Qatar National Bank has admitted that its systems were hacked but said that the information released online was a combination of data picked up from the attack and from other sources such as social media.The incident would not have a financial impact on the bank’s customers whose accounts are secure the bank said, without providing details of how its systems were hacked, the possible identity of the hackers, and what information was harvested.The announcement Sunday by one of the leading financial institution in the Middle East follows the posting online last week of leaked documents. The attack only targeted a portion of Qatar-based customers, the bank said, claiming the hack attempted to target the bank’s reputation rather than specifically its customers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
This is going to be a great week for SharePoint with the Future of SharePoint event coming on May 4. It’s not too late to register and even if you can’t watch the event live, you will be able to watch it later if you register. About 7 weeks later, from June 20-22, 2016, there is another opportunity worth considering: attending the Share Conference in South Africa.Share is a unique event sponsored by The Eventful Group. Each year, the conference producers conduct a series of focus groups to understand the critical issues and important topics for business users. Yes, that’s right – business users. Share is a business-centric conference for people who want to identify new and different ways to use SharePoint to solve business problems. This year’s hot topics include:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Last week was a busy week when it comes to ransomware. New victims included a utility company, visitors to a toymaker’s website, pirates sailing The Pirate Bay and many more. Some cyber crooks are now demanding gift cards for ransom instead of bitcoin. While it wasn’t all bad news, there are new decryptors and detectors, the FBI published a new warning about the proliferation of increasingly sophisticated ransomware campaigns.Utility company hit with ransomwareLansing Board of Water & Light (BWL), a Michigan municipal utility, was hit with ransomware after an employee opened an email with a malicious attachment. The ransomware spread, encrypting files on other computers on the internal network; BWL shut down its accounting system, email service for 250 employees and “phone lines,” including the customer assistance line for account inquiries and the line for reporting outages. “Printers and other technology” were also affected.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Last week was a busy week when it comes to ransomware. New victims included a utility company, visitors to a toymaker’s website, pirates sailing The Pirate Bay and many more. Some cyber crooks are now demanding gift cards for ransom instead of bitcoin.
While it wasn’t all bad news, there are new decryptors and detectors, the FBI published a new warning about the proliferation of increasingly sophisticated ransomware campaigns.Utility company hit with ransomware
Lansing Board of Water & Light (BWL), a Michigan municipal utility, was hit with ransomware after an employee opened an email that had a malicious attachment. The ransomware spread, encrypting files on other computers on the internal network. BWL shut down its accounting system, email service for 250 employees and “phone lines,” including the customer assistance line for account inquiries and the line for reporting outages. “Printers and other technology” were also affected.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Given the recent sharp increase in cyberattacks of all kinds, IT operations driving enterprise scale networks need something that will effectively reduce their intelligence gathering problems and help to automate their response to be as fast as possible. What’s needed is the ability to identify and deal with attacks as they happen but there are some really significant challenges in doing this including the sheer scale of network event data, the problem of filtering out the event "noise" and false positives, and the ability to detect zero day threats. With what must be one of the headiest combinations of hot technologies I’ve seen for a while, the security company Cybereason uses behavioral analytics, big data, and machine learning along with major league threat intelligence resources to thwart cyberattacks in, they claim, real time. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Employees that need access to certain business data on the go can now build their own app for it using a tool from Microsoft that went into public beta on Friday.The company has announced that it's opening up its PowerApps app creation service to the world, after a private beta period that began last year. PowerApps allows line of business employees to take data from a variety of sources and create apps that run on phones and tablets without requiring them to do any coding. Developers' time is often constrained, so doing something like creating a mobile expense reporting app might not be a top priority, even if it would save time and money. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Even though Apple last quarter generated $50.6 billion in revenue and $10.5 billion in profits last quarter (more than Google, Microsoft and Facebook combined), analysts came away disappointed. Specifically, analysts expressed concern regarding falling iPhone sales. In fact, this quarter marked the first time in history that Apple experienced a year over year drop in iPhone sales.For the quarter gone by, Apple sold 51.1 million iPhones compared to 61.7 million iPhones during the same quarter a year-ago. With many now worried that we've perhaps reached 'peak iPhone', Apple is now feeling a lot of pressure to really deliver with the iPhone 7. Further, because 'S' cycle refreshes typically focus on internal upgrades and thus don't generate as much excitement, Barclays analyst Mark Moskowitz believes that Apple might do away with the iPhone 7s altogether. Instead, the iPhone 7 may swiftly be followed by the iPhone 8 in 2017.