Apple’s iCloud appears to have been holding on to users’ deleted internet browsing histories, including records over a year old.Moscow-based forensics firm Elcomsoft noticed it was able to pull supposedly deleted Safari browser histories from iCloud accounts, such as the date and time the site was visited and when the record was deleted.“In fact, we were able to access records dated more than one year back,” wrote Elcomsoft’s CEO Vladimir Katalov in a Thursday blog post.Users can set iCloud to store their browsing history so that it's available from all connected devices. The researchers found that when a user deletes that history, iCloud doesn't actually erase it but keeps it in a format invisible to the user.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The iPhone could really go back to becoming a status symbol if the latest iPhone 8 rumors prove true.
Grabbing attention this week is a Fast Company article, headlined "Here's why Apple's 10th anniversary iPhone will likely cost more than $1,000," in which a source says the 5.8-inch iPhone 8 is going to be packed with new features. Those include a wraparound OLED display, more memory and possibly 3D sensing technology for security.
(This concern about pricing has been a hot topic of late: See iPhone 8 Rumor Rollup -- Paying the Price for Cool.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A patient lies in a hospital bed waiting for a medical professional to conduct a blood gas analysis. Little does the patient know that his personal information is also undergoing a procedure.The database that stores patient data was found unencrypted, default passwords were used, and the nature of the exploit was basic, according to TrapX Security, which was called in later to recreate and diagnose the issues at the unnamed hospital. The technology research company recently released its findings in a report called "Anatomy of an Attack – Medical Device Hijack (MEDJACK)". The security company declined to name the three hospitals it examined, except to say they were located in the Western and Northeastern U.S.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A patient lies in a hospital bed waiting for a medical professional to conduct a blood gas analysis. Little does the patient know that his personal information is also undergoing a procedure.The database that stores patient data was found unencrypted, default passwords were used, and the nature of the exploit was basic, according to TrapX Security, which was called in later to recreate and diagnose the issues at the unnamed hospital. The technology research company recently released its findings in a report called "Anatomy of an Attack – Medical Device Hijack (MEDJACK)". The security company declined to name the three hospitals it examined, except to say they were located in the Western and Northeastern U.S.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Fileless malware attacks, which were recently discovered in the networks of at least 140 banks, telecoms and governments, account for about 15% of known attacks today and have been around for years in different forms."Fileless malware attacks are becoming much more common and circumvent most of the endpoint protection and detection tools deployed today," Gartner security analyst Avivah Litan said.A recent discovery of fileless malware was reported on Wednesday by researchers at Moscow-based Kaspersky Labs. The attackers have not been identified and "attribution [is] almost impossible," according to Kaspersky.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Fileless malware attacks, which were recently discovered in the networks of at least 140 banks, telecoms and governments, account for about 15% of known attacks today and have been around for years in different forms."Fileless malware attacks are becoming much more common and circumvent most of the endpoint protection and detection tools deployed today," Gartner security analyst Avivah Litan said.A recent discovery of fileless malware was reported on Wednesday by researchers at Moscow-based Kaspersky Labs. The attackers have not been identified and "attribution [is] almost impossible," according to Kaspersky.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft has been stuck on the 400 million mark for Windows 10 for more than four months, as the head of the company's operating systems group yesterday repeated the milestone when he spoke to developers."We now have over 400 million users all around the world. This is consumers, people in schools, people in the enterprise," Terry Meyerson, who leads all Windows efforts, said at a developer's day Wednesday that was also webcast by the company.[ Related: Windows 10 Redstone: A guide to the builds ]
Yesterday's number was first announced by Microsoft in September 2016.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
This article was inspired by a post on Facebook by Ben Parr, former co-editor of Mashable. What he wrote hit a nerve with me—a nerve as raw as any of Lewis Black’s—evoking my tirade. Parr posted:
“Favorite CRM software and why?”
