Gregarius » éléments par Nabil Ansari

éléments par Nabil Ansari

Major banks testing Bitcoin blockchain technology

Publié: septembre 18, 2015, 5:50pm CEST par Nabil Ansari

Bitcoin more acceptable

The Bitcoin virtual currency could be used by some of the world’s biggest banks. Nine banks that include Barclays and Goldman Sachs, are considering adopting the blockchain technology to log who spends which virtual coins.

The primary reason why these banks want to use blockchain, is because it is hard to fool it, which makes fraud more difficult. Besides just fraud, the technology can also help banks carry out transactions even faster and also helps make processes more transparent.

Right now, the Bitcoin blockchain technology is currently being tested by the financial technology firm R3. The firm has signed up nine banks to the initiative. The other seven banks are JP Morgan, State Street, UBS, Royal Bank of Scotland, Credit Suisse, BBVA and Commonwealth Bank of Australia.

In the case of Bitcoin, the blockchain acts as a global ledger that logs all the transactions. And because of the sheer number of people involved who are constantly contributing to verify each deal, it makes it really hard for anyone to get any fraudulent deals verified and approved.

The benefit to banks by adopting this technology would be cuts in the cost of reporting transactions and working out who bought what and when.

As of now, there is no fixed time given as to when the banks will start using this technology.

Photo credit: Lightboxx / Shutterstock

Mercedes plans to launch self-driving car service

Publié: septembre 16, 2015, 7:48pm CEST par Nabil Ansari

Interior of Mercedes-Benz SL500 roadster

German car manufacturer Mercedes-Benz has revealed that it is planning to develop its own on-demand, self-driving car service, specifically using limousines as the vehicle of choice.

It goes without saying that this move will be putting them head to head with the search engine giant Google and app-based taxi service Uber.

Autonomous vehicles are definitely becoming a battleground between carmakers and tech firms, with all of them trying to get a head start in the market.

Google and Baidu are amongst the first ones to start the development of such cars, and they are clearly ahead of the curve by having legislation permitting them to test autonomous vehicles in at least 4 US states.

Mercedes has already built a prototype of the self-driving car, named F 015. In August, BMW, Audi and other German carmakers acquired Nokia’s digital mapping business for $3.2 billion.

The company also bought two smartphone applications last year that will help them facilitate the users for taxi-hailing services.

Daimler chief executive Dieter Zetsche said: "I think you don’t need too much imagination to see that by combining these strengths, attractive business models are possible in the future".

Photo Credit: Bocman1973/Shutterstock

John McAfee is running for president

Publié: septembre 10, 2015, 7:38pm CEST par Nabil Ansari

john_mcafee_contentfullwidth

John McAfee was once a fugitive. He has now said that he will be running for the US presidency in 2016. He tweeted that he will be making an official announcement at 6pm ET on September 10.

According to NBCNews, McAfee will be running for presidency as a third-party candidate under a newly created party called the Cyber Party, mainly because of the fact that McAfee has been recently providing valuable insights into many different global hacking scandals and internet surveillance.

McAfee said that as a party candidate he will obviously be focusing on cyber security.

He says, "it’s clear that the leadership of our country is illiterate on the fundamental technology that supports everything in life for us now, that is cyber science, our smartphones, our military hardware, our communications".

He further said: "The desire to respond to terrorist attacks had opened citizens up to excessive surveillance. The government can spy on people using their mobile phone while they’re with their wives and husbands... the US government is simply dysfunctional and lacks an understanding of the basic technology that runs the world".

McAfee was once considered as a fugitive and a "person of interest" in the murder of an American expatriate Gregory Viant Faull in Belize. McAfee had lived in Belize for several years.

Dating sites continue to allow simple passwords, endangering users' private data

Publié: septembre 10, 2015, 11:15am CEST par Nabil Ansari

123456_password_sticky_note

It has been slightly over 3 months since the extra-marital affair website Ashely Madison was hacked and the details of millions of users were released to the world.

But the surprising thing is that other dating websites haven’t learned the lesson from this attack.

In fact, in a recent study by Dashlane, it was found that there are websites that offer one letter passwords, which is basically an invitation for hackers to attack their accounts and steal user’s information.

The research consisted of examining 24 of the most popular dating websites around the world. Surprisingly, only seven of them passed the security screening.

Those seven were Christian Mingle, OK Cupid, BlackPeopleMeet, Outime, Adoptuen mec and Zoosk.

