Wednesday, October 25, 2017
Friday, June 30, 2017
SwiftKey for Android Gets GIF Support, Transliteration for 8 Indian Languages, and More
After announcing transliteration support for seven new Indian languages in beta mode last week, SwiftKey has now brought transliteration support for these languages in the stable version, apart from Tamil and Tamlish. With the latest update, SwiftKey now supports transliteration for Bangla, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, and Telugu. Additionally, it has also added GIF support, along with bug fixes and improvements.
Thanks to transliteration, these supported language speakers will now be able to use SwiftKey to type in their native language by spelling words out phonetically in English. SwiftKey will throw corrections and next word predictions in both English and the native language, allowing you to write in a mixture of the regional language and English, as you prefer.
Apart from this, SwiftKey also introduced support for GIF, and they can be now accessed from the emoji panel. Currently, GIF searches only happen by category, but SwiftKey says we can expect more choice in the future. There’s also a new keyboard shortcut for Bluetooth access and hard keyboards as well. Several bug fixes are also included in the changelog, most notably the issue of app crashing when deleting punctuation in the Japanese layout, and app crashing when deleting the exclamation mark.
For those unaware, SwiftKey was acquired by Microsoft early last year, and it already offers keyboards in 22 Indian languages. If you have Swiftkey on Android, check for the latest update. If you haven’t received a notification, download the latest version of the SwiftKey app from Google Play Store or you can even download the APK Mirror from here.
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New Firewall Claimed to Better Protect Android Devices From Threats
Photo Credit: AABGU
Scientists have developed an innovative firewall programme that can protect smartphones from malicious codes and security threats.
Earlier this year, researchers from the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) in Israel discovered a security vulnerability in the internal communications between Android cellphone components and a phone's central processing unit (CPU).
They alerted Android developer Google and helped the company address the problem.
"Our technology doesn't require device manufacturers to understand or modify any new code," said Yossi Oren from BGU. "It's a firewall that can be implemented as a tiny chip, or as an independent software module running on the CPU," said Oren.
Some 400 million people change their phone's components, such as touchscreens, chargers, and battery or sensor assemblies, which are all susceptible to significant security breaches and attacks.
These components, referred to as "field replaceable units (FRUs)," communicate with the phone CPU over simple interfaces with no authentication mechanisms or error detection capabilities.
A malicious vendor could add a compromised FRU to a phone, leaving it vulnerable to password and financial theft, fraud, malicious photo or video distribution, and unauthorised app downloads.
"This problem is especially acute in the Android market with many manufacturers that operate independently," researchers said.
"An attack of this type occurs outside the phone's storage area; it can survive phone factory resets, remote wipes and firmware updates. Existing security solutions cannot prevent this specific security issue," they said.
"There is no way for the phone itself to discover that it's under this type of an attack. Our solution prevents a malicious or misconfigured FRU from compromising the code running on the CPU by checking all the incoming and outgoing communication," said Omer Schwartz from BGU.
The research team uses machine learning algorithms to monitor the phones' internal communications for anomalies that may indicate malicious code.
The software allowed them to identify and prevent hardware-generated data leaks and hacks. The researchers are seeking to further test the patent-pending technology with phone manufacturers.
Petya Ransomware a 'Ruse' to Hid Cyber-Attack Culprit, Claim Researchers
The cyber-attack that crippled computer systems in Ukraine and other countries this week employed a ruse - the appearance of being ransomware - that seems designed to deflect attention from the attacker's true identity, security researchers said.
And many companies initially fell for it.
The first reports out of cyber-security firms on Monday, when news of the attack hit, was that a new variant of WannaCry, a virus that encrypted data and demanded a ransom to restore it, was on the loose.
In fact, a number of researchers said this week, the malware - which researchers are calling NotPetya - does not encrypt data, but wipes its victims' computers. If the data is not backed up, it's lost, they said.
"It definitely wasn't ransomware and wasn't financially motivated," said Jake Williams, founder of Rendition Infosec, a cyber-security firm, which has analysed the virus. "The goal was to cause disruption in computer networks."
Moreover, the email address to make a payment to retrieve data is no longer accessible, said Matt Suiche, a hacker and founder of Comae Technologies, a cyber-security firm.
He said in a blog post this week that the ransomware feint was likely a way to make people think "some mysterious hacker group" was behind the attack rather than a nation state.
"The fact of pretending to be a ransomware while being in fact a nation state attack . . . is in our opinion a very subtle way for the attacker to control the narrative of the attack," Suiche said.
Security researchers cautioned that it is too early to know for sure who is behind it. But some say that the targeting and distribution method of the malware point to Russia.
More than half the victimized computers were in Ukraine, including banks, energy firms and an airport.
Russia, which has annexed Crimea and has backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, has carried out an aggressive campaign of cyber-attacks and harassment there.
In December, Russian government hackers disrupted the power grid in Kiev and a year earlier they knocked out power in western Ukraine.
In this case, to get into victims' computers, attackers infected a financial software program in Ukraine, called MEDoc, that delivers software updates to businesses through the Internet.
