AT&T has big plans for their future and yours. If they're your carrier of choice, and if you live in the cities of Dallas, Atlanta, or Waco, then you stand to be on the cutting edge of the changes the company has in store. Those locations have been selected to be the first to receive AT&T's 5G network upgrade. Often, whenever a new technology is touted, you hear the phrase "this changes everything" associated with it. However, after listening to an AT&T spokesman talk at length … Read more
Android Ransomware Infections Declined in 2017
Android users have a reason to cheer. According to the latest report by ESET, the number of ransomware attacks targeting Android devices declined in 2017. The decline represents a bit of an anomaly, given that in 2017, the most common type of malware attack (by a wide margin) was ransomware. Given that security researchers can't name a particular reason for the decline, it's important not to read too much into the data. Whether there are declining figures or not, ransomware attacks still … Read more
Sim Cards Can Now Be Built Into Processors
SIM cards have long been a source of frustration for equipment manufacturers. With the relentless drive to produce smaller and smaller devices, the SIM card is a hurdle to be overcome. It's relatively large, and when you account for the necessary housing, it becomes quite the design challenge. That challenge seems to have been met, however. ARM, a prominent chip design firm, has recently announced the development of the iSIM. The iSIM is built into the processor, and according to the … Read more
Traditional Hard Drive Technology Is Evolving
Rumors of the death of HDD technology have been greatly exaggerated. The advancement of solid state technology and its increasing rate of adoption has been largely responsible for this, but don't count old school HDDs out just yet. They still have many important advantages, and recent breakthroughs should add further to the longevity of the tech. Right now, the biggest advantage that HDDs have over their solid-state counterparts is sheer size. While it would be prohibitively expensive to … Read more
IRS Labeled Email Could Contain Ransomware
There's a new strain of the "Rapid Ransomware" making the rounds, and because of how it's being transmitted, it's destined to have a higher than average rate of infection. The new strain was first discovered by Derek Knight. It is disturbing because it claims to come from the IRS, and will feature subject lines like "IRS Urgent Message-164." The body of the email then goes on to say that the recipient owes some amount of money in real estate taxes, and "helpfully" includes instructions for … Read more
40 Percent Of All Login Attempts Are From Bots
Here's a statistic that is as disturbing as it is frustrating. According to the latest "State of the Internet/Security" report for the fourth quarter of 2017, as published by Akamai, bot-traffic accounts for a staggering 43 percent of all login attempts. As bad as that figure is on its face, it's far worse for companies in the hospitality industry, where the figure is an almost unbelievable 82 percent. The reason? Hackers are increasingly using bots to perform "credential stuffing" … Read more
New Bug Discovered in iOS That Can Disable iPhone Apps
Last year, Apple had to fix a "special character" bug in their Message app that was more of an annoyance than anything. This year, a new special character bug has been found, but this one is much more serious and could allow an attacker to crash your phone and block access to a variety of messaging apps. The bug is specific to iOS 11, so if you've got an older version, you don't have anything to worry about. The company has already announced that it will be fixed in the upcoming release of … Read more
Changes To Google Images Will Make Image Theft Difficult
Image theft is one of the biggest problems on the internet. If you're a photographer, you've almost certainly lost money because people find your work online and make a copy of it rather than paying for the right to use it. Unfortunately, Google has made that incredibly easy to do, but that's changing. Until recently, if you did a Google image search, you'd get a list of images that matched your search phrase, and one of the buttons displayed was a "View Image" button that would take you to … Read more
Microsoft Office Update Available To Only Windows 10 Users
There are big changes coming to MS Office which you need to be aware of, given how widely used "Office" is in most companies. First, the headline change: When MS Office 2019 is released, it will only run on Windows 10. If you've still got machines on older operating systems, and you want to keep your productivity suite up to date, then you'll need to upgrade those older systems. Also, be aware that when Office 2019 ships, it will only have "Click-to-Run" technology. No MSI, although … Read more
Vulnerability Found In Popular Grammar Checker
On February 2, Tavis Ormandy, a researcher on Google's Project Zero team discovered a critical flaw in the popular online grammar checking app, "Grammarly." Tens of millions of users make regular use of the app to improve the quality of their writing. The bug allowed a hacker to steal a Grammarly user's authentication token and use that token to log on and access every document they've run through the Grammarly system. This along with that user's history, logs and other data. They were able to … Read more
