Security Execs Sweat Insider Threats

Insider threats are becoming increasingly worrisome to corporate security executives. That is one of the findings in a survey of C-level businesspeople Nuix released last week. "The insider threat seems to be a bigger concern this year than it was in previous years," said Nuix's Keith Lowry. "People are recognizing that it is a significant weakness that has yet to be fully addressed by most organizations." Insider threat programs are widespread across the broad set of industries represented by 28 high-level execs participating in the study.

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China's Internet Tightrope Walk

Chinese President Xi Jinping recently told an international delegation of cybersecurity and technology experts that governments must be allowed to exercise sovereign rights and decision making over Internet use within their own countries. Speaking at the second annual World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, China, the president effectively called for a revised order in Internet governance. One nation should not be empowered to call all the shots, requiring less-advanced countries to abide by its rules, he maintained.

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Zuckerberg Defends Downsized Internet for Developing World

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Monday defended his company's downsized version of the Internet, called "Free Basics," which is offered in developing nations around the world. "In every society, there are certain basic services that are so important for people's wellbeing that we expect everyone to be able to access them freely," he said, citing public libraries, hospitals and schools as examples. "That's why everyone also deserves access to free basic Internet services."

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Gadget Ogling: Streaming Socks, a High-Powered Hoverboard, and a Vigilant Vacuum

Finally, a pair of socks I would not be ever-so-slightly disappointed to find among my gifts on Christmas morning. Netflix has released some designs for socks that can stop streaming the show or movie you're streaming if you should nod off. The socks detect when you've stopped moving for a long period and hit the pause button. When they're about to turn off your show, there's an LED light that flashes -- so if you're still awake, you can wiggle your big toe to halt the action.

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Backspace Flaw Enables Linux Zero-Day Attack

Researchers last week revealed a zero-day flaw that lets attackers take over a Linux system by pressing the backspace key repeatedly. Pressing backspace 17 to 20 times will overwrite the highest byte of the return address of the grub_memset() function, ultimately causing a reboot by redirecting control flow to the 0x00eb53e8 address, according to the Cybersecurity Group at the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia. The flaw is in Grub v 1.98 and later. Grub is the bootloader used by most Linux systems, including some embedded systems.

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Looking Ahead to 2016

Next week is CES, and I am so looking forward to coming home from that show. It used to be a lot of fun, but it covers such a massive amount of space that just getting around takes up much of the time. Given that most folks do prebriefings if they are smart, and that most of the really cool stuff is behind closed doors and not on the show floor, every year I question the intelligence of going. However, this year it does herald what should be a rather amazing year.

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All Security Pros Want for Christmas: Smarter Users, Decoy Networks

People like to see gifts from their wish lists under the Christmas tree, and security pros are no exception. Here are things some cyberwarriors would like old St. Nick to deliver to them. The wish at the top of Ryan Kalember's Christmas list would be a tough one for Santa to fulfill, said the senior vice president for cybersecurity strategy at Proofpoint. "It's probably never going to happen, but it would be fantastic to get smarter users who are less susceptible to social engineering."

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10 Things on an Apple Fan's 2016 Wish List

When your favorite consumer tech company is also the best consumer tech company in the world, and said tech company is generally a magnet for hyperbole and blind customer loyalty -- while also producing more products at higher levels of quality than ever before -- what's left to really wish for? Plenty, it turns out. I'm not talking about a new Apple car or any new product category. As it turns out, I just want some simple things to work better. I'd like to see some refinements, really, small shifts in priority from Apple's various teams.

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Apple's Cook Goes to the Barricades on Encryption

Apple CEO Tim Cook brought the encryption battle between the high-tech industry and the nation's law enforcement authorities to prime time TV Sunday in an interview on the CBS news program 60 Minutes. During the interview, Charlie Rose asked Cook about the need for law enforcement agencies to access data that has been encrypted on Apple phones. There's all kinds of sensitive information on smartphones today, Cook noted. "You should have the ability to protect it. The only way we know how to do that is to encrypt it."

