Archinect - News

Hackers are using architects’ computers for crypto-mining, cybersecurity firm warns

2023-09-08T11:09:00-04:00

Cybersecurity firm Cisco Talos is warning of the potential for hackers to target architects and other designers with crypto-mining malware. The hacking campaign, which has largely targeted French-speaking architects, engineers, and graphic designers, sees the victim’s computer infected with malware via installer tools.

“Cybercriminals are abusing Advanced Installer, a legitimate Windows tool used for creating software packages, to drop cryptocurrency-mining malware on infected machines,” Cisco Talos explains.

The vulnerability centers on Advanced Installer, a package used in the installations of legitimate software installers such as Adobe Illustrator, Autodesk Revit, and SketchUp. The hackers package such installers with malicious scripts and use Advanced Installer’s Custom Actions feature to make the software installers execute the malicious scripts.

The resulting malware allows h...

Zaha Hadid Architects hit with ransomware attack

2020-04-27T17:18:00-04:00

Information stolen from the servers of Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) is being held at ransom by computer hackers.

The Architect’s Journal reports that the 348-person, London-based practice has been ensnared by a ransomware attack that has resulted in the loss of some unknown quantity of confidential information.

According to the report, ZHA alerted police on Tuesday, April 21st that the attack had taken place after office employees discovered messages from the hackers announcing that information stored on its internal server had been encrypted and would only be returned if the hackers were paid a ransom. According to AJ, instead of communicating with the hackers, ZHA is working with a cyber forensics team to investigate the situation.

The architecture firm maintains that the information had been previously backed up and that its work was not under threat, though it is unclear exactly what information was taken. A ZHA spokesperson tells AJ, “We immediately worked to secure our networ...

High-end homes are going biometric

2019-06-24T19:11:00-04:00

Little by little, new biometric technologies are making inroads into the domestic sphere.

The Wall Street Journal reports that digital fingerprint lock and facial-recognition systems have become a fact of life for some of the wealthiest homeowners and now come standard for many high-end developments.

The Diller Scofidio + Renfro-, Rockwell Group-, and Ismael Leyva Architects-designed 15 Hudson Yards tower, for example, comes equipped with fingerprint scanner technology, according to the article.

Meanwhile, 2000 Ocean, a TEN Arquitectos-designed condominium tower in Miami, goes one step further by using a "passive facial-recognition system" in its lobby to alert the concierge that you have arrived. "Once you are in the elevator," the project's developer, Shahab Karmely of KAR Properties, told WSJ, "you have to use facial-recognition or a fob to get to the private landing of your unit." Karmely adds, "It’s a different level of security. You can leave your fob behind, someone can ...

City governments are learning the hard way that there's no one-size-fits-all approach to cybersecurity

2016-04-04T13:09:00-04:00

Among the toughest cybersecurity challenges cities face are recruiting a skilled workforce, increasing education and training for employees on cyberthreats, and taking steps to ensure utility companies and service providers are protecting public water and electrical systems. [...] Cybersecurity experts say large cities are competing with private companies to recruit and retain skilled workers. Smaller cities, particularly in rural areas, often lack staffing and funds for cybersecurity

More cybersecurity and hacker news on Archinect:

Hack The City

2015-12-03T21:00:00-05:00

NBBJ calls the concept No-Shadow Tower, though it would be more accurate to call it the Smaller-Shadow-From-One-of-Two-Towers, since it depends on a pair of buildings separated by an open space. For that reason, the technique is an awkward fit for New York

A weeklong series of ideas for improving urban life, ranging from an examination of how Next-Generation Drones Will Save New York City’s Infrastructure, to how new building designs will usher in the Age of Shadowless Skyscrapers.

The Most Relevant News of 2014 (for Architects)

2014-12-30T14:02:00-05:00

Sometimes it's easy to pretend that architecture exists outside of this world, erupting instead in the blank of a 3D space governed only by the laissez-fair laws of software. But sometimes a news headline will penetrate through this fog of imagination, appearing as a blazing light shining forth from an image of some distant row of houses hollowed by mortar fire and colored with the blood of a strangers' body. "This is the real of architecture," the news seems to silently implore.

As gravity serves as the counterweight to the feverish, technofuturism fashionable to today's students, news events seem to ground architecture just at the moment it seems like it may finally escape into the vapors of idealism. While it may seem that architecture is increasingly consigned to the building of institutions or expensive residences, the demand for buildings and dwellings simultaneously grows louder and more desperate with every unfolding disaster.

