Windows Phone hacked! Unlock Lumia bootloader, get root access, flash custom ROMs
If you are the type of person that likes to tinker, Linux-based operating systems are for you. You would probably have many hours of fun playing with an Android device or Raspberry Pi. With that said, Linux is not the only game in town.
Windows Phone and Windows 10 Mobile are probably the last operating systems you would expect to be hacker-friendly. After all, despite its occasional embrace of open source, Microsoft is largely a closed company. Today, this perception could begin to change, you see, as a new tool rocks the mobile community. Called "Windows Phone Internals", it allows Lumia owners to unlock their bootloaders, gain root access and even flash custom ROMs. Whoa.
Black Friday shopping and beyond -- Here are the hottest deals in tech right now!
Shopping on Black Friday can be a great way to save money with amazing deals. With that said, why wait? There are plenty of amazing online deals that are live now. Seriously, forget about waiting on long lines and fighting with other shoppers on Friday; you can get all of your Christmas shopping done now while wearing pajamas.
Of course, not all deals are created equal. Actually, some online deals are straight-up wack. Don't worry, your friends at BetaNews have got your back. For the next few days, I will be updating this article with the hottest tech deals I find online. There are no sponsored links; it is just our way to say "thank you" to our readers. If you find any good deals, please share them in the comments and I might add them to the list!
Google unveils the hottest search topics for Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving is rolling around in the US, kicking off the holiday season. Of course this also means shopping, but at the moment minds are mostly geared towards food. To perhaps nobody's surprise cooking is a hot topic, after all it's what the holiday is all about -- well that and football.
Google has released the top search topics leading up to the big day. At the top of the list is, of course, turkey, the bird that was, at one time, nominated for the national bird though it lost out to the bald eagle.
Companies want to go after their attackers
Corporates on both sides of the Atlantic are calling for changes in the law to allow them to fight back against the current wave of cybercrime.
As things now stand, corporates are discovering that the very laws meant to protect individuals against being hacked are now serving to protect the organized criminal gangs (OCGs) who are stealing billions from their accounts, compromising sensitive customer data and ransoming their most confidential data.
Google's Accelerated Mobile Pages will speed up the web in 2016
It's now a few weeks since Google announced Accelerated Mobile Pages. When the project was unveiled, there were just 30 or so partners on board and no indication of when AMP would be made available to everyone. Today Google reveals that the acceleration program will start to roll out early next year.
There are now, according to Google, thousands of publishers who have expressed interest in AMP. With many of these representing a large number of newspapers, TV and radio stations, the range of content is looking promising. As this is Google, a focus on ads should be expected, and now Outbrain, AOL, OpenX, DoubleClick, and AdSense are adopting the AMP spec.
Li-Fi wireless transfers are 100 times faster than Wi-Fi
Li-Fi, the technology which uses light instead of radio waves to transmit data has been tested outside the laboratory environment. The result? Possible Internet speeds a hundred times faster than what we currently have.
So how does this technology work? An LED flicks on and off at speeds imperceptible to the naked eye which can be used to write and transmit information in binary code. It’s basically Morse code, only for computers.
Nest announces new software with major updates
Nest is one of the darlings of today's connected home, bringing integration with multiple devices such as Amazon Echo and Harmony remotes (at least some models). Now the device maker is rolling out an update to add a bit more to your experience with it.
The company is launching major enhancements to the thermostat and this will be available for all generations of the device.
Budget airlines driving in-flight Wi-Fi adoption
A new study from Juniper Research, titled In-Flight Entertainment & Wi-Fi Connectivity, Market prospects 2015-2020, has revealed that the adoption of in-flight Wi-Fi by budget airlines will provide a boost to the connected IFE (in-flight entertainment) market.
Juniper’s findings suggest that budget airlines hosting in-flight Wi-Fi will drive the number of connected commercial aircraft to over 10,400 by 2020, which is a threefold increase from an estimated 3,200 this year.
Critical Zen Cart vulnerability could spell Black Friday disaster for online shoppers
It's around this time of year, with Black Friday looming and Christmas just around the corner, that online sales boom. Today security firm High-Tech Bridge has issued a warning to retailers and shoppers about a critical vulnerability in the popular Zen Cart shopping management system.
High-Tech Bridge has provided Zen Cart with full details of the security flaw which could allow remote attackers to infiltrate web servers and gain access to customer data. Servers running Zen Cart are also at risk of malware, meaning that hundreds of thousands of ecommerce sites pose a potential danger.
iPhones, iPads dominate enterprise activations in Q3 2015
When you look at which operating system powers most smartphones and tablets, it is Google's Android which comes out on top. Apple's iOS is a distant second in both cases, while Microsoft's Windows and Windows Phone are in even weaker positions. But, if we take a look at the enterprise sector, things look quite a bit different.
In the enterprise market, according to a new report by Good Technology, 66 percent of devices activated in the third quarter of the year were iPhones and iPads. Meanwhile, only 31 percent of devices activated during that time frame were Android handsets. Windows and Windows Phone devices make up three percent of activations.
Mozilla launches new JavaScript-based Add-ons Validator for developers
Like apps hitting a store, browser add-ons have to go through validation to ensure that they work properly and are secure. This is the case with Firefox, and developers will be only too aware that the validation tool provided by Mozilla is unreliable and difficult to use.
Today the company announces that the old Python-based validator could soon be a thing of the past and unveiles a new version of the tool based on pure JavaScript. Although described as "not production-ready", Mozilla is looking for feedback, and is making the tool available for testing.
Five best practices for securing mobile devices and everything they touch
In the span of just one year from 2012 to 2013, smartphone thefts in the U.S. nearly doubled to 3.1 million, and another 1.4 million were lost, according to Consumer Reports. For businesses and other organizations, every one of those losses and thefts could enable multiple security breaches. That’s because confidential data stored on the phone isn’t the only asset that’s vulnerable. As a trusted device, that phone also has access to corporate networks and the data stored on them.
More than half of North American and European companies are developing a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policy, Forrester Research says. These policies implicate security risks because, for example, employees are reluctant to give their IT departments the power to remotely erase their smartphone or tablet when it’s lost, stolen, or the employee separates from the company. Part of employees’ fear is that the device will be wiped by mistake, costing them irreplaceable personal data such as photos.
What’s the value of an API?
We've seen a big expansion in the use of APIs recently with big companies like IBM keen to stake their claim to a slice of the revenue opportunity they provide.
But what's an API really worth? Software quality company SmartBear has produced an infographic which sets out to answer that question.
Hilton Hotels answers allegations of card-stealing malware
We heard earlier this week that Hilton Hotels had been hit with malware designed to steal personal data and, even worse, credit card information. The breach affected point-of-sale systems. Sounds familiar? This same sort of beach happened to a number of major targets in 2015, mostly retail chains like Target and Home Depot.
Hilton has now responded to the issue and admits there was a problem. It's advising customers to keep a close eye on transactions on their accounts. Though customers are generally not held responsible for fraudulent charges it's a major hassle to go through.
Malwarebytes exposes adware that disables antivirus
Malwarebytes has issued a detailed report explaining the various tricks Vonteera adware uses to compromise your PC -- and it makes for uncomfortable reading.
Unwanted adverts, unknown Windows services, modified shortcuts, forced installation of uninstallable Chrome extensions, even a way to prevent you running antivirus software -- it’s all here.
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