Tech Integer

Fresh Updates About Samsung Galaxy S8.

2017-01-25T12:18:00.004-08:00

With just a couple of months to go until its unveiling, rumors are flying about the latest Samsung flagship smartphone. Presumably to be called the Galaxy S8, it carries the extra pressure of being a sort of comeback kid—Samsung’s first big announcement after the exploding Galaxy Note7 debacle.

The details are pretty much in the rumor category at this point, but as the launch date draws near, a clearer picture is emerging of the device. We’ll keep updating this article with the latest information, but the most recent reports tease a number of exciting details, including some possible confirmation of a desktop dock, “infinity displays,” and evidence that the headphone jack won’t be leaving after all.

An even better display

The latest Samsung phone usually wins the “best display” crown from Displaymate, and it looks like this year won’t be any different. At first it seemed like Samsung was going to bump up the resolution to 4K (2160x3840), based on a report from the Korea Herald. However, while the Korea Herald has broken its fair share of Samsung news in the past, recent rumors indicate that the company won’t be going 4K just yet.
SamMobile’s sources report that the Galaxy S8 will retain the 1440x2560 quad HD Super AMOLED display of its predecessor, but will manufacture it using a new material that will help it last longer and use less power. The site also reports that the company will switch from the Diamond PenTile subpixel arrangement to a standard RGB stripe one, effectively increasing the subpixel count from 7,372,800 to 11,059,200. Sammobile claims the change will “provide a noticeable improvement in virtual reality environments.”
Additionally, BusinessKorea most recently reported that the S8 will utilize 2K resolution displays, with Samsung holding off on 4K until Galaxy Note8 launch.

The biggest yet

As far as the size of the S8 goes, SamMobile reports that the new displays will be even bigger, clocking in at 5.7 inches and 6.2 inches, an increase of more than a half-inch over the 5.1- and 5.5-inch S7 and S7 edge, equaling or exceeding the 5.7-inch Galaxy Note7. An early VentureBeat report backed up the 6.2-inch claim, as well as a rumor from South Korea-based Naver. Additionally, the publication said that while Samsung toyed with the notion of adding a Note-style pen to the larger S8, it ultimately decided to scrap the idea. Even with the bigger model, however, the physical dimensions of the S8 aren’t expected to increase, due to a higher screen-to-body ratio.
The Guardian backs up that claim, reporting that the two phones “will have screens in the 5-inch to 6-inch region, with the devices having the same or smaller proportions of previous versions of Samsung’s flagship smartphone but with larger displays.” Bloomberg also weighed in, reporting that the Galaxy S8 will feature a completely bezel-less design not unlike the Xiaomi Mi Mix concept phone that launched earlier this year.
So, while the displays are going to be significantly bigger, the actual phone itself may not.

To edge or not

There’s some uncertainty about just how many phones Samsung will release, and what form they’ll take. Initial murmurings suggested that all S8 models will go for that Edge look with the dual-curved screen. Bloomberg also reported that the S8 “will only come with wraparound displays,” but a January report from Sammobile raised the specter of a similar lineup to the S7, with a regular flat model and a curved edge variant.
Furthermore, the Guardian shares some details about a so-called “infinity display (that) will cover the majority of the front of the device, with very little body on the top and bottom of the screen not dedicated to the display.” Furthermore, both versions of the phone “will have screens that curve down at the left and right sides of the device similar to the Galaxy S7 Edge,” according to the publication’s sources. Tipsters also tell the site that there wasn’t even room to put a logo or brand name on the front of the device, a design detail many users will appreciate.

A recent leaked picture by Twitter user @dfordesign backs up the Guardian’s description by showing a front panel that’s nearly entirely screen. Particularly of note are the rounded corners on the display, something we haven’t seen in most Android phones. It also would be the first Galaxy S phone without a physical home button.

A new digital assistant

Everyone is trying to get in on the digital assistant game these days. Samsung doesn’t want to just watch on the sidelines as the Google Assistant, Cortana, Siri, and Alexa battle for dominance. The company recently purchased Viv Labs for this purpose. The service can handle natural language queries like the other digital assistants in this hot space. Since the Google Assistant isn’t yet available to outside developers, Samsung clearly wants this type of capability and is keeping with its strategy of pushing its own services on the company’s hardware.
A report by Sammobile says the new Viv-powered digital assistant will be named “Bixby” and will work across nearly every native Samsung application: “Unlike S Voice, Bixby will be much more advanced, and it will work system-wide,” the site writes. “For example, it might be come in handy inside the Gallery app where you can ask Bixby to show you pictures and videos that satisfy particular criteria (similar to Google Photos and or Apple’s Photos app in iOS 10). S Voice is likely to be replaced by Bixby in the Galaxy S8.”
The Guardian weighed on here, too. While it was less clear on the Bixby name, its sources said the AI assistant will be able “to perform tasks such as object recognition, using the smartphone’s camera similar to Google Goggles.”

Retaking the camera crown

Samsung typically offers the best-in-class smartphone camera. But with the S8 it will have some catching up to do to beat Google’s Pixel, which many regard as the current photography king.
There are a variety of reports to consider here, making this particular piece of the puzzle a little unclear. A report from Tech Updates indicated a 30MP rear camera. A tipster to Weibo says the phone will go dual lens, with 13MP and 12MP cameras. (However, Bloomberg reported that while Samsung is indeed experimenting with a dual-camera system, it may scrap the idea due to higher manufacturing costs.) An 8MP camera will be on the front, with other reports indicating it could have an autofocus for even better selfies. A trademark filing with the European Union Intellectual Property Office for “Samsung AF” seems to support that rumor.
In the Guardian’s report, sources said the S8’s camera will have a similar dual pixel sensor to last year’s S7, with “incremental improvements to image quality, low-light performance, and speed.”

Powering the engine

Samsung has typically used its own Exynos chip or a Qualcomm Snapdragon model depending on which region the phone is sold in. A SamMobile report says that trend will continue, with an Exynos 8895 processor with ARM’s Mali-G71 GPU on tap. Performance is said to be 1.8 times better than the S7 with optimizations for 4K and VR. The Qualcomm chip will be the recently announced 10nm Snapdragon 835, and a recent report suggests it may be exclusive to the Galaxy S8 at launch.
As far as the fingerprint sensor goes, the Guardian tossed cold water on the dream that it would be built into the display. According to its report, the scanner will move to the back of the display, like the Pixel and many other Android phones have already done.

Jack in the box

Apple made a lot of noise when it removed the headphone jack from the iPhone 7. A few Android handsets have done the same (most notably the HTC U Ultra and the Moto Z), and according to SamMobile, Samsung was looking to do the same with the Galaxy S8.
However, those fears may be unwarranted. A recent case leak suggests that the headphone jack will remain on the S8, which was backed up by the Guardian’s sources, sure to be music to audiohpiles’ ears.

