Security

In a step up towards addressing the spate of privacy concerns surrounding Windows 10, Microsoft is introducing new privacy tools that will enable users to see the exact data being sent as telemetry information.

Updates to Android 8.0 Oreo are slow to arrive. However, this weekend saw users in ZTE's US beta program receive Oreo software, and HTC announced that sprint has approved the Oreo update for the U11 on their network.

The much-discussed under screen fingerprint technology featured in the Vivo X20 Plus UD is tipped to market on January 21. It will be the first smartphone on the market to feature the cutting-edge technology.

Fujitsu caps off a busy week with three new desktops, a 17.3-inch workstation notebook with an Nvidia Quadro 5000, and Attachecase confidential file distribution software which removes part of a file and uploads it to a company server to make the original file unreadable.

The darling of the mobile phone enthusiast community is in hot water once again. Less than a week after it was discovered that OnePlus was sending user data to servers in China without permission, the Chinese OEM's merchant platform was compromised. OnePlus has just revealed the full scope of the attack: up to 40,000 users may have had their credit card information stolen.

Rosen and Pomerantz law firms representing AMDs investors claim that the processor maker had prior knowledge about the Spectre variant 2 vulnerability. Investors are also claiming that the stock prices have dropped upon the release of BIOS updates for the Spectre variant 2 vulnerability.

The phased rollout of the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update has reached the final stage with it now being fully available to all Windows 10 computers.

There were some fairly large privacy concerns that arose early in the life of Skype. Microsoft has tried to allay those fears in recent times, but the integration of end-to-end encryption using the open-source Signal Protocol is the strongest privacy move they've made to date.

F-Secure's security researchers discovered another flaw in Intel's Active Management Technology (AMT) that a hacker can potentially misuse to gain remote access to a system.

Users of older generation 'Haswell' and 'Broadwell' Intel CPUs are reporting of constant reboots after applying patches to address the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities. Intel is looking at issuing a revised firmware to address specific issues related to these CPUs.

AMD has revealed that its chips are also vulnerable to the Spectre exploit. Although not as vulnerable as Intel's chips, it is working with operating system vendors and developers to patch affected systems.

Google's Play Store has once again been beset with supposedly vetted apps hiding malware. On this occasion, 63 apps have been pulled from the Play Store after it was discovered they harbored malware serving up porn ads.

McAfee researchers recently uncovered a hacking operation that targets North Korean defectors and those who help them, using popular chat apps and social media services (Facebook included) to deliver malware to their Android devices.

Although some ARM-driven Chromebooks do not need patching, there are also a few Chrome OS-powered notebooks that will not get any sort of protection from Meltdown and Spectre, including the Acer C7 and the Samsung Chromebook 5.

OnePlus has been caught manhandling user data again, with a OnePlus 3T user on the OnePlus forums showing proof of his clipboard app sending data to an Alibaba-controlled server.

Microsoft has halted some security updates for AMD-powered computers due to said updates apparently bricking people's machines. Microsoft blames inaccurate documentation provided by AMD.

Compared to the Gen 2, the latest model integrates a bigger 13-inch IPS touchscreen with 3K resolution, CPUs updated to Intel's gen 8 Core i7 ULVs and extended security features including a fingerprint reader compatible with Windows Hello and an infrared sensor. Shipping will begin this January and MSRP starts at US$1,599.

Although the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities are quite serious and Microsoft already issued patches that take care of them, smartphone makers are not that fast. Surprisingly enough, Andry Rubin's Essential Phone is one of the first handsets to get a fix for the two problems mentioned above.

Intel will be expanding its home Wi-Fi portfolio with new 802.11ax chipsets for 2x2 and 4x4 home routers. The new IEEE standard promises 40% higher peak data rates and increased average throughput in congested environments.

Verizon decided to buy Niddel for improving its malware detection and response for enterprise customers thanks to the machine-learning-based automated threat hunting technology of the latter.

The PR blunders will likely haunt Intel for the rest of the year as fans ponder if the chipmaker could have delayed Coffee Lake even further to address the critical concerns at the silicon level.

With the massive vulnerabilities recently discovered in Intel CPUs, the main question on everyone's minds are when affected devices will be updated to guard against possible exploits. Apple is ahead of the game; apparently, the latest versions of their various operating systems protect against Meltdown, and a fix for Spectre is coming to Safari in the next few days. The best part? These mitigations have no perceptible effect on performance.

The next version of Linux Mint, Linux Mint 19, will release sometime in May or June this year. The popular Linux distro will be based on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.

Updated with response from Intel. A security flaw has been found in the way that Intel processors from the last ten years handle kernel memory. The solution being implemented in the Windows and Linux kernels can vary from virtually no impact up to 20% or 30% for processes that involve a high number of kernel calls, such as writing to databases.

