It's bad news for businesses. Hackers have launched large-scale attacks that are capable of bypassing the security protections added by Microsoft's Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET), a tool whose goal is to stop software exploits.Security researchers from FireEye have observed Silverlight and Flash Player exploits designed to evade EMET mitigations such as Data Execution Prevention (DEP), Export Address Table Access Filtering (EAF) and Export Address Table Access Filtering Plus (EAF+). The exploits have been recently added to the Angler exploit kit.Angler is one of the most widely used attack tools used by cybercriminals to launch Web-based, "drive-by" download attacks. It is capable of installing malware by exploiting vulnerabilities in users' browsers or browser plug-ins when they visit compromised websites or view maliciously crafted ads.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Sean Radlich is Manager of Digital Experience at HealthNow New York, one of the leading health insurance companies in upstate New York servicing about a million members. Headquartered in Buffalo, NY, the company operates BlueCross BlueShield of Western New York (Buffalo), BlueShield of Northeastern New York (Albany), Health Now Brokerage Concepts (Blue Bell, PA) and Health Now Administrative Services (across the Northeast US and California). Network World Editor in Chief John Dix recently spoke with Radlich about the organization’s digital initiatives and how his team works with IT.
Sean Radlich, Manager of Digital Experience, HealthNow New YorkTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Samsung's new Galaxy S7 Active is a toughened-up version of the flagship Galaxy S7 that won't fail if dropped on the ground or in water.
The Android smartphone has a 5.1-inch screen with a 2560 x 1440 pixel resolution, and 32GB of storage. It sports a 12-megapixel rear-facing camera and a 5-megapixel front camera.
It also has a fingerprint reader, and support for Samsung Pay.
The smartphone will be available through AT&T on June 10. You can shell out US$794.99 for the handset, or buy it via AT&T Next, which cuts the price of phones down into monthly installments. AT&T Next also provides options to upgrade the handset at certain intervals.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Paul Marcarelli – an actor better known as the “Can you hear me now?” guy – spent nine years profiting from a Verizon ad campaign that made his face famous and that phrase a part of the lexicon. That gig ended in 2011.Now he’s begun selling Sprint. In the new commercial he says he switched teams because Sprint’s service has become so wonderful. In real life, we all know he switched because Sprint is now helping him pay his bills. That’s fine. If AT&T had wanted Marcarelli’s services it would be the wonders of AT&T that the actor would be extolling on TV. Here’s the ad:
Now there’s absolutely nothing to criticize about an actor earning a living. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing wrong here.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Emergency 911 services first materialized in the United States when the Alabama Telephone Company established the service in the sleepy little town of Haleyville on Feb. 16, 1968. At that time, phone companies knew the installation address and phone number of each and every telephone device, and calls were routed based on this information. While seemingly unsophisticated by today’s standards, at the time, it was considered quite a feat of engineering.The process remained valid until Sept. 21 of 1983 when the world changed forever. In a historic decision by the Federal Communications Commission, the Motorola 8000X, the world's first commercially available portable cell phone, was approved for service and personal mobility took on a brand-new meaning. What was the cost of this miraculous technology? For just under $4,000, consumers could ‘cut the cord’ that tethered them to the wall -- a small price to pay for a device that would revolutionize and redefine telecommunications history.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Over the weekend hackers managed to access Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's Twitter and Pinterest accounts, as well as the social media accounts of other celebrities.
Someone posted to Zuckerberg’s Twitter feed on Sunday, claiming to have found his password in account information leaked from LinkedIn.
A group calling itself the OurMine Team took credit for breaking into Zuckerberg's Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram accounts, but there's no evidence that the Instagram account has been breached.
"You were in LinkedIn Database with password 'dadada'," read a message supposedly posted by hackers from Zuckerberg's @finkd Twitter account. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A new company launched Monday by former NASA chief Dan Goldin aims to deliver a major boost to the field of neural computing.KnuEdge's debut comes after 10 years in stealth; formerly it was called Intellisis. Now, along with its launch, it's introducing two products focused on neural computing: KnuVerse, software that focuses on military-grade voice recognition and authentication, and KnuPath, a processor designed to offer a new architecture for neural computing.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Intel continues to pump more horsepower in its chips, by releasing a 24-core processor for high-performance computers.The Xeon processor E7-8890 v4 chip is part of the Xeon E7-8800 v4 family of chips that Intel announced on Monday. It was announced just a week after Intel made headlines with a new 10-core Core chip for gaming code-named Broadwell-E.The 24-core chip will go, in many cases, into monster performer four- to eight-socket servers. An eight-socket system could have up to 192 cores, with support for up to 24TB of memory.In a data sheet, Intel estimated a 192-core system with 2TB of memory and two hard drives to be priced at about US$165,000. Add 24TB of memory, and the server price could skyrocket.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A plethora of people with the remote desktop tool TeamViewer have been in an uproar after their machines were remotely hijacked; in some cases over the past month or so, users had their bank or PayPal accounts sucked dry. TeamViewer denied it has been hacked and launched two new security measures.After experiencing a TeamViewer takeover, IBM security researcher Nick Bradley thinks password reuse may be the problem. Bradley said he was gaming on his PC when he lost control of his mouse and TeamViewer popped up. He killed the app and dashed downstairs to another PC which had TeamViewer.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If you’re a user of TeamViewer, the very popular “remote support, remote access, and online meeting software” for Windows, OS X, Linux, Chrome OS, iOS and Android, you might want to take a second to change all of your passwords. In fact, before you finish this article, before you learn why you should change your TeamViewer passwords, go change them right now to be really strong passwords and take down any copies you usually leave running that aren’t absolutely necessary … it’s that big a deal.