Desktop expansion

Elsewhere, Samsung is said to be prepping a unique feature for the Galaxy S8. Called the Samsung Desktop Experience, as revealed in a purported leaked slide from a Galaxy S8 presentation, the feature will reportedly allow the new phone to connect to a monitor to extend the workspace beyond the screen.
According to the description, the Galaxy S8 will work with an external keyboard, mouse, and monitor much like Continuum does on Windows 10. The details are sparse, but it appears that the phone would connect to a monitor via USB-C and expand apps for better viewing.
The Guardian’s report backed up this claim with a few more details. Sources tell the publication that a new dock and service will turn the phone into an “Android desktop computer, connecting to a monitor, keyboard and other peripherals called DeX (desktop extension) will be available.”

Cashing in

The Galaxy S8 is a premium phone, and it’ll demand a premium price. The S7 debuted at $699 and the S7 Edge went for $795. A six-inch plus screen could go for more, perhaps closer to the MSRP of the Note7, which went for as high as $880 depending on the carrier.
A research note by Goldman Sachs claimed that Samsung the Galaxy S8 could cost the company as much as 15 to 20 percent more than the S7 to manufacture due to the effect of rising raw material prices. That means that the flagship handset could jump to more than $800 for entry-level buyers, but it’s unclear from the report (and unlikely, given customer expectations) how much of the additional costs would be passed along to consumers. However, Apple quietly increased the price of its iPhone Plus by $20 earlier this year, so a price increase isn’t out of the question.

When’s it coming?

Samsung has already announced that the phone won’t be making it’s debut at Mobile World Congress this year, and according to a Wall Street Journal report, the S8 won’t actually arrive until April. Last year the S8 went on sale March 11, but an April release may be required to give Samsung just enough time to avoid the catastrophe it experienced with the Note7.
A report from South Korea-based Naver echoed the Journal’s claim of an April release date, adding that the company was eyeing a New York City event for the S8 unveiling. In August, Samsung held its annual Unpacked event at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York to debut the Note7.

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Automobile companies now must become a Tech company.

2017-01-25T11:29:00.001-08:00

I recently met with Dan Cauchy at Automotive Grade Linux. He spoke to how all the car companies were flocking to participate in his Linux-based open-source platform. Well that’s the way it should be if only as a hedge. It seems
│that the Japanese car companies are actually excited and engaged, a couple of the European companies are engaged, and virtually none of the U.S. companies are engaged.
Whether the car companies like it or not their industry is becoming a tech industry. Virtually all powerful tech companies are in a race to see who can provide the best solutions for autonomous driving, in-car entertainment, and even propulsion. Tesla is the car poster child for success and their big wake-up call to the market was getting hundreds of thousands of preorders for a car that isn’t due until sometime next year.
Much like it was when we moved from horses and buggies to cars there was a massive purge of firms that just didn’t want to change fast enough. In addition, at least initially, there was then a large influx of new companies that were better located, staffed and trained to build cars. It isn’t that the big car companies don’t see it coming, they supposedly do, but, with the exception of Japan, they seem to be thinking they have plenty of time. They don’t.
Let talk about why there are likely to be far fewer car companies and why the U.S. may be entirely out of the car business if things don’t change more quickly.

Car companies in the U.S. aren’t agile

With the exception of Tesla, U.S. car companies are historically not agile. The biggest wake-up call likely should have been in the 1970s when, faced with the influx of ever more successful Japanese cars, GM brought out the Vega and Ford offered the Pinto, both of which were crap. This showcased that the U.S. car companies couldn’t respond quickly to change.
They were reminded again of this when gas prices got out of hand last decade and the firms ended up having to sell off or shut down many of their brands to survive. Chrysler had to sell itself first to Mercedes and then the Fiat. Going from U.S., to German, to Italian ownership had to be incredibly painful given the cultural differences.

Then Tesla hit and even though GM actually had the first viable electric car platform, which was for its time very popular, it missed the boat. It seemed the primary defense was largely not to compete on product, but to block Tesla stores politically, typically not a great long-term strategy because political power tends to shift. And Musk and Trump suddenly seem to be getting on famously.

Tesla vs. Ford and GM

Tesla basically sells a computer on wheels, which is far closer to where the industry is going than where Ford and GM are. Yes, the firm has had issues learning the market and to be fair I’ve driven a Tesla X and the car sucks (it is getting better), but the Tesla S, on the other hand, remains one of the industry’s marvels.
What really makes Tesla different isn’t just that it is all electric. It is that the cars are modular, upgradable and fully connected. This means they can be more rapidly patched, critical to avoiding the increased number of security threats coming to connected vehicles, be more able to address bugs once the car is released, and remain one of the safest vehicles on the road. Even today they have a history of breaking safety test equipment rather than breaking themselves.

Ideally, given Ford leads the world in sales (but pickup truck sales) Ford would have an electric truck in market as a hedge against someone doing this first. Ironically, in many ways given how pickups are often used they make more sense as electrics than cars do. They aren’t used for long-distance travel much, the big electric weakness, they need a lot of torque for pulling and electrics have 100 percent torque from the start, and if you want to go off-road electric motors respond more quickly, are more powerful, and are solid state making them far more reliable climbers. Fortunately, pickup drivers aren’t seen as very progressive, which has put the Tesla pickup truck on the back burner up until recently. Sadly, for Ford, unless it steps up, that is about to change. Though I would hope Tesla would get a new designer to work on the project that understands the existing market better.

One other interesting difference with Tesla is it h as designed in the ability to refurbish and resell their cars. This potentially opens up the secondary market to Tesla. Right now, U.S. car companies basically compete with themselves in terms of used cars, getting some parts revenue, but being largely out of the revenue loop once the car has been initially sold. Tesla remains engaged and, once at full scale, that should give them a huge revenue advantage over their more traditional competitors.

Anyone who looks at Tesla and sees just a car has missed the bigger point. Tesla is moving to change the industry.

An industry’s inability to change can be its demise

What struck me the most when I spoke to Cauchy at AGL was just how aggressively the Japanese car makers are when it comes to getting ready for the new world and how painfully slow the U.S., and most of the European brands are in adapting to the coming changes. Even fast rising Tata seems more engaged in the present than in anticipating the future. That doesn’t bode well for the coming changes in autonomous cars, which will effectively be rolling computers, and likely on the way to becoming human carrying drones. We may be seeing the last days of the U.S. car companies and, unless something changes, we may only see Ford and GM in history books or, like Chrysler, a brand that belongs to an overseas firm.
I’m reminded of Thomas Watson Jr.’s comments when he was designing IBM to survive the coming changes and assure IBM’s more than century long life:
“I firmly believe that any organization, in order to survive and achieve success, must have a sound set of beliefs on which it premises all its policies and actions.
Next I believe that the most important single factor in corporate success is faithful adherence to those beliefs.
And, finally I believe if an organization is to meet the challenge of a changing world, it must be prepared to change everything about itself except those beliefs as it moves through corporate life.”
It has been clear that the biggest risk any industry faces is its own inability to change and if things don’t change, when the dust of the next technology wave settles we’ll have far fewer car companies. Currently, only Japan seems to be taking this threat seriously as a country.

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Apple's brand new Apple Watch patent that is fully functional stand-alone device.

