Updating Apple iOS will protect you from this fake ransomware attack

Lookout researchers warned of a campaign involving fake ransomware attacks that attempt to extort money from users of mobile Safari. Victims are accused of accessing illegal pornography and the browser appears to be locked up unless a “ransom” is paid.“Your device has been locked for illegal pornography,” the message stated on a site with security agency icons such as NSA and Interpol at the bottom of the page. An overlay pop-up warned that Safari “cannot open page” with “OK” underneath the message. However, the dialog would not go away no matter how many times the victim tapped “OK.”Lookout said, “Each time he tapped ‘OK’ he would be prompted to tap ‘OK’ again, effectively putting the browser into an infinite loop of dialog prompts that prevented him from using the browser.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Updating Apple iOS will protect you from this fake ransomware attack

Lookout researchers warned of a campaign involving fake ransomware attacks that attempt to extort money from users of mobile Safari. Victims are accused of accessing illegal pornography and the browser appears to be locked up unless a “ransom” is paid.“Your device has been locked for illegal pornography,” the message stated on a site with security agency icons such as NSA and Interpol at the bottom of the page. An overlay pop-up warned that Safari “cannot open page” with “OK” underneath the message. However, the dialog would not go away no matter how many times the victim tapped “OK.”Lookout said, “Each time he tapped ‘OK’ he would be prompted to tap ‘OK’ again, effectively putting the browser into an infinite loop of dialog prompts that prevented him from using the browser.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How Microsoft plans to address AI and machine learning challenges

Microsoft, Google and IBM face difficult challenges in winning early enterprise adopters of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). Microsoft AI Research Vice President Peter Lee shed some like on how Microsoft will meet those challenges when we met at this week’s MIT Technology Review EmTech Digital conference.Lee began with the same explanation that he gave to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Nadella, a former research engineer, does not need to have technology spoon fed to him, but he does need to understand the framework used to manage the future of the vertical industries transferred to the stewardship of Microsoft’s AI group. It is a big bet, amounting to 6,000 employees or one-fourth of the company and includes leading industry businesses such as healthcare, education, automotive, finance and retail. A very big bet on the future of AI, indeed.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Privacy advocates plan to fight Congress’ repeal of ISP privacy rules

Privacy advocates haven't given up the fight after the U.S. Congress voted to allow ISPs to sell customers' browsing histories and other personal information without their permission.On Tuesday, the House of Representatives voted 215 to 205 to strike down ISP privacy regulations approved by the Federal Communications Commission only months ago. House's passage of a resolution of disapproval followed a Senate vote to pass the same resolution days earlier. President Donald Trump is expected to sign the Republican-pushed bill. But Senator Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, said he will introduce new legislation to require the FCC to pass new ISP privacy rules.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Privacy advocates plan to fight Congress’ repeal of ISP privacy rules

Privacy advocates haven't given up the fight after the U.S. Congress voted to allow ISPs to sell customers' browsing histories and other personal information without their permission.On Tuesday, the House of Representatives voted 215 to 205 to strike down ISP privacy regulations approved by the Federal Communications Commission only months ago. House's passage of a resolution of disapproval followed a Senate vote to pass the same resolution days earlier. President Donald Trump is expected to sign the Republican-pushed bill. But Senator Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, said he will introduce new legislation to require the FCC to pass new ISP privacy rules.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Experts: Online trolls are here to stay, unless we do something

A report issued this morning by the Pew Research Center and Elon University said that online interactions will continue to be shaped by trolling and mistrust, according to a survey of digital scholars and futurists.More than four in five of the 1,537 respondents surveyed said that the tone of communication via online media like social networks and discussion sites would either become more unhinged over the next decade or stay roughly the same.ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Microsoft's Docs.com is sharing dangerously sensitive personal files and information + 5 burning questions with new IETF Chair and Cisco Fellow Alissa CooperTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

F5 to buy Brocade’s virtual ADC business?

