According to Motherboard, a Muslim prayer smartphone app with tens of millions of downloads has severed ties with a location company that reportedly sold its user data to the US military.

Dubbed the "most popular Muslim app in the world," Muslim Pro has been downloaded more than 98 million times in 200 countries. The app provides users with Muslim prayer times and shows them the direction of Mecca.

Motherboard released the report Monday that said Muslim Pro sold user location data to a company called X-Mode, which collects location data directly from the app and then sells it to contractors or the military.

Microsoft has told Windows 10 owners and IT admins not to expect any Windows 10 preview updates in December to give them a break when staffing levels are low over the holiday season.

December will be a break from the usual schedule of Windows 10 updates each month, which include optional previews that arrive after the mandatory Patch Tuesday security updates in the second week of every month.

"Because of minimal operations during the holidays and the upcoming Western new year, there won't be any preview releases for the month of December 2020," Microsoft said in a support note.

Well, first of all, hello – and I'm glad to be back. I've spent the past two and a half years teaching at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (AUAS). I initially thought that I would be able to keep up this blog while doing that, but it didn't take long for me to realize how impractical that was. Now that I am done at the AUAS, I am very pleased to be writing here again.

What better way to resume than with a brand new Raspberry Pi system? To me, this one confirms that the people at Raspberry Pi Towers really are a bunch of hard-core geeks who came of age with computers at about the same time that I did.

In the 1980s, the Commodore 64 and the Sinclair ZX were the stuff of geeky dreams, and are still a source of nostalgia for those of us who remember them. So a Raspberry Pi in a keyboard brings huge smiles to a lot of old faces.

Back in 2008, Barack Obama famously harnessed the internet and social media to help win the White House. He kept up the embrace once he got there.

Now he worries that the internet and social media have helped create “the single biggest threat to our democracy.”

Obama has been saying a version of this for four years — since he left the White House — but his words are getting steadily more pointed. He’s clearly sounding an alarm, but it’s not exactly clear what he thinks we should do about it.

His latest critique comes in a new interview between Obama and Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg, and before we go any further we should put it in full context: Obama was discussing a media landscape dominated not just by Facebook but by Fox News that allows Americans to choose their own distorted reality. Which means, he says, we no longer have a shared set of facts.

It can be a very convincing trick…

“You can check the number in your display online sir. You’ll see I’m really calling from your bank.”

That is, of course, if you are unaware that phone numbers can be spoofed. Then again, they wouldn’t be successful scammers if they weren’t convincing. If you suggest calling them back, they’ll tell you it’s impossible to call their extension directly and you would have to go through the operator in the head office. Which could take a while and because of the urgency that is not really an option now, is it?

Silicon photonics researchers from the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) have demonstrated the first all-silicon optical transmitter at 100Gbps and beyond without the use of digital signal processing.

The optical modulator almost doubles the maximum data rate of current state-of-the-art devices, demonstrating the potential for low power low-cost all-silicon solutions that avoid complicating fabrication processes with new materials that are not CMOS compatible.

In just the past week, the national-security states of the United States and United Kingdom have discreetly let it be known that the cyber tools and online tactics previously designed for use in the post-9/11 “war on terror” are now being repurposed for use against information sources promoting “vaccine hesitancy” and information related to Covid-19 that runs counter to their state narratives.

A new cyber offensive was launched on Monday by the UK’s signal intelligence agency, Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), which seeks to target websites that publish content deemed to be “propaganda” that raises concerns regarding state-sponsored Covid-19 vaccine development and the multi-national pharmaceutical corporations involved.

The CIA and German intelligence jeopardised Switzerland's historic reputation for neutrality by using a Swiss company as a platform for a global espionage operation for decades, according to a report by members of the Swiss Parliament.

Investigators concluded that Swiss authorities were aware of, and at times complicit in, an elaborate espionage operation in which the CIA covertly owned and controlled a Swiss company, Crypto AG, that secretly sold rigged encryption systems to foreign governments.