2017-01-24T10:55:00.002-08:00

Apple’s latest Apple Watch patent is the one that could make it a fully functional stand-alone device.

Apple was just granted a patent for “modular functional band links” for a wearable device by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
The wearable device at the heart of the patent is obviously the Apple Watch, and those modular functional band links will build more functionality into the Apple Watch band.
What kind of functionality? This is the exciting part.

“The electronic components included in the modular functional band links may be any kind of electronic component associated with any kind of functionality,” Apple said in its patent filing.

Each link could be a different device with features like cameras, batteries, speakers, photovoltaic cells, and biometric sensors like blood pressure monitors, sweat sensors, and thermometers.

The band would have to be one of Apple’s link bracelets, so you wouldn’t be able to use a Sport or nylon accessory and get the same features.

But imagine popping in a link when you need an extra battery boost or checking your blood pressure to make sure you’re in the normal range. The links could also include antennas, meaning they could have cellular connectivity for the watch to truly stand on its own.

Why this matters: It’s uncertain if or when Apple plans to release these watch bands, but the idea makes sense. CEO Tim Cook said Apple would rather not build clinical health functionality into the watch itself, which would require Food and Drug Administration approvals and would slow down the watch development cycle. Putting sensors into watch bands instead, which are easily interchangeable and wouldn’t affect the watch itself, would make much more sense for the company.

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48 percent small and midsized businesses has become victims to ransomware.

2017-01-24T10:50:00.005-08:00

More than 50 percent of small and midsized businesses have fallen victim to ransomware, and of those, 48 percent paid a ransom, according to a survey released today by Ponemon Institute and Carbonite.

The average company had four ransomware attacks last year, paid an average ransom of $2,500 per incident, and spent 42 hours dealing with the attack.
"We're nowhere near the end of the ransomware threat," said Norman Guadagno, chief evangelist at Carbonite, which provides continuous automated cloud backup services.
Of those who did not pay up, 42 percent said that having a full and accurate backup was the reason.

And only 13 percent said their preparedness to prevent ransomware was "high."
"People say, 'I know I should back up, have anti-virus, use strong passwords' -- but they don't do it," said Guadagno.
Only 46 percent of respondents said that prevention of ransomware attacks was a high priority for their company.
One reason could be that they don't think the hackers will bother with them.

According to the report, 57 percent of respondents said that their companies were too small to be a target of ransomware.
"Every business is potentially a target," he said. "If you have a computer, you're a target."

Norman Guadagno, chief evangelist at Carbonite
And if companies believe that the ransomware will get into their backups, making them useless, that's not true either, said Guadagno.
"Once you find out you have a ransomware infection, our team rolls back to before the point where you had the infection," he said.
If the file containing the ransomware malware was also backed up, that file is encrypted and inert, he said, and can't spread while it is stored in the cloud.
And there are processes in place to catch it so that it doesn't get restored when the infected system is cleaned out.
"Our tech support teams get all the latest tools and ensure that you're downloading a clean backup," he said.

There hasn't been a case yet of a customer getting reinfected from a bad backup, he said.
"I'm not saying that it's not a constant battle between us and them," he added. "But we feel very confident -- we've helped more than 10,000 over the past two years get their data back safely."
However, losing access to their data wasn't the only potential consequence of a ransomware attack, and that is where backups fall short.
According to the survey, 55 percent of companies said they thought it was either likely or certain that the ransomware also exfiltrated data from the infected device.
"That was a stunning statistic," he said.
Businesses should not only have anti-virus in place to keep ransomware from getting in, but also train their employees to spot potential attacks.
According to the survey, only 29 percent of respondents said they were confident that their employees could detect risky links or sites.

It just goes to show that you can't even trust cybercriminals these days.
"The criminals might be saying, 'Yup, we encrypted it, pay us, you'll get it back, and everyone is happy'," Guadagno said. "But they could also be poking through the data, looking for valuable information, and exfiltrating it. It could be that the criminals are not telling us the truth."

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Nvidia Shield TV becoming one of the best media streamer for geeks.

2017-01-23T12:01:00.001-08:00

The Nvidia Shield TV, a $200 Android-based streaming box with excessive processing power, appeals to a scattershot of audiences. It’s the ideal streamer for PC gamers who also want to play those games in their living room,
for media hoarders who want to build a cheap a Plex server, for cord-cutters in search of over-the-air DVR solutions, for Kodi enthusiasts with that media center's morally dubious plug-ins, for 4K HDR TV owners who have an aversion to Roku, or for people who just want as much computing power as they can get.
In other words, the Nvidia Shield TV is an unbeatable streaming device for nerds with money to spend on their nerdy hobbies. It’s about time something like that existed.

The more things change

The new Nvidia Shield TV’s hardware isn’t much different than the first-generation version from 2015. It has the same Tegra X1 processor, 16GB of storage, 3GB of RAM, dual USB 3.0 ports, gigabit ethernet, and an 802.11ac Wi-Fi adapter housed in a smaller enclosure.

Those similarities aren’t a bad thing. The Shield TV’s X1 processor still tears through apps that can induce long load times and choppiness on other devices—it offers the speediest PlayStation Vue experience you’ll find outside of Sony’s own PS4 console, for instance—and it never skips a beat when you’re switching between apps. It’s also one of a handful of streaming boxes with 4K HDR video support, alongside the Roku Premiere+, Roku Ultra, Xiaomi Mi Box, and the original Nvidia Shield TV.
The biggest changes to the second-generation Shield TV are external. The bundled game controller has longer battery life—up to 60 hours, according to Nvidia—and is more comfortable to hold, despite an odd design that resembles low-polygon video game architecture. Physical buttons replace the old capacitive touch ones for search, home, and back, and there’s a new dedicated play/pause button as well. The original controller’s volume rocker, which never worked reliably, has been replaced by a touch-sensitive slider bar between the joysticks. The new controller also has an IR blaster, so you can adjust volume directly on your television or receiver, and it retains the original’s headphone jack for private listening. Combined with HDMI-CEC support, this controller could replace your TV remote.
Nvidia is also bundling a traditional remote control now, with a directional pad, a volume slider with IR support, and buttons for home, back, and voice search. The message here is that you needn’t be a gamer to enjoy what the Shield TV has to offer.

There’s just one trade-off with the box itself: Though it’s much smaller than the original, it no longer includes a MicroSD card slot. If you want more storage without relying on USB drives, you can opt for the Shield Pro ($300), which has a 500 GB hybrid drive built in while retaining the original’s larger size and MicroSD slot.

Software overhaul

What the Nvidia Shield TV lacks in hardware improvements, it makes up for with software that eliminates many of the original Shield’s frustrations.
On the home screen, Nvidia has removed its own row of apps on the home screen, and bumped up the general apps row so it sits directly underneath the Recommendations bar. Netflix now lives inside the apps section where it belongs, while Nvidia’s cloud gaming service GeForce Now and PC-to-TV gaming application GameStream are intermingled with the general gaming row. In one stroke, the home screen is now more convenient for gamers, and less intimidating to non-gamers. (We’ll have more to say about Shield’s gaming capabilities in a future article.)