I replied, “They all pretty much suck and have since Siebel Systems invented it.”Let’s start with platform companies like Google and Square Payments that do not generally use CRM systems and rarely use call centers. These companies understand that any CRM system will collapse at scale, so they build well-designed web-facing responsive self-service systems as part of the product design. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
DARPA is going to have to contend with an Earth-bound problem if it is to get its plan to service satellites in geosynchronous orbit into space.The agency this week said it had picked Space Systems Loral (SSL) as its commercial partner to develop technologies under its Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites (RSGS) program that would enable cooperative inspection and servicing of satellites in geosynchronous orbit (GEO), more than 20,000 miles above the Earth, and demonstrate those technologies on orbit.+More on Network World: How to catch a 400lb drone traveling at full speed+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
DARPA is going to have to contend with an Earth-bound problem if it is to get its plan to service satellites in geosynchronous orbit into space.The agency this week said it had picked Space Systems Loral (SSL) as its commercial partner to develop technologies under its Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites (RSGS) program that would enable cooperative inspection and servicing of satellites in geosynchronous orbit (GEO), more than 20,000 miles above the Earth, and demonstrate those technologies on orbit.+More on Network World: How to catch a 400lb drone traveling at full speed+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft announced today it is celebrating 20 years of Visual Studio with the introduction of Visual Studio 2017, the latest iteration of its developer tool suite, on March 7.A lot has changed in those 20 years, as illustrated by a picture Microsoft posted of the contents of Visual Studio 97 (below), the first iteration of the IDE. Back then it was pretty much just a bunch of languages in one box with no real integration. Microsoft
And most of the languages supported back then are gone—such as Visual J++, a Java compiler that caused all kinds of legal problems with Sun Microsystems, and Visual C++, which has been ditched in favor of C#. Also, Visual FoxPro is pretty much dead, and the support apps, including SourceSafe and InterDev, have been replaced with newer apps or functions. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Not sure what your phone is collecting about you? A free Android app is promising to simplify the privacy settings on your smartphone, and stop any unwanted data collection.The English language app, called Privacy Assistant, comes from a team at Carnegie Mellon University, who’ve built it after six years of research studying digital privacy. “It’s very clear that a large percentage of people are not willing to give their data to any random app,” said CMU professor Norman Sadeh. “They want to be more selective with their data, so this assistant will help them do that.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Not sure what your phone is collecting about you? A free Android app is promising to simplify the privacy settings on your smartphone, and stop any unwanted data collection.The English language app, called Privacy Assistant, comes from a team at Carnegie Mellon University, who’ve built it after six years of research studying digital privacy. “It’s very clear that a large percentage of people are not willing to give their data to any random app,” said CMU professor Norman Sadeh. “They want to be more selective with their data, so this assistant will help them do that.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
5G wireless is already being hyped by AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon as their next-gen tech trials get underway, even though the term is often taken more lightly by industry observers (including us), who tone it down as just a marketing term. The 3GPP (3rd generation partnership project), which oversees cellular communications standards, has now taken a step to further rein in 5G marketing before it really gets out of hand by establishing an official logo for it that comes with some rules.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A Microsoft lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice over indefinite gag orders attached to search warrants can proceed, following a federal judge’s ruling on Thursday.The tech titan sued last year to end the government’s practice of indefinitely blocking it from informing customers of search warrants for their information. Microsoft alleged that such orders violate its First Amendment frees speech rights and the Fourth Amendment privacy rights of its users.The Justice Department argued that Microsoft couldn’t bring either of the claims in a motion argued in front of the judge two weeks ago.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A Microsoft lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice over indefinite gag orders attached to search warrants can proceed, following a federal judge’s ruling on Thursday.The tech titan sued last year to end the government’s practice of indefinitely blocking it from informing customers of search warrants for their information. Microsoft alleged that such orders violate its First Amendment frees speech rights and the Fourth Amendment privacy rights of its users.The Justice Department argued that Microsoft couldn’t bring either of the claims in a motion argued in front of the judge two weeks ago.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
"Every gamer is going to want to have 3D Xpoint. Every single gamer."Those were words from Intel's CEO Brian Krzanich when updating investors on the company's Optane technology, which the chipmaker believes could ultimately replace SSDs and DRAM in PCs and servers.Intel is now shipping the first-generation Optane but is also working on next-generation technologies as looks to increase density in this new class of storage and memory.Intel says Optane is significantly denser and faster than SSDs and DRAM. It is based on a technology called 3D Xpoint, co-developed with Micron.The chipmaker looks at Optane as the Moore's Law of storage. With future generations, Intel wants to make the memory smaller, denser and cheaper, and that's driving the development of Optane.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Cloning a drive comes in handy for a variety of reasons, but primarily when you want to replace one drive on a PC with another that is either bigger or faster than the original drive, if not both.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
IT managers disagree with chief executives over who is responsible for a cyber security breach, according to a survey released Thursday.The survey -- of a group of 221 chief executive officers and other C-level executives and another group of 984 IT decision makers -- found that each group largely believes the other group is responsible in the event of a breach.In the survey, 35% of C-level respondents said IT teams would be responsible in a breach, while 50% of IT leaders think that responsibility rests with their senior managers.Also, IT managers estimate a single cyber attack will cost their business nearly twice what top-level executives estimate. The IT managers put the cost of a single attack at $19 million, compared to the C-suite estimate of about $11 million.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here