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Petcube is an interactive pet camera that lets you watch, talk to and play with your pets from your smartphone when you’re away from home. Access and control the Petcube Camera through our mobile app for iOS or Android and check on the live HD broadcastTo activate a real laser toy on the camera, drag your finger across your phone screen or simply point to the area you would like the laser to go.Engage and join the conversation with thousands of pet lovers across the globe. Share your photos & videos, tips and experiences with fellow pet lovers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
With a regular list price of $2,099, this 38% off deal puts the JS7000 at just $1,297.99. Enjoy an exceptional home theater experience with the Samsung JS7000 60-Inch 4K SUHD Smart TV. The Samsung JS7000 features 4K UHD resolution (3840 x 2160) and Nano-crystal technology for vivid colors, enhanced contrast, and a brighter, more true-to-life picture. The JS7000 Smart TV absorbs ambient light and reduces reflections to minimize glare for a great picture from any angle. With Smart TV and Smart View 2.0, you can easily access and play your favorite content and watch TV on your mobile device. A quad-core processor lets you quickly switch between apps, streaming content, and other media. And with ConnectShare Movie, you can watch videos, play music, and view photos via a USB connection. See the Samsung JS7000 now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Intel could be on the verge of exiting the market for smartphones and standalone tablets, wasting billions of dollars it spent trying to expand in those markets.The company is immediately canceling Atom chips, code-named Sofia and Broxton, for mobile devices, an Intel spokeswoman confirmed.These are the first products on the chopping block as part of Intel's plan to reshape operations after announcing plans this month to cut 12,000 jobs.The news of the chip cuts was first reported by analyst Patrick Moorhead in an article on Forbes' website.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter’s approach.Step back and imagine the world of technology 10 years ago. YouTube was in its infancy, the iPhone was more than a year away from release, Blackberry was the smartest phone on the market and Twitter was barely making a peep.While the masses are now glued to their iPhones watching cat videos and pontificating 140 characters at a time, the backend infrastructure that supports all of that watching and tweeting—not to mention electronic health records, industrial sensors, e-commerce, and a myriad of other serious activities—has also undergone a massive evolution. Unfortunately, the tools tasked with monitoring and managing the performance, availability, and security of those infrastructures have not kept up with the scale of data or with the speed at which insight is required today.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In a battle between a rodent and a 17-mile-long superconducting machine designed to smash protons, one might expect the rodent to fare poorly. And in this case, it did, though not without the little guy doing some damage of its own.From a BBC report:
The Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator at Cern is offline after a short circuit - caused by a weasel.The unfortunate creature did not survive the encounter with a high-voltage transformer at the site near Geneva in Switzerland.The LHC was running when a "severe electrical perturbation" occurred in the early hours of Friday morning.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Last week I discussed 15 ways to not get fired from your dream job and I actually got a decent amount of thank you email. One email, however, got me thinking. It was from a guy who was not getting along with his manager -- and man I’ve been there. I had this one manager who was a nightmare and I kind of went a little off the rails myself. Now when I spoke to others who had worked for him, something I should have done before I took the job, I found that not only wasn’t he a good manager, he was harsh to employees who aggressively wanted to advance, particularly if they were women.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Television stations have volunteered to sell off 126MHz of "beach front" wireless spectrum to mobile carriers in an ongoing U.S. Federal Communications Commission auction, potentially bringing higher speeds and more reliable networks to customers.The 126MHz of spectrum was the highest amount anticipated by the FCC in the so-called incentive auction, agency officials said Friday. In most areas of the country, the agency will be able to auction 10 blocks of 10MHz to mobile carriers and other interested bidders.This low-band spectrum, in the 600MHz band, is highly coveted by mobile carriers because it can cover long distances and penetrate walls and other obstacles. Mobile carriers have pushed for more spectrum as their customers' network use keeps growing, and the low-band spectrum will help carriers roll out faster 5G service, supporters say.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The scourge of ransomware hit new highs in 2015 and 2016 is turning out to be no bargain – particularly attacks against businesses as the payoffs are higher, the FBI said this week.