The report marks the culmination of a Swiss investigation launched after the history of the Crypto operation was revealed earlier this year by The Washington Post in collaboration with German public television ZDF and Swiss broadcaster SRF.

IN 2018, AAYUSH Jain, a graduate student at the University of California, Los Angeles, traveled to Japan to give a talk about a powerful cryptographic tool he and his colleagues were developing. As he detailed the team’s approach to indistinguishability obfuscation (iO for short), one audience member raised his hand in bewilderment.

Original story reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent publication of the Simons Foundation whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research develop­ments and trends in mathe­matics and the physical and life sciences.

“But I thought iO doesn’t exist?” he said.

Stolen social media accounts are a hot commodity on Dark Web marketplaces. The average Facebook account sells for about $74.50, making the social network a priority target for phishing scams and cybercriminals.

Phishing campaigns make it easy to steal large quantities of login credentials at once. All scammers need to do is create a fake login page and trick victims into signing in. Tap or click here to see a copyright notice phishing scam targeting Facebook users.

If cybercriminals aren’t careful with their stolen data, they can easily blow their entire operation. A group of cybercriminals learned this the hard way after hosting hundreds of thousands of Facebook logins on an unprotected database. Cybersecurity isn’t just for the good guys, after all.

A video posted to Twitter shows a woman attempting to send a URL about alleged vote fraud to an iPhone but the message going undelivered, prompting claims that phone networks are now censoring links.

“BREAKING: Messages about election fraud are being censored via text message,” claims the woman. “Here is 100% proof! GEyesgle Green apple or Verizon or all are the culprit. More testing is needed to figure out which company(s) is censoring text messages about the fraud! We have hit peak level censorship!”

The clip shows her sending normal text messages from an Android phone to an iPhone, but when she attempts to send a link about alleged vote fraud from thedonald.win website, the message is not delivered to the iPhone, despite the Android phone saying it had been delivered.

"Information Clearing House" - We have been discussing the calls for top Democrats for increased private censorship on social media and the Internet. President-elect Joe Biden has himself called for such censorship, including blocking President Donald Trump’s criticism of mail-in voting. Now, shortly after the election, one of Biden’s top aides is ramping up calls for a crackdown on Facebook for allowing Facebook users to read views that he considers misleading — users who signed up to hear from these individuals. Bill Russo, a deputy communications director on Biden’s campaign press team, tweeted late Monday that Facebook “is shredding the fabric of our democracy” by allowing such views to be shared freely.

The largest video streaming service in the world, Youtube, suffered a massive outage Wednesday evening. Hundreds of thousands of reported to DOWNDETECTOR: Videos won't play.

Outages like this are so rare the number of times they've happened can be counted on one hand. Yet, it happened.

People are openly wondering if this is some type of deliberate situation because the veritable Tsunami of U.S. ELECTION FRAUD videos showing the brazen, widespread and utterly corrupt theft of the US Presidency is simply overwhelming the tech-thought-police ability to purge them?

Are we seeing, in real time, a situation where, if they can't keep the information suppressed, then crash all information until they can catch up?

In November's monthly prayer intention, Pope Francis called on all the good Catholics of the world to "pray that the progress of robotics and artificial intelligence may always serve humankind."

The pope's monthly prayer intentions, published on the US Conference of Catholic Bishops' website, was also featured in a short video clip on YouTube via Vatican News.

In his message, the pope said artificial intelligence was "at the heart of the epochal change we are experiencing," and that robotics could empower the world if harnessed for good. He said, "if technological progress increases inequalities, it is not true progress. Future advances should be orientated towards respecting the dignity of the person."

Was the fix baked right into the system?

President Trump on Thursday tweeted out information from One America News Network (OANN) claiming that Dominion, the voting system that experienced several glitches favorable to candidate Joe Biden, “deleted” 2.7 million votes for him, and, in Pennsylvania, switched 221,000 Trump votes to Biden, swinging the election.

