Latest Technology News

In an attempt to get more users to upgrade to Windows 10, Microsoft announced early this year that it would drop support for Intel Skylake processors on Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 after July 17, 2017. The controversial policy was short lived though, as a few months later the software giant gave its customers a one-year reprieve, pushing the deadline to July 18, 2018.

But, as you can see, that is not the end of the story, as Microsoft has changed its mind once again. Today, it announces that Intel's sixth-generation processors will actually be supported for an even longer period of time on Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 devices. That is good news for those who are not planning on upgrading to Windows 10 in the foreseeable future.

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Microsoft is doing its part protecting its users from hackers, but it can’t do everything on its own.

According to new figures released by Secunia Research in its Country Reports, covering Q2 2016 for 12 countries, the number of unpatched Windows machines is on the decline. Compared to Q1 this year, when 6.1 percent of systems were unpatched, only 5.4 percent are not up to date now. Same time last year, the figure was 10.3 percent.

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One way to access data efficiently and accelerate the development and deployment of analytics apps is to build an API. APIs are a natural way to access data, whether it be personalization scores for web content or a service to assess the risk of a part failing.

There are a number of benefits to using an API for data access. First, it restricts the user to efficient requests. Google Analytics is a prime example. A query API gives you access to the rich data in your Google Analytics instance. While the API is fairly flexible, it allows Google to more accurately describe the types of queries that can be performed efficiently.

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Security researchers at the University of California, Riverside, have uncovered a major Linux vulnerability that enables hackers to hijack Internet traffic which, if exploited, can be used to intercept communications, launch targeted attacks, and lower Tor's anonymity. The vulnerability impacts iterations of the open-source kernel released in the past four years.

The security researchers believe that this security issue "affects a wide range of devices and hosts" -- the open-source kernel is well known for powering a significant number of servers and being at the heart of Android, the most popular mobile operating system today. The vulnerability was introduced in a TCP specification that is found in Linux versions starting with 3.6, which was released in September 2012.

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Phishing attacks are on the increase and are becoming increasingly sophisticated. This means that older technologies such as blacklisting known phishing sites are struggling to keep up with the threat. The Anti Phishing Working Group detected a 250 percent jump in phishing sites between October 2015 and March 2016.

Fraud protection company Easy Solutions is helping to combat the problem with the public beta launch of its Swordphish predictive phishing and malware risk assessment technology.

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Last week Moon Express, a contender for the Google Lunar X-Prize (GLXP), announced that the company had received interagency approval from the White House, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Department of State and other U.S. government agencies "for a maiden flight of its robotic spacecraft onto the Moon’s surface to make the first private landing on the Moon".

This heady announcement got a lot of press including this story I am linking to because it was in the New York Times, the USA’s so-called pape of record. If the Times writes "gets approval to put robotic lander on the Moon" it must be true. Only this story isn’t true. Yes, the FAA kinda-sorta gave Moon Express permission to land on the Moon. But by the same token, the FAA has no power to deny Moon Express -- or anyone -- the right to land on the Moon. It’s not in their jurisdiction.

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During the recent Defcon hacking conference, held last week in Paris, a hacker demonstrated how he could make fraudulent payments through Samsung Pay.

Samsung says it knew of this and considers it an acceptable risk. It claims the method is almost too difficult to pull off, and no different than fraud methods we see today with credit cards.

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There are a number of concerns that companies have over migrating to the cloud, but one of the key ones is who else might have access to the data.

Cloud security company Bitglass has released the results of its latest Mitigating Cloud Risks survey in conjunction with the Cloud Security Alliance, which shows that potential government access to encrypted data is an issue.

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Each day, executives in Federal agencies and departments balance the public’s growing need for services with budget discipline -- "doing more with less".  They rely on predictive analytics and machine learning to make government work better, ensuring tax compliance, enforcing the law, detecting fraudulent claims, and understanding public needs.

The most demanding analytics work is often ad-hoc and time-sensitive, and requires an ability to scale up quickly. Consider the following scenarios:

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Shortage of skills is one of the main reasons businesses give for not achieving their objectives according to Gartner and this is especially true in the cybersecurity field.

Access control specialist SecureAuth is aiming to address this with the launch of its SecureAuth University, a continuing education program for customers, partners and employees.

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Microsoft has created a backdoor in Secure Boot, the security feature designed to ensure that a device can only run the operating system that it is meant to. And, to make matters worse, it has just accidentally leaked the "golden keys" needed to bypass it.

The Secure Boot backdoor is there to, for instance, allow a Microsoft developer to install a new build of Windows on a device -- that has the security feature enforced -- without it having to be digitally signed beforehand. It makes their job easy, but it also makes the security system ineffective if -- when -- the golden keys that unlock it make their way into the wrong hands.

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Wmail is an open-source Chromium-based Gmail client for Windows, OS X and Linux. The program supports both Gmail and Google Inbox accounts, and you can add and manage as many as you need.

You could do this with a browser, of course, but Wmail gives you much improved support for drag and drop and keyboard shortcuts, as well as providing native desktop notifications when a new message arrives.

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EaseUS makes some excellent Windows software, including tools for recovering lost data, backing up your system and files, managing disk space, and more.

It offers both free and paid editions and, from today, to celebrate the company’s 12th birthday, you’ll be able to get your hands on some of its best paid software, for free.

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Protecting your web traffic can be very easy: use HTTPS where you can, maybe install HTTPS everywhere to enforce that, use a VPN for an extra layer of security. Meanwhile DNS gets so little attention that many people don’t even realize there’s an issue, even though DNS eavesdropping and spoofing are very real security concerns.

DNSCrypt is an open-source technology from the OpenDNS team which encrypts your DNS traffic, making it much more difficult for others to snoop on your activities or hijack your browsing with man-in-the-middle attacks.

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Remember that cyber-experiment when a couple of hackers managed to take control over a speeding car in the middle of the highway?

Well, IOActive has published a study, entitled Commonalities in Vehicle Vulnerabilities, after three years of testing, and the results are quite scary.

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