Security

Microsoft has unveiled ElectionGuard, a software development kit (SDK) intended to make e-voting technology more secure. This open-source, encryption-enabled kit is intended to improve the polling systems to which it is applied. It will become available to polling officials via GitHub from the summer of 2019.

The Exynos i T100, Samsung's latest IoT solution is now official as a 28 nm chip that targets short-range devices that automate and control environments within homes or businesses. Its list of features and capabilities includes BLE 5.0 and Zigbee 3.0 support, as well as a hardware block for data encryption.

The Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities proved that most of the CPUs made by Intel and AMD in the past 10 years are susceptible to code-based attacks and the current security model of bugs and patches needs to change at a fundamental level. Researchers at the University of Michigan might have the solution with the Morpheus CPU security architecture that renders processors virtually invulnerable even to the fastest electronic hacking techniques.

Following up on a promise to combat cheating in Apex Legends more than ever, developer Respawn announced in a blot post today that the company has banned over 770,000 players for cheating so far. The company also banned over 4,000 spam accounts in the past 20 days alone.

Dell reportedly sat silently on a critical SupportAssist vulnerability for nearly 6 months, according to the security researcher that reported it to the company. If you have the software installed, then chances are that your laptop will be affected, and it will be open to attackers unless you have recently updated SupportAssist.

Vade Secure is an email-security company that produces a series of reports called "Phisher's Favorites". The 2019 first-quarter (1Q2019) issue shows that the targeting of social media by this kind of hacker has increased by 74.7% compared to 1Q2018. Facebook and Instagram are prominent example of the sites in question.

An upcoming feature that recently debuted in the latest Android Q beta may not be officially seen until next year. Scoped Storage, a feature that hopes to curtail app permission issues by sandboxing applications, has been found to break legacy applications under some common circumstances.

Six apps from Chinese developer DO Global have been found to secretly collect user data and send it to Chinese servers. While these apps have now been removed, this issue has once again turned a spotlight on a serious privacy problem that continues to plague the Google Play Store: unwarranted app permissions.

The device-diagnostics company Blancco claims to have bought over 100 second-hand hard drives on the eBay sites of 4 different counties, to see what data, if any, could be accessed on them. It claims that 42% of these drives still stored information from their previous owners that can be thought of as sensitive.

The Nokia 9 PureView's in-display fingerprint reader has been the subject of many a debate, and the company has sent out OTAs that were supposed to improve it. A new video, however, shows a Nokia 9 PureView being unlocked by an unregistered fingerprint, and a packet of chewing gum afterwards. And no, we're not making this up.

Emtek, the licensed owners of the BlackBerry Messenger app, announced that the service will shut down on May 31 considering that users preferred using other messaging platforms. However, BlackBerry said that BBM Enterprise is now available for use by consumers and will be free for the first year for new users.

An XDA contributor has noticed that Google Maps has gained the ability to scan a mobile device's clipboard for addresses. This enables it to suggest an address that has been copied from, say, Chrome, in its search bar without the need for a button or option to paste it. It is not clear when this new feature of Maps arose.

Parrot has unveiled its latest drone. The new ANAFI not only allows for 4K video in both live and recorded formats, but also has a high-end FLIR mode for thermal imaging. It can fly over potential dangerous hot-spots for up to 26 minutes on a single battery's charge for professional-grade safety and thermal gradient monitoring.

Google Pay has gained more functionality in a new update. It involves the ability to 'scan' Gmail for information on a user's financial perks and other info. This includes rewards from using loyalty cards or other similar systems.

Instead of telling the anti-virus software what the common attributes of a malware are, why not have the software learn that itself from terabytes of pre-determined files? HP says its Sure View algorithm can detect even the latest viruses and malware based on a similar technology that Nvidia uses for its Deep Learning Super-Sampling (DLSS) graphics technique.

A new series by the New York Times investigating privacy has uncovered a Google database known internally as SensorVault. Police have been able to access the database to help identify suspects based on their movements recorded in SensorVault.

A user-friendly jailbreak for the Apple Watch could soon be available thanks to efforts of developer @ethanpepro. The jailbreak is currently being developed for watchOS 5.1.2 and is not available for public download yet. The new jailbreak is in contrast to the previous one that was available last year, which was more targeted at developers than end users.