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Juniper Networks Shortens ScreenOS Threat List

Juniper Networks on Sunday said that recent security threats to its ScreenOS were not as widespread as initially believed. The company last week issued an alert following its discovery in ScreenOS of unauthorized code that could allow an attacker to gain administrative control of devices or to decrypt a VPN. The two issues are unrelated. Juniper had not received any notifications of exploitation of the vulnerabilities when it issued its original alert last week, and as of Monday, it had nothing further to share on the security issues.

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Slack Energizes App Development With $80M Fund

Slack this week announced its participation in an $80 million investment campaign to fund startups that build software that integrates with its own apps. The company also announced the availability of an app directory and a new development framework. The goal is to position Slack as a hub for connecting users to other cloud business software. Slack joins a funding partnership with six other investors that gave the company its financial start: Accel, Andreessen-Horowitz, Index Ventures, KPCB, Spark and Social Capital.

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2015: Looking Back at an Amazing Year

I'm kind of surprised it took us so long to figure out that an iPod-like product with a Siri-like voice interface would be a massive hit in the home. As I write this, the numbers suggest the breakout product this holiday is the Amazon Echo. It once again showcases that if you create something that is plug-and-play easy and does at least one thing folks want to do well, it will be a hit -- particularly if it also looks more like something you'd classify as art than something that looks like it was built by Frankenstein.

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Gadget Ogling: Long-Lasting Smartphones, Burglar-Busting Drones, and Ski-Obsessed Sensors

If the dream for many in the modern world is to have a smartphone that never needs a charge, Oukitel's K10000 is a pretty good runner-up. The smartphone is named for its 10,000mAh battery. When subjected to "normal" use, it's good for 10 to 15 days between charges. Given that many smartphones will need some extra juice after around 10 hours of typical use, that seems a tall order. However, with intelligent power management it's absolutely possible. To have a modern smartphone with such a long battery life, you'll need to compromise somewhere.

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California's Proposed Rules Could Stop Google Car in Its Tracks

The California Department of Motor Vehicles on Thursday proposed rules for autonomous vehicles, and Google isn't happy about one of the provisions. The new rules for autonomous autos were presented for public commentary. The DMV has invited the public to weigh in on the proposal in two workshops, one in Sacramento and the other in Los Angeles, early next year. The regulations call for manufacturers to meet safety and performance standards, along with requiring a third party to independently verify performance.

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Google, Facebook and Twitter Agree to Pull Hate Speech in Germany

Germany on Tuesday announced that Google's YouTube, Facebook and Twitter have agreed to its demands to remove hate speech appearing on their networks within 24 hours after a removal request has been made. The measures include best practice mechanisms that FSM, a nonprofit association dedicated to the protection of minors, and its members, including Google, have developed. They will not impede freedom of speech, and all legitimate expressions of opinion, even if they're objectionable, are protected, according to the agreement.

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Linux Mint Upgrade Sparkles

Linux Mint upgrade to version 17.3 Rosa is one upgrade regular users do not want to skip. This latest release in downloadable ISO format, available in the MATE and Cinnamon desktop editions, hit servers earlier this month. Several days later, the upgrade was available from within the package management repository for existing Linux Mint users. That eliminates the need for a clean installation and having to set up all the apps and configurations to use the new release.

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MacKeeper Loses Control of User Data

Kromtech this week revealed a vulnerability in the data storage system of its MacKeeper software. Security researcher Chris Vickery, who alerted the company to the problem with its server, pegged the number of MacKeeper users affected at about 13 million. Kromtech posted a security alert about the breach on MacKeeper's website. The company fixed the error within hours of its discovery, it said. The breach did not jeopardize highly sensitive data about its customers.

