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Security software that uses ‘code hooking’ opens the door to hackers

Some of the intrusive techniques used by security, performance, virtualization and other types of programs to monitor third-party processes have introduced vulnerabilities that hackers can exploit. Researchers from data exfiltration prevention company enSilo found six common security issues affecting over 15 products when they studied how software vendors use 'hooking' to inject code into a process in order to intercept, monitor or modify the potentially sensitive system API (application programming interface) calls made by that process. Most of the flaws enSilo found allow attackers to easily bypass the anti-exploit mitigations available in Windows or third-party applications, allowing attackers to exploit vulnerabilities that they couldn't otherwise or whose exploitation would have been difficult. Other flaws allow attackers to remain undetected on victims' computers or to inject malicious code into any process running on them, the enSilo researchers said in a report sent via email that's scheduled to be published Tuesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Can’t upgrade your laptop to Windows 10? Microsoft will give you one for free*

With two weeks left before Microsoft’s free upgrade offer for Windows 10 comes to a close, the company is pulling out its biggest gimmick yet. Its latest offer is that they’ll give you a free Dell Inspiron 15 laptop if they can’t update your laptop to Windows 10 with same-day service.And yes, there are some strings. Quite a few. First, your trade-in PC needs to be compatible with Windows 10 in the first place. That should cut out a lot of lame old PCs from the mix. If you don’t have a compatible system, you can earn $150 to the purchase of a new PC.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

4 numbers that stood out in VMware’s earnings

VMware this week updated investors on the progress of emerging technologies playing an increasingly significant role in the company’s earnings.+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: EMC targets strategic markets as Dell acquisition looms | Microsoft will miss its 1 billion Windows 10 device target +VMware’s product mix includes not just compute virtualization, but network virtualization, cloud management and end user computing. Below are four numbers that provide a snapshot of VMware’s earnings and a preview of future offerings.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Getting a handle on spam emanating from generic top-level domains

Since I posted my tome about the generic top-level domains (gTLDs), I’ve received mostly bouquets. A few brickbats were also metaphorically hurtled through the window. I’m disturbing business models fostered by the new gTLDs.A lawyer who doesn’t want to be named just threw a tort across the transom. It ended up as junk mail, but I fished it out and responded.+ Also on Network World: Best practices for email security +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Stopping ransomware in its tracks

Allowing ransomware to enter a computer and corrupt a few files before being stomped on is the way to arrest the forward march of an attack, say computer scientists.The key is to not to stop ransomware getting into the system, which is hard, but to simply identify when files are beginning to be encrypted, assume something’s amiss, and then kill anything that’s causing the anomaly, researchers from the University of Florida (UF) and Villanova University say.+ Also on Network World: Who is a target for ransomware? Everyone +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

​EMC targets strategic markets as Dell acquisition looms

EMC has reported encouraging financials ahead of the company’s crucial shareholder vote this week, as the vendor targets strategic markets and profitability ahead of its upcoming acquisition by Dell. With the largest technology merger in history pending approval, the storage giant reported strategic successes during 2Q16 that it can build from as it continues toward its landmark expected integration into Dell. After a full year of bottom-line declines during 2015, EMC notched a second consecutive quarter of year-to-year net income improvements during 2Q16, rising 160 basis points to 9.7 per cent, supported in part by cost restructuring initiatives but also by heightened monetisation of investment in strategic solutions areas.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

7 things you shouldn’t do while playing Pokémon Go

Most mobile games can be played quietly and anonymously in the privacy of your own home, cubicle, train seat, or bathroom stall—but Pokémon Go isn’t that kind of game. With physical movement as a primary gameplay mechanic, the Nintendo favorite is getting millions of people out and about and exploring their neighborhoods. Obviously, there’s good in this: People are walking more, socializing with mostly-friendly strangers, and even overcoming anxiety and depression by leaving the house. All of those are tremendous benefits, and it’s awesome to see people getting so much out of the game.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How AT&T wants to use AI as a crystal ball

AT&T uses artificial intelligence to tell if things are going wrong in its network. Soon, AI may know it before it happens.The carrier says it’s been using AI for decades in areas like call-center automation but developed it for each use as they came along. Now AT&T is pouring its AI smarts into a one platform that can be used with multiple applications.“I can’t just keep doing this once at a time. We need a foundation,” said Mazin Gilbert, assistant vice president of the company’s Inventive Sciences division, in an interview last week at the AT&T Shape conference in San Francisco.That foundation is about two million lines of the code that powers AT&T’s Domain 2.0 software-defined network, which the carrier built so it could roll out new services more quickly and efficiently. Along with its own AI code, much of which is open source, the company is using open-source components from partners including universities and third-party vendors.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How a healthcare hacker is pressuring victims to pay up

Pay up or face your patients' wrath.That’s how one hacker is trying to shake down U.S. healthcare providers after stealing sensitive data about their patients.TheDarkOverlord claims to have stolen 10 million patient records and is selling them on the black market. In the meantime, the hacker is trying to extort the providers by telling them their patient data won't be sold if they pay a ransom.At least one of the healthcare providers so far has refused to give in, TheDarkOverlord said in an interview Friday. To apply pressure, the hacker claims to have called some of its patients to warn them their records will be leaked if the provider doesn't pay up.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to build a strong employee referral culture

