Also: The best smart air purifiers for allergy season In my home, I’ve been testing the Coway Airmega IconS air purifier, which effectively gets rid of kitchen odors when I cook and helps with pet dander in the puppy’s room (aka my office). The machine was created with style in mind; it’s a neutral-toned, mid-century furniture piece, that stands just over 21 inches tall and is covered in beige fabric....
The Magniber campaign, detailed by HP Wolf Security, is unusual for 2022 in the way it focuses on generating relatively small ransom payments from individual users, compared to what could be extorted by going after businesses and demanding large ransoms. In many ways, it’s a throwback to early ransomware campaigns that encrypted files on individual computers. However, Magniber is using innovative techniques that make it much more difficult to detect – especially for home users....
The NSW government first announced its plans for a national electronic birth certificate in April 2021. At the time, NSW Minister for Digital and Customer Victor Dominello said the aim of the initiative was to “use technology to make life easier for families, so they can spend more time with their newborn and less time dealing with government”. The state government then issued a tender last November in search for a vendor to help build the digital certificate....
Even though YouTube was founded in 2005, it wasn’t until smartphones put a camera in every pocket that video really began to open up to the general public on a spontaneous basis. And then came TikTok, the first Chinese technology giant to become successful in the West, and it broke through by providing clever tools to help ordinary people make short videos that others wanted to watch. I only see TikTok videos on Twitter....
Google has released Chrome version 104 for Windows, Mac and Linux, with fixes for 27 security bugs reported by third parties. None of the flaws are listed as being actively exploited, but the release notes for Chrome 104 do contain a few notable, albeit sparsely described, fixes for high severity flaws that affect the Chrome ‘Omnibox’ (address bar), Google’s optional online protection Safe Browsing, the Dawn WebGPU implementation in Chrome, and Google’s Apple AirDrop-like Nearby Share feature for sharing files between Chromebook and Android devices....
The images are from the farthest places in the universe that humanity as peered into: as NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told reporters last month, the Webb telescope was “nothing short of a real scientific feat.” ALSO SEE: On July 12, we’ll see the universe like never before Signaling how big a deal Webb’s first images are, US President Joe Biden will release one of its first images in an event at the White House today (Monday) at 5 pm EDT....
Over the years, Trickbot has evolved from its original state as a banking Trojan to a wider suite of malicious components. Following the retirement of Dyre in 2016 and the disruption of the Emotet botnet by law enforcement in 2021, Trickbot has filled the gap for many threat actors and is now used to steal financial data and to facilitate the execution of ransomware – and due to its versatile, modular nature, has also become a popular option for deploying other forms of malware....
Sitrep Let’s start with a sitrep (situation report). There are two key items which are tangentially related. The first item is that Kape Technologies has announced plans to acquire ExpressVPN for $986 million. I do have concerns about this because Kape was once considered a malware provider. I’ll talk more about this in a bit. The second item is a report in Reuters indicating that ExpressVPN CIO Daniel Gericke is among three men fined $1....
The US Department of Justice (DoJ) said this week that Glib Oleksandr Ivanov-Tolpintsev was taken into custody in Korczowa, Poland, on October 3 last year. As the US and Poland have an extradition treaty, the 28-year-old was then sent to the US to face charges that could land him up to 17 years in federal prison, if found guilty. Originally from Chernivtsi, Ukraine, Ivanov-Tolpintsev is suspected of being the operator of a botnet that was able to enslave devices infected with malware and automatically perform brute-force attacks against other internet-facings systems....
The General explained that his agency is working hand-in-hand with the NSA, FBI, and other federal entities while during a talk at the Reagan National Defense Forum, a meeting of national security officials held on Saturday. After the talk, he noted to The New York Times that he sees Cyber Command’s mission right now as focusing on trying to “understand the adversary and their insights better than we’ve ever understood them before....