That's called a "watering hole" attack, which targets users who navigate to the site for updates or to browse. It is also a tactic that Russian government hackers have used in the past to compromise industrial control system networks, Williams noted.
MEDoc is one of only two software options Ukrainian businesses have to pay their taxes, noted Lesley Carhart, an information security expert.
"This was a clever choice" for several reasons, she noted in a blog post, including that the "distribution base" within the country was "extremely comprehensive" as many companies used the software.
NotPetya did not spread across the open Internet, she said in an email. "Its tactic was to compromise a few computers inside a network" once the hacker got in, say, by delivering the malware through MEDoc. Then it could rapidly spread to other computers in the same network using a variety of other methods.
"While most 'patient zero' computers were in Ukraine . . . the corporate networks those computers [connect to] could potentially span the globe, and infection could also spread to any customers, partners, or vendors with whom they had unrestricted network connections and shared accounts," she said.
That might explain how US pharmaceutical giant Merck, the Danish shipping firm Maerskeven and the Russian oil company Rosneft got infected.
The Rosneft infection might be an unintended consequence - collateral damage, Williams said.
Valentyn Petrov, head of the information security service at Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, said that the attack's timing, on the eve of Ukraine's Constitution Day, indicated this was a political attack.
"We are in an interesting test phase in which Russia is using modern cyber weapons," Petrov said, "and everyone is interested to see how it is working - and how threats can be countered."
HTC Desire 10 Pro 'Explosion' That Burnt a Woman's Hand Is Being Investigated by the Company
Photo Credit: Nidhi Kapoor/ Facebook
When one hears of a smartphone exploding, the first thought that occurs to us is of Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 - a fact that's telling of just how much the product recall and its aftermath pervaded both daily life and popular culture. Now, a new isolated incident has come to light involving a smartphone by HTC. Earlier this week, a woman on Facebook announced that her HTC Desire 10 Pro exploded, burning her fingers. HTC says it's investigating the customer's report.
Making the claim in a Facebook photo earlier this week showing a bandaged hand, Nidhi Kapoor said her 'HTC 10' exploded on June 21. She added that the smartphone was not on call or charging when it exploded.
Gadgets 360 contacted HTC for comment, and were provided the following statement, "HTC is aware of the customer's report and we are working to investigate as quickly as possible. As always, our customers' safety is a top priority."
The Taiwanese smartphone maker also clarified that the smartphone in question was in fact an HTC Desire 10 Pro - not an HTC 10 as Kapoor wrote - and that the incident occurred outside of India.
Kapoor in her Facebook post goes on to say that HTC didn't provide her with a satisfactory response in the time between the incident and the revelation, alleging the company repeatedly asked for her email ID and the smartphone's IMEI number. Let's wait and see how this case unfolds.
The HTC Desire Pro was unveiled in September last year, and made its way to India in November.
The devices we carry around in our pockets and hold to the side of our faces are not immune to mishaps, and some of these can be disastrous. Smartphones (and pretty much most modern portable electronics) bear lithium-ion batteries, which, if improperly handled, can catch fire and even explode. There've been numerous cases in the past, and as we mentioned, Samsung was caught in the headlines this past year thanks to the Galaxy Note 7's explosive battery.
Display
5.50-inchProcessor
1.8GHz octa-coreFront Camera
13-megapixelResolution
1080x1920 pixelsRAM
3GBOS
Android 6.0Storage
32GBRear Camera
20-megapixelBattery Capacity
3000mAhMonday, June 26, 2017
Google to Stop Scanning Gmail for Creating Targeted Ads
Google said Friday it would stop scanning the contents of Gmail users' inboxes for ad targeting, moving to end a practice that has fueled privacy concerns since the free email service was launched.
A Google statement said Gmail users would still see "personalised" ads and marketing messages but these would be based on other data, which may include search queries or browsing habits.
Google Cloud senior vice president Diane Greene said in a blog that the free Gmail service would now follow the same practices as its corporate G Suite Gmail.
"Consumer Gmail content will not be used or scanned for any ads personalisation after this change," Greene said.
"This decision brings Gmail ads in line with how we personalise ads for other Google products. Ads shown are based on users' settings. Users can change those settings at any time, including disabling ads personalisation."
Privacy activists have long complained that the scanning of email contents amounts to unwarranted "eavesdropping" on users.
The Internet giant earlier this year reached a settlement in a class action lawsuit in the matter, but a federal judge rejected the deal as inadequate.
US District Judge Lucy Koh ruled in March that the settlement was difficult to understand and "does not clearly disclose the fact that Google intercepts, scans and analyzes the contents of emails sent by non-Gmail users to Gmail users for the purposes of creating user profiles of the Gmail users to create targeted advertising."
Danny Sullivan, founding editor of the online blog Search Engine Land, called the move a "big change" for Gmail, noting that the scanning of email contents "has been the biggest hit against the services since it began."
But Sullivan wrote on Twitter: "On the other hand, does it reassure consumers to know that Google has better info now about how to target them than by reading their emails?"
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