Website	Dashlane Password security score (out of 100)
OK Cupid	62
Zoosk	50
Eharmony	38
Gleeden	32
Adult Friend Finder	30
Ashley Madison	30
Match	30
BeNaughty	24
Illicit Encounters	24
Badoo	22
Mysinglefriend	22
Plenty of Fish	22

It is now clear that people who date online, should definitely be concerned about what information they are sharing on the websites and how that would affect their lives if that data was hacked and released to the public. The fact is that most dating websites do not offer adequate security measures and it is only a matter of time until it is being hacked.

Researchers discovered that the reason why hackers found it easy to hack Ashley Madison, is because the users employed codes that were too simple to crack.

Photo credit: shutteratakan / Shutterstock

Fiat Chrysler recalls Jeep Renegade SUVs to fix major security vulnerability

Publié: septembre 8, 2015, 5:06pm CEST par Nabil Ansari

Jeep-Renegade

Fiat Chrysler recently recalled over 8,000 vehicles that are vulnerable to a bug through which hackers can take control over the car’s computer system, which would eventually give them the control over the entire car.

The new Jeep Renegade SUV is the one that is vulnerable. Especially those jeeps that were ordered with a 6.5-inch touchscreen in the dashboard.

Thankfully, there have been no accidents since the issue was brought light. In fact, it was the security researchers who demonstrated the vulnerability by taking over a jeep that was being driven by a journalist on a public road.

Immediately after the revelation, the company released a software update and over 1.4 million vehicles have already been patched with the update.

As of now, the recall is for a much smaller group of jeeps. 7,810 to be precise.

Most of the jeeps have not been sold yet, and so they are still at the dealerships. Some of them that have been sold, the customers have been notified about the vulnerability and they are asked to schedule an appointment with their local dealership to receive the update.

Or they can do it themselves by downloading the software update from Chrysler’s website and installing it with a USB stick.

Most Apple Watch users embrace Apple Pay

Publié: août 20, 2015, 8:03pm CEST par Nabil Ansari

Apple Watch Sport on wrist

New research has found that almost 80 percent of Apple Watch owners are using the tech giant’s contactless payment system, Apple Pay.

The research was carried out by Wristly, which is an independent research platform. It asked 1,000 people whether they were using Apple Pay or not and almost 80 percent of them answered affirmatively. Nine percent said that they preferred to pay through their iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus (these are the only two compatible iPhones as of now).

The research was done in the US and the UK because those are the only two countries where Apple Pay can be used.

Other people who weren’t using Apple Pay, said that they weren’t using because their banks didn’t support the system. The rest of the people who are not using said that they didn’t trust the system enough to protect their transactions.

It is obvious that if a person is owning an Apple Watch, they will probably be using Apple Pay to increase the usability of the Watch.

According to the research, it is estimated that in a short time, almost 95 percent of people will adopt Apple Pay. The remaining five percent will refrain from using the contactless payment service altogether.

Photo Credit: Wayne Williams

Ambient sound can be part of two-factor authentication

Publié: août 19, 2015, 1:06pm CEST par Nabil Ansari

Sound Waves

For those of you that have been living under a rock for the past few years, two-factor authentication is something that you use to re-verify your credentials to log into a particular site or service. This authentication is typically completed in the form of text message, a phone call, or a notification on your smartphone.

Although 2FA is extremely secure, it is also slightly annoying to have to open up a secondary app to authenticate yourself again. A couple of researchers from Switzerland want to make that process even easier and less annoying. So, the researchers want to get rid of the text-based bits and use ambient sound instead.

What they want to achieve, is authentication with sound. Basically, when you’re trying to log into a service, the website will send a notification to an app on your smartphone. This basically will let the smartphone know that now is the time for authentication.

Once you receive that notification, the app will then record a couple of seconds of sound that it hears around you. Then your laptop will do the same and then they will compare that sound. If both sounds seem similar, and 2FA will be completed.

It is obvious that this process will work better on laptops (and mobile devices) as opposed to desktops, considering that most desktops don’t have a microphone or a webcam hooked up.

As of now, the technology is still in process and the researchers are refining the entire process. We hope that Sound-Proof will not remain a research project for long, but make it into the mainstream before to long.

Photo Credit: Eliks/Shutterstock

Apple has two more vulnerabilities to fix in OS X 10.10 Yosemite

Publié: août 18, 2015, 12:13pm CEST par Nabil Ansari

MacBook Pro 2015

Two zero-day vulnerabilities in Apple’s OS X, that have been discovered by an Italian teenager, could potentially be used to gain remote access to a computer.

Luca Todesco, 18, found that there are two bugs in the OS that can be used to corrupt the memory in the OS X’s kernel. Once the memory is corrupt, the attacker can then circumvent the kernel address space layout randomization (kASLR), which is a defensive technique of the OS to protect itself from giving the attacker the root shell. But once the attacker circumvents through the kASLR, they can gain a root shell.