F5 Networks is said to be lining up to acquire Brocade’s virtual Application Delivery Controller (ADC) business, the latest hunk of Brocade’s IP suite to be sold off to meet the terms of Brocade’s $5.5 billion acquisition by Broadcom, a deal announced last November. Brocade sold its Ruckus Wireless and ICX Switch business to Arris International in February for $800 million.The latest divestiture -- reported by companies contacted by the private equity firm shopping the ADC asset -- is said to involve Brocade’s Virtual Traffic Manager, formerly known as the SteelApp Traffic Manager.  Brocade had acquired the technology from Riverbed in 2015 for an undisclosed fee, and Riverbed itself had acquired the tech from Zeus Technologies in 2011 for $140 million.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

F5 to buy Brocade’s virtual ADC business?

F5 Networks is said to be lining up to acquire Brocade’s virtual Application Delivery Controller (ADC) business, the latest hunk of Brocade’s IP suite to be sold off to meet the terms of Brocade’s $5.5 billion acquisition by Broadcom, a deal announced last November. Brocade sold its Ruckus Wireless and ICX Switch business to Arris International in February for $800 million.The latest divestiture -- reported by companies contacted by the private equity firm shopping the ADC asset -- is said to involve Brocade’s Virtual Traffic Manager, formerly known as the SteelApp Traffic Manager.  Brocade had acquired the technology from Riverbed in 2015 for an undisclosed fee, and Riverbed itself had acquired the tech from Zeus Technologies in 2011 for $140 million.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Scammers scare iPhone users into paying to unlock not-really-locked Safari

Apple yesterday patched a bug in the iOS version of Safari that had been used by criminals to spook users into paying $125 or more because they assumed the browser was broken.The flaw, fixed in Monday's iOS 10.3 update, had been reported to Apple a month ago by researchers at San Francisco-based mobile security firm Lookout."One of our users alerted us to this campaign, and said he had lost control of Safari on his iPhone," Andrew Blaich, a Lookout security researcher, said in a Tuesday interview. "He said, 'I can't use my browser anymore.'"The criminal campaign, Blaich and two colleagues reported in a Monday post to Lookout's blog, exploited a bug in how Safari displayed JavaScript pop-ups. When the browser reached a malicious site implanted with the attack code, the browser went into an endless loop of dialogs that refused to close no matter who many times "OK" was tapped. The result: Safari was unusable.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Scammers scare iPhone users into paying to unlock not-really-locked Safari

Apple yesterday patched a bug in the iOS version of Safari that had been used by criminals to spook users into paying $125 or more because they assumed the browser was broken.The flaw, fixed in Monday's iOS 10.3 update, had been reported to Apple a month ago by researchers at San Francisco-based mobile security firm Lookout."One of our users alerted us to this campaign, and said he had lost control of Safari on his iPhone," Andrew Blaich, a Lookout security researcher, said in a Tuesday interview. "He said, 'I can't use my browser anymore.'"The criminal campaign, Blaich and two colleagues reported in a Monday post to Lookout's blog, exploited a bug in how Safari displayed JavaScript pop-ups. When the browser reached a malicious site implanted with the attack code, the browser went into an endless loop of dialogs that refused to close no matter who many times "OK" was tapped. The result: Safari was unusable.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Future Intel CPUs could be cobbled together using different parts

Today’s processors, made using a single continuous slab of silicon, may soon give way to multiple chips interconnected at high speeds, Intel said Tuesday morning.Intel said its new Embedded Multi-die Interconnect Bridge, or EMIB, technology would let a 22nm chip connect to a 10nm chip and a 14nm chip, all on the same processor.“For example, we can mix high-performance blocks of silicon and IP together with low-power elements made from different nodes for extreme optimization,” said Intel’s Murthy Renduchintala, who heads the Client, IoT, and Systems Architecture Group.That’s a radical departure from how the company has constructed most CPUs and SoCs, where all components of a CPU or SoC are built on the same process. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Future Intel CPUs could be cobbled together using different parts

Today’s processors, made using a single continuous slab of silicon, may soon give way to multiple chips interconnected at high speeds, Intel said Tuesday morning.Intel said its new Embedded Multi-die Interconnect Bridge, or EMIB, technology would let a 22nm chip connect to a 10nm chip and a 14nm chip, all on the same processor.“For example, we can mix high-performance blocks of silicon and IP together with low-power elements made from different nodes for extreme optimization,” said Intel’s Murthy Renduchintala, who heads the Client, IoT, and Systems Architecture Group.That’s a radical departure from how the company has constructed most CPUs and SoCs, where all components of a CPU or SoC are built on the same process. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

