Device Can Track Soldier Movements With or Without GPS

As reported by Defense Systems: Army researchers are developing a pocket-size device that will give soldiers precise geolocation information even when GPS signals are unavailable.

The Warfighter Integrated Navigation System (WINS), being developed at the Communications Electronics Research Development and Engineering Center, uses a variety of sensors to track a soldier’s movement from a last known location, recording footsteps, speed, time, altitude and other factors to show the soldier’s location on a map.

"It's got a number of inertial sensors, such as a pedometer and an accelerometer, things you will find on your cell phone but of a higher quality," Osie David, a CERDEC researcher, said in a news release. "Even if the enemy is denying you GPS or the terrain is, you can still get known location on here so it will show up on your Nett Warrior device or your command and control system."

Finding alternatives to GPS is a focus for the Defense Department precisely for those times when Global Positioning Systems signals don’t get through, whether because of terrain such as dense forests or jungles, or enemy interference. GPS signals can be jammed even with low-powered devices or spoofed by stronger signals.

Or both. In 2011, it is thought that Iranian engineers jammed the GPS signal for an U.S. RQ-170 Sentinel drone, then spoofed its coordinates to make it land in Iran instead of its base in Afghanistan. University of Texas students also have demonstrated using spoofing to take control of unmanned aircraft and even an 80-foot yacht. 

The military doesn’t expect that it ever will do without GPS—it’s still the most accurate and far-reaching geolocation system ever created and likely will remain so for the foreseeable future. But in addition to hardening GPS signals against jamming and other electronic warfare attacks, researchers are working on alternatives for those times when GPS service is blocked.

Driver is Fined for Using His Apple Watch While Driving

As reported by Engadget: Now that electronics manufacturers are releasing more and more smartwatch models, you might be wondering what the authorities' stance is on using one while driving. Well, this clears things up a bit for our Canadian readers: a man named Jeffrey Macesin was recently pulled over and fined $120 for using his Apple Watch behind the wheel. Macesin told CTV News Montreal that the watch was inside a bag, and that he was only changing songs on it at that moment, since it was plugged into the car radio. He thought the cop only wanted him to get out of the way when he turned the cruiser's lights on, but the officer obviously thought the device was a cause of distraction.

In the end, he got a ticket under Section 439.1 of the Quebec Highway Safety Code, which states "No person may, while driving a road vehicle, use a handheld device that includes a telephone function." Technically, smartwatches aren't handheld devices, but it has an LCD screen and smartwatch-like features, so they fall within a grey area. A lawyer who specializes in traffic violations, Avi Levy, told CTV News he believes a smartwatch is a Bluetooth device instead of a handheld, and "it has been established in the law that you're allowed to use Bluetooth devices and it doesn't constitute an infraction."

In at least two other locations, New South Wales and Victoria, Australia, cops made it clear in April that if you use a smartwatch while driving, you could face penalties.

A study by the U.K. Transport Research Laboratory found smartwatches are far more distracting than smartphones. According to the Huffington Post, the research found it takes 2.52 seconds for someone to react in the event of an emergency after looking at their smartwatch, compared to 1.85 seconds if they were using a handheld cellphone.

With this data and citing the fact that only more distracting apps are bound to come on the market, Paul Singh, CEO of the vehicle safety company Smart Witness, called upon the U.K.’s Department of Transportation to “place an immediate ban on the use of [smartwatches] by drivers.”

“We don’t want to sound like kill-joys and the health and safety police but there’s no doubt that using smart watches whilst driving will cause serious accidents,” Singh wrote for the Huffington Post.  Singh’s post noted that the U.K. banned drivers from using handheld phones in 2003.

In the U.S., only 14 states have banned handheld cellphone use all together. However, 44 states have banned texting while driving.

There do not appear to be any proposed bans on driving and using a smartwatch in the U.S. yet, but last year, there were several bills introduced that proposed making it punishable to drive and use a Google Glass device.

