Security

A report by the Wall Street Journal has stated that Telegram has scrapped plans to carry out an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) for the public. Apparently, because the two coin presales that have already been carried out for private investors have attracted US$1.7 billion in funds, there is now no need for the instant messaging service to engage in a public ICO.

A press release from Cambridge Analytica and parent company SCL Group has stated that all the firm's operations have ceased. Insolvency applications have been filed in the UK and bankruptcy proceedings will soon commence in the USA. The company’s closure has been attributed to “damage caused to the business by the unfairly negative media coverage” in relation to the ongoing Facebook data scandal.

A report from a leading investment banking firm has forecast that cryptocurrencies are heading for a 90% correction within the next 12 months that will devastate the cryptocurrency market. Many virtual currencies could be wiped out, although those that survive the predicted market turmoil will enjoy impressive growth in the resulting less-cramped environment.

The recent Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal has proved that user data can be harvested and used for any purpose by almost anyone without explicit consent. Therefore, it is imperative that one secures his/her online experience from tracking sites, intrusive ads, and deceptive pop-ups. One way to accomplish this is by editing the Hosts file. The Hosts file in any OS contains references to domain names and their corresponding IP addresses. Knowing how to edit the Hosts file can be very useful in preventing access to malicious websites, redirection to other sites, blocking intrusive ads, creating shortcuts to websites, and a lot more. The Hosts file is the same in Windows, macOS, and Linux although, the method of getting access and editing it might have some variations. This guide aims to comprehensively detail the purpose of the Hosts file and how you can use it to secure your online experience.

Google has updated its Chrome OS to version 66, bringing with it numerous bug and security fixes. Chief among the security updates is a patch for Meltdown for Intel-based Chrome OS devices closing off the vulnerability across all Chrome OS devices.

Thanks to a collaboration between Purism and UBports, the upcoming crowd-funded Librem 5 smartphone now officially supports Purism's own PureOS and Ubuntu Touch. Ubuntu Touch, which was abandoned by Canonical last year, was picked up by the UBports team for further development and may finally find a more permanent home on the Librem 5.

A newly discovered hardware exploit allows for the execution of arbitrary code on devices powered by Nvidia's Tegra processors. This includes Nintendo's wildly popular Switch, which has been under the scope of several hacking groups this past year. The new exploit functions at the boot level and is claimed to be "unpatchable."

YouTube has released a Community Guidelines enforcement report that states the video-sharing website removed over 8.28 million videos from the platform during the last quarter of 2017. The majority of these videos, 6.68 million of them, were flagged by automatic processes rather than human flaggers. The company’s official blog states that almost 76% of the machine-flagged videos were taken down before receiving a single view.

Released last week, Avira's free Privacy Pal tool for Windows focuses on providing the user with a more precise level of control over the personal data collected and sent away by the web browsers and other apps. In addition to cookie, cache, or web history clearing, this app can also remove Skype chat logs or stop Cortana from tracking your location.

The cryptocurrency Ripple (XRP) has been performing well lately and may hit a price of US$1.00 in the near future. Like many virtual currencies, it has dropped in value over the last few weeks, reaching a low of US$0.48 as recently as the second week of April. But now the Ripple network's native cryptocurrency seems to be bouncing back.

Available as a standalone antispyware program for Windows XP, Windows Defender shipped with Visa and Windows 7, then it replaced Microsoft Security Essentials as a full antivirus solution since Windows 8. Now, the time has come for it to protect those using the popular Chrome browser, as an extension.

The E485 model will feature a 14-inch 1366 x 768 IPS screen, while the E585 will come with a 15.6-inch FHD display. Hardware configurations for both variants are identical and include AMD Ryzen Mobile CPUs all the way up to Ryzen 7 2700U coupled with up to 32 GB of DDR4 RAM and up to 1 TB HDDs, plus up to 512 GB NVMe SSDs on select SKUs.

A department of the Quebec government has stated that Bitcoin is not a “magnet” for illicit transactions and that the widely believed perception of the cryptocurrency being mainly connected to criminal activity is erroneous. In other reports, Russian police busted an illegal Bitcoin mining facility, a woman has been arrested for arranging a Bitcoin-funded hit, and the alleged mastermind behind Iceland’s “Big Bitcoin Heist” has escaped from prison.