“REPORT: DOMINION DELETED 2.7 MILLION TRUMP VOTES NATIONWIDE. DATA ANALYSIS FINDS 221,000 PENNSYLVANIA VOTES SWITCHED FROM PRESIDENT TRUMP TO BIDEN. 941,000 TRUMP VOTES DELETED. STATES USING DOMINION VOTING SYSTEMS SWITCHED 435,000 VOTES FROM TRUMP TO BIDEN,” the president tweeted.

The devil may be in the details, but the angels are in the data. That’s what we’re learning very quickly as we examine the work of a dedicated Trump-supporter who appears to have uncovered all of the proof necessary to dispel this myth that Joe Biden won the presidential election.

A post on TheDonald.win by user TrumanBlack has sparked a little attention, though not nearly enough. It needs a lot more because within the data sorted and examined is the smoking gun the Trump campaign can use to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the election was hacked. Massive amounts of votes were changed from President Trump to Biden. Other votes were removed altogether without reason. This “cyber coup” is much bigger than most of us realized. While we’ve been focused, and rightly so, on analog voter fraud, there is technological fraud on a gargantuan scale that happened. More importantly, it has been proven.

The new M1 Mac mini is... hmm. It's not a slam dunk, but neither is it a complete WTF. It's ready enough for prime time for some tasks, and carries the Apple Silicon question mark for other tasks. It's worth buying, but not for everyone or every workload.

No, we're not talking about the money supply or a tank (other common uses of "M1"). Instead, our subject is the new CPU Apple introduced at this week's Apple Event. The M1 is an all-Apple design based on their mobile chips and the Arm architecture. And, yeah, it has potential.

With high-performance and efficiency workload cores, with a deep commitment to on-silicon machine learning, and with an onboard GPU that shows some potential, this could be an architecture that leaves Intel behind.

What is Hammer and Scorecard?

In the tense aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, there are massive amounts of information circling around. One of the hot topics that people are talking about is the ‘Hammer and Scorecard’ software. What is this software? Where did it come from and why is it important?

Dennis Montgomery a former CIA/DOD/DHS/NSA/FBI contractor turned whistleblower designed and built the software called “The Hammer.” According to an article by The American Report in 2019, this software was designed as a “foreign surveillance tool” with many safeguards in place in order to prevent it from being used as a domestic spy tool. However, the “whistleblower tapes” leaked in 2015 cover 47 leaked hard drives and testimony that reveal this software was in fact used to spy and surveille U.S. citizens, namely President Donald Trump a “zillion times.”

While a report estimated the maximum price tag to totally exclude Huawei at $4 billion, Swedish Digitalisation Minister Anders Ygeman argued that the cost of building the 5G network on an uncertain basis would be significantly higher.

Following a ruling by a Swedish administrative court to allow Chinese firm Huawei to participate in the expansion of the country's 5G network, Swedish telecoms regulator PTS halted the upcoming 5G spectrum auctions.

Earlier on Monday, the administrative court of Stockholm temporarily lifted the ban on the Chinese telecom giants Huawei and ZTE to participate in the expansion of the 5G network in Sweden, which Swedish Radio reporter Sven Carlsson described as a "partial victory" for Huawei.

With support for Windows 10 version 1903 coming to an end on December 8, Microsoft has started pushing 1903 users to Windows 10 version 1909.

As reported by Neowin, Microsoft is taking the unusual step of automatically upgrading users on version 1903 to 1909, rather than to the latest version of Windows 10, the October 2020 Update (20H2), or even its predecessor, Windows 10 2004.

The head of US Cyber Command (CYBERCOM) and the National Security Agency (NSA) told reporters Tuesday the US had carried out cyber ops against Iran to ensure it did not interfere with the US elections.

US Army Gen. Paul Nakasone, who heads both CYBERCOM and the NSA, told reporters Tuesday he was “very confident in actions” taken against Iran “over the past several weeks and the past several months to make sure that they’re not going to interfere in our elections,” the Washington Post reported.

However, the cyber chief gave no specific information about the operations.

Nakasone said that while they were watching for interference in the US election, “I just don’t see the levels that we had seen” in 2018. During that election, too, the wild claims about planned interference by Russia failed to materialize, leaving the media strangely silent during the November day of decision.