Okay? Done? Good. The reason for my urging you to take immediate action is that through as yet undetermined means, someone or ones have managed to acquire an unknown but apparently huge number of TeamViewer account credentials and as a consequence, a number of TeamViewer users claim to have suffered huge financial losses.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Nest co-founder and CEO Tony Fadell is leaving the company, a move that may mark a shift in strategy for one of the early stars of the Internet of Things.Fadell founded the startup, which makes connected thermostats and other smart-home gear, in 2011 with co-founder Matt Rogers. Google bought Nest in 2014. In a blog post on Friday, Fadell didn’t say much about why he was leaving but said he would become an advisor to Alphabet, the parent company of Nest and Google, and its CEO, Larry Page.The resignation came after news reports that said Nest was suffering from internal turmoil. In his parting note, Fadell said the company was growing fast and had a bright future.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Retaining and “journaling” content has been a key requirement of organizations for years, however as organizations have migrated to Office 365, plus with Microsoft’s shift to new and improved eDiscovery tools, the process of “holding” and “searching” for content has changed.This article covers a whole new series of best practices that EVERY legal department, compliance officer, and content / Office 365 administrator needs to read, understand, and ensure they have Office 365 setup properly so that when the time comes and they need to do eDiscovery of content, that the information they are looking for has actually been held and managed for future look-up.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Shipping giant Maersk Group made headlines earlier this year when it used a drone to deliver a bucket of cookies to a tanker at sea. That was just the beginning of an effort the company thinks could dramatically change its business.The company is evaluating ways to expand its use of drones and plans a bigger test later this year, said Markus Kuhn, a supply chain manager at Maersk, at the Drones Data X conference in San Francisco.In January, the company made a drone fly 250 meters from one of its barges to a tanker and drop off a batch of cookies. It's now looking for a drone-making partner for a test flight that would haul a 10-kilogram package for 10 kilometers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Texas Advanced Computer Center (TACC) has received $30 million in U.S. funding for a new supercomputer that will roughly double the performance of its existing 9-petaflop supercomputer.The new system, named Stampede 2 after its predecessor, is being funded by the National Science Foundation. It will be available for scientific research by June 1, 2017.The Texas supercomputing center occupies a unique niche. The U.S. government owns the nation's largest and most powerful supercomputers. The national leader is Titan, a Cray XK7 Opteron-based system at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, running at a peak performance of about 27 petaflops.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The LC06 laptop fan from Opolar averages 4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon from nearly 900 customers (read reviews), and currently lists for just $29.99. It's designed for laptops with vents on the sides or rear, quietly and rapidly reducing the internal and surface temperatures by 18-50 degrees in minutes, far outperforming most cooling pads. Temp can be monitored on the built-in display. The motor is built to last through many years of heavy use, and is backed by a one year warranty for product defects and a 30 day no hassle return for incompatibility. See the discounted LC06 laptop fan now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Researchers have found a malware program that was designed to manipulate supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems in order to hide the real readings from industrial processes.The same technique was used by the Stuxnet sabotage malware allegedly created by the U.S. and Israel to disrupt Iran's nuclear program and credited with destroying a large number of the country's uranium enrichment centrifuges.The new malware was discovered in the second half of last year by researchers from security firm FireEye, not in an active attack, but in the VirusTotal database. VirusTotal is a Google-owned website where users can submit suspicious files to be scanned by antivirus engines.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The OpenSwitch Project took a significant development step this week when it became the first full feature network operating system project of the Linux Foundation.+More on Network World: Feeling jammed? Not like this I bet+The move gives OpenSwitch a neutral home where it can receive all the necessary support for long-term growth and sustainability – including back-office, technical infrastructure and ecosystem development services, said Michael Dolan, VP of Strategic Programs at The Linux Foundation.While the Linux Foundation hosts other projects in the networking space, the addition of OpenSwitch makes available a complete NOS solution, from the ASIC drivers to the APIs,’ that will run on reference hardware and in hypervisors, he stated.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Darth DownImage by Reuters/Peter NichollsDon’t make dad feel like this on Fathers Day. One heck of an epic gift, if not intergalactically expensive, this foray into the darkside will set you back $3,500. This worker from the Propshop holds a replica of Darth Vader's melted helmet from "Star Wars: The Force Awakens".To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Internet of Things is no good without a way to act on the data it generates. A new partnership between two of the biggest IoT players promises to put smart collection and advanced analysis of data right where it’s needed.IBM and Cisco Systems have worked out how to run components of IBM’s Watson IoT analytics on Cisco edge devices. This will bring more intelligence closer to where the action is, helping enterprises run things like factories and oil rigs more efficiently.MORE: 10 Internet of Things Companies to WatchTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In what the Federal Trade Commission is calling a first-of-its-kind verdict, a jury has found that a Utah man and his three movie companies are responsible for a variety of “deceptive and unlawful” selling practices that include 117 million illegal telemarketing calls.
In a case that has already dragged on since 2011, the jury ruling enforces both the FTC’s Telemarketing Sales Rule and its enormously popular Do Not Call Registry rules. The judge has yet to access civil penalties, but since they can be as high as $16,000 per violation it’s safe to assume the total will fall somewhere south of the $1.9 trillion maximum for just those illegal calls.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here