The exploit works in 10.9.5 through to 10.10.5 versions of OS X. One good news for OS X lovers is that this exploit has been fixed in the upcoming El Capitan update. But El Capitan is currently in beta, which means that you are still most likely using a vulnerable version

This exploit was discovered just after the latest patch that Apple released last week to prevent attackers and miscreants from loading programs onto computers through remote access. The patch was for a local privilege escalation vulnerability.

Todesco said that he does security research in his spare time, which was when he found this exploit. He also said that he notified Apple a few hours before publishing the exploit on GitHub.

Photo Credit: Joe Wilcox

Siri might be able to transcribe your voicemails in iOS 10

Publié: août 4, 2015, 6:49pm CEST par Nabil Ansari

Siri

The future is here. Apple is now preparing to launch a voicemail service that will use Siri to transcribe your messages. And since we all know what a pain it is to listen to those voicemails again, you will then receive a message from iCloud of the transcribed voicemail, although this is due in 2016.

Here’s the theory that Apple is using: people like to leave voicemails because it is much easier to leave an oral message as opposed to typing it all out in a text message. But, on the other hand, people don’t like to receive voicemails because it is much easier to read a message, than go through all the voicemails someone has left.

Plus, older people prefer to leave and listen to voicemails.

So, it doesn’t matter whether you are a baby boomer, or the Gen Y, you will love this new service from Apple.

So, all of that juicy info begs the question -- how does this new voicemail thing works?

Let me tell you.

Consider that your friend is calling you and you are unable to take a call. So, instead of letting that call go, Siri will answer it. It will relay the information about where you are and why you cannot pick up the phone right now. But here’s the best part, once your friend ends the call, you will receive a transcription of that voicemail.

As of now, this new Siri voicemail service is being tested by Apple employees. It is predicted that if the service is improved and is deemed reliable enough, 2016 will be the year when it will be launched, possibly along with the new iOS 10 update.

Recording Microsoft HoloLens videos: How it's done

Publié: juillet 30, 2015, 1:12pm CEST par Nabil Ansari

Microsoft steps into the future with HoloLens, holographic computing meets virtual reality

I know this is some Iron Man-level stuff, but it is true. Microsoft’s HoloLens allows you to interact with holographic objects that are set in the real world.

If you told me five years ago that I’d be able to wear a futuristic augmented reality headset and do so many tasks, I wouldn’t have believed you. We already saw what HoloLens can do and how it can make us feel like the Iron Man (except the suit). The best thing is, we are barely scratching the surface of the capabilities of this headset. A recent research paper outlines how the headset can be used to grab live video and turn it into a hologram.

Microsoft says that the headset is capable of capturing, compressing and recreating life like situations. The headset takes advantage of 1-6 RGB, infrared cameras and a green screen to produce holographic videos.

These are the requirements for creating holographic videos for now, but we believe that with the advancement of holographic technology, it might be possible that a user could just wear the headset and see the real world in a hologram form.

For a more detailed, and in depth look at this new technology, watch the video below.

5 features to expect from Samsung's Galaxy Note 5

Publié: juillet 27, 2015, 2:57pm CEST par Nabil Ansari

samsung_logo_water

If you’ve been following the Samsung Galaxy Note 5 leaks for a while, you might already be able to get a clear idea of what you should expect. We still think that there might be some changes to the exact details of the upcoming flagship, but reports suggest that the next Note device might be released as soon as next month.

So, to set our expectations and also be able to get some surprises from the smartphone giant, here are the five things that you (and we too) should expect from Samsung’s new Note device.

1. USB-C

This is the year of the USB-C connectors and we are expecting that the Galaxy Note 5 will have it. It should allow the device to charge quickly, but the more important feature of that connector, is to provide faster data transfers.

This means that if they do include a USB-C connector, you won’t have to wait hours for your phone to receive gigabytes of media and other data. Plus, the connector is reversible, which should make things easier for you when you’re drunk or just trying to plug in the charger when it’s dark.

2. Ultra Powerful Processor

Rumors suggest that Samsung is going to reveal a new Exynos 7422 processor that will include a GPU, RAM and a Shannon (Samsung brand) LTE modem all into a single chip (SoC). If this is true, then you should expect to see a huge bump in battery life and performance, which will definitely be beyond what you saw in the Galaxy S6.

3. VR Support

Galaxy Note 4 was the first one to enter the Gear VR zone, and then Galaxy S6 followed the Note 4 with a new Gear VR unit this year.

We are pretty sure that Samsung has a new Gear VR headset for the Galaxy Note 5 and there are chances that the new Gear VR will be shipping along with the Note 5.