There's been a massive increase in Emotet attacks and cyber criminals take advantage of machines compromised by the malware as to launch more malware infections as well as ransomware campaigns.

The October 2020 HP-Bromium Threat Insights Report reports a 1,200 per cent increase in Emotet detections from July to September compared to the previous three months in which deployment of the malware appeared to decline.

Since emerging in 2018, Emotet regularly sees surges in actively then seemingly disappears only to come back again, something which researchers suggest is going to continue well into 2021.

Emotet often gains a foothold into networks via phishing emails and those behind it have been seen to use thread hijacking in an effort to make the emails look more legitimate – people are more likely to download an attachment if it looks to come from a colleague or someone else they know.

Street lamps that can wirelessly charge phones have been installed on the streets of Wuhan in central China.

In the video, a smartphone was put on a lamp and started charging.

According to a worker from the local construction bureau, more than 60 lamps which can be used as a wireless charging stations have been installed. The lamps can also monitor pedestrian flow and alarm.

With the election looming, businesses need to be more diligent than ever to keep unsuspecting employees from being led into a phishing attack through election-themed social media content.

Even after the election, there's a huge risk for the enterprise as this new evolving threat landscape threatens businesses as employees are hungry for news on election results and updates. Fortunately, there are steps that businesses can take to protect themselves, and their employees.

An individual who filed false copyright complaints with platforms including Facebook, Amazon, and Instagram in order to damage a rival's business has been heavily punished by a court. In a default judgment handed down this week, the defendant was ordered to pay almost $370k for abusing the DMCA.

Court DamagesEvery day millions of DMCA takedown notices are sent to major online platforms including Google, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

The aim is to remove content that infringes third-party copyrights and the majority succeed in that goal. However, some people see the takedown provisions of the DMCA either as a tool for censorship or one to be abused in order to seize an advantage over a competitor or rival.

The Raspberry Foundation has been making affordable personal computers for years. The Raspberry Pi devices started at just $35, offering tinkerers a cheap PC that could be used for various DIY projects. But the Pi computers evolved tremendously in the past few years, becoming even more user friendly in the process. The Raspberry Pi 4 isn’t just a lot more powerful than the former generations; it also comes in ready to use packages that anyone can turn into fully working PCs ready to support basic productivity apps, internet browsing, and media playback. Add to that the whole 2020 coronavirus pandemic factor, and the Raspberry Pi might be exactly the kind of additional computer for the home in a year where more people have to work or study from home.

The British Mail Newspaper on Sunday revealed that the son of the man expected by many to be America's next President abandoned a laptop containing a treasure trove of top-secret material, including his father's private emails and mobile phone numbers.

In an astonishing lapse, Hunter Biden chose to protect his MacBook Pro computer – crammed with what an IT expert last night described as a 'national security nightmare' and 'classic blackmail material' – with a single, simple password: Hunter02.

Its existence was revealed by the New York Post last month, but the staggering scale and sensitivity of its contents – easily accessible to a hacker with a modicum of skill – is only revealed for the first time today.

A second laptop owned by Hunter Biden was seized by the U.S. government, it emerged on Friday - adding another layer of intrigue to an already complex case.

Biden's first laptop was handed over to the FBI in 2019 from a repair shop in Delaware, near the home of his father Joe. The owner has said he was suspicious about the contents, without elaborating.

That laptop has become the source of much speculation regarding his business dealings, and whether his father was involved and profiting.

The son of the man expected by many to be America's next President abandoned a laptop containing a treasure trove of top-secret material, including his father's private emails and mobile phone numbers, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

In an astonishing lapse, Hunter Biden chose to protect his MacBook Pro computer – crammed with what an IT expert last night described as a 'national security nightmare' and 'classic blackmail material' – with a single, simple password: Hunter02.

Remarkably, the 50-year-old businessman and self-confessed drug addict took the machine to a back-street IT store in Delaware in April 2019 to get it repaired – yet never returned to collect it.

The Wisconsin Republican Party reported that hackers stole $2.3million from the party’s account which was being used to help President Donald Trump’s reelection.

