Hacker wiping unprotected MongoDB installs and holding data for ransom

How many years have we been hearing about the dangers of leaving MongoDB instances unprotected? In December 2015, Shodan creator John Matherly warned that there were 684.8 TB of data exposed due to publicly accessible MongoDB instances. Yet there are still people don’t who bother to learn how to lock it down and so now a hacker is targeting and erasing those MongoDB installations, replacing the data with a ransom demand.Security researcher Victor Gevers, aka @0xDUDE and co-founder of the GDI Foundation, has personally been notifying owners of exposed MongoDB for years. But near the end of 2016, he came across an open MongoDB server that had the database contents replaced with a ransom note.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Hacker wiping unprotected MongoDB installs and holding data for ransom

How many years have we been hearing about the dangers of leaving MongoDB instances unprotected? In December 2015, Shodan creator John Matherly warned that there were 684.8 TB of data exposed due to publicly accessible MongoDB instances. Yet there are still people don’t who bother to learn how to lock it down and so now a hacker is targeting and erasing those MongoDB installations, replacing the data with a ransom demand.Security researcher Victor Gevers, aka @0xDUDE and co-founder of the GDI Foundation, has personally been notifying owners of exposed MongoDB for years. But near the end of 2016, he came across an open MongoDB server that had the database contents replaced with a ransom note.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Intel Readying 5G Modem For Millimeter Wave & Sub-6 GHz Spectrum

The Goldbridge modem will start sampling in 2H'17.

Intel puts mobile chip failures in its past with first speedy 5G modem

Intel has a disastrous history with smartphones. It fumbled a chance to be in Apple's first iPhone, and then quit making its Atom smartphone chip to focus on modems. But the company is now set to ship a groundbreaking modem that will deliver data transfer rates many times faster than most wired internet connections. The chipmaker will start shipping its first 5G modem for testing in the second half this year. Beyond mobile devices, the modem could also be used in autonomous cars, servers, base stations, networking equipment, drones, robots, and other internet-of-things devices. In name, 5G is the successor to 4G in today's mobile devices, but it's significantly faster and more versatile. It will combine multiple wireless high-speed and low-bandwidth technologies and enable communications across an array of spectrum bands. New 5G networks are expected to be deployed starting in 2020.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Intel puts mobile chip failures in its past with first speedy 5G modem

Intel has a disastrous history with smartphones. It fumbled a chance to be in Apple's first iPhone, and then quit making its Atom smartphone chip to focus on modems. But the company is now set to ship a groundbreaking modem that will deliver data transfer rates many times faster than most wired internet connections. The chipmaker will start shipping its first 5G modem for testing in the second half this year. Beyond mobile devices, the modem could also be used in autonomous cars, servers, base stations, networking equipment, drones, robots, and other internet-of-things devices. In name, 5G is the successor to 4G in today's mobile devices, but it's significantly faster and more versatile. It will combine multiple wireless high-speed and low-bandwidth technologies and enable communications across an array of spectrum bands. New 5G networks are expected to be deployed starting in 2020.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Intel puts mobile chip failures in its past with first speedy 5G modem

Intel has a disastrous history with smartphones. It fumbled a chance to be in Apple's first iPhone, and then quit making its Atom smartphone chip to focus on modems.But the company is now set to ship a groundbreaking modem that will deliver data transfer rates many times faster than most wired internet connections.The chipmaker will start shipping its first 5G modem for testing in the second half this year. Beyond mobile devices, the modem could also be used in autonomous cars, servers, base stations, networking equipment, drones, robots, and other internet-of-things devices.In name, 5G is the successor to 4G in today's mobile devices, but it's significantly faster and more versatile. It will combine multiple wireless high-speed and low-bandwidth technologies and enable communications across an array of spectrum bands. New 5G networks are expected to be deployed starting in 2020.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Preconfigured Z-Wave gear will save installation time

The next time an installer comes to set up a Z-Wave IoT device in your home, it might take a lot less time.Sigma Designs, the company that makes most chips for Z-Wave wireless networks, is introducing a system at the CES trade show that lets service providers configure IoT devices before they’re delivered. That leaves less for a technician to do, and potentially to mess up, according to Sigma.The system, called Z-Wave Smart Start, could make life easier for a lot of people getting started with smart-home technology. It’s still hard to set up most IoT products, so most don’t try to do it themselves. About 80 percent of home IoT gear is purchased through service providers rather than from shops or online stores, said Raoul Wijgergangs, vice president of Z-Wave for Sigma Designs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

CES 2017: Let the madness begin!

I’m sitting in my very nice hotel room here in Las Vegas, preparing for my first day of meetings at International CES 2017 (or whatever they’d like us to call it these days, it’s hard to remember). We’ve already seen companies producing a bunch of new product announcements - be sure to check out our slideshow of the “Hottest products at CES 2017”In terms of overall themes, I’m expecting to see just about everything - smart home and IoT will be big again, with the overall question about interoperability between all of the new “things” in your home. Wireless mesh in the home is expected to continue to gain momentum (Linksys just entered the market with its Velop system). Connected cars, AR and VR of course will be top of mind for almost everyone as well.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft’s browsers may have hit rock bottom

Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) and Edge browsers may be near the bottom of their unprecedented crash in user share, measurements published Sunday show.Analytics vendor Net Applications reported that the user share of IE and Edge -- an estimate of the proportion of the world's personal computer owners who ran those browsers -- dropped by seven-tenths of a percentage point in December, falling to a combined 26.2%.That seven-tenths of a point decline was notable because it was less than half that of the browsers' average monthly reductions over the last 12, six and three months, which were 1.9, 1.8 and 1.5 points, respectively. The slowly-shrinking averages over the three different spans supported the idea that IE and Edge may be reaching rock bottom.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Facebook and Google dominate list of most popular apps (again)