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, more than 3,000 people were killed in the U.S. in 2012 in accidents caused by distracted driving.

Space Station Module Move Makes Room for Private Spaceships

As reported by Space.com: Astronauts on the International Space Station moved a closet-like storage module to a new spot on the orbiting lab Wednesday (May 27) to make room for a new docking port to welcome private space taxis in 2017.

During an hours-long move, the station's bus-size Permanent Multipurpose Module rode a robotic arm to a new perch on the space station's Harmony connecting node. It was the first move for the module, which NASA calls the PMM, since its installation on the station's Unity node in 2011. You can see a video of the space module move here.

Early in the docking process, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly noted a warning message that was quickly cleared by NASA. "Except for that first little message there, it all looked perfect," Kelly said after the module move was finished.

NASA worked closely with controllers at the Canadian Space Agency in Quebec to move the module using a robotic arm. The work began at 4:45 a.m. EDT (2045 GMT), according to NASA, with the de-mating of the 14-foot-wide (4.3 meters) module taking place at 5:50 a.m. EDT. The module move was closely supervised by Kelly and fellow NASA astronaut Terry Virts, who commands the station's Expedition 43 crew.

The is just one in a series of steps to prime the International Space Station to receive crew flights on U.S.-built commercial spacecraft. Currently, the station's docking ports are designed to accommodate NASA's space shuttle fleet (which retired in 2011) and Russia's Soyuz space capsules, which now ferry all crews to space.

Boeing and SpaceX are creating new spacecraft that will begin sending astronauts aloft around 2017. Two docking adapters will fly into space aboard two SpaceX Dragon spacecraft this year; astronauts will install the adapters in a series of spacewalks.

NASA is shifting to commercial vehicles to reduce its reliance on Soyuz spacecraft, and regain a U.S. capability of launching astronauts into space.

The PMM was first used to haul supplies from Earth while the space station was under construction. Then called "Leonardo," the Italian Space Agency's module flew eight times in space before the STS-133 crew left it behind in 2011 to dock to Unity.

Today, the module is used as a 2,400-cubic-foot (68 cubic meters) storage facility, able to hold 11 tons of equipment, or up to 16 racks, plus several storage bags.

SpaceX Cleared for US Military Launches

As reported by BBC News: The US Air Force has certified the private company SpaceX to launch military and spy satellites.

A joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing has had a monopoly on those launches since 2006.

Founded by entrepreneur Elon Musk, SpaceX has already won contracts with NASA to ferry cargo and crews to the International Space Station.

The approval from the US military followed two years of intensive reviews by the US Air Force.

"SpaceX's emergence as a viable commercial launch provider provides the opportunity to compete launch services for the first time in almost a decade," Air Force Secretary Deborah James said in a statement.

Mr Musk said the decision was "an important step toward bringing competition to national security space launch."

In June, the Air Force expects to open bidding for the contract to launch GPS satellites built by Lockheed and it will be SpaceX's first opportunity to compete for military work.

Russian engines

The US military has been relying on the Atlas 5 rocket, which uses Russian built engines, to power payloads into space.

But the military only has until 2019 to use that system, as US lawmakers have banned the use of Russian engines for launches that concern national security.

The certification of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will give the military an alternative rocket ahead of the ban.

New Research Suggests that Hackers can Track Subway Riders Through Their Phones, Even Without GPS

As reported by the Daily Dot:  Underground subways offer no place to hide from hackers.

Determined hackers can track the movements of millions of subway riders around the world even as they go underground by breaking into smartphone motion detectors, new research from Chinese academics reveals. The attack can track subway riders with up to 92 percent accuracy.

The ability to track subway riders represents a significant cybersecurity threat to the tens of millions of people who use public transportation every day. There are more than 5.5 million daily New York City subway passengers, and over half of those people are carrying smartphones, thus exposing themselves to tracking.