Republican Party Chairman Andrew Hitt told the Associated Press on Thursday that the party noticed the suspicious activity on Oct. 22 and proceeded to contact the FBI immediately the following day.

The attack was discovered less than two weeks before Election Day as both President Trump and Joe Biden made their final push to win Wisconsin and its 10 monumental electoral votes.

In 2016, Trump won the state by fewer than 23,000 votes and planned his third visit in seven days on Friday.

An email Hunter Biden received in April 2015 from a Burisma executive discussing an introduction to then-Vice President Joe Biden, which lies at the heart of a New York Post investigation, is unquestionably authentic, a cybersecurity expert told the Daily Caller News Foundation on Thursday.

The DCNF obtained a full copy of Hunter Biden’s alleged laptop from former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani on Wednesday. The DCNF provided Robert Graham, the founder of the cybersecurity firm Errata Security, with a copy of the email and its metadata for forensic analysis.

Donald Trump’s campaign website was briefly gripped by hackers Tuesday who claimed to have evidence that "completely discredits" him as a president and proves his "criminal involvement" in the manipulation of the 2020 election.

A message reading, "this site was seized" appeared briefly on the "About" and "Events" pages of DonaldJTrump.com, before the website was brought down completely just after 7:20pm.

According to disclosures by former contractor Edward Snowden, the US National Security Agency has pursued various routes to access tech equipment, sometimes via commercial deals inducing companies to insert back-door encryption, and in other cases by ‘manipulating standards’ so firms unknowingly adopt software the agency experts can break.

The US National Security Agency is reportedly stonewalling attempts by a leading Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee to investigate whether it is continuing the controversial practice of installing "back doors" into commercial technology products, reports Reuters.

The back-door encryption has been touted by the NSA as a means of scanning large amounts of traffic without the hassle of a warrant and, accordingly, making it easier to gather vital intelligence, including interception of terrorist communications.

Instead of working to dismantle one of the world’s largest botnets, a federal judge in the Eastern District of Virginia granted Microsoft full control over the Trickbot botnet. Trickbot is a special kind of malware that gleans financial and personal data from unsuspecting recipients. Hackers use Trickbot to install malicious software onto infected systems. This network of botnet computers, now in the possession of Microsoft, is one of the largest of its kind anywhere in the world. The Trickbot has at least one million infected computers in its reach and another two million could be covertly infected in its network. According to cybersecurity experts, there are 19 identified Trickbot command and control servers that are currently active around the world.

Experts continue to warn that Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) are NOT safe (see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5). There have been multiple reports about Teslas crashing and/or catching fire. Telsa owners have reported additional life-threatening situations as well.

In regard to 5G, the majority of scientists oppose deployment until there are studies that show it’s safe. Doctors and scientists have asked for moratoriums on Earth and in space (see 1, 2). American opposition includes federal agencies and other credible experts who warn 5G threatens jobs, national security, public safety, and weather forecasting accuracy (see 1, 2, 3, 4). French telecom employees want to stop 5G deployment due to health and economic concerns. Cities AND entire countries have taken action to ban, delay, halt, and limit 5G installation AS WELL AS issue moratoriums on deployment.

Federal agencies warned that cybercriminals are unleashing a wave of data-scrambling extortion attempts against the U.S. healthcare system designed to lock up hospital information systems, which could hurt patient care just as nationwide cases of COVID-19 are spiking.

In a joint alert Wednesday, the FBI and two federal agencies warned that they had "credible information of an increased and imminent cybercrime threat to U.S. hospitals and healthcare providers." The alert said malicious groups are targeting the sector with attacks that produce "data theft and disruption of healthcare services."

The cyberattacks involve ransomware, which scrambles data into gibberish that can only be unlocked with software keys provided once targets pay up. Independent security experts say it has already hobbled at least five U.S. hospitals this week and could impact hundreds more.

The pricing for SpaceX’s Starlink beta service in the U.S. appears to have been revealed, after potential users received emails inviting them to sign up to the service.