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Creating Rules of War for Cyberspace

The idea of a "Cyber Geneva Convention" has gained steam in the last five years. Based on the original Geneva Convention, which dates back to 1864, it would ensure that certain types of attacks, as well as specific targets, would remain off-limits in a cyberwar. The concept of rules dictating what shouldn't be allowed in war came about after Swiss national Henry Dunant visited wounded soldiers during the Second Italian War of Unification and found that little was being provided to help the hurt and dying.

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Musk and Friends Launch OpenAI

The aim of OpenAI, which launched last week, is to use artificial intelligence to benefit society. The fledgling project has drawn $1 billion in funding from some of high tech's most recognizable names to help it achieve that goal. The nonprofit organization seeks to "advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return," CTO Greg Brockman and Research Director Ilya Sutskever wrote in a blog post.

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Star Citizen's Second Alpha Hurtles Past $100M Landmark

Racking in more than 200 times its original asking price, the crowdfunded space simulator Star Citizen earlier this week reached a landmark 100 million in backer dollars. At the same time, developer Cloud Imperium released version 2.0 of the game's Alpha build. Alpha 2.0 is billed as the biggest Star Citizen update yet, as it features more pieces of Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts' ambitious vision for the space trading and combat simulator. The update puts to use the Star Citizen's multi-crew component.

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Samsung's S7 May Fall Just Shy of Innovation

Samsung's forthcoming Galaxy S7 smartphone will have several new features, including a pressure-sensitive display like the one available on the iPhone 6s, according to a report published Monday. The S7 also will have a USB Type-C port, which will make for faster charging; a camera optimized for low-light photography; and possibly a retina scanner and an external memory card slot in some versions, the report said. The camera lens will be flush with the back of the phone instead of bulging out as the Galaxy S6's lens does.

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Twitter Alerts Users to State-Sponsored Cyberattack Threat

Twitter last week began warning some of its members that they may be the target of a state-sponsored attack on their accounts. Coldhak posted to its Twitter account a copy of the warning it received. It's among a small number of accounts that state-sponsored actors may be targeting in an attempt to obtain information such as email addresses, IP addresses and phone numbers, Twitter warned. There's no evidence the actors obtained Coldhak's account information, said Twitter, which is investigating the matter.

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AI Programmed to Learn at Human Speed

Researchers have created a computational model that enables artificial intelligence to learn the way humans do, according to an article published last week. The model gives AI the ability to recognize handwritten alphabetical characters as fast as humans can. While AI systems have been able to learn to spot patterns and make inferences from pictures and sounds, they generally have been able to do so only after being given thousands of examples. Humans typically need only a handful of examples before they learn things.

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Hot Hacker Targets in 2016: Fantasy Sports, Professional Services

As 2016 approaches, it's time to get the crystal ball out and predict next year's cybersecurity trends. Here are some predictions from security pros TechNewsWorld interviewed. Fantasy sports sites like DraftKings and FanDuel in 2015 caught the attention of states' attorneys general, who wanted to treat the outfits as gambling enterprises. In 2016, the sites will get attention from another quarter: hackers. "One of the very rich targets we can imagine being attacked in 2016 are the fantasy sports companies," said Damballa CTO Stephen Newman.

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Yahoo Ropes In Gmail

Yahoo last week announced that it had integrated Gmail with the online version of Yahoo Mail, just two months after integrating Outlook.com, Hotmail and AOL Mail in a major redesign. It also has integrated Gmail support in Yahoo Mail for Android 5.1 and Yahoo Mail for iOS 4.0.4. Yahoo Mail for Android 5.1 began rolling out to Google Play last week. Yahoo Mail for iOS 4.0.3, now available globally, lets iPad users run Yahoo Mail side by side with other apps, in addition to checking Gmail messages.

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The Trouble With Hoverboards and Lithium-Ion Batteries

As I'm writing this, a few more hoverboards have caught fire, and they now are banned on most domestic airlines, suggesting that shipping these things fast could be a problem. Australia even has put out a specific warning on hoverboards. The biggest problem is that a lithium ion fire in a large battery pack like this could burn down your house, and that would be an ugly end to holiday festivities. Take my terrifying experience, for example. I have two electric bikes, and the firm that made them created a lithium-ion booster battery.

