Just because you’re using a Mac doesn’t mean you’re safe from hackers. That’s what two security researchers are warning, after finding a Mac-based malware that may be an attempt by Iranian hackers to target the U.S. defense industry.The malware, called MacDownloader, was found on a website impersonating the U.S. aerospace firm United Technologies, according to a report from Claudio Guarnieri and Collin Anderson, who are researching Iranian cyberespionage threats.The fake site was previously used in a spear phishing email attack to spread Windows malware and is believed to be maintained by Iranian hackers, the researchers claimed.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Toyota is partnering with Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to research artificial intelligence and robotics in order to bring greater autonomy to Toyota cars.The car maker will contribute US$50 million over five years to two research centers that are being set up at Stanford and MIT.However, don't expect a computer to completely drive your Camry any time soon.Toyota will always assume a person will be at the wheel, said Gill Pratt, who oversaw the DARPA Robotics Challenge and is now joining Toyota as an executive technical adviser.Toyota will focus on creating "human-centric systems" that are supplemented by technology, Pratt said Friday at a press conference in Palo Alto, California.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A flaw in an old Intel chip could crash servers and networking equipment, and the chipmaker is working to fix the issue.
The issue is in the Atom C2000 chips, which started shipping in 2013. The problem was first reported by The Register.
In January, Intel added an erratum to the Atom C2000 documentation, stating systems with the chip "may experience [an] inability to boot or may cease operation."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
For today’s knowledge workers, heavy workloads and slow productivity growth is a major challenge. Some products and services emphasize processes and systems such as continuous improvement and removing wasteful steps. Others emphasize the human aspects of productivity — a manager training a junior employee to take over a task, for example. AI assistants offer another approach to the workplace productivity challenge, but are they ready for “prime time” use in the enterprise?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Democratic senators have promised to fight any move by President Donald Trump's administration to gut the Federal Communications Commission's net neutrality rules.Any moves by Trump or the Republican-controlled FCC to roll back the 2015 regulations will meet stiff resistance from Democratic lawmakers and digital rights groups, the five senators said during a press conference Tuesday.Millions of U.S. residents called for the FCC to pass strong net neutrality rules that prohibit broadband providers from selectively slowing or blocking internet traffic, said Senator Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat.ALSO: The end of net neutrality is nigh—here’s what’s likely to happen
The senators were joined by seven digital rights groups, including Public Knowledge, Free Press, and Fight for the Future.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft's program allowing potential customers to try a Surface Hub for 30 days before buying it will start on Feb. 15.The try-and-buy program is available only through Surface Hub resellers in North America, Asia, and Europe. A list of resellers can be found on Microsoft's website.The Surface Hub is a gigantic Windows 10 computer available with a 55-inch or 84-inch screen. The 55-inch model is priced at US$8,999 and the 84-inch model is $21,999.The computer is designed for collaboration, videoconferencing, and whiteboarding. It runs a custom version of Windows 10.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Max Schrems' 2013 complaint to the Irish data protection commissioner over Facebook's handling of his personal information put him in an unusual position on Tuesday: He's a co-defendant, alongside Facebook, in a case before the High Court of Ireland.The case concerns the standard contract clauses that Facebook and other companies relied on to legalize their export of European Union citizens' personal information to the U.S. for processing in the months after the Safe Harbor agreement was overturned.The three-week hearing began Tuesday with representations from the data protection commissioner, which brought the case; Schrems and Facebook will get their turn next week.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
For the 5th straight year, impersonator bots were the most active bad bots, making up 24.3 percent of all bot activity. Both cheap and effective, impersonator bots are most commonly used to launch DDoS attacks, including October’s attack against DNS provider Dyn.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Companies building applications that leverage speech recognition have a new machine-learning based tool to improve their work. Microsoft is opening the public beta for its Custom Speech Service, the company said Tuesday.The service, formerly known as CRIS, allows customers to train a speech recognition system to work in a specific scenario, allowing it to produce more accurate results. For example, the Custom Speech Service can be trained to provide better results in a noisy airport or set up to work better with voices from a particular group, like kids or people with different accents.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
For enterprise IT, the cloud has finally reached the tipping point. It is no longer a question of whether cloud is part of the strategic plan for most organizations, but simply when and how they will realize the move to cloud.If you’re an IT leader, however, you may not want to get too comfortable with your cloud strategy.Despite having just fully arrived in the cloud era, we are about to move on—at least according to Peter Levine of Andreessen Horowitz.As 2016 wrapped up, Levine gave a talk in which he made his provocative prediction: Cloud computing is coming to an end.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The 97 tech firms who have joined forces to oppose President Donald Trump's executive order on immigration say they are looking to protect their employees as well as their business interests."The order makes it more difficult and expensive for U.S. companies to recruit, hire, and retain some of the world's best employees," the court brief reads. "It disrupts ongoing business operations. And it threatens companies' ability to attract talent, business, and investment to the United States."INSIDER 12 habits of successful tech CEO