Nvidia has also managed to bring Amazon Video onto the Shield despite a rocky relationship between Amazon and Google. The app isn’t perfect—Amazon content doesn’t appear in system-wide search or in Android TV’s Recommendations bar—but its mere existence makes the Shield a viable streaming option for Prime subscribers. And with Amazon’s trove of 4K and 4K HDR video, the Shield is on even footing with Roku’s Ultra HD library.
The Shield is still hamstrung by the Android TV platform, but to a lesser extent than a couple years ago. App selection has vastly improved since 2015, though it’s still behind the other major streaming platforms. The Recommendations bar at the top of the home screen remains an inefficient way to browse content from across apps—Roku, Amazon, and Apple are all doing a better job on this front—and it’s unutilized by some major services like Netflix. Google’s search results, while powerful, can also seem overwhelming, with rows of app-specific content thumbnails to sift through.

Still, Android TV’s situation is starting to look up. An improved YouTube app is on the way, bringing Android TV’s version into parity with other streaming devices like Roku, and Google plans to bring its powerful Assistant voice controls to the platform in the coming months. On Shield, this will allow for hands-free voice commands through the game controller, so you can start playing Netflix and YouTube videos, control video playback, turn on some music, and control smart home devices without reaching for the remote. (We’ll update this review once Assistant becomes available.)
Original Shield owners shouldn’t fret, by the way; Nvidia says all these changes are coming to the first-generation box soon, and the revamped game controller is already available as a $60 standalone purchase.

Nerdier endeavors

Why should you buy the Nvidia Shield TV when you can get a Roku, Amazon Fire TV, or Apple TV for considerably less? The reality is most people shouldn’t. Yet for a certain type of power user, the Nvidia Shield TV has a coolness factor that its competitors lack.
The Shield’s Plex integration, for instance, is unparalleled. The box can act as a Plex media server, not only for local and USB storage, but for mounted network hard drives, so you don’t have to buy a pricier PC or keep it powered on around the clock. You can also connect an HDHomeRun networked tuner to your router, and if you have a Plex Pass subscription, Shield can record over-the-air broadcasts for playback on your TV and other devices.

Speaking of broadcast TV, the Shield will be first in line to support Tablo’s Droid DVR app and USB tuner later this year, potentially turning the streaming box into a low-cost DVR for cord-cutters. The Shield also supports the popular media center software Kodi without the arcane sideloading methods that Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV insist on.
In the future, the Shield will even work as a SmartThings hub, letting you create scenes and automation routines with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth smart home devices, and with ZigBee and Z-Wave devices through a USB dongle. (Again, we haven’t been able to test this functionality ourselves yet.)
On top of all that, there’s some allure in having a blazing fast streaming box with a do-it-all remote, built-in Chromecast support, and the option to play some high-quality games without a more expensive console. Maybe Nvidia could increase the Shield’s mainstream appeal with a $150 remote-only model, or maybe the arrival of hands-free Google Assistant will change the equation. But for now, the Shield’s greatest strength is that it doesn’t cater to the lowest common denominator.

Pros

Unrivalled speed for demanding apps such as PlayStation Vue
Streamlined software and bundled remote
Plex server and Kodi support; over-the-air DVR

Cons

Android TV is still behind on TV guide features and app support
Far pricier than other streamers, but less powerful than game consoles
Google Assistant and SmartThings capabilities aren't available yet

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Secrets for Mac and Secrets Touch allows users to easily and securely store their confidential information.

2017-01-23T11:47:00.001-08:00

If there’s one breed of app every Mac and iOS user should own, it’s a password manager. After all, it’s no longer possible nor advisable to repeat the same easily-guessed login credentials across all the websites and services we use, and nearly impossible for most of us to remember so many combinations of letters, digits, and special characters.

For my money, 1Password (for Mac and iOS) is hands-down the best choice, and one I highly recommend to others. But not everyone will benefit from that software’s more advanced features, while others are simply unwilling to shell out hard-earned cash for the convenience when jotting passwords onto a piece of paper gets the job done. (Sadly, my own mother is guilty of this!)

Keeping secrets

Secrets (free on the App Store) strips away most of 1Password’s power user features to offer a cleaner, more streamlined user interface. The basics remain the same: You can generate unique secure passwords, autofill website logins in Safari (as well as Chrome on the desktop), and seamlessly sync between Mac and iOS devices via iCloud. Everything is saved in OpenPGP format using proven AES, RSA, and SHA encryption standards for maximum security.

In many respects, Secrets for Mac is like the ghost of 1Password past—a basic, no-frills password manager akin to the one AgileBits introduced nearly a decade ago. The dual-pane UI displays a list of entries at left which can be sorted by four item types; there’s also a search field at the top that makes it easy to find exactly what you’re looking for.

With an item selected, a collapsible detail pane at right displays specifics for that record, masking sensitive data unless you hold down the Option key or click the Reveal button, which only appears when the mouse is hovered over the password field. Most of this functionality is cribbed right from 1Password, including the handy one-click Copy option. If all you need to save are website logins, credit card or bank account details, secure notes, and software licenses, Secrets will be a good match. But try to add other item types, and you’re out of luck. There’s no way to create custom classes for identities, reward programs, memberships, or many of the 18 categories offered in 1Password.

Passwords to go

As with most password managers, Secret for Mac is only half of the story. Developer Outer Corner also offers a universal iOS version called Secrets Touch (free on the iTunes Store) which faithfully replicates nearly all the functionality of the desktop version, including a sharing extension to autofill logins in Safari and other mobile browsers.

Unfortunately, this extension is less useful than 1Password’s own, which offers an option to fill pages on websites with similar domains. (For example, disneymovieclub.com and disneymoviesanywhere.com could use either login.) I had problems using iCloud to sync between Mac and iOS with earlier versions,
although the latest 2.2.2 update was more reliable on my iPhone 7 Plus; I never could completely sync to my iPad Pro, however.
Secrets is worth a look if you’re averse to the current trend toward subscription-based software. (1Password and LastPass now both rely on this business model, although the former continues to offer perpetual licensing, at least for the moment.) By comparison, Secrets has abandoned the paid model of the original release and is now free on both platforms, with one caveat: You can only store up to 10 items. That’s a bit stingy even for casual users, but it’s enough to get a sense of whether the apps will work for you.

Thankfully, a one-time in-app purchase of $20 for Mac and $10 for iOS enables storing an unlimited number of items, a reasonable price considering a 1Password subscription is $36 per year (LastPass is even more affordable at only $12 annually). By comparison, Secrets can be used forever—or at least until the inevitable 3.0 release.

It’s also easy to make the leap from competing password managers, since Secrets for Mac allows importing from 1Password, LastPass, RapidoSerial, or PasswordWallet, which can then be synced to Secrets Touch. You’ll need to first export data from those apps; I successfully transferred over 1,200 1Password entries, although a single rogue login from streaming provider VUDU.com repeatedly caused Secrets to crash.

Bottom line

Although nowhere near as robust as password managers like 1Password, there’s a lot to like about Secrets, especially if you prefer simplicity over a larger set of features you might never need.

