The seemingly harmless blinking lights on servers and desktop PCs may give away secrets if a hacker can hijack them with malware.
Researchers in Israel have come up with an innovative hack that turns a computer's LED light into a signaling system that shows passwords and other sensitive data.
The researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev demonstrated the hack in a YouTube video posted Wednesday. It shows a hacked computer broadcasting the data through a computer’s LED light, with a drone flying nearby reading the pattern.
The researchers designed the scheme to underscore vulnerabilities of air-gapped systems, or computers that have been intentionally disconnected from the internet.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Amazon has discounted its refurbished Paperwhite models for a limited time, so with the current deal you can get one for just $79.99. That saves you $30 on the typical price of a refurbished model, and saves even more over buying it brand new ($119.99 new). A Refurbished Paperwhite E-reader is refurbished, tested, and certified by Amazon to look and work like new. The popular Kindle Paperwhite has a higher res 300ppi screen, WiFi, a built-in adjustable light, a long lasting battery, and best of all it's glare-free even in bright sunlight so you can use it literally anywhere, night or day. See the discounted refurbished Paperwhite model on Amazon to learn more and explore buying options.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
U.K. network operator EE plans to deliver 4G internet access from a kite-like balloon first developed as an observation and communications platform for the military.The Helikite was invented in the 1990s and has also found favor with Antarctic explorers, disaster relief workers and emergency services. EE revealed its plans to deliver wide-area network coverage from the helium-filled balloons on Tuesday, although it won't have the first one in service until later in the year.According to Allsopp Helikites, the maker of the kite-balloons, hoisting a 4G base station aloft can increase its range from 3 kilometers to between 30 km and 80 km.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Federal Communications Commission announced Wednesday that it had approved two cellular base stations – one each from Ericsson and Nokia – to use LTE-U, marking the first official government thumbs-up for the controversial technology.FCC chairman Ajit Pai said in a statement that the unlicensed spectrum – historically, the territory of Wi-Fi – can now be used to help ease the load on carrier mobile networks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A new Secunia Research report states that the average private user in the U.S. has 75 programs installed on their PC, and 7.4% of them are past end of life and no longer patched by the vendor.
By being past end of life, this software becomes a popular attack target by hackers because the programs are so widespread on devices today. This was the warning from Microsoft when it ended support for Windows XP in 2014—that people should no longer use it because exploits would no longer be fixed.
The report from Secunia Research, which is owned by Flexera Software, covers findings for the fourth quarter of 2016 in 12 countries. In the U.S., it found 7.5 percent of private users had unpatched Windows operating systems in Q4 of 2016, up from 6.1 percent in Q3 of 2016 and down from 9.9 percent in Q4 of 2015.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Lab tests of pre-standard 5G wireless with multi-gigabit speeds are evolving into trial services that users can actually enjoy in the real world – though not necessarily while walking around with a smartphone.Verizon said Wednesday it will launch pre-commercial 5G service in 11 markets around the U.S. by the middle of this year, joining rival AT&T in aggressively deploying the future technology.MORE: 2016 -- the year 5G wireless trials really took offAt Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week, carriers are expected to announce more upcoming 5G trials.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Amazon Web Services is the consensus leader of the IaaS public cloud computing market according to industry watchers, but they credit Microsoft for closing the gap with Azure and say Google with its Cloud Platform has made considerable strides as well.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Remember that moment when you really committed yourself to solid security and privacy practices? The moment when you committed to never clicking on a link you weren’t sure about, to always checking for badges on people coming in the door, to always using your password manager to create a complex password? If you do, you reached your “cybersecurity tipping point.”For many, that moment has not yet come. And if you are reading this article, it might be your job to get your employees to hit that point. And you already know that the hard part is figuring out how.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Look for U.S. President Donald Trump's administration to push for increased cybersecurity spending in government, but also for increased digital surveillance and encryption workarounds.That's the view of some cybersecurity policy experts, who said they expect Trump to focus on improving U.S. agencies' cybersecurity while shying away from new cybersecurity regulations for businesses. Trump is likely to look for ways for the National Security Agency and other agencies to assist the government and companies defend against cyberattacks, said Jeffrey Eisenach, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a tech advisor during Trump's presidential transition.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A new file-encrypting ransomware program for macOS is being distributed through bittorrent websites and users who fall victim to it won't be able to recover their files, even if they pay.Crypto ransomware programs for macOS are rare. This is the second such threat found in the wild so far, and it's a poorly designed one. The program was named OSX/Filecoder.E by the malware researchers from antivirus vendor ESET who found it.OSX/Filecoder.E masquerades as a cracking tool for commercial software like Adobe Premiere Pro CC and Microsoft Office for Mac and is being distributed as a bittorrent download. It is written in Apple's Swift programming language by what appears to be an inexperienced developer, judging from the many mistakes made in its implementation.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft released MS17-005 to patch critical flaws in Adobe Flash Player, but that’s it. Microsoft didn’t release the fix for the two zero-day exploits disclosed this month.After the company said patches would be delayed in February, it clarified that security updates would instead be released on Patch Tuesday in March. Yet InfoWorld’s Woody Leonhard reported that Microsoft emailed its largest customers on Monday with a heads-up about the Flash patches for Internet Explorer and Edge.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
