Windows PC makers hang customers out to dry with flawed crapware updaters

Prominent Windows PC makers, including Acer, Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo, have made "egregious" omissions in the software updaters they bundle with notebooks that leave customers at risk from attack by cyber-criminals, a security firm contended."It's 2016," said Steve Manzuik, director of security research at Duo Security, in an interview. "[These updaters show] a lack of basic security measures that you should use."Earlier this week, Duo published a report detailing an examination of 10 Windows laptops from five OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) -- Acer, Asus, Dell, HP and Lenovo -- that focused on the software updating tools the vendors pre-loaded on their machines.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Decline in slate tablets bigger than expected, IDC says

Demand for slate-shaped tablets is declining even faster than expected. For all of 2016, global tablet shipments will drop by 9.6% over 2015, market research firm IDC forecast this week, marking the second straight year of decline. In March, IDC had forecast a decline of 6% for this year. The decline will occur even when newer detachable tablets, often called 2-in-1s, are included with slate tablets, IDC said. "The impact of the decline of slates is having a bigger impact, faster than we thought. They are not coming back," said IDC analyst Jean Phillippe Bouchard in an interview.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Infrastructure monitoring products: Users pinpoint the best and worst features

IT monitoring software probes various parts of the infrastructure -- servers, networks and applications -- and alerts IT about problems before they can cause an outage that affects the business. According to IT managers in the IT Central Station community, the most important criteria to consider when choosing infrastructure monitoring software include compatibility with existing infrastructure and customizable views.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Infrastructure monitoring products: Users pinpoint the best and worst features

IT monitoring software probes various parts of the infrastructure -- servers, networks and applications -- and alerts IT about problems before they can cause an outage that affects the business. According to IT managers in the IT Central Station community, the most important criteria to consider when choosing infrastructure monitoring software include compatibility with existing infrastructure and customizable views.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Don’t expect a self-driving car from Microsoft

While its fellow tech giants work on autonomous, self-driving cars, Microsoft has opted out of a similar pursuit and instead is taking a strategy of working with car makers and other vendors in the market. Peggy Johnson, the head of business development for the company, made these comments at the Converge technology conference hosted by The Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong Friday. She had been asked about whether Microsoft would follow in Google and Apple's footsteps in making self-driving cars. In the case of Google, that project is well-known. In the case of Apple, it's all rumor.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

LTE equipment party is over, as carrier spending drops

For the first time since LTE technology hit the mainstream in 2012, the worldwide market for carrier wireless equipment has declined, according to a report released today by IHS Technology.The decline, moreover, is a sharp one, the report said – the global market for macrocell infrastructure dropped by 18% in the first quarter of 2016, down to $10 billion overall. The mobile infrastructure sector in general was down 8% in the same time frame, and LTE equipment specifically dropped by 23% on a quarterly basis.+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Human error biggest risk to health IT + Oracle employee says she was sacked for refusing to fiddle with cloud accountsTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Amy Schumer savages mobile phone TV ads

Had enough of those perky and quirky wireless phone provider commercials from the likes of AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile? Comedian Amy Schumer takes direct aim at these inane promos in a new episode of Comedy Central's Inside Amy Schumer (warning: a bit on the NSFW side of things...) MORE: 6 Techiest Commercials from Super Bowl 50 | Wi-Fi hotspot block persists despite FCC crackdownTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Amy Schumer savages mobile phone TV ads

Had enough of those perky and quirky wireless phone provider commercials from the likes of AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile? Comedian Amy Schumer takes direct aim at these inane promos in a new episode of Comedy Central's Inside Amy Schumer (warning: a bit on the NSFW side of things...) MORE: 6 Techiest Commercials from Super Bowl 50 | Wi-Fi hotspot block persists despite FCC crackdownTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Aqua Security focuses on securing the runtime environment of containers  

This column is available in a weekly newsletter called IT Best Practices.  Click here to subscribe.  In a nod to the benefits of containers, the financial services giant Goldman Sachs Group has announced it's in the midst of a year-long project to move 90% of its software into containers. The shift involves some 5,000 applications as well as the firm's software infrastructure.As reported in The Wall Street Journal, Don Duet, the co-head of Goldman Sachs' technology division, says this move will create a better software environment for his company. The staff of more than 8,000 software developers can focus on creating new products and tools, while the runtime process is automated, thus reducing labor and infrastructure costs. In addition, the use of containers will create standards for packaging and distributing different kinds of software.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

EU and US officials sign ‘umbrella’ data protection agreement, but it’s no Privacy Shield