Facebook and Google closed out 2016 with a near duopoly in popular mobile applications. Both companies' mobile apps expanded their dominance of the 10 most popular mobile apps in the United States by significant margins, according to research from Nielsen. The media measurement firm calculated the average unique audiences for apps between January 2016 and October 2016 and provided year-over-year percentage changes for the 12-month period that ended in October. A Facebook and Google world ... Facebook makes the two most popular mobile apps in the United States, Facebook and Facebook Messenger, as well as Instagram, the second-fastest growing app and the No. 8 most popular app, according to Nielsen. Facebook's average unique audience on mobile during the period grew 14 percent year-over-year to 146 million users. Facebook Messenger's audience grew 28 percent from the previous year to 129.7 million users. And Instagram jumped 36 percent from 2015 to 74.7 million users, Nielsen says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

3 tips for tracking employee productivity

Productivity trackers in the workplace are another result of big data. Employers can gain insights into how employees are using their time and offer ways to objectively evaluate performance. However, productivity tracking brings up questions of employee privacy, what metrics to track and how much employers should monitor.Alice Chin, founder and CEO of Your Other Half, a human resources and operations outsourcing firm that helps businesses fine tune productivity, says there are certainly benefits as long as these considerations are handled correctly. In her own business, productivity tracking has helped fine-tune efficiencies, and she's helped numerous clients implement similar systems.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Important features of PowerShell

I think it's time to talk in depth about some of the most important features of PowerShell: Providers and modules. (Snap-ins have also been important, but they are being gradually phased out.) These are really the core of the universe when it comes to all of the commands available for use within PowerShell, so I want to teach you what they are, how they work and how to use them in your daily activities. Let's dive in!Introducing modules and snap-insTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Review: Caffe deep learning conquers image classification

Like superheroes, deep learning packages usually have origin stories. Yangqing Jia created the Caffe project while earning his doctorate at U.C. Berkeley. The project continues as open source under the auspices of the Berkeley Vision and Learning Center (BVLC), with community contributions. The BVLC is now part of the broader Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) Lab. Similarly, the scope of Caffe has been expanded beyond vision to include nonvisual deep learning problems, although the published models for Caffe are still overwhelmingly related to images and video.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

FTC sets $25,000 prize for automatic IoT patching

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is scheduled to announce Wednesday a "prize competition" for a tool that can be used against security vulnerabilities in internet of things systems.The prize pot is up to $25,000, with $3,000 available for each honorable mention. The winners will be announced in July. The announcement is scheduled to be published Wednesday in the Federal Register.The tool, at a minimum, will "help protect consumers from security vulnerabilities caused by out-of-date software," said the FTC.The government's call for help cites the use of internet-enabled cameras as a platform for a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack last October. Weak default passwords were blamed.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

FTC sets $25,000 prize for automatic IoT patching

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is scheduled to announce Wednesday a "prize competition" for a tool that can be used against security vulnerabilities in internet of things systems.The prize pot is up to $25,000, with $3,000 available for each honorable mention. The winners will be announced in July. The announcement is scheduled to be published Wednesday in the Federal Register.The tool, at a minimum, will "help protect consumers from security vulnerabilities caused by out-of-date software," said the FTC.The government's call for help cites the use of internet-enabled cameras as a platform for a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack last October. Weak default passwords were blamed.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Cloud In 2017: Unleashing The Apps

iPhone prototypes that never saw the light of day

What the iPhone might have been: 16 prototypes that led to the original iPhoneImage by AppleTen years ago, Apple completely and forever changed the way we interact with technology when Steve Jobs introduced the original iPhone. Though the original iPhone, by today’s standards, is far from impressive, the iPhone when launched was nothing short of groundbreaking. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Important features of PowerShell

I think it's time to talk in depth about some of the most important features of PowerShell: Providers and modules. (Snap-ins have also been important, but they are being gradually phased out.) These are really the core of the universe when it comes to all of the commands available for use within PowerShell, so I want to teach you what they are, how they work and how to use them in your daily activities. Let's dive in!Introducing modules and snap-insTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

6 must-see techie TED talks

Ideas forum TED ended its year by picking its top 10 TED Talks for the year, and we'll start 2017 off by selecting a handful of techie ones we figure might be of particular interest to Network World readers.These talks, published during 2016, touch on subjects ranging from AI to the Blockchain to Linux (as discussed by Linus Torvalds himself). One nice thing about the TED YouTube channel is that videos are now captioned, so yes, you can digest these videos even when you're not in a position to actually listen to them...MORE: 9 tantalizingly techie TED TalksTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Car makers team on platform for smartphone-vehicle interaction

Car makers Ford and Toyota have announced the SmartDeviceLink Consortium, a nonprofit to manage open source software for the interface of Android and iOS smartphone apps with their vehicle infotainment systems.Mazda Motor, PSA Group, Fuji Heavy Industries and Suzuki Motor are the first automaker members of the consortium.Elektrobit, Luxoft, and Xevo have joined as the first supplier members, while Harman, Panasonic, Pioneer and QNX have signed letters of intent to join, according to an announcement Wednesday by Ford and Toyota.BlackBerry subsidiary QNX Software Systems already powers Ford’s Sync 3 infotainment system, as the Canadian company moves its focus to software, including for automotive applications.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here