4. A New S Pen

Rumors suggest that the new S Pen will be able to auto-eject itself. This might be possible either through a voice command or the software. We’ll have to see.

Besides that, you should expect better handwriting accuracy and a couple of new functions.

5. The Best Display

The Galaxy Note line has always enabled the South Korean company to show off its latest technology in almost every part of the smartphone. Quad HD was one of the best displays used on a smartphone and we eventually saw that on the Galaxy S6 this year.

It is suggested too that there will be an introduction to an Ultra HD display or a new Quad HD display. Either way, we are pretty sure that people won’t be disappointed with it.

Photo credit: Anton Watman / Shutterstock.com

EU wants to remove geo restrictions for TV content

Publié: juillet 24, 2015, 6:36pm CEST par Nabil Ansari

European Union flags

Six major US film studios, and Sky UK have been charged by the EU on the basis of unfair restriction of content across the European Union.

Competition chief Margrethe Vestager said that the European consumers want to watch the pay-TV channels of their choice regardless of their location in the EU. But according to their investigation, the film studios cannot restrict the content because of the licensing agreements. They believe that these studios might be in breach of the EU competition rules.

Disney, Paramount Pictures, Sony, Twentieth Century Fox, Warner Bros, NBCUniversal are the six film studios that have been charged by the EU Commission. According to the Commission, when the British pay-TV company, Sky UK licenses films from these studio they are required to geo-block access to the content for people who are outside of the UK and Ireland, at the time of licensing films. This results in many European citizens being blocked who are in other parts of Europe.

In a press release, a EU spokesperson said that, "The Commission’s preliminary conclusion is that [these] clauses would constitute a serious violation of EU rules that prohibit anticompetitive agreement".

The Commission is now also investigating other major European broadcasters such as Canal Plus of France, Sky Italia of Italy, and Sky Deutschland of Germany. They say that the Statement of Objections is the first step in a full antitrust suit. But they would require a response from the companies being charged before the suit continues.

This is a part of the EU’s Digital Single Market Strategy that plans to boost Europe’s digital economy simply by making it easier for people to access digital content like movies and music from other countries, and for companies to operate easily across borders.

They believe that the customers must be able to access the content if they are paying for it regardless of the licensing agreements within specific countries.

Photo Credit: ojka/Shutterstock

Should Apple keep making iPads?

Publié: juillet 23, 2015, 7:42pm CEST par Nabil Ansari

ipad_air_2_vs_ipad_air_contentfullwidth

When Apple released its Q3 report for FY2015, it revealed that its iPad sales continue to fall. This was the first quarter when the iPad’s revenue was lower than Mac sales. The past quarter reported that the revenue was lower than a couple hundred million dollars, but this quarter shows that the difference is nearly $1.5 billion.

This is quite a substantial drop in revenue, but still, the iPad in terms of units sold is still higher than Mac sales.

The meaning of this, is that Apple is currently making more revenue per Mac sold, compared to the revenue per iPad sold. Simple maths shows us that after selling 4.7 million units of Mac devices, the tech giant resulted in a revenue of $6 billion. While on the other hand, after selling 10.9 million units, it made $4.5 billion in revenue.

This begs the question -- should Apple stop making the iPad?

Definitely not. This isn’t a great reason to stop making the iPad. Plus, the more revenue Apple has, the better it will be, and it goes without saying that the company has to be diverse and corner the market as much as it can.

Furthermore, if you do some research, you will notice that Apple is still dominating the tablet market. Not even a single manufacturer is close to the sales it is making with the iPad.

So, to answer your question about whether the tablet, or the iPad is dying -- it’s not. The iPad is still outselling the rest of the industry.

EU opens antitrust investigation into Qualcomm

Publié: juillet 17, 2015, 7:56pm CEST par Nabil Ansari

Woman looking through magnifying glass

We all love Qualcomm processors, and so do the manufacturers. And while Qualcomm is enjoying a good hold over almost the entire mobile industry, the regulators are in doubt as to whether the US company has achieved its dominance through fair practices. Or is there something else to the story?

The European Commission (EC) has now opened the case. They announced today that they have opened two antitrust probes into the company.

Previously, Qualcomm had paid $975 million (£625 million) to escape an investigation for its monopolistic practices in China. But now that the EC has already opened two antitrust probes, we doubt that the company will be able to do the same again.

In one investigation, according to the EC, it will be asked if the company had offered any "financial incentives" to their customers for ordering those wireless chipsets. And the second investigation will be focused on whether or not, Qualcomm had sold their 3G chips well below the cost price so that the competitors could not match it, or even get close to it.