Secrets 2 for MAC - Available on 'App Store'.
Secrets Touch - Available on 'Tunes Store'.

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HP gives 33% OFF on 23er 23-inch IPS LED Backlit Bezel-less Monitor.

2017-01-23T11:25:00.002-08:00

IPS panel technology for ultra wide viewing, from almost any angle. 1920 x 1080 resolution for a sharp, detailed view. Bezel-less design maximizes your viewing
area and makes for seamless multi-monitor set-ups. And LED backlighting enables high screen performance. Ultra slim and Energy-Star compliant design.

The HP 23er 23-inch IPS LED backlit monitor is currently super-affordable ($119.99) with a 33% off deal happening now on Amazon, where it's averaging 4.5 out of 5 stars from over 270 reviewers. See the deal now on Amazon.

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6 ecommerce retail categories that will be hot this year.

2017-01-23T11:19:00.000-08:00

Ecommerce continues to make gains among consumers, with more people buying products online than ever before. Indeed, eMarketer recently predicted that worldwide ecommerce sales would total $1.915 trillion in 2016,
with $423.34 billion of that coming from North America. And the company forecast double-digit retail ecommerce growth through 2020.

Here are six ecommerce categories that will fuel that growth:

1. Grocery and fresh foods

In its report, eMarketer cites grocery as one of the main categories fueling ecommerce growth. And it’s not the only one predicting more people will be checking out their groceries and fresh foods online in 2017.

“[This] will be the year that buying fresh foods – produce, meat, deli and dairy – online becomes mainstream consumer behavior,” says Jordan Rost, vice president, consumer insights, Nielsen. “More than any other consumer goods category, fresh foods [will] enjoy the biggest jump in consumers' willingness to buy online in the next six months, as compared to what consumer said they'd purchased in the prior three months.”
One of the main drivers of this trend is millennial consumers, “15 percent of whom said they would buy fresh food online in the next six months,” he says. “Similarly, 17 percent of Hispanics said they would buy fresh food online.” The reason: younger Americans, “having grown up buying everything from clothing to mattresses online, are ready to shift more of their food dollars to digital platforms.”

2. Health and wellness

“Health and wellness will stay top of mind in 2017,” predicts Jorge Castrejon, marketing insights analyst, Profitero. “Analysis by Profitero revealed more than one-third of the best-selling groceries on Amazon are wellness related products – up from 25 percent in 2015 – [with] ‘organic’ and ‘gluten free’ the top two products in this category.
“Generation Z and millennials are willing to pay a premium for sustainably sourced ingredients, so it’s no surprise that wellness-oriented products are [popping up] in online stores,” he says. And he believes “this trend is bound to continue in 2017 as the popularity of healthy products continues to grow.”

It’s not just healthy food consumers are interested in, though. “People are taking mind + body health more seriously these days,” says David Rusenko, cofounder & CEO, Weebly. “From personal training and weight loss… [to] diets… yoga [and] mindfulness, we've seen more and more people turn their passion for wellness into a thriving business.” And as more people embrace health and wellness, “we expect to see more of these types of sites to pop up in 2017.”

3. Pet products

People love their pets – and continue to spend money (lots of money) on them, an estimated $62.75 billion in 2016 in the United States alone.
“The pet care and pet health space is a category which will continue to [grow] in 2017,” says Vanessa Pino, content & inbound marketing director, 1-800-PetMeds. “We’ve seen over the years how pets are members of the family. [And pet care] products will [become] even more popular,” she predicts. One of the reasons: personalization.
“Personalization has proven [to be a] great success in retail,” she says. And we will see more sellers of pet-related products “marketing [personalization] to owners of four-legged family members,” which will help drive growth in this category.

4. Artisanal/handcrafted goods

This category, which was a top pick for 2016, should continue to do well in 2017, say ecommerce watchers.
“There's a movement to forgo the large retailers and find artisanal, one of a kind goods,” says Rusenko. “Millennial shoppers are particularly on the hunt for something bespoke, and they are creating their own online shops at a rapid pace. On our platform, we notice that the more unique the story and product, the more successful the sales.”

5. Sporting goods

“Though already massive, we believe the sporting goods vertical is poised for growth in 2017,” says Leo Castro, vice president,product marketing & brand, BigCommerce. “With over $10 billion in spend online in 2015 and 40 percent growth over the past several years, 2017 looks to be even stronger,” he says. “Unlike home furnishings or electronics, where many people still prefer to see and feel merchandise before purchase, consumers are increasingly comfortable buying outdoor equipment and sporting goods online.”
Moreover, “visually appealing storefronts with modern, mobile friendly designs… combined with the steady decline of physical sporting goods stores, will fuel an online surge in this vertical in 2017.”

6. Virtual reality

“I think the hot ecommerce trend in 2017 will be sites that are selling VR headsets and applications,” says Dave Hermansen, CEO, Store Coach. “Already becoming popular, there should be an explosion of interest in virtual reality headgear when Windows 10 releases its next huge update in the early part of 2017, the ‘Creators Update.’ Part of that update is supposed to include VR functionality, and they have already partnered with half a dozen companies who will be making virtual reality headsets with ‘freedom sensors.’”

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Samsung promises to release an innovative Note 8.

2017-01-23T11:03:00.002-08:00

Now that the results of its investigation into the Galaxy Note7 fires has been completed and reported, Samsung can fully turn its attention to the launch of one of the most anticipated phones of the year, the Galaxy S8.
But don’t get your hopes up just yet. It looks like it’s going to take a little longer than usual to arrive.

During an interview with Reuters following the announcement of the results of the probe into the Note7 batteries, Samsung mobile president DJ Koh said the Galaxy S8 would not be unveiled during its customary slot at the Mobile World Congress show next month. Rather, the company is taking a little longer with the production of its new handset as it implements an extensive set of testing to ensure the batteries are functioning normally.

Koh did not offer a time frame for the release, but reports have indicated that the handset could arrive in late March or April, possibly at an event in New York City. After Samsung was forced to pull the Note7 off shelves in October and implement a massive global recall, it found that the battery was to blame, and the company has since put an 8-point battery safety check in place to ensure future devices don’t have the same issues.

Samsung also revealed that there will indeed by a Note8 handset. In a separate interview, Koh told CNet that the company is not retiring the established Note name and instead “will bring back a better, safer, and very innovative Note 8.” He said there are “lots and lots of loyal Note customers,” but Samsung will surely need to work to build trust around the brand again. Samsung has said that 96 percent of the 3 million activated handsets have been returned.

Why this matters: The delay in Samsung’s launch of the S8 might be disappointing to fans anxiously awaiting to upgrade, but it’s good to hear Samsung taking its time with the new phone. Reports have indicated that part of the battery issues with the Note7 stemmed from the company’s aggressive production timeline (both before and after the initial launch), and Samsung certainly seems to be treating its new phones with the care and attention they deserve. As far as the Note brand goes, it remains to be seen whether Samsung can win over skeptical customers, but it’s refreshing to see a company embrace its history, warts and all, and not use marketing smoke and mirrors to hide their past mistakes.

