Security researchers find major vulnerabilities in Uber
A group of hackers from a security company in Portugal managed to hack into Uber and get their hands on a bunch of data that should remain hidden.
The team of three experts, Vitor Oliveira, Fábio Pires and Filipe Reis from Integrity, found a total of six flaws: they managed to use promotion codes, found private emails using UUID, found users’ phone numbers, created driver accounts, validated them, found where you went, who your driver was, and who you are and, ultimately, date of the trip, driver name and picture, the ID and the cost of the trip. The route map was also disclosed.
Passwords suck, and consumers want biometrics
The golden rule of password security is never use the same credentials on multiple sites. The idea is if one site suffers a breach, hackers can try the now-stolen credentials on other sites. This makes sense, yet many people still do it. You know what? I don't blame them. It can be impossible to remember all of the unique passwords, and writing them down is frowned upon too. What can be done to fix this?
Enter biometrics. Rather than use a password, a user's face or fingerprint can be used. More and more smartphones, tablets, and laptops are offering biometics, but sadly, the web is lacking. Consumers are understandably frustrated, and according to a new survey, more than half of them would prefer biometrics to passwords for daily use.
New solution allows intelligent management of data growth
The amount of data companies have to deal with is getting bigger and bigger, it's expensive to store and time consuming to manage. Little wonder then that businesses are looking for solutions that can automate the process.
Komprise, emerges from beta today with a solution that lets companies automate the management of enterprise data with analytics and insight -- across both cloud and on premise.
Oops, looks like Windows 10 Anniversary Update is arriving later than planned
Microsoft’s big Windows 10 Anniversary Update introduces a ton of new features and improvements to the new operating system, including a revamped Start menu, support for extensions in Edge, Windows Ink, and more.
Windows Insiders have been testing these new features for a while, and it’s looking very much as if the Anniversary Update will be a great improvement. The big update was set to be released on July 29, the same day as the free upgrade offer ended, but according to an accidental release from Microsoft, it seems as if the software giant is going to miss that window.
67 percent of used drives for sale contain sensitive data
An analysis of 200 second-hand hard disks and solid state drives purchased from eBay and Craigslist in the first quarter of 2016 reveals that 67 percent of them contained personally identifiable information.
In addition 11 percent held sensitive corporate data, including company emails, CRM records and spreadsheets containing sales projections and product inventories. The study comes from mobile diagnostics and secure erasure specialist Blancco Technology Group.
Microsoft finally lets users say no to Windows 10
Microsoft has used every trick in the book to get Windows 7 and 8.1 users to upgrade to Windows 10. From making the new operating system free, and introducing an app to simplify the upgrade process, to fooling users into requesting an upgrade even if they really don’t want it.
The latest approach has been to change the behavior of the red corner X in the Get Windows 10 popup. People who clicked the button to close the message assumed they’d rejected the new OS, but had in fact sanctioned the upgrade. Microsoft even went so far as to remove the X in some cases, so people couldn’t even close the popup without agreeing to install the upgrade either immediately, or at a time arranged by Microsoft.
Almost a third of IT professionals ignore cyber security alerts
Just over 30 percent of IT professionals admit to sometimes ignoring security alerts because of high volumes of false positives.
This is among the findings of a new survey from Skyhigh Networks conducted along with the Cloud Security Alliance which also reveals that 20 percent of companies have more than ten security tools that generate alerts.
Cohesity adds protection for physical servers
As demand for data grows, companies often struggle to stay in control of a range of different secondary storage solutions.
Californian company Cohesity has pioneered hyper-converged secondary storage and today announces new releases of its DataProtect and DataPlatform products that expand data protection to physical servers, enable faster recovery times, and double performance levels.
Organizations must transition from legacy 'wet ink' signatures to a 'digital' format
Even in today’s highly digital, technology-driven business environment, many organizations demand wet ink signatures for important business critical documentation. This is when, say a contract in an electronic format for a new deal could be signed and sent via email within minutes -- compared to wet inking it, scanning (sometimes running into 100s of pages), and posting to the other party, who then would follow the same process to send a signed copy back.
It’s a hugely inefficient, time consuming and inconvenient process. But it’s a corporate policy that many businesses insist on.
IBM Summit will be the world's fastest supercomputer
After it was reported that China has the world’s fastest supercomputer, IBM unveiled a few details about its upcoming behemoth, which is already branded as the computer that will dethrone the Chinese Sunway TaihuLight.
IBM's supercomputer is called Summit. It is expected to reach US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in early 2018, and should have a quarter more computational power than originally intended.
Huawei MateBook is the affordable Windows 10 hybrid PC of your dreams [Review]
Windows 10 is a great desktop operating system, and for the most part, OEMs have manufactured some solid hardware to showcase it. Respectable companies like HP and Dell have done Microsoft proud with some truly satisfying touch-friendly laptops. Unfortunately, Microsoft has been a bit deficient with its Surface line. Don't get me wrong, the Pro 4 and Book are pretty good choices, but there have been many known bugs, and they are quite expensive.
There's a new player in the Windows world, however, and its looking to outdo Microsoft at its own Surface game. Huawei -- a well-known company in China -- is looking to make a name for itself in the USA. Its all-new affordable MateBook Windows 10 tablet/laptop hybrid is the company's biggest move yet. In such a crowded Windows 10 device world, is this computer worth your money?
Mozilla uses emoji game Codemoji to teach about encryption
The world of technology relies on encryption. Everything from private messages to online payments are secured in this way -- but how does it all work? Mozilla has come up with a way to teach people about encryption, combining gaming and emoji into a useful learning tool.
Codemoji is described as "a fun way to learn about ciphers", and while you might think that it's aimed solely at children, there's something here for all ages. The idea is very simple: letters and words are translated into emoji so they can only be read by those who understand the decryption technique.
New cloud platform delivers IT resilience
Economic pressures means IT departments need to provide high levels of service whilst cutting costs and using fewer resources. Legacy infrastructure not only gets in the way of this it limits IT's ability to quickly respond to incidents, outages and security breaches.
Disaster recovery specialist Axcient is launching Fusion, a cloud-converged platform for IT resilience and agility that will allow enterprises to reduce infrastructure overhead and cost, regain valuable IT staff time and deliver a more reliable and high-performing service to their end users.
Stop common malware exploits with NoVirusThanks Smart Object Blocker
NoVirusThanks Smart Object Blocker is a low level tool which enables blocking the execution of certain applications, commands, DLLs and drivers. Default rules block some common malware exploits and attacks, and you can add more to fine-tune the protection available.
Creating these rules requires editing a text file, which isn’t exactly convenient, but a few bundled examples help to explain the basics.
Google teams up with LyricFind to show song lyrics in search results
"Son and heir", not "sun and air". Excuse me while I "kiss the sky", not "this guy". If you've ever struggled to interpret the lyrics to a song, you've probably scurried online to look up what is actually being sung. By teaming up with LyricFind, Google just made this much quicker and easier.
No more jumping from site to site. No more ad barrages. Now Google will display song lyrics directly in search results from the world’s largest lyric licensing service. As well as making things easier for searchers, the deal means that artists get paid royalties as their lyrics are viewed.
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