Windows promptly released security updates for all the Windows 10 builds in ordered to fix the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities discovered by the Google Project Zero team earlier this week. Although there have not been reports of exploited systems, Windows 10 users had better install the patch.

Google has pulled Archive Poster from the Chrome Web Store. The Chrome browser extension was caught secretly mining cryptocurrency in the background whenever Chrome was open on an affected user's PC.

Many Android games have been found to track the user's TV viewing habits for displaying ads. The games use software from Alphonso that collects data from the phone's microphone, identifies the audio stream, and displays targeted advertising.

Although it can be acquired for just US$100 in the United States, the Nokia 2 has a frame and physical buttons made of metal that allow it to withstand more punishment than most competitors.

The latest Ubuntu release has a bug in the Intel SPI driver in the Linux kernel that seems to be corrupting UEFI firmware on certain Lenovo and Acer laptops leaving users with no options to change UEFI settings or select an alternative boot method.

Eelo is a new non-profit project started by the founder of Mandrake Linux with the goal of creating a fully open-source smartphone environment (Android, associated software, and associated services). It is in the early stages but they already have some functioning Google-less prototypes.

LG has announced on its Korean website that it is rolling out Android 8.0 Oreo to its V30 handset. The update is currently rolling out in the Korean market but users have found that it does not support Project Treble.

The upcoming version 390 of NVIDIA's graphic driver will be the last to officially support 32-bit OSs. Barring a year's more time of security support for 32-bit drivers, all new features and enhancements will take the 64-bit route going forward.

Android malware reaches a new high (or maybe "a new low," depends on how you see it) with the Loapi Trojan, a piece of code that can push the infected devices to the limit for mining Monero tokens until they blow up.

A Google security researcher has discovered that the included third-party password manager in Windows 10, Keeper, comes with a security vulnerability that injects privileged UI into web apages that exposes a user's passwords.

The Vivo Xplay 7 has been revealed as the first smartphone to ship featuring under-display fingerprint authentication technology. Clear ID, developed by Synaptics, is twice as fast as 3D facial recognition systems like Apple's Face ID.

Some Firefox users recently found an unwarranted add-on installed in their browsers. The add-on, which is a page tool tied to the popular online show "Mr. Robot," was installed for some users that are a part of Mozilla's Studies program. While not malicious, the add-on was installed without the users' knowledge and raised some alarm from fervent Mozilla fans.

A unnamed high-end smartphone will arrive with Synaptics new Clear ID under-display fingerprint authentication tech in January. According to Synaptics, the new technology is twice as fast as 3D facial recognition technology as featured on the iPhone X.

Although this is not the first time it happens this year, HP has been caught red-handed once again. This time, the keylogger has been found in the Synaptics touchpad driver that ships with more than 460 HP notebook models.

Google has asked developers whose apps use the accessibility permission to email them with how their app uses this permission to enhance user experience so that they can assess "responsible and innovative" use of the permission. While doing this they have put a pause on the 30 day 'modify or remove' notification they had previously given developers.

A fresh report published by The Citizen Lab revealed that Ethiopia, a country where less than 5 percent of the population has access to the internet, conducted a complex global cyber espionage campaign.

The Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro suffered from less than ideal disk read and write speeds despite having a Samsung PM961 SSD onboard. A BIOS update is now available that enables full x4 bandwidth on the NVMe SSD PCIe lanes, leading to increased read/write speeds.

A recent Samsung patent describes how the palm scanner could help users remember forgotten passwords. The image of the user's palm features embedded incomplete characters that would appear random to other people, but could juggle the phone owner's memory into remembering the correct string.

Apparently as a response to the recently discovered (and patched) KRACK exploit, Samsung added a VPN service to the Galaxy Note 8. Known as "Secure Wi-Fi," this service encrypts all outgoing traffic to provide safe browsing while connected to unsecured public networks.

The MC 4900 mouse is designed to bring extra security to office and business environments through the integrated fingerprint reader. While the mouse has a modest 1375 DPI optical sensor, the fingerprint sensor is among the best capacitive sensing solutions on the market, with 508 DPI resolution, 12 FPS capture speed and AES128 USB encryption.

Malwarebytes has identified the use of pop-under windows which contain a cryptomining script to bypass adblockers and continue to run even after the user has closed the visible browser windows.

The Indian Intelligence Bureau has directed its border troops to format their smartphones and delete a number of specified apps, citing the reason as a discovered data trail leading from these apps to China.

While Intel is working with the big brands to patch the major security holes recently discovered in its Management Engine firmware, System76 plans to take it all to the next level by disabling IME entirely via a firmware update.

HP is dismissing all the allegations, claiming that Touchpoint Analytics only collects hardware data and sends it with the user's approval. The new version of the app did install itself without any user consent, but this was already covered by permissions given at the initial system install. LaptopMagazine tested the app and did not find anything suspicious about it.