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Here's the new Intel's Euclid computer for robots.

2017-01-22T09:50:00.004-08:00

Intel's Euclid computer for robots operates on a battery, has an HDMI port, 3D RealSense camera, Atom processor, and a range wireless sensors.

Intel is getting proficient at developing small computers. First, came its Compute Sticks and then its credit-card-shaped Compute Cards.

But nothing's quite like the mysterious Euclid, which is a self-contained computer the size of a thumb designed to be the brains and eyes of a robot.

More details have emerged about the computer, which was announced in August and has yet to be released.

The Euclid is so small and light that's possible to hold like a pen. It has a built-in 3D RealSense camera, making it like a PC fused into a Microsoft Kinect.

The design makes it possible to install the Euclid where the eyes of a human-like robot would be typically placed. The 3D RealSense camera will act as the eyes of a robot, capturing images in real-time and helping with movement.

Euclid has motion and position sensors that can help the robot move around both indoors and outdoors.

Intel announced and demonstrated the Euclid computer in a robot moving on stage during CEO Brian Krzanich's keynote at the Intel Developer Forum in August. The Euclid Developer Kit launch page is up on the website of Mouser Electronics. Intel didn't provide a specific launch date or pricing.

Once the Euclid is placed in a robot, it can be operated remotely through a mobile device or PC. The Euclid has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity to communicate with the PC.

The Euclid can also "serve as a full, autonomous brain with sensing capabilities, or as a smart sensor controlled by a more powerful computer," Mouser states on its website. The computer has GPS capabilities for navigation.

The Euclid presentation about RealSense technologies last year at the Roscon robotics conference.

The Atom CPU provides the horsepower to process and analyze the images collected by the 3D camera. The CPU will drive a robot's movement and help it complete tasks.

The ZR300 is a 1080p camera bundled with an infrared camera and an infrared laser projector. The combined features will help robots get a better sense of depth and motion, which will aid in movement.

The device operates on a battery and has environmental sensors on the back. One sensor is a barometric pressure sensor. Additionally, it has a microphone and speakers, and HDMI and USB 3.0 slots.

Euclid supports Linux-based Ubuntu OS and Robotics Operating System (ROS), which typically sits on top of an OS. It will also support Arduino, a software package commonly used by developers to create basic electronics.

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The new Microsoft Office 365 is coming soon.

2017-01-22T09:43:00.001-08:00

Get ready, Office 365 administrators: Microsoft is ending support for the Office 2013 client apps that it previously distributed through its cloud-based productivity service. Instead, administrators and users
will be pushed to use Office 2016, the latest version of the productivity suite that includes Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

Starting on Feb. 28, users won’t be able to download the Office 2013 apps from the Office 365 self-service portal, and they won’t be downloadable through the Office 365 Admin Center. Microsoft also won’t release feature updates for those products, and won’t provide support through Customer Service Support or Premier Support.

Microsoft released Office 2016, the new version of its productivity software suite for Mac and Windows, in September 2015. The company has been aggressive in rolling out new features for those apps but has kept the previous version available for businesses that haven’t wanted to migrate yet. Now, administrators have a little over a month to install all the copies of Office 2013 that they want to.

Migrations can be tough work because the Office 2016 apps look and behave differently to their predecessors. Getting people used to a new version of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook after they’ve been using another for years can be a disruptive change.

Furthermore, administrators still using Exchange Server 2007 have another hurdle in front of them. Office 2016 client apps, including Outlook, don’t support connecting Exchange 2007. To make everything work, they’ll have to upgrade to a supported version of Exchange Server first.

Microsoft is offering assistance to companies that still have to migrate their users through its FastTrack migration service. That offering gives administrators access to tools and experts to help them make the move from one set of client applications to another.

Office 2016 offers a number of feature improvements over its predecessors, including one that might help with migration. Tell Me is a function available in — among other apps — the Windows versions of Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint that lets users search for what they want to do, without having to find it in a nested series of menus.

Microsoft will continue to issue critical and important security updates to Office 2013 until April 10, 2018, however. Companies that still have the software installed will be able to keep it running at least until then without fear of gaping security holes.

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A Non-Google phone with the same Google's intelligent Assistant - LG's upcoming G6 smartphone

2017-01-21T12:05:00.003-08:00

You might not have to buy a Google Pixel or Pixel XL to get the company's intelligent Assistant after all.

LG's upcoming G6 smartphone might be
the first non-Pixel phone to include Assistant, according to a report from BusinessKorea. LG is also said to be in talks with Amazon to possibly incorporate Alexa into future phones.

When Google launched its Pixel phones in October, it touted Assistant as one of the main selling points. Google CEO Sundar Pichai called the Assistant "your own personal Google." In Mashable's testing, Assistant bested Siri in a number of ways.

Allowing Assistant on non-Google phones could help make it mainstream faster. Amazon pursued a similar strategy by making Alexa an open platform for any device maker to use.

With AI and digital assistants so hot these days, LG would be wise to strike a deal to get Assistant on its phones.

The move would pair well with LG's decision to bake Assistant into its two upcoming Android Wear 2.0 smartwatches.

The more interesting part of the report claims LG is also considering Alexa for its phones. LG already has a smart refrigerator with Alexa, so it's not a completely farfetched idea for the company to launch an Alexa-equipped phone. LG would also become the first company to release a phone with Alexa built in at the native level.

Phone hardware may have become "boring," but that doesn't mean software has to be bland. This is poised to be the year of the digital assistant. Besides Google Assistant and Alexa, Samsung's expected to unleash its own digital assistant (codenamed "Bixby") starting with the Galaxy S8 this spring.

A G6 with Assistant could be just the phone LG needs to erase the G5 from our memory and compete with this year's new crop of AI-infused flagships.

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Apple and Qualcomm broke into public view . Know what actually hapened.

2017-01-21T11:59:00.000-08:00

A nasty spat between Apple and Qualcomm broke into public view on Friday when the smartphone maker accused the chip supplier of charging "exorbitant" licensing fees for its cellular technology.

Apple is asking a Southern California court to order Qualcomm to pay it nearly $1 billion that it says Qualcomm is holding back. Apple says it is owed the money but Qualcomm is holding it back because Apple cooperated with a South Korean government investigation into Qualcomm's licensing practices.

The lawsuit alleges that Qualcomm charges high licensing fees to the companies that make iPhones for Apple. Those companies pass the fees on to Apple but aren't allowed to show Apple the specifics of the licensing deals, leaving Apple unsure what it is paying for.

"For many years Qualcomm has unfairly insisted on charging royalties for technologies they have nothing to do with," Apple said in a statement. "The more Apple innovates with unique features such as TouchID, advanced displays, and cameras, to name just a few, the more money Qualcomm collects for no reason and the more expensive it becomes for Apple to fund these innovations."

The lawsuit comes just months after Apple began using Intel radio chips in some units of the iPhone 7. And it follows two recent legal actions by antitrust regulators against Qualcomm's licensing practices.

In December, antitrust regulators in South Korea levied an $854 million fine against Qualcomm for unfair licensing practices. Qualcomm vowed to appeal the decision.

