storm!

You haven’t yet heard about it? Well, you’ll be hearing about a lot from this day on!

How does Dream Targeting work?

Dream Targeting is a revolutionary outreach program that aims to reach the inner core of human sub-consciousness that gets activated in this period of REM sleep.

This outreach program has seen the development of a product that has been in the beta testing period for the last three months. Codenamed ‘SCTM’ (Subs-Conscious Consumer Targeting Mechanism), this product uses ultrasonic sound waves that can be embedded into multimedia product banners. These banners, like regular multimedia banners, are seen by the customers on both mobile and web while browsing an e-commerce store. The sound waves in these banners seed the integration of a mere ‘idea’ into the frontal cortex of the subject, which in turn is triggered during REM sleep.

The success of this product has been tested and monitored via electrooculography (EOG), which measures the amount activity in the retina as well as the brain, during REM cycles. In the simplest of terms, this will result in the subject seeing the resurfaced image of the multimedia product banners during the REM stage of their sleep cycle. The fact that the ad has become a part of one’s dream pattern, appeals to the subject’s (the consumer’s) sub-conscious, leaving behind an unexplainable desire to buy the product or service.

Key Observations till now

By deploying Dream Targeting (beta testing for the last 3 months), an assorted pool of e-commerce companies* have witnessed –

  • 20% increase in conversions.
  • Since the ad creative become a part of one’s subconscious, a 35% increase has been observed in favor of buying the product.
  • Adglobal360, which has created Dream Targeting, has been able to attribute the increased conversions through Dream Targeting by Big Data Analysis of the vast cookie pool generated though huge media campaigns.
  • One of the e-commerce companies has recently secured heavy funding owing to the increased traction through Dream Targeting

*Please note that for Confidentiality reasons, the names of the participating e-commerce companies have been kept undisclosed.

What is in the pipeline?

Apart from e-commerce, Dream Targeting has also been deployed in verticals like online gaming, real estate, and travel, all of which have seen higher conversions since then.

Rakesh Yadav, who also heads the initiative and the R&D at Adglobal 360, is excited about the possibilities that Dream Targeting holds for marketers across the globe. He believes that the customer base that we at times lose because of ad blockers can be regained via this virtual inventory of “in-dream” ads influencing the target consumer’s buying behavior. Further, steps are now being taken towards advancing this REM integration technology for multimedia stories being seeded instead of simple static banners.

While the research required for this step has already commenced, Dream Targeting is going to be further evolved through the innovation that is next in line – the ability to ‘buy’ while sleeping. This also includes potential mobile wallet integration. Utilizing a wearable device that can be connected to a smartphone, Dream Targeting will map the vital stats and pulse rates, the REM movements will be recorded, and the patterns noted. If an ad creative keeps resurfacing in a consumer’s subconscious for a week; the process to buy the product will be initiated.

Such has been the excitement surrounding Dream Targeting that Adglobal360 has already applied for a patent with Intellectual Property, India, under section 4.2.0 of the Indian Patent Act of 1873, to ensure that this revolutionary innovation isn’t replicated.

Looking at the struggle being faced by most e-commerce companies in India, Adglobal360’s Dream Targeting (patent pending) technology will forever change the way a brand will communicate to the customer. All that remains to be seen is when this will be ready to be officially rolled out. Stay tuned, for the consumer targeting revolution is coming!

Facebook Is Going For LinkedIn’s Throat

Facebook is getting ready to eat LinkedIn’s lunch as it allows companies to post job listings on their company pages. Facebook has over a billion daily users now and its algorithms are finely tuned to bringing people the content that they want to see.

This means that job hunting could be as easy as ‘liking’ the company page and then getting regular updates on your news feed. It will definitely help save job hunters some time and possibly eliminate the need for them to pay LinkedIn for extra features as well.

Recruiters could possibly pay to ensure their job postings are being shown to specific demographics and possibly even promote their visibility. It seems like a natural addition to facebook especially as companies were already using the social network to post jobs and get in touch with applicants.

According to facebook, the addition of features with dedicated job sections is just a natural response to that need.

It is easy to see how facebook could offer a complete job hunting experience where personal details are quickly filled into job application forms, communication could be carried out through Messenger and it is only a matter of time before chat bots dedicated to hunting jobs come are released.

LinkedIn should be afraid that its dominance in the hob hunting space could be under very serious threat. That is not to say that Facebook has dominated every category it has entered as Snapchat and the various attempts made to hijack its userbase have shown but Microsoft might just be worried about the 26 and something billion dollars it paid to own the job hunting space.

The United States and Canada will be the first countries to get these features on both the web and mobile interfaces after which a global rollout is expected.

New Report Unveils A Dramatic Increase In Malvertising During 2016

Malvertising is a dark side of internet marketing. The number of pages containing malvertising ads is increased dramatically over the years, especially on mobile devices. Since ad blockers aren’t so prominent in the mobile world, many sites use malvertising to redirect users to pages containing malware, usually followed by obnoxious vibrating notifications.

