Cloudy Scribe Went All Delphi On Us

Not too long ago in the greater scheme of things, we wrote a little story for DefCon21. You can find it here.

[TL;DR -- Set in 2034,"In Too Deep" follows Georgia Tech student Anthony Frederickson (who'd really rather you call him 3-d33p) on an ill-fated trip to DefCon42, the world's most (in)famous hacker convention... No spoilers, but a few months before heading out to Las Vegas, Anthony discovers that his nifty new blazer not only changes colors and images in time with music and its environment, but it can also activate an 0day hack, just by being in the room with a camera...]

All three of us worked on "In Too Deep," but -- as with so many of our stories -- this really is Cloudy's baby. And it's a pretty cool idea, right? He comes up with a lot of those, and we do a lot to turn them into stories y'all wanna read... Well, it turns out Cloudy's not just prolific, he's prescient, too! Check out this article about a (now-fixed) flaw in Google Glass. When Tasky saw it, he said, "Wow, dude. You're like the Oracle of Delphi... Except, not sexy." Haters gonna hate.

But, seriously, y'all. Check this out:

Google glass' camera scans all photos it takes for QR codes so that it can make Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections to a phone for internet access. So...

"Whenever the Glass software detects a QR code, it decodes it to see if it names a Wi-Fi network to connect to. It will do this even if the code does not occupy the whole of the frame - so a hacker could get a Glass owner to hack their own device just by standing near a printout of special QR code.

'We created a QR code that told Glass to connect to a Wi-Fi network of my choosing and started sending data to that,' Marc Rogers, principal security analyst at Lookout, told the Guardian. 'We could become the middleman, and if we needed to strip out the encryption on the connection. Then we could see the pictures or video that it's uploading. We could also direct it to a site on the web which exploits a known vulnerability in Android 4.0.4' - used by Glass - 'which hacked Glass at it browsed the page.'"

Sound familiar? Sound like something a particular Scribe might have come up with? Let's get down to brass tacks:

"Both the vulnerablity, and the way it was delivered, are unique to Glass - a consequence of it being connected," Rogers said. "I don't think anyone's hacked a device with an image before."

At least no one had done it in real life. Just another reason you might wanna keep an eye on us. ESP: Fiction or Premonition?

Spelly Goes to the Movies: PACIFIC RIM

In a recent interview with Vanity Fair, Guillermo Del Toro said,

"If you see my movies, I celebrate imperfection. I celebrate us being incomplete. I celebrate the fact that if we want to be complete, we need each other. In every movie I make, that is the prevalent message; the message that fragility is good, imperfection is good. And I think that you learn very little from perfection in life, and you learn so much from imperfection. And monsters are the patron saints of imperfection."

Thirty seconds after watching Pacific Rim, Spelly Scribe* said (out loud, to no one in particular), "That was EXACTLY what I needed it to be. Perfect!"

If you haven't seen it yet, go. You owe it to yourself. Del Toro considers this film his baby. In the same Vanity Fair interview, he says it's a very young film. At 48, he wrote it for himself at 12 years old. He wrote it for young boys and girls, to give them role models who do great things together. That theme of incompletion and imperfection? It’s everywhere, and it’s absolutely beautiful.

Rollin' Out that Fiction!

A dead body blocks entrance or exit to an apartment building. Sailors eat bruised apples and smoke cigarettes as their ship sinks. A young man tries to hitchhike to see his dying father. A young girl finds that she needs to cut something off any time she gets stuck.

What do they have in common? In this collection of short vignettes, Electric Sheep Press' Amelia Shackelford (Spelly Scribe) explores a variety of troublesome situations, how to get out of them, and what happens when you just can't.


Exit Wounds is available on Amazon Kindle for just $0.99. Something to hold you over till we release the next chapters of oSWAT and Fighting Fire! Check it out. Let us know what you think!

Fighting Fire: Fuel is free for the next two days

http://amzn.to/11YkLtb

Days after moving from Texas to California, fifteen year-old Alex Parker's family is killed in a botched police raid. Days later, officers involved with the raid start dying in freak accidents. Alex was kicked out of three different schools in Texas for alleged hacking. Could she be behind the killings?
FUEL, the first installment of FIGHTING FIRE sets the stage.

Good people make bad decisions, and we all know what paves the road to hell.

Defcon Short Story Contest

We entererd the Defcon Short Story Contest. Our story is called In too Deep and can be found here. If you like it vote for us in the peoples choice poll!

Thanks!

TopFic: 3D Printers is out!

TopFic:3D printers is a short read about the fictional issue of using 3D printers to make weapons! It is available on Amazon now as a Kindle download.

TopFic: 3D Printers

#3 - Remedies for the Supernaturally Afflicted: Evicting the Blob and Dating a Succubus

We have a very special edition of “Remedies for the Supernaturally Afflicted” for you today! While we only have two questions for you, we feel that they’ll more than suffice. Both questions hail from our own favorite city of Atlanta, Georgia (whatcanwedoforya?), and both have, let’s just say, some... legal ambiguities...

1. I have a big problem. And i mean BIG. My house has been taken over by what i can only describe as a "The Blob." 

So, I just moved into my first house, everything was going great until i got all moved in and finally got a chance to use the shower. I saw something work its way out of the drain, then it popped the screen and a reddish, gooey tentacle came out and made straight for my foot. 

So I make it out of the shower and the thing* kind of went back in the drain.  I went underneath the house and he was all up in the crawl space, I barely made it out of there too.  i found out later that before i bought the place, nobody was in there for over a year. So, i'm thinking he's just like a squatter, except he's a The Blob, so then i call the cops. 

Well, the cops tell me they really can't do anything if he's not being violent at the moment -it's not like they can taser the dude and drag him out in cuffs - so he's got to be legally evicted. First, i'm thinking: why are they treating him like a regular squatter, right? So the next day i call my agent, which leads to the lawyer telling me to go downtown and get everything documented…and it turns out that in the time the house was empty, The Blob moved in and he paid the fucking property tax for 2012! there's a check for $1,900 signed "The Blob" in county fucking records!

So I'm begging you guys, please help me. there's no way this guy gets "squatters rights" and there's no way i'm giving up my house, but I'm not staying there for fear that he absorbs me at night or something.

Sincerely,

Sleepless in Atlanta

"Come at me, Bro!"