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Gadget Ogling: Unappetizing Apple Juice, a Fistful of Virtual Reality, and Considerate Drones

After years of seeing third-party companies release battery pack cases for its iPhone line, Apple finally has entered the market itself. The Smart Battery Case aims to protect your iPhone and provide it with extra power when you need it. A full charge on the phone and the battery case delivers up to 25 hours of talk time, and up to 18 hours of LTE Internet use. The iPhone's lock screen and Notification Center show how much charge you have left, and the case supports Lightning accessories.

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Less Poking Around? Google Seeks Patent on Needle-Free Blood Drawing Tech

Google has filed for a patent on needle-free blood-drawing technology, described in a USPTO application published last week. Application 20150342509 suggests four potential implementations of the technology, including its use in a device that has an evacuated negative-pressure barrel with a membrane sealing an aperture at the far end containing an accelerator barrel. Upon activating a trigger, pressurized gas would shoot a microparticle within the accelerator barrel to subsonic speeds.

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GeckoLinux: This Baby Knows What Its Doing

GeckoLinux is a custom spin of the openSuse project. It offers an impressive variety of options and easier operation than typical Suse-based Linux distros provide. GeckoLinux is a newcomer. I mean very new. Its first release was last week. You shouldn't view this distro as a wailing infant, however. It's based on openSuse Leap 42.1 and was leapfrogged into near-instant maturity from Suse Studio, a Web application for building and testing software applications in a Web browser. No, it's not a Chromebook-like operating system.

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FBI Chief: High-Tech Firms Need to Rethink Encryption Stance

FBI Director James Comey on Wednesday told members of a U.S. Senate committee that high-tech companies may need to adopt a new business model regarding encryption in order to get on the same page with law enforcement. "Encryption is getting in the way of our ability to have court orders effective to gather information we need in our most important work," he told the Senate Judiciary Committee. That new model presumably would allow companies to unscramble the data on a user's phone or other device if a court ordered them to do so.

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Fans Psyched for Psychonauts Sequel

Double Fine founder Tim Schafer said last week that Psychonauts will get a sequel -- if fans prove they want it badly enough. Appearing at the Game Awards in Los Angeles, he kicked off Double Fine's Fig campaign for Psychonauts 2, urging fans to pitch in $3.3 million toward development of the new title. It's now one week since the campaign started, and with 32 days remaining, it has raised $2.3 million -- 70 percent of its goal. The follow up to 2005's Pyschonauts will continue the story of Razputin, a juvenile psychic.

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Zuckerberg Has Muslims' Backs

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday posted a message of support to Muslims in the Facebook community and around the world. Zuckerberg's post stands in stark contrast to presidential candidate Donald Trump's verbal attacks on all Muslims, including his call earlier this week to ban them from entering the United States. Supporters cheered when Trump suggested the ban at a rally. "As a Jew, my parents taught me that we must stand up against attacks on all communities," wrote Zuckerberg.

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Mozilla Gives Up Firefox Phone Ambitions

Mozilla on Wednesday confirmed that it has hung up on the Firefox OS mobile phone and will try using the operating system to dial into other connected device uses instead. The company spent several years developing a browser-based smartphone OS. It ended its sales program of the Firefox mobile operating system to carriers and will no longer develop the OS for smartphones, Mozilla said. Some Mozilla members broke the news at the company's annual Mozlando developer conference in Orlando, Florida, on Tuesday and via its Twitter feed.

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Apple Tweaks Music, Mail, News in iOS Update

Apple on Tuesday released a new version of iOS, and while it was largely a maintenance release of the mobile operating system, the upgrade included some treats for music and news enthusiasts. The release, iOS 9.2, improved Apple Music, the company's streaming music service, in a number of ways. For example, users can create new playlists when adding a song to a playlist. Also when adding a song to a playlist, the most recently changed playlist will appear at the top of the display stack.

