Google is taking yet another important step to help save us from ourselves. The company is releasing a complete redesign of their Chrome browser, which is exciting. There's one feature in particular, however, that bears taking a special look at. Perhaps the most significant change to the browser is the addition of a new password manager, which will offer to generate a random password when you sign into a website for the first time. The randomly generated password will be securely tucked away … Read more
SmartHome Users Aren’t Keeping Up With Security Updates
The Internet on devices continues to be a major problem when it comes to security. Unfortunately, a big part of the reason why comes down to end users. Recently, Bitdefender released a new report entitled "The IoT Threat Landscape And Top Smart Home Vulnerabilities in 2018," and it paints a grim picture indeed. The average home now contains twenty smart devices, and most of them contain security vulnerabilities. 95 percent of those vulnerabilities reside in the firmware. While the majority … Read more
Microsoft Outlook is Rolling Out New Design Changes
Microsoft is making some long overdue and welcome changes to Outlook to include the Windows and the Web-based version. People who use either one will now see a "Coming Soon" option that allows users to toggle between the version they've got now, and the new and improved version with the changes. As to those changes, they fall broadly into three groups: Better Organization - The improved Outlook offers intelligent technology, specialized icons, visual changes and a "highlights" feature … Read more
Tech Support Scammers Are Advertising Online
Tech Support scams are nothing new, but they are getting increasingly sophisticated. Worse, tech giants like Google are finding it notoriously difficult to detect them. A report recently released by the venerable data security firm, Symantec, indicates that tech support scammers are increasingly integrating call optimization into their schemes, which allows them to insert phone numbers into web pages dynamically. Among other things, this allows the scammers to display the phone number of … Read more
New Versions Of Ransomware Continue To Wreak Havoc
2017 was "The Year of Ransomware." It saw an incredible number of ransomware attacks and infections, paired with a tremendous number of innovations. Although 2018 hasn't seen quite the same level of ransomware activity, it's still a major threat with one company coming under attack about every ten minutes. Although there haven't been as many innovations so far this year, that doesn't mean they're not occurring, and some of the new ransomware strains are particularly nasty. Of interest, … Read more
Some Apple iPhone 8’s May Have A Manufacturer Defect
Do you own an iPhone 8? If so, you may have problems. Apple has recently reported that a small percentage of iPhone 8s "contain logic boards with a manufacturing defect. Affected devices may experience unexpected restarts, a frozen screen, or won't turn on." The company has isolated the defect to phones manufactured between September 2017 to March 2018, in Hong Kong, India, Japan, China, New Zealand, Macau, and the United States. To find out if you've got one of the impacted iPhone 8s, … Read more
Hackers Make More Money Than Is Spent On Cybersecurity
Quick question - how much do the world's cyber criminals make every sixty seconds? If you guessed a quarter of a million dollars, you'd be wrong. If you doubled that value, you'd be wrong again. According to research conducted by RiskIQ, cybercriminals are raking in a cool million dollars per minute, compared with businesses spending $171,233 per minute on security measures. It's a lopsided battle, and businesses aren't winning. Some other interesting tidbits culled from the company's … Read more
High Frequency Audio Computer Monitors May Expose Screen Activity
It may sound like something straight out of a science fiction movie, but recently, researchers have made a disturbing discovery. Using nothing more than an off-the-shelf microphone, it's possible for an attacker to determine what content you're viewing on your computer monitor. The researchers tested a variety of LCD screens (with both LED and CCFL backlighting) and observed that the high-pitched noise made by the monitors changed as the content displayed on the screen changed. The … Read more
Android Malware Could Access Your Pictures And Calls
Android users have a new threat to contend with, according to a sixteen-page whitepaper outlining a new malware strain. The paper was published by a group of security researchers working for Bitdefender. They identified a robust new strain of malware called "Triout." According to the report, although they just discovered the malware a month ago, there are indications that it has been in use since at least mid-May of this year. Among other things, it can: Steal call log … Read more
Encrypted Chats Are Now Available In Skype
Earlier this year, Microsoft announced that it had entered into a partnership with Open Whisper Systems, the makers of the Signal app. The purpose of the partnership was to bring Signal's open source, end-to-end encryption protocol to Skype. As of the latest Skype builds, that is now a reality. Stable versions of Skype have been released for Windows, macOS, Linux, android, and iOS. If you haven't yet upgraded to the latest versions and want to begin making use of the new protocol, you … Read more