US prosecutors said this week that Joseph Iorhemba Asan Jr. will spend 46 months – or over three-and-a-half years – in prison for conducting both romance and Business Email Compromise (BEC) scams. According to the US Department of Justice (DoJ), from around February 2018 until October 2019, the former serviceman worked with a co-conspirator, named as Charles Ifeanyi Ogozy – another member of the US Army Reserves – to commit fraud “against dozens of victims across the United States, defrauded banks, and laundered millions of dollars in fraud proceeds to co-conspirators based in Nigeria....
State Department spokesman Ned Price added that there is a $5 million reward “for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction in any country of any individual conspiring to participate in or attempting to participate in a DarkSide variant ransomware incident.” “The DarkSide ransomware group was responsible for the Colonial Pipeline Company ransomware incident in May 2021, which led to the company’s decision to proactively and temporarily shut down the 5,500-mile pipeline that carries 45% of the fuel used on the East Coast of the United States,” Price said....
In an explainer document released alongside the text of the bill, the US House of representatives armed services committee said the cyber provisions in the bill would initiate “the widest empowerment and expansion of CISA through legislation since the SolarWinds incident.” In addition to significantly more cybersecurity investments, the bill gives greater budget authority to the Commander of US Cyber Command, “modernizes” the relationship between the Department of Defense Chief Information Officer and the National Security Agency’s components responsible for cybersecurity while also establishing a program office within Joint Forces Headquarters-DODIN to centralize the management of cyber threat information products across the Defense Department....
“Is this USB port broken?” “Is this device charging properly?” Also: This USB charger can power four devices at once and look good doing it “Is this gadget charging?” “Is the battery in this gadget accepting a charge?” I’m amazed at how often I’m asking one of the above questions when I’m examining a broken, malfunctioning, or otherwise misbehaving device. USB ports are everywhere, and it’s no coincidence that USB port problems are an increasingly common issue that those who diagnose or repair gadgets have to face....
The new Google Chrome Privacy Guide walks users through their privacy settings and was developed by engineers in the Google Safety Engineering Center (GSEC), the company’s global hub for privacy and security engineering. “Soon, you’ll see a new card for Privacy Guide in the “Privacy and security” tab in your Chrome settings, which you can find by clicking the three dots on the top-right corner of your browser,” Google said....
According to App Annie’s State of Mobile 2022 report released this week, mobile device use hit record-breaking numbers last year. The study found that the top 10 mobile markets (which include the US, Canada, Mexico, and Japan) spent an average of 4.8 hours a day on our phones – or one-third of a single waking day – which is up 30% from the past two years. App Annie’s CEO, Theodore Krantz, called mobile the “Greatest of All Time,” adding that it would be the go-to device of the future....
What started out as something I thought was just about the art has turned into what I’d call a hobby. I spend hours researching projects, being active in various communities and, surely, annoying my Twitter followers with tweets and retweets about NFTs. Also: Check our ZDNet’s Crypto Coach column Below you’ll find my own lessons learned over many, many hours. I’ve tried to explain what NFTs are, detail how you can get started, and offer some sage advice of my own....
While convenience is the main advantage of using a debit card, there’s another big one, too: With debit cards, you can’t slide into debt like you can with a credit card. You have the ease of paying with plastic, which allows you to make online purchases, and most banks will let you log in online to track your purchases, but you’re spared the monthly bill – and you’ll never pay interest because you’re spending money you already have....
In recent times, there has been a flurry of activity around platform offerings targeted at users with little or development experience – so-called “citizen developers” – as well as still serving the needs of professional developers hard-pressed to deliver apps in extremely tight timeframes. This new generation of low-code and no-code platforms are designed to make it relatively easy for people to design, build, and launch applications quickly, without having to worry about the nuances of underlying operating systems or scalability requirements....
According to a 2021 survey by BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, less than a fifth of IT specialists in the UK are women: a figure that has grown just 3% since 2018. Women and black, Asian and ethnic minority (BAME) individuals are also under-represented in tech leadership positions. Evidence suggests that tech companies are especially prone to bias when it comes to recruiting, preferring to choose a candidate who reminds them of other candidates they might have previously recruited for the same role....