A strong referral culture not only helps streamline the recruiting and hiring process, but also delivers benefits such as increased engagement, collaboration and job satisfaction -- not to mention improving retention and loyalty. The recent Active Job Seeker Dilemma survey from Future Workplace, a research firm and workforce management consultancy, and Beyond.com, a career and hiring marketplace, polled 4,347 U.S. job seekers and 129 HR professionals and found that 71 percent of those surveyed say referrals from existing employees were the source of their best hires. Culture club What makes a great employee want to refer their friends, family and former colleagues? Culture, benefits, flexibility and a sense of mission and purpose, says Dan Schawbel, partner and research director at Future Workplace. "Culture is your most important competitive advantage. As long as you're paying people fairly, of course, then they are going to look for factors aside from that as positives or negatives -- they want meaningful work, solid benefits, flexibility, and those are the things they'll talk about with friends, former colleagues, family," Schawbel says. If you already have those things, you're well on your way to building a referral culture. [ Related story: 4 Continue reading

Box moves telephony, Web conferencing to the cloud

You would be forgiven for assuming that a native cloud company -- a company whose raison d'etre is selling cloud applications and platforms -- wouldn't have a lick of on-premises software. But the reality is that for companies founded as recently as 10 to 15 years ago, SaaS analogs for every core computing operation did not exist. For that reason, migrating to SaaS solutions is still very much the mission for Box CIO Paul Chapman. Box CIO Paul Chapman.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

27% off 3 Squares TIM3 MACHIN3 Rice and Multi Cooker – Deal Alert

The 3 Squares TIM3 MACHIN3 Rice Cooker, Slow Cooker, Yogurt Maker & Food Steamer will make a lot more time for you while making great meals for your family. The TIM3 MACHIN3 cooks rice up to 45% faster than competing rice cookers. With Fuzzy Logic 2.0 and a 20% thicker cooking pot ensure that quickly cooked rice comes out delicious - with no burning. This unit is currently rated 4.5 out of 5 stars (read reviews) and is currently selling for $50.99 on Amazon .To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Deloitte goes cognitive, partners with IPSoft

Cloud computing delivers many benefits for end user organizations, but for consulting firms, whose bread and butter is long (some would say torturous) technology implementation projects, the cloud tends to be somewhat toxic to traditional revenue streams.Seeing this impending hole, the big consulting firms have to find new ways to replace existing revenue streams. As a result, we've seen the formation of digital transformation units within the large consulting firms.Another trend is to jump into emergent technologies. We have a good example of this today from Deloitte, which is announcing a partnership with IPSoft.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

HP’s Elite X3 smartphone with Windows 10 will ship this month for $699

Not many are using smartphones with Microsoft's Windows 10 Mobile, but HP's flagship Elite X3 -- which ships this month -- could boost the OS's sagging fortunes. The premium smartphone will be priced starting at US$699 in the U.S. It feels more like a phablet, but HP believes it could also be a PC in a pinch with its top-line mobile processor, OS and innovative accessories. HP first announced the Elite X3 at the Mobile World Congress trade show in February. It has a 5.96-inch AMOLED screen that can display images at a 2560 x 1440 pixel resolution, matching top smartphones like Samsung's Galaxy S7 and LG's G5. The rugged screen has Gorilla Glass 4 technology.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Facebook details its 2016 open source accomplishments

Facebook added 54 new projects to its open-source initiative during the last six months. The company is on a mission to open source its code for software and hardware to encourage ongoing development from outside companies and engineers. "We build tools that enable engineers to work more easily across platforms, automate testing to catch problems sooner, and help improve the overall performance of our products," wrote Christine Abernathy, a developer advocate with Facebook's open source team, in a blog post. "We know from experience that collaborating with the open source community surfaces new ideas and solutions to the challenges that we face." To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How Salesforce.com’s Wave Analytics helps publisher track leads

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) is leaning heavily on data to identify sales opportunities and track the status of existing accounts, both crucial activities as the textbook publisher’s business increasingly shifts from ink and paper to learning software. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt CTO Brook Colangelo. HMH CTO Brook Colangelo says the company has bet on analytics software as part of a sweeping transformation at the 184-year-old publisher designed to give sales staff more easily accessible data about leads from any mobile device.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft disavows 1B-or-bust goal for Windows 10

Microsoft today acknowledged that it would not make its self-imposed goal of putting Windows 10 on 1 billion devices by mid-2018. "We're pleased with our progress to date, but due to the focusing of our phone hardware business, it will take longer than FY18 for us to reach our goal of 1 billion monthly active devices," a Microsoft spokesman said in an emailed statement. "In the year ahead, we are excited about usage growth coming from commercial deployments and new devices - and increasing customer delight with Windows." Microsoft's fiscal year 2018 -- the "FY18" mentioned in the firm's statement -- ends June 1, 2018. Ed Bott of ZDNet first reported on Microsoft's admission.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The H-1B positions of Clinton and Trump

With the political conventions set for the next two weeks, now is the time to offer a summary of where Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton stand on tech's top issue, immigration. Silicon Valley fears Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president. A letter released Thursday and signed by about 150 technologists, inventors and entrepreneurs, said Trump would be a disaster for innovation. Much of their criticism was directed at his proposed immigration policies. Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, is far more aligned with Silicon Valley on immigration.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

If Microsoft can’t install Windows 10 on your PC, it’ll give you a new one

As July 29 gets closer and the free Windows 10 upgrade offer reaches its final days, Microsoft is pulling out all the stops in order to convince users to upgrade. It’s even willing to give you a new laptop. As spotted by Neowin, Microsoft retail stores are offering to install Windows 10 on any compatible machine for free. If the store’s technicians don’t complete the upgrade by the end of that business day, they’ll give you a free 15-inch Dell Inspiron notebook.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here