Day: November 7, 2013

Engineering, TechnologyLeave a comment

Video: hacking contacless with homemade antennas

E&T magazine

You might have read our story about hacking contactless cards and devices relying on the the Near Field Communication standard using simple antennas and cheap off-the-shelf receivers. Now you can watch our video interview with Johann Briffa from the University of Surrey, the lead researcher behind the paper published in the recent Journal of Engineering. Despite the team haven’t managed to break the encryption yet, its good to know your data travelling through the air on radio waves are so easily accessible – well, there is little you can do to protect yourself though. Read our full article here. Continue reading Video: hacking contacless with homemade antennas

Engineering, Technology1 Comment

@NASA readies #MAVEN spacecraft for flight to Mars – an annotated graphic

E&T magazine

To paraphrase Jonathan King (not a sentence we ever thought we’d open a blog post with), everyone’s gone to the Mars. Earlier this week, it was India sending its Mangalyaan mission to the Red Planet. Next, it’s the turn of NASA, which intends to pitch its MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) spacecraft on a year-long mission to Mars. MAVEN’s raison d’etre is to help us understand what became of Mars’ historically thick, water-rich atmosphere. One theory is that as the planet’s magnetic field declined due to the planet’s core cooled, solar winds gradually stripped away the atmosphere. What a … Continue reading @NASA readies #MAVEN spacecraft for flight to Mars – an annotated graphic