PayPal, the online payment service once owned by Elon Musk and now in the hands of eBay, has become a bit of a staple of daily life on the internet. After all, we can use it for all sorts of payments, money transfers, invoicing and receiving money. But is it as secure as we hope?

An Australian security researcher has uncovered a way to hack past PayPal's Two-Factor Authentication (2FA). Joshua Rogers used the vulnerability he discovered with an eBay account:

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Some people love spreadsheets, it's a fact. It's also a fact that a lot of people dislike spreadsheets, and for companies that use them every day, their less-than-efficient aspect can be a hindrance to growth.

Or so says research from Intuit -- an online accounting software provider -- in an investigation of 200 UK small businesses.

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For some strange reason, Microsoft is repeating the same mistake over and over again -- whenever a new Surface tablet is launched, its availability is limited to a low number of markets. No surprise then that the lineup is a sales flop. Consumers may like what they're seeing, but if they cannot buy Surface they will get something else. I know I've been there. Fortunately, not long after launch, Microsoft fixes this problem.

Less than two months after it went on sale, Surface Pro 3 is finally heading to 25 new markets, announces Microsoft's Brian Hall. Prospective buyers will be able to get all variants of the slate (starting with the entry-level Intel Core i3 model and the Intel Core i7 flagship), from the end of this month.

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Apple and Samsung have been waging a global patent war since 2011. Apple famously won $1.05 billion in damages in an American court two years ago (a verdict still being challenged by Samsung), but the two companies have been continuing to sue each other since, including fighting a range of infringement cases in nine other countries.

Finally, though, it seems as if peace has broken out between the two smartphone giants, with news today that Apple and Samsung have agreed to end all patent litigation outside the United States.

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After slashing 60 percent of its workforce in a brutal three-year period of restructuring, it looks like the tide could be turning for beleaguered BlackBerry and its smartphone business.

An internal memo from CEO John Chen to all company employees was picked up by Reuters, revealing that BlackBerry has plans to grow once more.

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We recently celebrated the 45th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, which saw Neil Armstrong become the first man to set foot on the moon. As a young man, I remember respecting astronauts, such as Mr. Armstrong, as American heroes. Quite often, I would stare into the night sky and dream of exploring the moon's surface like them. Sadly, from what scientists have told me, it is not made of cheese.

Even without mozzarella or muenster, I still want to experience other planets and moons. While private trips to space are becoming a reality, it is reserved for the super-wealthy. Average working folks, like you and I, will just have to keep on dreaming, right? Not so fast. Today, Google announces the ability to explore Earth's moon and Mars in Google Maps. Your impossible dream of space travel can now be achieved!

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As the global recession recedes, economists are still puzzled by lagging productivity. Despite all the signs of recovery, workers are still producing less output per hour than they were before the crisis; robust economic growth will not return until productivity increases. IT’s role in driving growth has been considered in depth. The consensus is that increased investment in technology will help deliver much-needed boosts in productivity.

A study by the Center for Economic and Business Research has shown that since the 1970s, technology has increased the efficiency of office workers by 84 percent. Now, with businesses leaving years of uncertainty behind, investment in IT is beginning to pick up again. The most recent Gartner Worldwide IT Spending Forecast showed that global spending on IT devices will grow by 4.4 percent to some $689 billion this year. With this new technology, we should see productivity begin to increase.

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Pebble, a smartwatch maker that was formerly a Kickstarter darling, is on the market, and has been for a couple of years. Little has changed, though the company did release a new version earlier this year, called Pebble Steel. Now there is yet another variation, this time resembling the Swatch of the 80's (yes, I know it's still around).

The company previosuly asked customers to choose the colors they wanted to see. "#ColorMyPebble received thousands of submissions as Pebblers flexed their creative muscles and made their voices heard. Narrowing down everyone’s color ideas to two winners was tough—there were so many shades to love! Orange and Grey emerged triumphant, but we couldn’t shake the desire to produce new colors one day for Pebblers who wanted more", the company announces.

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Microsoft has confirmed that it will be delivering an update for Windows 8.1 on August 12, as part of Patch Tuesday, and as I reported yesterday, it will be a pretty unexciting release.

Anyone hoping that Microsoft was going to surprise us all with a feature packed update will be doubly disappointed as not only is the August update not the rumored Update 2, but Microsoft has no plans -- zero, zip, zilch, nada -- to release an Update 2 at any point in the future. Clear signs that the tech giant is focusing all its attention on Windows 9 (aka Threshold) now.

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While email may be falling out of favor with today's youth, I still prefer it as my main means of digital communication. It may be all the rage to send pictures of your private parts on Snapchat, selfies on Instagram and messages to your BFF on Whatsapp, but I'll stick with good ol' electronic mail, thank you very much.

Unfortunately, email hasn't changed very much over the years -- there has not been a lot of innovation. Even worse, email addresses have forever been limited to Latin characters. The problem with this is email and the internet are global and not all countries use Latin characters in their language. If they do, they may also integrate accented Latin characters too, such as an accent (á) or a tilde (ñ). Today, Google is stepping up to bring support for both non-Latin and accented Latin characters, in its very popular Gmail service.

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Consumer cloud storage specialist MediaFire has announced a major update to its native iOS app, bringing a number of new features to the popular storage platform and heralding a new pricing model.

Available on the iTunes store from today the new free app includes automatic photo and video syncing, enhanced video and music streaming performance, new mobile sharing options, and a brand new high resolution user interface.

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Ransomware is a particularly nasty form of malware that locks your computer, encrypts your files, and then demands a ransom to free your data. Payment is usually made using untraceable currencies like Bitcoin. In a lot of cases it’s easy enough to remove the malware without paying anything, but doing so won’t get your files back.

A new wave of even more dangerous ransomware is now beginning to appear in the wild. Kaspersky recently highlighted a worrying new threat called CTB-Locker (aka Critroni), nicknaming it "Onion", because it uses the anonymous TOR network. Trend Micro reported another wave of ransomware called Crytoblocker, described as the potential successor to CryptoLocker, and Synology customers are now experiencing a targeted customized ransomware attack.

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Although it's increasingly popular to move data and systems to the cloud, the risk of suffering a system outage of some kind is still very real and it can make monitoring the IT infrastructure more difficult.

IT risk management company Continuity Software has a solution for users of the ServiceNow cloud portfolio who will now be able to use Continuity's AvailabilityGuard to verify their systems.

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As the security industry has got wise to the use of the Network Time Protocol vulnerability to create DrDoS (Distributed reflected Denial of Service) attacks their traffic levels have dropped by 86 percent.

However, traditional multi-vector attacks against servers and websites have seen their traffic increase by 140 percent. Attacks using the TCP SYN and HTTP GET protocols are now the most frequent and severe threats to enterprises and service providers. This is according to a threat report for the second quarter of 2014 from attack protection specialist Black Lotus.

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The scanning of personal emails is almost universally regarded as a terrible thing. Just like the activities of the NSA, when email providers start rifling through private information, it has a tendency to upset people. The justification for governmental mass surveillance has always been that it helps to combat crime -- and of course we never have to wait for long before the words "terrorists", "extremists", and "attack" are used. Google has just demonstrated how email scanning can be used to catch criminals. In this case, Google's image recognition software was used to identify images of child abuse sent via email by a Texan man.

A 41 year old man was arrested after the system detected suspicious material. The police were alerted and requested the user's details from Google after child protection services were automatically notified of the findings. The convicted sex offender's account triggered an alert after automatic, pro-active scans detected illegal pictures and Google then reported it to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Google is understandably tight-lipped about how its technology works, but as the Telegraph points out, we do already know a little about the methods used.

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