Governments must impose a global moratorium on the international spyware trade or face a world in which no mobile phone is safe from state-sponsored hackers, Edward Snowden has warned in the wake of revelations about the clients of NSO Group. Snowden, who in 2013 blew the whistle on the secret mass surveillance programmes of the Read more about Edward Snowden calls for spyware trade ban amid Pegasus revelations[…]
The revelation that our government might be using spyware called Pegasus to hack into its critics’ phones has started a whole new debate on privacy. The opposition is taking a dig at the ruling party every chance it gets, while the latter is trying to damage control after facing such serious allegations. Amidst the chaos, Read more about How To Check If Your iPhone Is Infected With Pegasus Using MVT[…]
Billions of people are inseparable from their phones. Their devices are within reach – and earshot – for almost every daily experience, from the most mundane to the most intimate. Few pause to think that their phones can be transformed into surveillance devices, with someone thousands of miles away silently extracting their messages, photos and Read more about Huge data leak shatters the lie that the innocent need not fear surveillance – governments are spying on critics, journos, etc without a warrant using commercial Pegasus spyware by NSO[…]
Samsung is causing much angst among its SmartThings customers by shutting down support for its original SmartThings home automation hub as of the end of June. These are network-connected home automation routers providing Zigbee and Z-Wave connectivity to your sensors and actuators. It’s not entirely unreasonable for manufacturers to replace aging hardware with new models. Read more about Samsung Bricking Original SmartThings Hubs[…]
A few days ago, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) came out with a 5-0 unanimous vote on its position on right to repair. (PDF) It’s great news, in that they basically agree with us all: Restricting consumers and businesses from choosing how they repair products can substantially increase the total cost of repairs, generate Read more about US FTC Weighs in On Right To Repair[…]
On May 31 last year, 25-year-old Safarain Herring was shot in the head and dropped off at St. Bernard Hospital in Chicago by a man named Michael Williams. He died two days later. Chicago police eventually arrested the 64-year-old Williams and charged him with murder (Williams maintains that Herring was hit in a drive-by shooting). Read more about Police Are Telling ShotSpotter to Alter Evidence From Gunshot-Detecting AI[…]
If you’ve returned to the restaurants and bars that have reopened in your neighborhood lately, you might have noticed a new addition to the post-quarantine decor: QR codes. Everywhere. And as they’ve become more ubiquitous on the dining scene, so has the quiet tracking and targeting that they do. That’s according to a new analysis Read more about QR Menu Codes Are Tracking You More Than You Think[…]
Nvidia’s Shield TVs are some of the best streaming video boxes on the market, but following a recent update to Android TV, Shield TV users are starting to see ads on their home screen and they aren’t happy about it. The latest update to Android TV on Shield TV devices began rolling out earlier this Read more about Shield TV Owners Are Pissed About the Banner Ads in Android TV – wtf are manufacturers doing advertising on products you actually own?[…]
iFixit co-founder and CEO Kyle Wiens has exposed how companies including Apple, Samsung, and Microsoft manipulate the design of their products and the supply chain to prevent consumers and third-party repairers from accessing necessary tools and parts to repair products such as smartphones and laptops. ZDNet Recommends The best old phones to buy Why last Read more about iFixit CEO names and shames tech giants for right to repair obstruction – not sustainable at all[…]
Law firm Campbell Conroy & O’Neil has warned of a breach from late February which may have exposed data from the company’s lengthy client list of big-name corporations including Apple and IBM. The breach, which was discovered on 27 February 2021 when a ransomware infection blocked access to selected files on the company’s internal systems, Read more about US legal eagles representing Apple, IBM, and more take 5 months to inform clients of ransomware data breach, will only offer support if social security number was in data[…]
Researchers have released technical details on a high-severity privilege-escalation flaw in HP printer drivers (also used by Samsung and Xerox), which impacts hundreds of millions of Windows machines. If exploited, cyberattackers could bypass security products; install programs; view, change, encrypt or delete data; or create new accounts with more extensive user rights. The bug (CVE-2021-3438) Read more about 16-Year-Old HP Printer-Driver Bug Impacts Millions of Windows Machines[…]
the UAE is now testing a new method that has drones fly into clouds to give them an electric shock to trigger rain production, the BBC and CNN have previously reported. The project is getting renewed interest after the UAE’s National Center of Meteorology recently published a series of videos on Instagram of heavy rain in parts of the Read more about Cloud seeding in UAE: Artificial rain with drones, electricity[…]
A new video investigation by the Wall Street Journal finds the key to TikTok’s success in how the short-video sharing app monitors viewing times. Why it matters: TikTok is known for the fiendishly effective way that it selects streams of videos tailored to each user’s taste. The algorithm behind this personalization is the company’s prize Read more about How TikTok serves you content you love – simple, actually[…]
Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O) Google will now show its search engine users more information about why it found the results they are shown, the company said on Thursday. It said people googling queries will now be able to click into details such as how their result matched certain search terms, in order to better decide if the Read more about Google is starting to tell you how it found Search results[…]
We take for granted that the water coming out of the kitchen faucet is safe to drink, but that’s not always the case in other parts of the world. So researchers at the University of Cambridge are developing a new approach to testing for contaminants using a device that billions of people already use every Read more about Normal Touchscreens Can Also Detect Contaminated Water[…]
[…] The threat actors are offering Saudi Aramco’s data starting at a negotiable price of $5 million. Saudi Aramco has pinned this data incident on third-party contractors and tells BleepingComputer that the incident had no impact on Aramco’s operations. “Zero-day exploitation” used to breach network This month, a threat actor group known as ZeroX is offering 1 TB of Read more about Saudi Aramco data breach sees 1 TB stolen data for sale[…]
New Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) rules say astronaut hopefuls must be part of the flight crew and make contributions to space flight safety. That means Jeff Bezos and Sir Richard Branson may not yet be astronauts in the eyes of the US government. These are the first changes since the FAA wings programme began in Read more about FAA changes definition of “Astronaut” on day Bezos flies to space[…]
[…] Watkins, a self-described privacy advocate whose mother and grandmother shredded personal information when he was growing up, said he is unwilling to complete the identity verification process his state now requires, which includes having his face analyzed by a little-known company called ID.me. He sent a sharply worded letter to his state’s unemployment agency Read more about Want unemployment benefits in the US? You may have to submit to facial recognition with a little known company ID.me[…]
A Which? investigation has found that printer ink is one of the most expensive liquids consumers can purchase when bought from the big inkjet printer manufacturers – and people could save a small fortune by opting for third-party alternatives. Which? research has uncovered that inkjet printer ink bought from the manufacturer could be up to Read more about Litre of printer ink? That’ll be £2,410 please. One of the most expensive consumer liquids on the planet – 3rd party ink much cheaper, blocked by manufacturers…[…]
EU countries may be taken to court for their tardiness in enacting landmark EU copyright rules into national law, the European Commission said on Monday as it asked the group to explain the delays. The copyright rules, adopted two years ago, aim to ensure a level playing field between the European Union’s trillion-euro creative industries Read more about Commission starts legal action against 23 EU countries over copyright rules they won’t implement that favour big tech over small business and forced censorship[…]
The security shortcoming can be exploited using the wonderfully named PetitPotam technique. It involves abusing Redmond’s MS-EFSRPC (Encrypting File System Remote Protocol) to take over a corporate Windows network. It seems ideal for penetration testers, and miscreants who have gained a foothold in a Windows network. Specifically, security researcher Gilles Lionel found it was possible Read more about You, too, can be a Windows domain controller and do whatever you like, with this trick which requires no authentication at all[…]
You can spot a veteran of the Browser Wars a mile off. These fearsome conflicts, fought across the desktops of the world not 20 years ago, left deep scars. […] By Gen XP, it was all over and the internet desktop was under total Empire control. Then came the Rebel Alliance of Chrome and Firefox, Read more about Windows 11 reopens browser wars by including Teams[…]
The wraps have finally, officially, come off the mock-up of Russia’s new light fighter, the Sukhoi Checkmate, also known as the Light Tactical Aircraft, or LTS in Russian, with a formal unveiling at the opening of the MAKS international air show at Zhukovsky, outside Moscow, today. Observers who had been given a succession of tantalizing, Read more about Russia’s Checkmate Light Tactical Fighter Is Officially Unveiled (Updated)[…]
More and more as of late, some of the F-117 Nighthawks long retired from active duty are now enjoying their secretive second life as developmental and red air aggressor platforms. The Air Force Test Center pilots that fly the Air Force Materiel Command-owned jets out of the shadowy Tonopah Test Range Airport (TTR) have been Read more about F-117 flying more often as Aggressors[…]
Japan’s onerous Unfair Competition Prevention Law has created what looks from here like a massive overreach on the criminalization of copyright laws. Past examples include Japanese journalism executives being arrested over a book that tells people how to back up their own DVDs, along with more high-profile cases in which arrests occurred over the selling Read more about Japanese Police Arrest Man For Selling Modded Save Files For Single-Player Nintendo Game[…]