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27 Highly Desirable Gifts for Apple-Loving Fanatics - and 1 to Skip

Chances are, you know an Apple fanatic -- someone whose iPhone, Mac or iPad is a prized possession. If you don't know a true fanatic, you probably know a fan -- or barring that, someone who might appreciate an Apple-made gift this holiday season. To help you cut through the chaff, from one Apple fanatic to... someone else entirely, I've put together a list of the best Apple gifts this holiday season, covering multiple price points. Of course, we should get this out of the way right now: Most of Apple's price points are pretty high.

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Final Fantasy VII Remake: More Story, Less Action

Square Enix last week offered some tidbits about its upcoming Final Fantasy VII remake, which likely will be episodic in nature with the emphasis on action toned down. The company revealed the first gameplay footage of the remake at the PlayStation Experience 2015 event in San Francisco. The game, which was announced in June, likely will be released exclusively for Sony's PlayStation 4 game console, at least at launch.

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Microsoft to Open Source Chakra JavaScript Engine

Microsoft last week revealed that it will release the core components of its Chakra JavaScript engine to open source as ChakraCore.It will be available next month on GitHub under the MIT license. ChakraCore offers best-in-class JavaScript execution with the broadest set of ES2015 feature coverage and dependable performance, reliability and scalability, Microsoft said. It will target cloud-based services, the Internet of Things and beyond. Microsoft will work with Intel, AMD and NodeSource to develop the ChakraCore community.

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Gadget Gives Passwords Pocket Protectors

Denis Clermont and Jérôme Jadot last month launched a Kickstarter campaign for the OdyOne digital identity manager. As much as many Web travelers and security experts would like usernames and passwords to disappear from use, the pesky credentials aren't going away anytime soon. That's why password managers are seen as a way to make the best of a bad situation. They allow you to store scads of usernames and passwords in the cloud where they can be readily accessible, but some hitches exist.

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Apple's Pricey New iPhone Battery Case Gets Very Little Love

Apple on Tuesday unveiled its own battery case for the iPhone 6s. Offered in white and charcoal gray, it has a silicone exterior and a microfiber lining. In addition to offering protection, it increases iPhone usage times. The intelligent battery status is displayed on the iPhone Lock screen and in Notification Center. Priced at $99, the case supports Lightning accessories, so users can transfer data while the iPhone is in it. "It is expensive," observed Susan Schreiner, an analyst at C4 trends.

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Social Media Firms Face Quandary Over Terror Prevention

Following the recent terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., social media companies are coming under increased pressure, both internally and externally, to protect their networks from being used as platforms for operational planning and propaganda. There needs to be a greater balance between promoting free expression on the Web and allowing social media to become a tool to spread hatred or violence, wrote Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt in an op-ed. "We should build tools to help de-escalate tensions on social media."

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Hello Barbie, Can We Talk About Your Security Issues?

New security issues that surfaced last week in connection with Mattel's Hello Barbie doll, which talks back to kids, have heightened fears that hackers could use the toy to steal information about its owners and their families. The Hello Barbie app, which is available for iOS and Android, uses an authentication credential that can be reused by hackers, Bluebox disclosed. It also connects a mobile device to any unsecured WiFi network whose name includes the word "Barbie," the firm said.

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Wii U at Long Last to Share Minecraft Gold

Mojang on Monday announced that Minecraft finally is headed for the Wii U, with touchdown scheduled for Dec. 17. The lack of Minecraft availability long has been a legitimate reason to skip the Wii U in favor of another console. Although Minecraft is just the type of family-forward experience Nintendo pushes, it's surprising how long it took the LEGO-like sandbox game to reach a piece of Nintendo hardware. Minecraft has long since hit the other major consoles, and there's even a mobile version.