Google Wallet has reportedly gained access to a number of Google accounts over the last few days. That would be fine and all - if the official iteration of this app still existed. It was discontinued and absorbed into Google Pay some time ago, meaning that this name may now be used by scammers to steal user payment details or funds.

Abaco Systems, a specialist in rugged embedded computing products, has just announced its SBC3511 3U OpenVPX single-board computer. The powerful board with an 8th Gen Coffee Lake Intel Xeon processor has been designed with security and durability in mind. Products from Abaco have been selected by the military for their capabilities.

Android owners with app version 10.7.3.3 or older may want to update to the latest version whenever possible which addresses the breach. The actual developers, however, appear to be putting in no effort whatsoever to warn any of its users about the invasion of privacy.

Razer issued fixes for all the models launched from 2016 onward, but owners of the Blade and Blade Pro models released prior to 2016 will have to wait for a few more weeks to get the fixes. The vulnerability is identical to the early 2018 CVE-2018-251 backdoor that affected Apple's MacBooks, which were sold with the Manufacturing Mode still enabled.

The under-display fingerprint sensor built into the new Samsung Galaxy S10 is often perceived as the most secure. This is due to its state-of-the-art, ultrasonic nature that builds a 3D map of the user biometric in question. A Reddit user has claimed to have fooled it with a mock print made of resin.

In a new partnership announced today, Purism and Private Internet Access (PIA) have announced that the companies will develop a specialized VPN service for the Librem 13 and Librem 15 laptops as well as the Librem 5 smartphone. The VPN will be backed into PureOS and the Librem 5 out-of-the-box and aims to continue both Purism's and PIA's mission of protecting user data and privacy.

SPURV is a new project by Collabora, an open source software development and integration company. SPURV can run a full instance of Android in a container, allowing the mobile OS to directly access system hardware and run apps natively on a Linux system. The process essentially runs two operating systems on a machine at the same time and can be quite resource intensive.

Office Depot, Inc. and Support.com, Inc. have agreed to pay a combined total of US$35 million to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) after being accused of tricking customers into paying for unnecessary computer repair services. Support.com has been involved in a similar scareware scandal before, in conjunction with AOL’s Computer Checkup service.

The backdoor-like vulnerability was discovered through the Windows Defender ATP kernel sensors back in January, but Microsoft did not alert the media. Instead, the company contacted Huawei directly and a patch was promptly released. Microsoft presumably did not want to add to the list of serious allegation currently targeting Huawei.

In response to the massive media attention around Operation ShadowHammer yesterday, Asus has released a fix for the affected software (Asus Live Update Utility) to patch the security holes used in the attack. The company also released a tool that allows users to check their systems for any traces of the malware. Links to both the online tool and instructions on updating the Live Update Utility are included below.

Kaspersky Labs earlier today wrote about an attack they discovered in January that compromised Asus' Live Update Utility. The attack affected 57,000 Kaspersky customers and may have hit as many as 500,000 computers around the world. Dubbed "Operation ShadowHammer," the attack injected a Trojan into the Live Update Utility and used authentic Asus software certificates to install itself onto targeted systems.

HMD Global has come up with an official response on the issue of its devices sending sensitive user data to Chinese servers. While the company's reasoning appears sound, it's still a tad appalling that something of this sort is associated with the Nokia brand, especially considering the hardware and software issues the company's devices have been accused of having over the past year.

Some users of the Nokia 7 Plus have reported that their phones are sending data to Chinese servers without permission, a direct violation of GDPR laws. This data includes IMEI's, serial numbers, and location, all of which are considered personal data and can be used to track and identify users. HMD Global has confirmed the claims.

Due to a security oversight made by some Facebook employees, certain Facebook apps have been inadvertently logging user passwords as plain text on internal company servers. While still secured against outside intrusion, between 200 and 600 million user passwords were visible and searchable by about 20,000 employees at Facebook.

Microsoft has become much more open under current CEO Satya Nadella with apps made for macOS, iOS, Android and Linux. The latest step in this initiative is the porting of a version of Microsoft Defender antivirus software for macOS, but in this instance, it is targeted at business users initially.

There have always been rumors that Huawei was working on its own OS. Those have now been confirmed by the company, with Huawei CEO Richard Yu affirming that the Chinese monolith has a working mobile OS all geared up and ready to go, just in case.