The European Commission has signed a landmark agreement with the U.S. in its quest to legitimize the transatlantic flow of European Union citizens' personal information.No, it's not the embattled Privacy Shield, which the Commission hopes to conclude later this month, but the rather flimsier-sounding umbrella agreement or, more formally, the U.S.-EU agreement "on the protection of personal information relating to the prevention, investigation, detection, and prosecution of criminal offenses."It covers the exchange between EU and U.S. law enforcers, during the course of their investigations of personal data including names, addresses and criminal records. U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, European Commissioner for Justice Vĕra Jourová and Dutch Minister for Security and Justice Ard van der Steur signed the agreement in Amsterdam on Thursday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

EU and US officials sign ‘umbrella’ data protection agreement, but it’s no Privacy Shield

The European Commission has signed a landmark agreement with the U.S. in its quest to legitimize the transatlantic flow of European Union citizens' personal information.No, it's not the embattled Privacy Shield, which the Commission hopes to conclude later this month, but the rather flimsier-sounding umbrella agreement or, more formally, the U.S.-EU agreement "on the protection of personal information relating to the prevention, investigation, detection, and prosecution of criminal offenses."It covers the exchange between EU and U.S. law enforcers, during the course of their investigations of personal data including names, addresses and criminal records. U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, European Commissioner for Justice Vĕra Jourová and Dutch Minister for Security and Justice Ard van der Steur signed the agreement in Amsterdam on Thursday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Arista launches Universal Leaf Platform

Last month, Arista Networks put the core router market in the crosshairs with it’s Universal Spine (http://www.networkworld.com/article/3049140/router/arista-takes-aim-at-core-router-market-with-universal-spine.html) system.  This week Arista complimented this by announcing a Universal Leaf network platform powered by its new 7280R switch series. The products leverage the Broadcom Jericho chipset which is optimized for 100 Gig-E, deep buffers and routing.  Arista has been one of the more aggressive vendors with respect to using a leaf-spine architecture to be the backbone of a modern data center, so it makes sense that it would try and push the evolution of both the leaf and spines.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Arista launches Universal Leaf Platform

Last month, Arista Networks put the core router market in the crosshairs with it’s Universal Spine (http://www.networkworld.com/article/3049140/router/arista-takes-aim-at-core-router-market-with-universal-spine.html) system.  This week Arista complimented this by announcing a Universal Leaf network platform powered by its new 7280R switch series. The products leverage the Broadcom Jericho chipset which is optimized for 100 Gig-E, deep buffers and routing.  Arista has been one of the more aggressive vendors with respect to using a leaf-spine architecture to be the backbone of a modern data center, so it makes sense that it would try and push the evolution of both the leaf and spines.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

A new WordPress plug-in exploit endangers thousands of websites

Over the past few days, attackers have been exploiting an unpatched vulnerability in WP Mobile Detector, a WordPress plug-in installed on over 10,000 websites.The plug-in's developer fixed the flaw Tuesday in version 3.6, but in addition to updating immediately, users should also check if their websites haven't already been hacked.The vulnerability is located in a script called resize.php script and allows remote attackers to upload arbitrary files to the Web server. These files can be backdoor scripts known as Web shells that provide attackers with backdoor access to the server and the ability to inject code into legitimate pages.The flaw was discovered by WordPress security outfit PluginVulnerabilities.com after it observed requests for the wp-content/plugins/wp-mobile-detector/resize.php even though it didn't exist on its server. This indicated that someone was running an automated scan for that specific file, likely because it had a flaw.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

A new WordPress plug-in exploit endangers thousands of websites

Over the past few days, attackers have been exploiting an unpatched vulnerability in WP Mobile Detector, a WordPress plug-in installed on over 10,000 websites.The plug-in's developer fixed the flaw Tuesday in version 3.6, but in addition to updating immediately, users should also check if their websites haven't already been hacked.The vulnerability is located in a script called resize.php script and allows remote attackers to upload arbitrary files to the Web server. These files can be backdoor scripts known as Web shells that provide attackers with backdoor access to the server and the ability to inject code into legitimate pages.The flaw was discovered by WordPress security outfit PluginVulnerabilities.com after it observed requests for the wp-content/plugins/wp-mobile-detector/resize.php even though it didn't exist on its server. This indicated that someone was running an automated scan for that specific file, likely because it had a flaw.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Measurement is key to cloud success

When I think about the Internet, I think about the General Motors bankruptcy of 2009. Okay, maybe it’s not the first thing that pops to mind. But there’s a lesson in it for builders of networks.It is hard not to draw an analogy between the rise of North American car culture and the development of the Internet. In the earliest days of car culture, it was a lot of work to use a car. You needed to be a pretty reasonable mechanic, and you were using a mode of transportation that was just as uncomfortable as any other one, but that was unreliable and experimental as well. But this didn’t matter, because other enthusiasts like you were trying out the same things, and if the new technology turned out to work it would be a really big deal. Similarly, in the earliest days of the network, the users were mostly also developers of the technology. Only pretty geeky people could have thought of telnet or FTP as user-friendly.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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