On the PC, malrvetising is also prominent, mostly with various streaming sites. The malicious ads are usually hidden from the user, mostly in the form of a “pop under” ads that are mostly unnoticed until it’s too late.

2016 saw a dramatic rise of malvertising, with many experts stating that it can only get worse in the coming years. According to the online security firm RiskIQ, malverstising saw a dramatic increase during 2016, rising 132 percent compared to 2015. An average online user sees at least one malvertisement per week, with many users having daily encounters with sites that contain malvertising ads.

Ian Cowger, a RiskIQ security researcher stated that “Every indication that we have is that malvertising is increasing on all fronts.” Cowger explained that malvertising affects “every step in the advertising chain,” and that “each one of them shares the responsibility.”

The results aren’t really bright, and just confirm that malpractice in internet advertising got worse during the last year, and that it will only get more frequent. After analyzing more than 2 billion pages, Risk IQ shared that 1 out of every 250 web pages contains malicious ads.

The most frequent form of fraudulent ads are those “informing” users that their device was infected with a virus and that, for a fee, they can get rid of the virus by installing third-party software or by calling a phone number. The scam tries to get money from uninformed users, and since more and more people are online on a daily basis, with many of them being relatively inexperienced when it comes to online scams, the trend can only rise higher.

Scams (or disingeous ads), along with redirects to phiching sites saw an increase of more than 845 percent, and almost 2000 (yes, two thousand) percent, respectively. The third place is held by fake software scams, which got a year-over-year increase of almost 70 percent.

Image Source: RiskIQ

The best way of fighting malvertising is getting a solid ad blocking software. There are a couple of excellent solutions for PCs, with a couple of solid ones available for Android too. But the problem with ad blockers is that, as they are more prominent, the number of malvertisements also rises. Also, using an ad blocking software will block all ads, even those found on sites you visit on a daily basis, which do not have any malrvertisements.

Fortunately, with the whitelist option every person can create a personal list of sites on which the ad blocking software won’t block ads.

James Pleger, a threat researcher at RiskIQ explained that malvertising is a “direct attack on the lifeblood of the internet as we know it.” Pleger continued by saying that “Digital media marketing is what funds the free websites we all know and enjoy online. The success of the internet and all the people that rely on it is inextricably linked to online advertising success and safety.”

 

Cellebrite, Company That Helped FBI To Hack An iPhone Used By The San Bernardino Attacker Got Hacked, iPhone Hacking Tools Leaked Online

If you remember, after San Bernardino terrorist attack, which took place during late 2015, FBI asked Apple to unlock the iPhone 5c used by one of the attackers, in an effort to uncover evidence that could give the police new findings of the case.

Apple responded by stating that it can’t help the FBI because if the company made the potential unlock tool, the tool could make iPhone security encryption obsolescent if ended in wrong hands. FBI tried to make Apple unlock the iPhone by a couple of court orders, but the Cupertino giant refused to do so because of its users.

At the end, FBI managed to hack into the iPhone and unlock the device. Apple chose to not cooperate so the FBI turned to one Israeli company, Cellebrite, which managed to develop tools able to breach the iPhone thus allowing FBI to snoop through the attacker’s device.

Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, stated in an interview with ABC’s David Muir that creating iPhone Backdoor for FBI would be ‘Software Equivalent Of Cancer.’

Cellebrite is a company specialized on developing tools used by law enforcement agencies to extract data from mobile phones. The firm’s most popular product is called Universal Forensic Extraction Device (UFED); UFED looks like a small laptop and is capable of hacking thousands of phone models.

After connecting the device to a mobile phone, the UFED can transfer emails, SMS messages, personal data, and more. The Israeli firm sold its tech to many agencies, with the US state police and highway patrol agencies spent millions of dollars on Cellebrite products alone.

Cook’s words now gained, even more, weight after reports started circling about Cellebrite’s servers being hacked, with attackers stealing 900 GB of data. Some of the data include documents proving that the company sold its iPhone hacking tools to the governments of Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Russia.

But that’s not the worst thing. The hacker who breached servers also managed to snag the tool used by the company to breach iPhone’s security. The hacker responsible for the attack publicly released a collection of files related to Blackberry and Android devices; the files regarding the iPhone hacking tool were also published.

The hacker stated to Motherboard that “The debate around backdoors is not going to go away, rather, it is almost certainly going to get more intense as we lurch toward a more authoritarian society,” and that “It’s important to demonstrate that when you create these tools, they will make it out. History should make that clear.”

The hacker claims that the group responsible hacked a remote Cellebrite server; although the files were protected, the group managed to bypass the defenses. The data collection is accompanied with a README file in which hackers explain that “The ripped, decrypted and fully functioning Python script set to utilize the exploits is also included within.”

Much of the files are similar to those used by people in the jailbreak scene, for hacking older iPhone models.

Cellebrite responded by saying that “The files referenced here are part of the distribution package of our application and are available to our customers.  They do not include any source code.”