A year-end round-up is as fraught as a ranking. If...

Big businesses and baby steps: Weekly News Round-Up for September 22 and 29, 2014

2014-10-06T18:43:00-04:00

Friday, October 3:

Eisenhower Memorial clears key hurdle on Gehry design: In a positive step for the Memorial's Approving Process Odyssey, the National Capital Planning Commission has OK'd the Commission on Fine Arts (the other federal body that must approve the design) to vote on the Memorial.
Where are the women? Measuring progress on gender in architecture: A series of infographics on the representation of women in architectural practice and education, courtesy of ACSA.

Wednesday, October 1:

Guggenheim plans New York expansion… again: Not for more art space (Gehry tried that before) but for offices.
Zaera-Polo steps down as dean of Princeton's School of Architecture: From the press release: "the school's former dean, Professor Stanley T. Allen, will serve as acting dean until a permanent successor is appointed and that Professor Allen will chair the search for the new dean."
Tiny Spanish Island to be First Energy Self-Sufficient Island: The 10,000 population island will use renewable e...

"Hacking" Rem Koolhaas' 2014 Venice Biennale with Project Source Code

2014-09-24T15:33:00-04:00

Hacking an architecture exhibition through augmented reality? Yes, there's an app for that. "Project Source Code" is a digital guerrilla-style exhibition created by architect/artist/researcher Güvenç Özel that lets mobile-device users "hack" key works in Rem Koolhaas' "Elements of Architecture" exhibit currently at the 2014 Venice Biennale. Blending digital and physical space, the project is deemed to be the first to use augmented reality on a live exhibition and also the first time that raw 3D architectural models are treated as exhibition pieces.

Ozel's selection includes 6 pioneering works he directly acquired (with prior approval) from contemporary architects and designers known for their use of digital design techniques. This includes Asymptote Architecture, Greg Lynn FORM, Neil M. Denari Architects, and Oosterhuis_Lénárd.

Ozel fully explains his project in the info he provided below:

PROJECT SOURCE CODE

"In the field of computer science, SOURCE CODE refers to a set of instructions...

Traffic Lights are Easy to Hack

2014-08-20T18:26:00-04:00

In a paper published this month, the researchers describe how they very simply and very quickly seized control of an entire system of almost 100 intersections in an unnamed Michigan city from a single ingress point. The exercise was conducted on actual stoplights deployed at live intersections [...] As is typical in large urban areas, the traffic lights in the subject city are networked ... allowing them to pass information to and receive instruction from a central management point.

Hackers Present Threat to Internet of Things

2014-08-08T13:16:00-04:00

A hacker with a smartphone can unlock your front door [...] Criminals and intelligence agencies grab data from your home thermostat to plan robberies or track your movements. According to computer-security researchers, this is the troubling future of the Internet of Things, the term for an all-connected world where appliances like thermostats, health-tracking wristbands, smart cars and medical devices communicate with people and each other through the Internet.

When 'Smart Homes' Get Hacked: I Haunted A Complete Stranger's House Via The Internet

2013-07-30T13:04:00-04:00

“I can see all of the devices in your home and I think I can control them,” I said to Thomas Hatley, a complete stranger in Oregon who I had rudely awoken with an early phone call on a Thursday morning. He and his wife were still in bed. Expressing surprise, he asked me to try to turn the master bedroom lights on and off. Sitting in my living room in San Francisco, I flipped the light switch with a click, and resisted the Poltergeist-like temptation to turn the television on as well.

LinkedIn Hacking Doesn't Violate CFAA

2012-10-09T19:18:00-04:00

A federal court ruled last week that an employer didn't violate a federal anti-hacking law when it took over an employee's LinkedIn account after firing her, Ars Technica reported. Edcomm, the Pennsylvania company Linda Eagle presided over until it was bought out in 2010, fired Eagle in 2011, according to Ars Technica.

The New French Hacker-Artist Underground

2012-02-02T18:00:00-05:00

Through meticulous infiltration, UX members have carried out shocking acts of cultural preservation and repair, with an ethos of “restoring those invisible parts of our patrimony that the government has abandoned or doesn’t have the means to maintain.” The group claims to have conducted 15 such covert restorations, often in centuries-old spaces, all over Paris.