ZTE's poor fortunes continue, as a British government agency claims the use of ZTE manufactured equipment would cause a national security risk and mitigate measures currently in place to allow the use of equipment from Huawei.

The New York Times has published an article detailing Cambridge Analytica’s plans to create its own virtual currency (VC). The British consulting firm is now deeply embroiled in the Facebook data breach. In other cryptocurrency news, a VC known as Verge has agreed on a potentially lucrative partnership with one of the world’s most popular websites.

Intel has responded to concerns that its software-based fixes for Spectre and Meltdown are hampering CPU performance. A future patch coming through Microsoft's servers will offload memory scanning to the iGPU

Law enforcement agencies in the US and UK have accused Russia of attempting to hack routers on a global scale. The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) has released an alert today entitled “Russian State-Sponsored Cyber Actors Targeting Network Infrastructure Devices.” Apparently, millions of network devices have been targeted.

A study by Tech.pinion has shown Facebook's ever-dwindling fortunes in the eyes of the public. According to the study, 17% of the population has deleted the app from their smartphones since the details of the recent privacy violation case were brought to light a few weeks ago. A further 9% has deactivated their accounts altogether.

An internal memo warning Apple employees about the consequences of leaking information has been leaked. The tech giant has suffered from a considerable number of leaks in the past, and the memo warns that leakers face losing their jobs and may be fined and even imprisoned. Apparently, the Cupertino-based firm caught 29 leakers in 2017.

Bitcoin’s price rocketed for a short period on April 12, soaring from US$6,852 to US$7,834 in the space of barely two hours. The virtual currency’s value has been dropping consistently since December 2017, when it enjoyed record prices of over US$19,000. The latest close for the famous digital coin was US$7,819.

Hackers have managed to deface or delist many popular YouTube videos, including the highly popular 'Despacito' by Fonsi and Yankeee. Some videos have entirely disappeared while some had their titles changed. The affected videos were uploaded to the artists' YouTube Vevo accounts.

A bug in Google Chrome is causing the inbuilt antivirus scanner in the browser to initiate scans during startup causing delays in launching the program. While Google will be addressing this bug in a future patch, the only workaround right now is to clear the download history to prevent the scan from occurring at launch.

Facebook will allow users to delete/unsend their messages soon. This "feature" was unlikely to be released anytime soon but the company has promised to do so after it was revealed that company executives have had the ability to unsend messages in their private conversations for a while now.

As part of a feature upgrade to Outlook.com and OneDrive, Microsoft is adding security and privacy features to help users protect their synced files and sent emails. These include password protected sharing, optional end-to-end email encryption, attachment encryption, and forwarding-prevention measures.

The Chrome Web Store has updated its policy concerning extensions with crypto-mining scripts, outright banning such extensions from the store. Any existing extensions that can be used for mining cryptocurrencies will be removed by the end of June 2018. While the policy will prevent future extensions that are obviously used for crypto-mining, it remains to be seen if this will solve the problem of surreptitious mining scripts hidden in otherwise innocuous extensions.

Apple has baked a new privacy feature into iOS 11.3, the latest software update for its iPhones and iPads. Following the update, a new icon will appear each time personal information is required to enable a service providing users with a new layer of transparency over how their data is handled.

Bitcoin has suffered yet another turbulent day in regard to its market value. Within the last 24 hours the virtual currency’s worth has dropped from a high of US$7382 to a close of US$6822, reaching a low of US$6660 at one point. The leading cryptocurrency was valued at US$11,645 on March 5, so its considerable drop in the space of just a few weeks will be disconcerting for investors.

The popular fitness app MyFitnessPal has suffered a data breach that has affected the accounts of an estimated 150 million users. The company behind the food and nutrition application, Baltimore-based Under Armour Inc., has issued a press release in regard to the unauthorized acquisition of user data. The hack apparently took place in February, with MyFitnessPal workers noticing the breach on March 25.

The instant messaging service Telegram has apparently filed more papers with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) stating that it has now raised a total of US$1.7 billion during its Initial Coin Offering (ICO). The service already filed with the SEC back in February after raising US$850 million. Telegram has a native cryptocurrency token known as the Gram.

There has been a reported malware attack on a Boeing production plant involving the infamous ransomware cryptoworm WannaCry. A spokesperson for Boeing described the event as “a limited intrusion of malware” as there were concerns about the worm affecting production and even airplane software. The destructive WannaCry attack of 2017 affected computers in over 150 countries.

