How To Paint Shutterstock Image #774846

Photo: Sascha Burkard. Top good result at you know where! Previously: Is this the new face of jazz or Getty Images stock photo #LS008662 [The Onion]

How to Paint Shutterstock image #774846

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Celebrate Hubble’s 20th With Best Space Image Ever

8. Celebrate Hubble’s 20th With Best Space Image Ever

April 23

The Hubble Space Telescope did not make an appearance in our most popular stories of 2009, so we are very happy to see this mind-blowing space photo of a star-forming region in the Carina Nebula in our top ten this year.

We think this shot rivals what may be Hubble’s most famous image, a shot of the Pillars of Creation taken in 1995. The enormous pillar of gas and dust in the image above is 3 light-years tall. The seam in the middle is the result of new stars forming and emitting powerful gas jets that are ripping the pillar apart.

With the last shuttle repair mission to Hubble completed, every image the telescope sends to us could be its last. So enjoy this one, and join us in crossing our fingers that Hubble has lots of life left in it yet.

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Image: NASA, ESA, and M. Livio and the Hubble 20th Anniversary Team (STScI)

Celebrate Hubble’s 20th With Best Space Image Ever

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Dmitry Sklyarov and co. crack Canon's "image verification" anti-photoshopping tool

Dmitry Sklyarov and his colleagues at Elcomsoft have cracked the "image verification" system in high-end Canon cameras; this system digitally signs the photos you take so any alternations, "touch ups" or other modifications can be detected. Sklyarov (who became a cause celebre when he broke the DRM on Adobe's ebooks and was thrown in jail by the FBI at Adobe's behest) and his team have a sense of humor -- they've produced correctly signed images of astronauts planting the Soviet flag on the moon and the Statue of Liberty holding a sickle, among others.

The problem is that the HMAC sits in the camera's RAM in a de-obfuscated form and can be extracted, according to Sklyarov. It is also possible to extract the HMAC from the camera's Flash ROM and manually de-obfuscate it. Canon also released a third version of ODD, which Sklyarov was also able to break and forge the ODD. Elcomsoft has written a program that can analyze a camera's processor and firmware.

The problem is a design flaw and can't be fixed, according to Elcomsoft. Sklyarov said he was able to extract the HMAC keys for the following models: EOS 20D, EOS 5D, EOS 30D, EOS 40D, EOS 450D, EOS 1000D, EOS 50D, EOS 5D Mark II, EOS 500D and EOS 7D.

The problem, of course, is that for this system to work, the camera has to keep a secret from its owner -- and if one camera owner manages to extract the secret, all cameras fall. According to NetworkWorld, Sklyarov offers a silly remedy for this: "Canon should prevent its cameras from running non-Canon code to avoid the use of software tools by an attacker" -- that is, use DRM to control which code can run on a Canon camera (there is a thriving world of hobbyists who have improved the Canon firmware).

Dmitry Sklyarov and co. crack Canon's "image verification" anti-photoshopping tool

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