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Hot New BunsenLabs Linux Eases Pain of CrunchBang Loss

BunsenLabs Linux does a bang-up job of picking up where CrunchBang Linux left off. Developer Philip Newborough retired the popular minimalist distro earlier this year. In a world of feature-packed operating systems and bloated Linux distros, he felt his CrunchBang alternative served no further purpose. BunsenLabs is one of three CrunchBang replacements that mimic the lightweight but highly functional OS. CrunchBang++ and CrunchBang-Monara are the other two.

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4-Inch iPhone With Apple Pay May Be Coming Soon

Apple will launch an iPhone with a 4-inch display and support for Apple Pay in early 2016, according to a research note from an analyst with a good track record of predicting Apple products. The new iPhone model will have an A9 processor -- the same processor found in the latest iPhone models -- and a metal casing offered in several colors, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities said. The unit also will have 2.5D cover glass with curved edges and 8 megapixel rear-facing and 1.2 megapixel front-facing cameras.

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Facebook Lets Ordinary People Try Out Live Video

Facebook last week launched a beta of its Live Video service for a small percentage of iPhone users in the United States. Live Video reportedly will be available for the Android platform at a later date. Facebook also has launched a pilot to make it easier to share videos from mobile devices. Some iPhone and Android device users can tap the "What's on your mind?" prompt to trigger a drop-down menu of the options they can share. The lessons learned from that will help Facebook decide which new items to share in the future.

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Steve Ballmer's Excellent Android Adventure

Steve Ballmer last week presented an interesting plan to kill Android -- or at least compete with it. What's ironic is that Ballmer's tenure at Microsoft wasn't short of good ideas -- it was short on execution. In contrast, Satya Nadella has shown strength in execution but -- so far -- hasn't come up with anything that represents the kind of risks that Ballmer was willing to take. It kind of makes me wonder what would happen if the two men partnered for Microsoft's future.

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Gadget Ogling: Custom Kicks, Heartbeat Tricks, and Office Picks

I'm hardly the most stylish gent around town, but even I would consider wearing a pair of sneakers I could adorn to my liking at any time through their customizable display. ShiftWear's sneakers allow you to choose from myriad colorful or even animated designs through an app. Since the display is E-Ink-based, battery consumption is low, and a charge lasts around 30 days -- though animated looks are more power hungry. Batteries charge with each step you take. You can create your own designs and sell them in a marketplace for others to enjoy.

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Porsche Is on an All-Electric Mission

Porsche on Friday revealed plans to produce its first 100 percent electrically powered sports car under its Mission E project by the end of the decade. The Mission E concept car debuted at the Frankfurt International Motor Show earlier this year. The four-door vehicle utilizes a system power output that exceeds 440 kW and can accelerate from 0 to 100 kph in about 3.5 seconds, Porsche said. The concept vehicle, which is charged via an 800-volt charger unit, has a range of 500 kilometers.

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Yahoo Reintroduces a Messenger for This Millennium

In the midst of takeover speculation, Yahoo on Thursday reintroduced its standby Messenger app in a more robust version, with a set of features designed to breathe new life into a semi-comatose patient. Yahoo completely rebuilt the app with a focus on sharing images and online conversations. Tapping its Flickr, Tumblr and Xobni properties, Yahoo created some collaborative juice designed to counteract its image as the tech equivalent of P.M. Dawn -- an act that burned bright a generation ago, but rarely gets invited to the after-party these days.

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Wikipedia Uses AI to Assist Human Editors

The Wikimedia Foundation this week rolled out a service designed to improve the quality of Wikipedia articles. The Objective Revision Evaluation Service uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to help Wikipedia editors identify damaging articles more quickly and assign quality scores to them more rapidly. Every day, Wikipedia is edited some 500,000 times, Wikimedia said. Editors, most of them volunteers, have to review all those changes. ORES lets those editors peer into incoming content to identify potentially damaging edits swiftly.

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