Over the past week or so, WhatsApp has taken to enforcing its strict anti-third-party policies. The company considers third-party versions of the messenger a security risk and is now banning users of such apps. GB WhatsApp and WhatsApp Plus are examples.

A mobile insurance and device company, Asurion, has announced its findings on a study about missing devices and cases in which their owners managed to get them back. The company reported that having a lockscreen showing a contact number resulted in 3 times the chances of recovering such a device. In addition, the use of a cross-platform browser is a good idea in case of phone loss.

The Twitter account @NTAuthority has posted a video in which a Pixel 3 XL appears to boot into Windows. The OS' logo shows up at the start of this process, which is followed by not much more than a blue screen with what appears to be a command window. Should the claim prove true, it appears that Windows can run on yet another device not intended to do so.

Jay Frechette, the Community Manager for Respawn Entertainment, has shared information about the company’s battle against cheaters, specifically in the smash-hit battle royale game Apex Legends. Apparently, over 355,000 players have already been banned from the PC version, and the game developer is busy working on additional methods to combat cheating.

The popular tech YouTuber Lewis Hilsenteger has posted a video to his channel claiming that the new Samsung Galaxy S10 series' Face Unlock security can be hacked. Hilsenteger demonstrated this by holding his Galaxy S10+ up to a 2nd phone playing a video of his face, which appeared to successfully unlock the former's screen.

Proton Technologies AG, the company behind the popular encrypted email service ProtonMail, has issued a press release to reveal it has been awarded €2 million in funding from the European Commission (EC). The company plans on using the money to develop encrypted services such as its ProtonDrive file storage application.

Ghidra, the NSA's own reverse-engineering software, is now open source and freely available for download. The Agency voluntarily open-sourced the decompiler in an effort to benefit the cybersecurity community. Ghidra is a software decompiler that allows users to more easily see how a computer executes a program and is finely-tuned to be more user-friendly.

An Indian Twitter user has alleged that an Android TV to which he had access allowed him to see all the other accounts linked to the same via the Google Home app. The bug in question also could have let him put their Google Photos-stored images up on the screen. Google has responded by temporarily suspending the app options involved.

The Canadian government has moved ahead with extradition proceedings in regard to the case of Meng Wanzhou, the CFO of Huawei. The executive will be back in court on March 6 to find out the date for her extradition hearing. The news will undoubtedly infuriate the Chinese government, which has been insisting on Meng Wanzhou’s release.

For those parents desperate to find a new catchy song to entertain children bored of watching “Baby Shark”, look no further. Not only is “Huawei Beauty” sung by a bunch of cute kids, the video also features a nifty dance routine and gives some handy advice about what brand smartphone you should own. Just try to ignore the unsubtle propaganda and occasional iffy imagery.

The modders are back at it again! After the Nintendo switch was modded to run Linux, 2 developers released a twitter video presenting their modified Nintendo console that manages to run Android 10 Q. It never ceases to amaze us what some modders can do.

The LG G8 ThinQ and G8s ThinQ flagship smartphones have finally made an official appearance. The G8 variant comes with numerous attractive features that should appeal to users, such as touchless commands and an OLED screen that doubles as a speaker. The G8 also has a Time of Flight (ToF) sensor, known as the Z Camera, as part of the front dual camera setup.

A popular dating app, Coffee Meets Bagel, has revealed that it has suffered from a major data breach. Apparently, over 6.1 million accounts were affected by the hacks, which took place in late 2017 and again in May 2018. Coffee Meets Bagel users were informed of the cyber attack on the worst day possible for those looking for love: Valentine’s Day.

SamMobile has reportedly spotted security updates for the Samsung Galaxy S6, which should bring its patch level up to January 2019. This is not hugely unusual, except for the fact that this phone is now nearly 4 years old. It joins a very short list of devices this age to still receive official software support from its OEM.

How can spam messages be detected in end-to-end encryption? WhatsApp uses other tools and can already track 75% automatically using AI. Through this process, two million WhatsApp accounts are blocked per month.

The Apple App Store and Google Play Store host an app called Absher in Saudi Arabia. It is an official portal by which users can manage their legal travel-related obligations. However, multiple Middle East experts allege that it is also used to restrict freedom of movement for women in the country.