10 things you need to know about the security risks of wearables

The risks from corporate use of activity trackers and other wearables is low, some experts say -- especially in comparison to all the other security and privacy risks CISOs, CIOs and IT folks must worry about.That said, as with any connected device, there is risk potential. For example, recent research suggests that devices such as Fitbits can be hacked (when the hacker is within close proximity). By focusing on accelerometers and other motion sensors, researchers at the University of Michigan and the University of South Carolina found that it’s possible to, among other things, use sound waves at different frequencies to add thousands of steps to a Fitbit. (Scroll down to read Fitbit’s response to the research results.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

IDG Contributor Network: Cloud Foundry Foundation launches developer certification

Many years ago I created and ran the CloudU program, a vendor-neutral cloud education initiative that, in its day, had many thousands of individuals participate and graduate from the program. The rationale for creating the program back then was what I saw occurring in the industry: much interest in cloud as a concept, but little understanding of what it actually is and how to use it. Bear in mind this was years ago, before cloud became the default position for everything.RELATED: 10 tech skills that will boost your salary The idea of providing education programs to help individuals transition into a new way of thinking and working is a good one. A similar situation exists today with the move away from server-based infrastructures (be they physical or virtual) and into container or serverless-based approaches. Essentially we’re seeing challenges around the understanding and implementation of new “cloud native” ways of building applications.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Windows 10’s next major update arrives April 11

After months of waiting, beta tests, and trickles of information about new features, the next major update for Windows 10 will arrive on April 11. Microsoft announced Wednesday that the Creators Update, as it’s known, will start rolling out to users of the company’s latest operating system in roughly two weeks.The update includes a slew of new features, including changes to the Microsoft Edge browser, improvements to gaming on Windows 10 and more features for devices with touch screens. As the name implies, the Creators Update includes new tools for people who make and consume media on their PCs, including a new Paint3D app that updates Microsoft’s classic drawing tool to create three-dimensional models.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Pajama-wearing remote worker stereotypes shattered

A recent satirical piece in the New Yorker played the stereotypical remote worker for laughs -- disheveled, disoriented, starved for human contact, still in his pajamas after who-knows-how-many-days. Unproductive, he calls 911 for help. While it's hilarious -- and for those who work from home, there's certainly a few grains of truth buried within -- new research from Future Workplace and Polycom might finally put to rest the perception that remote workers are lazy, anti-social and unproductive.The report, The Human Face of Remote Working, polled 25,234 employees across 12 countries, including the U.S., Canada, Brazil, Japan, the UK, India, Singapore, Germany, Russia, France, Australia and China. Of the respondents, 55 percent held managerial or higher job titles; 58 percent are responsible for care in some capacity and 68 percent are parents. The study found that despite the remote working stigma of laziness and isolation, remote workers are more empathetic, desire human connection and pick up the phone more than their in-office counterparts.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Review: Windows 10 Creators Update is worth waiting for

Windows 10 Creators Update is coming for you, and it will get you sooner or later. The question is whether to embrace Creators Update immediately or to wait a few months until the bugs get worked out—because, as we learned with Anniversary Update, there will be bugs.Many who rushed to Anniversary Update paid the price with inexplicable freezes, broken antivirus utilities, stalled or disabled apps, disappearing volumes and drives, changed settings, and a legion of installation problems. No doubt many of those users wished they had waited the four months for Anniversary Update to reach Current Branch for Business status—Microsoft’s designation for builds that are finally stable enough for enterprise deployment.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

AI will transform information security, but it won’t happen overnight

Although it dates as far back as the 1950s, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the hottest thing in technology today.An overarching term used to describe a set of technologies such as text-to-speech, natural language processing (NLP) and computer vision, AI essentially enables computers to do things normally done by people.Machine learning, the most prominent subset of AI, is about recognizing patterns in data and computer learning from them like a human. These algorithms draw inferences without being explicitly programmed to do so. The idea is the more data you collect, the smarter the machine becomes.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

1 … 2,189 2,190 2,191 2,192 2,193 … 3,842