Then, earlier this week, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission followed with allegations of its own: that Qualcomm had engaged in anticompetitive practices by forcing some phone makers into accepting unfavorable licensing terms while giving Apple a break in exchange for exclusivity.

Apple cooperated with the South Korean investigation. It alleged on Friday that Qualcomm withheld nearly $1 billion in rebates as punishment for that.

In response to the FTC's lawsuit earlier this week, Qualcomm denied it did anything of the sort and said the FTC's lawsuit is "significantly flawed."

"Qualcomm has never withheld or threatened to withhold chip supply in order to obtain agreement to unfair or unreasonable licensing terms," it said in a statement. "The FTC’s allegation to the contrary -- the central thesis of the complaint -- is wrong."

It has not commented on Apple's lawsuit.

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Lavabit developer has developed a new end-to-end email protocol. Click to know more.

2017-01-21T11:53:00.002-08:00

The developer behind Lavabit, an email service that noted leaker Edward Snowden used, is releasing source code for an open-source end-to-end encrypted email standard that promises surveillance-proof messaging.

The code for the Dark Internet Mail Environment (DIME) standard will become available on Github, along with an associated mail server program, said its developer Ladar Levison on Friday.

DIME will work across different service providers and perhaps crucially will be "flexible enough to allow users to continue using their email without a Ph.D. in cryptology," said Levison.

To coincide with its launch, Levison is also reviving Lavabit. The encrypted email service shut down in 2013 when federal agents investigating Snowden demanded access to email messages of his 410,000 customers, including their private encryption keys.

Levison decided to shut it down, rather than help the U.S. government violate his customers’ privacy, he wrote on Friday.

“I chose Freedom,” he said. “Much has changed since my decision, but unfortunately much has not in our post-Snowden world.”

Levison said he is relaunching the service, citing “recent jaw-dropping headlines” over how email remains insecure.

“Today, we start a new freedom journey and inaugurate the next-generation of email privacy and security,” he wrote on Lavabit’s site.

The revived Lavabit is also built with DIME, which Levison started a Kickstarter fund back in 2014. It is designed to encrypt the email and its transmission, including the metadata such as the message's subject line, sender and recipient.
The new Lavabit will operate in three encryption modes that range from Trustful, Cautious to Paranoid. Each mode handles message encryption and private key storage differently at the expense of ease of use.

For instance, Paranoid mode means Lavabit’s servers will never store a user’s private keys.

Initially, however, Lavabit will only be accessible to existing users of the service and only in Trustful mode. New users must pre-register and wait for the eventual rollout.

Lavabit is a subscription-based service. On Friday, it was offering a discount deal. For $15 annually, a user can have access to 5GB of email storage. For $30, a user can have access to 20 GB of space.

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SanDisk Connect wireless stick with 200 GB - Deal on Amazon

2017-01-21T11:37:00.001-08:00

The SanDisk Connect wireless stick is a flash drive with a unique twist -- you can access it wirelessly. Whether it's in your pants pocket, in your bag,
or on the picnic table at your campsite, the Connect wireless stick lets you stream media or move files wirelessly with up to three computers, phones or tablets simultaneously. Connections are made via built-in wifi (think "hotspot"), so no external wireless or internet services are needed. A USB connection is also available, if desired. Storage on this model is a generous 200GB. Reviewers on Amazon report at least 8-10 hours of battery life on one charge. This model is currently discounted 34%, from $119.99 down to $78.95.

See it now on Amazon.

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Hacker suspected by the Spanish police behind Neverquest banking malware

2017-01-20T13:16:00.003-08:00

Spanish police have arrested a Russian programmer suspected of developing the Neverquest banking Trojan, a malware targeting financial institutions across the world.

The 32-year-old Russian citizen known as Lisov SV was arrested at the Barcelona airport, Spain's law enforcement agency Guardia Civil said on Friday.
The FBI had been working with Spanish authorities to track down the suspect through an international arrest warrant, according to a statement from the agency. The FBI, however, declined to comment on the man's arrest.
Neverquest is designed to steal username and password information from banking customers. Once it infects a PC, the malware can do this by injecting fake online forms into legitimate banking websites to log any information typed in. It can also take screenshots and video from the PC's desktop and steal any passwords stored locally.

Once the credentials are stolen, Neverquest can use the infected PC to secretly log back into the customer's online banking account. It can then access the victim's funds and transfer the money out.

In 2013, antivirus vendor Kaspersky Lab discovered the malware being advertised in black market forums. It's since been found preying on the banking sites of 100 to 200 financial institutions, and it has features built in making it hard for security researchers to track.

On Friday, Spanish authorities said the malware has resulted in financial losses from victims of about US$5 million. Lisov is suspected of creating NeverQuest and then using servers to administer the malware.
One such server contained files with millions of stolen login credentials from financial website accounts.

The arrested suspect’s full name is Stanislav Lisov, according to Russian news agency TASS, and he was arrested on Jan. 13. Russian diplomats have sent a request to Spanish authorities to learn more about the charges against Lisov.
If Lisov is indeed behind Neverquest, his arrest may stop or slow down the malware's spread. Last August, IBM Security said Neverquest was the most active financial malware in the world.

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Google is soon going to shut its older versions of Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides

2017-01-20T13:12:00.001-08:00

If you haven’t moved to the latest version of Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, or Slides, you might want to consider doing so. On April 3, Google will be shuttering older versions of these four apps, so users who rely
on them will need to upgrade to ensure uninterrupted service and syncing.

The move affects users on Android and iOS, and targets versions of the apps released before before Nougat and iOS 10 made their respective debuts. Google explains that users will begin seeing the prompts on March 1 warning them that the version they are using is too old and no longer supported. Additionally, some users with very old versions will be forced to upgrade when they receive the dialogue box.

The version of the apps being shut down are as follows:

Google Drive for Android (prior to version 2.4.311
Google Docs for Android (prior to version 1.6.292)
Google Sheets for Android (prior to version 1.6.292)
Google Slides for Android (prior to version 1.6.292)
Google Drive for iOS (prior to version 4.16)
Google Docs for iOS (prior to version 1.2016.12204)
Google Sheets for iOS (prior to version 1.2016.12208)
Google Slides for iOS (prior to version 1.2016.12203)

The impact on you at home: The vast majority of users of these apps have likely upgraded to the latest version, but some users with older phones or limited space might need to take action. To find out which version of Drive, Docs, Sheets, or Slides you are using, you can check the About option in each app’s Settings menu.

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WhatsApp vulnerability may expose messages and pry eyes, though experts claim it remote and limited in scope

2017-01-20T12:57:00.002-08:00

Update, 1/20/17: A post on the Technosociology blog signed by dozens of security experts calls for a Guardian retraction and apology. This article has been updated to reflect this.

When Facebook’s WhatsApp turned on end-end-end encryption in its messaging service last year, it was a big deal. As all eyes were glued on Apple’s fight with the FBI over unlocking the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone, WhatsApp took a huge step toward protecting its users’ privacy by moving to encrypt all messages and calls being sent between its apps.