"If an attacker can trace a smartphone user for a few days, he may be able to infer the user’s daily schedule and living/working areas and thus seriously threaten her physical safety," wrote Jingyu Hua, Zhenyu Shen, and Sheng Zhong of Nanjing University, one of China’s oldest universities. "Another interesting example is that if the attacker finds Alice and Bob often visit the same stations at similar non-working times, he may infer that Bob is dating Alice."

Smartphones have long been considered God’s gift to spies. They offer myriad tracking tools, from the browser to the GPS sensor, and they stay with their owners almost all day, every day.

The new research, which has not yet been peer reviewed, shows hackers can track people without either cell service or GPS, both of which are heavily protected from attackers and often don't work underground anyway. By contrast, motion sensors, like the accelerometer that enables screen rotation, are much more vulnerable and can give everything away.

Every subway in the world has a unique fingerprint, the researchers said, and every time a train runs between two stations, that fingerprint can be read in the accelerometer, potentially giving attackers access to crucial information.

“The cause is that metro trains run on tracks, making their motion patterns distinguishable from cars or buses running on ordinary roads,” the researchers wrote. “Moreover, due to the fact that there are no two pairs of neighboring stations whose connecting tracks are exactly the same in the real world, the motion patterns of the train within different intervals are distinguishable as well.”

To make this attack a reality, the researchers propose a new attack that learns each subway’s fingerprint and then installs malware on a target’s phone that steals accelerometer readings.

The trio of researchers performed experiments in China by tracking volunteers carrying smartphones through subways in Nanjing. Tracking accuracy reached 70 to 92 percent.

The attack is "more effective and powerful than using GPS or cellular network to trace metro passengers," the researchers assert. Accelerometers simply aren't protected the way GPS and cell networks are. An accelerometer can be accessed, run, and read without the user knowing, whereas smartphones display indicators when either GPS or cell service is being used.

There are several defenses against this hack, the most interesting one being power-consumption scrutiny. To track someone using this method, a hacker would have to continuously access the phone's accelerometer, draining significant power no matter how well the malware was concealed. If you monitor your phone's power consumption, you should notice when an app is using too much of the battery—possibly for nefarious reasons.

The Chinese research paper can be read below:

We Can Track You If You Take the Metro: Tracking Metro Riders Using Accelerometers on Smartphones

Watch the Furthest Flight Ever Flown on a Real Life Hoverboard

As reported by Gizmodo: The Guinness World Records says that Catalina Alexandru Duru just pulled off the farthest flight ever traveled on a real life hoverboard: 905 feet and 2 inches. You can see him rise up 16 feet in the air on the hoverboard and then start cruising through the air over a lake with nothing but invisible underneath him in the video below.

The hoverboard Duru uses is more like a super powerful quadcopter-type hoverboard and not a hoverboard in the 'Back to the Future' sense but it’s still pretty awesome. And also, the added bonus of not using BTTF-style? This one works over water.

You Won't Need Waves with this Electric Surfboard

As reported by Engadget: If you want to surf, but are too lazy to paddle or look for waves, the Wakejet Cruise from Swedish outfit Radinn is for you! The company says it "marries the agility and speed of wakeboarding with the freedom of surfing," but that doesn't mean you can take the electric-powered craft lightly. It cruises along at a rather insane 28mph for a full half-hour on a single charge -- or up to an hour if you're willing to go slower. That's about the same speed as a water skier, meaning that unlike seated watercraft, it'll require your full attention, along with some skill and athleticism.

You control the speed with a hand-held remote, and can recharge the built-in battery in about an hour when you're done. The carbon and kevlar board also has a mobile app, built-in GPS and magnetic safety switches. Radinn's wakejet is hardly the first product like this, but with the relatively short recharge time and long range, it's probably the most practical -- and expensive! It's on pre-order with a Q2 2015 delivery for a mere $20,000 or so, except that other one-percenters already snapped up the first run. Luckily, the next batch is available in Q3.