Firefox has released an official extension designed to put a stop to Facebook's user-tracking. The extension puts all Facebook-related tabs into a sealed "container", preventing any tracking to be conducted beyond the site itself.

It seems actor Steven Seagal is no longer the brand ambassador for the cryptocurrency Bitcoiin. Agents for the virtual currency (VC) have claimed that a soft cap of US$75 million has now been reached, meaning that both the founders of Bitcoiin and Seagal will “exit” from any further direct involvement with the controversial VC. The State of New Jersey recently issued a cease and desist order to the token’s founders.

A teardown of Facebook's user data archive has revealed the fact that the company collects private user data including well-detailed call logs and text metadata. The company has been involved in a number of cases pertaining to privacy issues, and this is just another icing on the cake.

There has been a report suggesting that Huawei Technologies is developing a smartphone that could utilize blockchain technology. Officials from the Chinese multinational have apparently been in talks with representatives from Sirin Labs, who created the Finney smartphone that features blockchain-based security. If Huawei goes ahead and create a “blockchain smartphone” then the company will be the first major smartphone manufacturer to deliver this particular technology to the masses.

Jack Dorsey believes that Bitcoin can take over all fiat currencies of the world in about 10 years, but before this could happen, the cryptocurrency needs to get over a few problems it is currently facing. Besides faster transaction times and lower fees, Bitcoin needs to stabilize the volatility and the mining cetralzation, plus it most likely needs solid regulations.

It took AMD more than one week to fully assess the CTS Labs report regarding 13 vulnerabilities found in all Ryzen and EPYC processors, but at least AMD's official position dismisses any claims that these vulnerabilities are critical and need immediate action. According to AMD, these exploits are to be fixed with simple firmware updates released through new BIOS versions in the coming weeks.

Bitcoin has received a significant boost in market value that has been put down to “very productive” discussions about cryptocurrencies and regulation at a G-20 meeting. The leading cryptocurrency has seen its value battered recently due to a number of market-related events, including pressure from the US Securities and Exchange Commission for tighter regulation.

The tiny chips are smaller than salt grains and integrate several hundred thousand transistors. Computing power for each chip is estimated to be similar to an early 1990s high-end x86 CPU. They will be used as "cryptographic anchors" in mass produced goods, as a blockchain-enabled anti-counterfeit measure.

Researchers at a cyber-security consulting company in Israel have claimed that they have found 13 serious vulnerabilities in AMD processors. CTS-Labs has published details about the flaws after only giving AMD 24 hours to comply. More oddities regarding the previously unhead-of company are elaborated below and in the attached video.

With the new Elite Slice G2 model, HP also included a "Center of Room" 12.3-inch tablet that makes it easy to setup meetings with little to no input from users. The tablet detects when people enter the meeting room, while the mini PC unit picks up sound from 5 meters away thanks to a far-field mic.

Venezuela’s Petro cryptocurrency has been called “illegal” and “unconstitutional” by the country’s National Assembly. Bitcoin has suffered another fall in its current exchange value, with the virtual currency's latest closing price standing at US$9434. In Japan, the Financial Services Agency has been throwing its weight around and has issued business suspension orders to two cryptocurrency exchanges.

A report published by the highly respected journal Science has estimated that fake news is 70% more likely to be retweeted than true news. The study found that false information which was rapidly shared online through social media reached more people than the truth did. The research also pointed out that fake news travels much faster than real news.

Apparently, some Alexa-enabled devices have started laughing in a disturbing manner at their owners. There have been reports made of unrequested creepy chortles issuing from smart speakers and Amazon devices by a number of users, who cannot understand why their personal assistant has suddenly become so sinister. Amazon is currently working on a fix for this disquieting issue.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission has issued a stern statement in regard to potentially unlawful online trading platforms. The statement includes a warning to investors that they should use “SEC-registered and regulated marketplaces” for virtual currency (VC) trading. The value of Bitcoin, and other VCs, dipped dramatically after the statement’s publication.

It seems that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) may have just thwarted any further attempt by Broadcom to succeed in its quest to takeover Qualcomm. CFIUS has sent a letter raising concerns to officials at Qualcomm that has been made public, and the agency has also ordered the American technology company to delay an annual shareholder meeting whilst the proposed US$121 billion deal is thoroughly investigated.