Saturday, December 3, 2016

Patrons feared trapped in huge blaze at Oakland venue (VIDEOS, PHOTOS)

A massive fire has broken out in a building hosting a warehouse party in Oakland, California. As firefighters tackle the inferno, at least a dozen people are reportedly unaccounted for, prompting fears that they may still be trapped inside.

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The blaze broke out on 31st Ave in Oakland during a party advertised as a ‘Rave Cave’ as part of musician Golden Donna’s ‘100% Silk’ West Coast tour.

Fire officials said they were informed that between 30 and 70 patrons were at the event when the fire broke out, the East Bay Times reports.

Dozens of people posted on the event’s Facebook page to say that they had safely escaped the fire, while others are enquiring about friends and relatives yet unaccounted for.

One, Eveline Darroch, wrote: “I am here with the fire inspector going through the list of missing names of missing/safe. At this point there are several threads. I am requesting that you only post in this thread their name and missing or safe next to it. Thank you.”

It’s not yet known how the fire started and it’s believed that an artists’ collective that lies adjacent to the warehouse was also engulfed in flames.

A Twitter account that posts about Oakland firefighters reported that the fire has gone through the roof and all units have been told to withdraw from the building. There has been no official update from the Oakland Fire Department, however.

'It's quite easy to build up the info & piece it together like a jigsaw'

Cyber criminals can work out card numbers, expiry dates and security codes of any Visa credit or debit card in as few as six seconds using nothing more than simple guessing technology, a new study has revealed.

The study, carried out by researchers from the University of Newcastle and published in the IEEE Security & Privacy journal, shows how a so-called ‘Distributed Guessing Attack’ can bypass every security feature put in place to protect online users in a matter of seconds.

The guessing technique works by automatically generating different variations of the card security data across multiple websites until hackers are able to land on a ‘hit’ for each required piece of information.

READ MORE: Chip-and-PIN credit cards hacked easily, Black Hat conference proves

The team found that by spreading the guesses across multiple websites, neither the network nor the banks were able to detect all of the invalid attempts.

“The current online payment system does not detect multiple invalid payment requests from different websites. This allows unlimited guesses on each card data field, using up to the allowed number of attempts – typically 10 or 20 guesses – on each website,” said Mohammed Ali, computer science PhD student in Newcastle University and lead author of the paper.

Additionally, while websites seek to bolster online shopping security by asking for different variations of card info, this actually works to the hackers’ advantage, according to the researchers, because it makes it “quite easy to build up the information and piece it together like a jigsaw.”

“The unlimited guesses, when combined with the variations in the payment data fields make it frighteningly easy for attackers to generate all the card details one field at a time,” Ali explained.

READ MORE: You’re now more likely to be mugged online than on the streets of Britain, ONS figures show

For anyone concerned about how to keep their credit and debit cards safe, the fact is “there is no magic bullet” accordingthe paper’s co-author Dr. Martin Emms.

However, he added that there are some steps consumers can take to minimize their risk of becoming a victim of credit card fraud.

“Use just one card for online payments and keep the spending limit on that account as low as possible. If it’s a bank card then keep ready funds to a minimum and transfer over money as you need it,” Emms advises.