Ransomware attacks are not only proliferating, they’re becoming more sophisticated, the FBI stated.
+More on Network World: FBI warning puts car hacking on bigger radar screen+
“Several years ago, ransomware was normally delivered through spam e-mails, but because e-mail systems got better at filtering out spam, cyber criminals turned to spear phishing e-mails targeting specific individuals,” the FBI stated. And in newly identified instances of ransomware, some cyber criminals aren’t using e-mails at all. “These criminals have evolved over time and now bypass the need for an individual to click on a link. They do this by seeding legitimate websites with malicious code, taking advantage of unpatched software on end-user computers,” said FBI Cyber Division Assistant Director James Trainor in a statement.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
"Data scientist" has already been declared this year's hottest job, and now a new report offers several more reasons to consider it as a career.For the past three years executive recruiter Burtch Works has been surveying data-science professionals about salaries and other related topics. Burtch Works defines data scientists as professionals who can work with enormous sets of unstructured data and use analytics to get meaning out of them. Published on Thursday, this year's report is based on interviews with 374 working data scientists, and it paints a pretty compelling picture. Here are five particularly attractive highlights.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If you paid attention to Apple’s quarterly report earlier this week, you could be forgiven for thinking that the mobile revolution was beginning to stall.Slipping mobile hardware sales
For the first time ever, iPhone shipments slipped year over year, and the growth of global smartphone sales is slipping to about 7 percent this year, per Gartner. That’s the first time it’s dipped below double digits. Ever.Similarly, iPad sales have been going nowhere for a while now. In fact, the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Tablet Tracker recently noted a 14.7 percent decline in worldwide tablet shipments in the first quarter of 2016, noting “an overall disinterested customer base.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Last weekend—April 23 and 24—was LinuxFest Northwest (LFNW) in Bellingham, Washington. And it was a truly excellent event.The amazing thing about LFNW is how very community-centric it is—yet still manages to draw in 2,000 attendees over the course of the two-day event.And, when I say “community-centric,” I really mean it. The exhibit hall, which is often one of the largest areas of many conferences, is small. Really small. Two short rows of booths with a scattering of booths around the edge of the room.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Cloud providers hosting blockchain secure transactions technology should take additional steps to protect the records, IBM says.IBM's new framework for securely operating blockchain networks, released Friday, recommends that network operators make it easy to audit their operating environments and use optimized accelerators for hashing -- the generation of numbers from strings of text -- and the creation of digital signatures to pump up CPU performance. Along with the security guidelines, IBM announced new cloud-based blockchain services designed to meet existing regulatory and security requirements. The company has worked with security experts to create cloud services for "tamper-resistant" blockchain networks, it said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Many alternative mobile operating systems like Firefox have fallen by the wayside while Android and iOS continue to dominate, but Samsung's Tizen has survived.After years of inactivity, Tizen is now back on the map with a major OS upgrade. A new version of the OS -- Tizen 3.0 -- was announced this week at the Samsung Developers Conference in San Francisco.Tizen 3.0 is a big technological upgrade that should make it compatible with some of the latest smartphones and tablets. Other improvements prime the OS for installation in smart appliances, wearables, in-car entertainment systems, drones, TVs, and virtual reality headsets.Tizen 3.0 will be a 64-bit capable OS, like iOS and Android. It will work on devices with some of the latest 64-bit ARM and x86 processors.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here