As most people know, Microsoft Edge was the company's "reboot." After trying for years to patch and update their beleaguered Internet Explorer, Microsoft ultimately decided to scrap it and start fresh. Since Edge's launch, it has struggled to gain traction with users. Recently, Microsoft has upped the ante, at least where Edge for iOS and Android devices are concerned. A recent update sees the browser outfitted with a built-in ad blocker. Prior to the update, if you wanted an ad blocking … Read more
New SSD Drive Can Hold 8TB of Storage
Good news for the business world in general, and the owners of data centers, in particular. Mass storage is about to get vastly more efficient thanks to Samsung's recently launched solid state drive, which manages to pack an impressive 8TB of storage into a delightfully small footprint, measuring just 11cm x 3.05cm. Not only do the new drives deliver twice the storage capacity of the SSDs used in high-end servers and slim line laptops, but it also has an impressive read speed of 3100 MB/s, … Read more
Vulnerability In Mac OS Went Unnoticed For Years
Researchers at Okta Security have stumbled across something big. Recently, they discovered a flaw in Apple's OS that would have allowed hackers to completely undermine Apple's code signing process. While at first glance that doesn't sound so bad, the implications are terrifying. In a nutshell, code signing uses cryptographic "signatures" to verify and validate code. If code bears the digital signature, it is considered trusted. If it's trusted, then it's given an automatic free pass, … Read more
Another Vulnerability Found In Intel CPU’s
More bad news for Intel. Yet another security flaw has been identified in the processors the company makes. This one is so newly discovered that the full technical details have yet to be released. Here's what we know so far, from a recent Intel announcement: "System software may opt to utilize Lazy FP state restore instead of eager save and restore of the state upon a context switch...Lazy restored states are potentially vulnerable to exploits where one process may infer register values of … Read more
Yahoo Messenger Will Shut Down In July
It's the end of the line for Yahoo Messenger. As of July, it will be no more, marking the end of an era. The announcement comes just six months after AIM (the old AOL messaging program) was shut down. The first major messaging programs from the early days of the internet will soon be a thing of the past. Users will have six months to download their chat histories from Yahoo Messenger. If they haven't gotten what they need by then, they'll lose their chance forever. It probably won't … Read more
Microsoft Ending Forum Support For Older Operating Systems
Big changes are coming from Microsoft starting in July (exact date unknown), and it has potentially dire implications if you're using some of the company's older technology. Microsoft announced that in July, they'll no longer provide forum-based support for a wide range of products and software, including: Microsoft Band Zune Surface Pro Surface Pro 2 Surface RT Surface 2 Microsoft Security Essentials Internet Explorer 10 Office 2010 Office 2013 Windows … Read more
Microsoft Purchases GitHub – What Does This Mean For Open Source?
Microsoft just made a big, significant purchase that has raised more than a few eyebrows. They just acquired GitHub for a hefty $7.5 billion. What makes the purchase interesting and potentially troublesome is that Microsoft is the world's largest proprietary software company, and GitHub is the world's largest open source hosting service. The natural question on everyone's mind then, is what does this mean for open source? Is it doomed? Is it soon to go the way of the dinosaur, or will … Read more
Microsoft Is Issuing Surface Book 4 Replacements
Do you own a Surface Book 4? If you do, you may have been unfortunate enough to get one that suffers from a peculiar screen flickering issue. It's not known exactly how many Surface Book 4's have been affected by the issue, but thousands of angry users have been comparing horror stories about it on various discussion forums around the web. For their part, Microsoft has been very slow to even acknowledge the existence of the issue, even though there are some user videos showing the screen … Read more
T-Mobile Site Leaked Data On Millions Of Customers
ZDNet Researcher Ryan Stevenson recently found a big problem on T-Mobile's website regarding an unprotected API. As a result of the flaw, untold millions of T-Mobile's customers' account information was left exposed and completely unprotected. Literally anyone who stumbled across the site and tried to abuse it could access a wide range of customer information with no password required. This includes, but is not limited to: Customer name Phone number Mailing Address Account … Read more
FBI Advises Users To Reboot Their Routers
Cisco's Talos Security Team has identified a new threat, and it's a nasty one impacting more than half a million consumer-grade routers in the US. According to the Talos Team's report, the new malware is impacting a broad cross-section of routers made by TP-Link, QNAP, Netgear, Mikrotik, and Linksys. Known as "VPNFilter," the malware currently infecting routers appears to be the first stage in a multi-phase attack, with the first segment allowing the hackers to collect a wide range of … Read more