Apple and Amazon have also recently been accused of negotiating favorable tax deals with Ireland and Luxembourg, respectively. And today’s EC announcement, is the Commission’s latest investigation into how different tech companies should be operating in the European continent.

Though Qualcomm will be forced to cooperate and comply with EC’s investigation, and the antitrust probes can take years. And if the mighty Qualcomm is found guilty, they could face fines of up to 10 percent of their yearly revenue, or they might even be forced to amend the way they do business across Europe.

Photo Credit: ollyy/Shutterstock

Google's now testing self-driving car in Texas

Publié: juillet 9, 2015, 8:10pm CEST par Nabil Ansari

Google's self-driving car cars fleet Lexus

This week has been a particularly exciting week for Google, as the company has started testing its self-driving car in Austin, Texas. The car in question is a specially equipped Lexus prototype, and with the new change of scenery the company is hoping that with it will learn more about the car’s performance in a different environment and road conditions, and how it reacts.

They have been testing self-driving cars since 2009, but most of the testing was done within Silicon Valley. Outside of Silicon Valley, Mountain View in California has been the primary testing ground, but with the ramping up of testing Google hopes that the self-driving technology should be ready for commercial use by 2020.

Following the path Google has set, most major multinational car manufacturers are starting to develop their own automated vehicles that are designed to control functions such as brakes, throttle, and steering. In other words, other carmakers are also developing their own self-driving cars.

Uber is another company that is looking to get into the self-driving business. Its testing vehicles don’t just have a nifty spoiler, but a small pile of gadgetry that includes a rotating device.

According to Biz Journals, an Uber spokeswoman said that "This vehicle is part of our early research efforts regarding mapping, safety and autonomy systems".

All Google’s self-driving cars have a human specialist on board to gain manual control of the car if necessary.

New OpenSSL vulnerability could be the next Heartbleed

Publié: juillet 9, 2015, 1:56pm CEST par Nabil Ansari

Security breach lock

The OpenSSL Project team has issued a warning about a new "high severity" flaw. More details about it will be released on Thursday.

"The OpenSSL project team would like to announce the forthcoming release of OpenSSL versions 1.0.2d and 1.0.1p. These releases will be made available on 9th July. They will fix a single security defect classified as 'high' severity. This defect does not affect the 1.0.0 or 0.9.8 releases". This alert and update information was released on Monday.

The OpenSSL Project is a global community of volunteers that are working towards developing an open source toolkit that include Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocols and also has a strong general purpose cryptography library. This open source toolkit is meant to be a full-feature, commercial grade toolkit.

This new alert has got the entire industry talking because of the 2014 OpenSSL-Heartbleed connection. At the 2014 Codenomicon, the security engineers found a bug that could give the hackers access to all the user passwords. But that wasn’t the end of the story. The bug could also allow the hackers to trick the users into using fake versions of popular websites.

That bug was then called Heartbleed. It affected most of the Internet.

Tim Erlin, director of IT security and risk strategy at the advanced threat protection firm Tripwire says: "A huge part of the heartburn with Heartbleed came from the scramble to identify where organizations were vulnerable and how to apply patches. In this case, a little organization can go a long way to a smoother patching cycle".

Erlin further says "Software vendors who use OpenSSL can be prepared to patch their code and shop new versions faster, and end-users can inventory where they have OpenSSL and set up appropriate testing environments ahead of time".

Image Credit: Sergey Nivens / Shutterstock

Facebook for iOS gets new photo-editing tools

Publié: juin 30, 2015, 5:47pm CEST par Nabil Ansari

Facebook rides roughshod over privacy laws

The 2013, Facebook’s failure to acquire Snapchat for $3 billion went across the world like a forest fire. Since then, it seems that the social networking giant has adopted some of the best features of Snapchat and has simply started including them in their apps.

The Facebook Slingshot app is one example of the social networking giant’s attempt to imitate Snapchat. The app lets users send colourful drawings and text to friends similar to Snapchat. Other features such as filters, text, and stickers are now added to the list.

This was first included in the Stickered app released in December 2014, but now they have introduced it to the mobile apps’ upload service this year.

This new update gives the users a lot more options, such as obtaining stickers from the Facebook sticker store, applying different filters, writing messages on the images before sending them to friends and family, etc.

A Facebook spokesperson recently said that all these new features are introduced as "a new place to house photo-editing tools". All these tools can be accessed by pressing the icon in the lower left-hand corner of your chosen photo.

As of now, these features are only available to most iPhone users , but as with most things, Android users will have to wait a little while before they receive them.

Photo credit: dolphfyn / Shutterstock