According to an email posted on Reddit, and confirmed by CNBC, Elon Musk's company will charge users $99 a month initially to use its Starlink service. They will also need to pay $499 for a small satellite dish, mounting tripod, and router from the company.

To discourage cheating, high schools and colleges limit what gadgets can be brought into an exam, and they require students to use very basic calculators if math is involved. But that doesn’t mean cheating is impossible, it just requires considerably more effort, like upgrading a dumb Casio calculator with a secret screen, wifi, and even messaging functionality.

YouTube’s Neutrino realized that the small solar panel that helped power his Casio fx-991MS scientific calculator was roughly the same size as a tiny OLED display, which looked more or less like a solar cell while it was powered off. But instead of just cracking open the device to upgrade it with a second screen, they took the hack several steps further, adding an ESP8266 wifi module and a rechargeable battery without modifying the physical appearance of the Casio itself.

The Feds are using the pandemic as an excuse to ID and track millions of innocent American's cellphones inside their homes.

This past August, a Motherboard article revealed the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) had signed a $476,000 contract with Venntel, a cellphone data mining corporation.

Motherboard went on to explain why the Feds signing a contract with Venntel is so troubling.
"The news highlights how law enforcement agencies continue to buy data that may in some cases require a warrant or court order to obtain."
What Motherboard is saying is that the CBP is using Venntel to monitor American's cellphones without a warrant.

"This new contract raises even more concerns about the cozy and ongoing relationship between the federal government and these data brokers, which operate in the shadows and can amass mountains of sensitive personal data without any restrictions," Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, and Chairwoman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform said.

Microsoft has released a Windows update that removes Adobe's Flash Player before it reaches end of support on December 31, 2020.

Update KB4577586 is part of Microsoft's effort to follow through with plans it announced along with Adobe, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Mozilla in 2017 to end support for Flash by December 2020.

The Flash-removing update is available for all supported versions of Windows 10 and Windows Server, as well as Windows 8.1.

In recent weeks, a fascinating confluence of events has increasingly moved to shed light on various aspects of the British hand running the Five Eyes Global intelligence apparatus spread across the Trans Atlantic.

In Luxembourg, the Court of Justice took a stand against Britain’s GCHQ’s practices of mass surveillance and bulk data collection on October 6 deeming it a “serious threat to national security”. Legal Director Carline Wilson Palow stated: “Today’s judgment reinforces the rule of law in the EU. In these turbulent times, it serves as a reminder that no government should be above the law. Democratic societies must place limits and controls on the surveillance powers of our police and intelligence agencies.”

Only weeks earlier, the U.S. National Security Agency and British Intelligence were both revealed to have been illegally tapping into the strategic Danish communications hub for decades (Denmark is a strategic control point for all European and Eurasian communications).

At the beginning of April 2016, two employees of Israeli private intelligence firm Black Cube were arrested in a raid on the Bucharest Marriot by members of Romania’s Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism.

The two - David Geclowicz and Ron Weiner - were caught with computers used hours prior to hack into the computers of family members and other confidants of Romania’s Laura Codruta Kovesi, then a state prosecutor heading the National Anti-corruption Directorate (DNA), charged with leading the country’s anti-corruption efforts.

A hacker has stolen roughly $24 million worth of cryptocurrency assets from decentralized finance (DeFi) service Harvest Finance, a web portal that lets users invest cryptocurrencies and then farm the price variations for small profit yields.

The hack took place earlier today and was almost immediately confirmed by Harvest Finance administrators in messages posted on the company's Twitter account and Discord channel.

According to these messages, a hacker invested large quantities of cryptocurrency assets in its service and then used a cryptographic exploit to siphon the platform's funds to their own wallets.

In total, the hacker stole $13 million worth of USD Coin (USDC) and $11 million worth of Tether (USDT), according to a transaction ID singled out by Harvest Finance administrators in a subsequent post-mortem investigation.

Google has removed 15 of 21 Android applications from the official Play Store over the weekend following a report from Czech antivirus maker Avast.

The security firm said the apps were infected with a type of malware known as HiddenAds.