The list of firms who signed onto the friend-of-the-court brief includes Airbnb, Apple, Facebook, GitHub, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Netflix, Twitter and Yelp. The move comes in response to the executive order signed on Jan. 27 that temporarily bars citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries, as well as all refugees, from entering the United States.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The U.S. technology industry warned President Donald Trump that his immigration order will hurt the U.S. economy by making it more difficult for businesses to attract overseas workers. The administration's seven-country ban is, for the tech industry, a blinking caution sign to the world's highly skilled population delivering this message: Come here at your own risk.Tech firms see the market for highly skilled workers as being "globally competitive," and any changes to immigration rules may inhibit their ability to recruit overseas. Most of these companies hire Indian nationals, who account for as many 70 percent of the H-1B visa holders.[ To comment on this story, visit Computerworld's H-1B & IT Outsourcing Facebook group. ]
Two hundred and fifty-one H-1B visa applications for people born in the seven banned countries were approved in fiscal year 2015 for computer-related jobs, according to a Computerworld analysis of government immigration data for that year. If new and renewed H-1B visas are counted for multiple years, the number will rise. The seven countries where the immigration ban would apply are Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A piece of silicon less than three inches across may speed up the arrival of 5G mobile networks in the next few years.IBM Research and Ericsson have developed a compact antenna array that can aim high-frequency radio signals at mobile devices and shoot them farther than they otherwise could reach, the companies said. Silicon integration makes it thin and energy efficient so it’s more commercially viable.Carriers expect 5G networks to deliver cellular data speeds in the gigabits per second, far faster than what today’s LTE services offer. They also expect benefits like less power consumption, lower latency and the ability to serve a lot more devices at the same time.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Twisted, tangled cords and wires are an eyesore. Organize your space with this simple 6-piece cable management system that works for power cords, charging cables, USB cords, phone chargers, audio cables, headphones, or any other wire up to 1/4-inch diameter. The cord organizers are made of a soft, flexibile material, will not damage your desk and cables, also you can remove it easily without damage or residue. The bundle includes four 5-channel clips (two black and two white), one single-slot clip and one double-slot clip as well. Its list price of $20 is discounted to $8. See it on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
As older IT workers retire, the industry is in danger of losing critical mainframe technology skills. But tapping millennials to fill these critical roles is helping to keep innovation alive."Credit cards, insurance companies, banks, government systems -- for any kind of large batch systems that use transactions like that, the mainframe is still the best at what it does from a processing speed and security perspective. That's why it lives on. And it sustains within large enterprises because there's no comparable cloud derivative, for one, and there's often millions of lines of proprietary, unique code that would be unreasonable to rework for another type of platform," says Chris O'Malley, president and CEO, Compuware.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Hidden gems: 14 Python libraries too good to overlookImage by InfoWorldWant a good reason for Python's smashing success as a language? Look no further than its massive collection of libraries, both native and third party. With so many libraries out there, though, it's no surprise some get crowded out and don't quite grab the attention they deserve. Plus, programmers who work exclusively in one domain don't always know about the goodies that may be available to them through libraries created for other kinds of work.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A mobile workforceImage by PexelsToday, employee mobility and office BYOD programs are critical for enterprise productivity. Mobile devices add new security challenges, bypassing many of the security controls you have in place. Mobile devices, mobile apps and the networks they use are now essential to satisfy customers, collaborate more effectively with suppliers, and keep employees productive anytime and anywhere.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Using a VPN on Android can help you access content that’s blocked in your region and help maintain your anonymity around the web. There are plenty of apps that offer VPN services for free and as a paid service, but which of them are worth your time?I tested six of the most popular VPN all-in-one apps (with Speedtest and the speedof.me HTML5 test) on Android to see how they stack up. You can also go your own way and use Android’s built-in VPN tool. With a few tweaks, you can make it a little easier to use, too.Why use a VPN?
A VPN (Virtual Private Network) is basically a way to funnel all your web traffic through a remote server. This makes it look like you’re in a different location and obscures your real IP address. VPNs encrypt the traffic passing through them, making it harder for anyone else to listen in on your connection, even if you connect to an unsecured Wi-Fi network.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Cybercriminals have been producing fewer new kinds of malware last year -- but that's because they're so busy raking in the money from their ransomware attacks.The number of unique malware samples discovered last year was 60 million, down 6.25 percent from last year's 64 million, according to a report released this morning by SonicWall."This is the first time I've seen that the number of unique malware samples actually decreased," said Dmitriy Ayrapetov, director of product management at SonicWall, which produced the report, based on data collections from more than a million sensors.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here