iPhone 8 rumors can become a snooze when they focus too much on the inside of Apple’s anticipated next flagship smartphones, but this week most of the scuttlebutt is thankfully centered around the shiny new display.Rumor fans also seemed excited to have a new source of information rather than the usual suspects (we’ll get to them later…) A TrendForce of Nature
Market watcher TrendForce created a stir on Tuesday by releasing a report in which it says, based on information from the supply chain, Apple won’t have a curved AMOLED display after all in its next flagship iPhone (so that’s one area where Apple might not match or surpass what Samsung is doing with its phones, like the Galaxy S7 Edge). The expected 5.8-inch iPhone will still have an energy-efficient and bright AMOLED screen, but production issues have forced Apple to hold off on the curved design, according to the report. “Thus, the next high-end iPhone is expected to have the same 2.5D glass for display cover as the current models,” TrendForce says. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Machine learning can automate the handling of huge troves of data to help companies make and save money. However, they’re not without pitfalls, as the real estate tech company Redfin learned.As Redfin began building its own machine-learning capabilities, it ran into a problem: Employees weren't using them. Bridget Frey, the firm’s CTO, said in an interview that there was a key reason for that: At first, Redfin didn't leave room in these systems for the real estate agents who were supposed to use them to make modifications.For example, a Listings Matchmaker feature generated a list of personalized recommendations for homebuyers, based on their interests. In its initial iteration, agents weren’t able to add recommendations they thought would be useful.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The PT-D210 makes it easy to create great-looking labels for your home and office. With convenient one-touch keys, you can quickly access fonts, symbols, frames and templates. Plus, you can preview your work on the display. The highly rated unit is a #1 best-seller on Amazon, where it has been discounted 75%, for what will likely be a limited time. So instead of $40 you'll be paying just $10. See the deal now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft this month reaffirmed that it will issue two Windows 10 upgrades this year, twice the number of 2016 but still shy of the firm's original target.In a presentation 11 days ago at a Microsoft technical conference held in Australia, Bill Karagounis, a director of program management, pointed to a follow-on upgrade that will appear sometime after the Creators Update, which is expected to finalize and ship next month.[ Related: Windows 10 Redstone: A guide to the builds ]
A slide Karagounis showed during the session -- which was webcast from Microsoft's Channel 9 website -- included another upgrade this year after Creators. It lacked a release date and a more descriptive name other than "Second Update in 2017."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A new report from a usually reliable site says there will be no new version of the Microsoft HoloLens, its virtual reality/augmented reality headset, until 2019. Not only that, but the company is skipping the second version design and going straight to the third version In a lengthy report on Thurrott.com, Brad Sims details how Microsoft decided that version 2 of HoloLens would feature only small, incremental improvements over the original version and that it wasn't right to come to market with a minor bump. Instead the company decided to shelve V2 and go straight to V3, which would feature a bigger leap in technology, and that meant taking a little longer to get it done.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.VMware’s NSX virtual network technology can help organizations achieve a greater level of network security, but how you approach deployment will vary depending on whether you are working with new applications (greenfield) or are moving applications from existing infrastructure to NSX (brownfield).NSX’s micro-segmentation capabilities essentially allow placement of virtual firewalls around every server to control East-West traffic, thereby limiting lateral exploration of networks by hackers, and making it significantly easier to protect applications and data. It can enable a level of security that previously would have been prohibitively expensive and complicated using traditional hardware.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
With all eyes understandably focused on Apple's iPhone 8 unveiling, an event that will presumably take place this coming September, it appears that we won't have to wait 7 more months before being able to feast our eyes on a slew of new Apple hardware.According to a fresh report from MacOtakara, Apple in March will not only unveil a slew of new iPad hardware, but some new iPhone models as well.Starting with Apple's upcoming iPhone products, the report relays that Apple in March will roll out a revamped iPhone SE. If history is any indication, the new iPhone SE will incorporate all of the same specs as the iPhone 7, albeit in the iPhone 5s' smaller form factor. A 128GB model is also said to be in the works. A revamped iPhone SE is certainly intriguing because there remains a large contingent of users who simply find the larger-screened iPhone models a bit too unwieldy.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The public cloud just keeps on growing, with increases in spending on cloud services and infrastructure easily outpacing overall IT spending. And it isn’t even close.
The latest update to International Data Corporation’s Worldwide Semiannual Public Cloud Services Spending Guide projects worldwide investments in the public cloud “will reach $122.5 billion in 2017, an increase of 24.4 percent over 2016. Those are big numbers, obviously, but to put them in full perspective, IDC noted that growth rate is nearly seven times the rate of overall IT spending growth. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Steam Link allows existing Steam gamers to expand the range of their current gaming set up via their home network. Just connect your Steam PC or Steam Machine to your home network, plug into a TV, and stream your games to the Link at 1080p. Video and audio data is sent from your computer to the Steam Link, while your controller input is sent back in real time. Virtually every game that your computer runs can be played on your TV. Steam Controller, Xbox One USB wired, Xbox 360 USB wired, Xbox 360 wireless, PS4, PS3 wired and Wii-U Pro controllers are compatible, as are many third-party Xbox controllers. Steam Link's typical price is $50, but right now you can get it on Amazon for just $20. See the significantly discounted Steam Link on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here