Discovered in 2019, this Android adware strain operates by showing excessive and intrusive ads and by opening mobile browsers on ad-heavy or promotional pages.

In a report published today, Avast malware analyst Jakub Vávra said the apps mimicked popular games, and the criminal group behind this operation relied on social media ads and marketing to draw users to their Play Store pages.

Once users installed any of these apps, the HiddenAds malware would hide the app's icon (to make it difficult for users to delete the app in the future) and then start bombarding users with ads.

The unique conditions of 2020 mean businesses are more reliant on being digitally connected than ever before. Cyber criminals know this, which is why ransomware attacks have become even more pervasive – and effective during the course of this year.

Hackers are breaking into networks of organisations ranging from tech companies to local governments and almost every other sector; encrypting servers, services and files with ransomware before demanding a bitcoin ransom that can be measured in hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars.

Part of the reason for the upswing in successful ransomware attacks is the huge growth of remote working as a result of the pandemic.

Big changes are coming to Internet Explorer.

Starting next month, users trying to access certain websites will see IE refuse to load the URL and automatically open the site in Edge instead.

This forced IE-to-Edge behavior is part of Microsoft's Internet Explorer deprecation plans.

Microsoft has been gradually rolling out the feature for testing purposes for some Windows users since the release of Edge 84 this summer.

However, with the release of Edge 87, scheduled for next month, Microsoft plans to enable the forced IE-to-Edge action for all IE users.

ONCE YOU POST something to the internet, it's there forever unless you take steps to remove it (and even then, you may not be successful.) While keeping your digital history around in perpetuity can have its advantages—digging out those tax emails from 2006, looking back on vacations from half a decade ago—it's also worth keeping some parts of our online trails as short as we can.

First, it means nothing from our past can come back and embarrass us. Second, it makes it harder for advertising companies to keep track of what we're up to online. And third (in the case of files and emails at least), it frees up space for new stuff.

If you've decided that you'd rather not have decades worth of tweets and emails hanging around, there are ways to put limits on your digital baggage. Note this is slightly different to stopping sites and networks from tracking you as you make your way around the web, though the two are definitely linked.

Scammers are getting serious about texting.

Over the past few months, cybercriminals have launched a large-scale “smishing” (SMS-based phishing) campaign, according to a report from cybersecurity firm Digital Shadows.

In the samples analyzed by Digital Shadows, the scammers masqueraded as major brands including Amazon, USPS, FedEx, Cash App, Netflix, as well as adult entertainment services, unnamed delivery services and payment card or financial services. The SMS messages primarily originated from spoofed U.S. numbers, including 917, 765, 646, 470, 347 or 332 area codes.

A Moscow research institute involved in developing high-tech S-300 air defense missiles has been blacklisted by the US Treasury Department over alleged “connections” to malware used “against US partners in the Middle East.”

The Central Scientific Institute of Chemistry and Mechanics (TsNIIKhM, or ??????) is “connected to the destructive Triton malware,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin declared on Friday, accusing it of “building customized tools that enabled” the cyber-attack on “a petrochemical facility in the Middle East” that allegedly took place in August 2017.

A group of researchers has created a new way to use Apple's iPhone, the latest iteration of which is now for sale, to diagnose strokes.

Scientists at Penn State University have teamed up with Houston Methodist Hospital to identify the debilitating medical episodes based on abnormalities in a person's speech and facial movements detectable with the iconic smartphone.

In a blow to privacy that extends the government’s authority to create a web of surveillance, the Virginia Supreme Court has ruled that state and local police are free to use Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs) to collect data about the travel and movement of persons throughout the state. Denouncing the fact that Americans cannot even drive their cars without being tracked by the government, The Rutherford Institute had asked the Court to rule in Fairfax County Police Department v. Neal that the use of ALPRs violated a Virginia law restricting government collection of personal information. Mounted next to traffic lights or on police cars, ALPRs photograph over 1,800 license tag numbers per minute, take a picture of every passing license tag number and store the tag number and the date, time, and location of the picture in a searchable database.