But a new report suggests it might not be as secure as users think. According to The Guardian, a serious vulnerability in WhatApp’s encryption could allow Facebook to intercept and read messages unbeknownst to the recipient, and only aware of by the sender if they have previously opted in to receive encryption warnings. The security flaw, which was discovered by Tobias Boelter, a cryptography and security researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, can “effectively grant access (to users’ messages)” by changing the security keys and resending messages.

“WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption relies on the generation of unique security keys, using the acclaimed Signal protocol … to guarantee communications are secure and cannot be intercepted by a middleman,” the paper wrote. “However, WhatsApp has the ability to force the generation of new encryption keys for offline users … and to make the sender re-encrypt messages with new keys and send them again for any messages that have not been marked as delivered.”

While there is no evidence to suggest WhatsApp has used the flaw to surreptitiously intercept messages, Boelter says he reported the vulnerability to Facebook back in April 2016 but was informed that it was “expected behavior.” According to The Guardian the security flaw, which still exists in the latest version of the service’s encryption, is exasperated by WhatsApp’s habit of automatically resending undelivered messages without authorization by the user.
However, there is mounting evidence to suggest The Guardian’s claims are overblown and even unfounded. According to the Whatsapp website, end-to-end encryption is always activated when using the service, and there is no way to turn it off. Additionally, each conversation has its own optional verification process that can be used to verify that calls and messages are end-to-end encrypted.

In a statement provided to Greenbot, WhatsApp defended the “intentional design decision” and slammed The Guardian’s characterization of it as false: “WhatsApp does not give governments a ‘backdoor’ into its systems and would fight any government request to create a backdoor. The design decision referenced in the Guardian story prevents millions of messages from being lost, and WhatsApp offers people security notifications to alert them to potential security risks.”

Additionally, a group of security experts signed a post on Technosociology.org titled, “A Plea for Responsible and Contextualized Reporting on User Security.” In the letter, they compare The Guardian’s report to publishing a headline that reads “Vaccines kill people.” “While it is true that in a few cases, vaccines kill people through rare and unfortunate side effects, they also save millions of lives,” they write.

In a lengthy post, the experts conclude that The Guardian’s report uncovered “a small and unlikely threat,” and explains in great detail how
WhatsApp’s “behavior around key exchange when phone or SIM cards are changed is an acceptable trade-off if the priority is message reliability.” They urge The Guardian to retract the story and apologize to readers, many of who “are switching to SMS and Facebook Messenger, among other options—many services that are strictly less secure than WhatsApp,” they experts claim.

The impact on you at home: Hopefully, there is none. While the flaw in WhatsApp certainly has the appearance of being nefarious, there is nothing to suggest that users’ messages are actively being compromised. That being said, it’s not a bad idea to head over to your account’s security settings and turn on the Show security notifications toggle.

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Please be aware of "FAKE" mobile Apps and bad wi-fi hotspots

2017-01-20T12:52:00.000-08:00

Black Friday and Cyber Monday holiday shoppers using smartphones should beware of fake commerce apps and fake Wi-Fi hot spots inside malls, two security firms have warned.

Hackers use these fakes to grab account numbers and sensitive personal information.

"Cyber criminals are increasing our risk of using mobile devices while shopping, whether it is Black Friday or Cyber Monday," warned Brian Duckering, mobility strategist for Skycure, an enterprise security firm, in a blog. "Going to physical stores and connecting to risky Wi-Fi networks, or shopping online both pose increasing risks we should all be aware of."

Skycure, a security company started in 2012, and enterprise security firm RiskIQ said that the smartphone risk is higher this year than in 2015. There are more active cyber criminals and many more shoppers using smartphones to find products and make purchases, either via Wi-Fi in stores or online in other locations.

RiskIQ predicted nearly 30% of spending on Black Friday and Cyber Monday will take place on mobile devices. Meanwhile, Skycure cited several analysts who predicted three times as many mobile payments will be conducted in 2016 compared to 2015. Online shopping from all venues totaled $5.8 billion on Black Friday and Cyber Monday in 2015, according to the Adobe Digital Index.
The rapid increase in mobile e-commerce is not only because of the increased number of mobile users, but also the increase in minutes spent on a smartphone every day as opposed to a laptop or desktop, said Varun Kohli, vice president of marketing at Skycure, in an interview. "If I'm a hacker I want to maximize my investment and go where the masses are, and the masses are on mobile phones," he said.

Many smartphone users compare prices and evaluate products while shopping inside a physical store, which means they are probably connected to a Wi-Fi network. Often, stores and malls offer Wi-Fi for the convenience of customers, but cyber criminals also set up fake Wi-Fi hotspots to be able to steal data.
Sometimes the cyber thieves monitor consumer communications over legitimate Wi-Fi hotspots that haven't been properly configured and expose a user's communications openly, Skycure said.

When shopping online anywhere, users need to be aware that hackers have set up fake store apps that look like legitimate ones, usually enticing smartphone users with deals and rewards, Skycure added.

Based on its own security tests of the nation's busiest malls, Skycure named 10 U.S. physical malls where it found at least five risky Wi-Fi networks to avoid. Fashion Show Mall in Las Vegas was judged the most risky for mobile shoppers, with 14 Wi-Fi networks that were found to be malicious or risky to connect to, based on the hacker signatures Skycure found on them.

Tysons Corner Center in McLean, Va., just west of Washington, was judged second by Skycure for risky Wi-Fi networks. The remaining eight malls named in the report are: Yorktown Center in Lombard, Ill.; Town Center at Boca Raton in Boca Raton, Fla ; Sawgrass Mills in Sunrise, Fla.; Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn.; Houston Galleria in Houston, Texas; King of Prussia Mall in King of Prussia, Pa.; Westfield Garden State in Paramus, N.J.; and Memorial City Mall in Houston, Texas.

Skycure said hackers also use man-in-the-middle exploits on poorly secured but legitimate Wi-Fi networks to gain access to user data. A hacker will observe unencrypted traffic or even manipulate the content the victim sees online to redirect the user to a malicious website or to download malware.

When a hacker sets up a fake Wi-Fi network, the hacker will mimic a legitimate network, often using the same name. Hackers might set up a network that uses the word "free" in the name to lure victims, Skycure said. Even short access to a malicious network may give a hacker enough information to later access bank accounts, social media accounts or corporate accounts.

Skycure found fake Wi-Fi networks at these shopping centers: Macysfreewifi at Park Meadows mall in Denver and at the Waterfront mall in Pittsburgh and in other places where there was no Macy's store; Belk_Guest in Columbiana center in North Carolina; Apple Store, in multiple locations where there was no Apple Store; Bloomingdalesfreewifi at Liberty Place in Philadelphia; officedepot in Magnolia Shops near Miami; and Panera near Baltimore.

Skycure warned in a white paper: "If you see a Wi-Fi that is named as if it is hosted by a store, but that store is nowhere nearby, don't connect." Also, Wi-Fi hotspots that use the term "free" like "FreePublicWiFi" are dubious.

For online shoppers using commerce apps, Skycure said hackers will sometimes repackage legitimate apps so the fake app looks exactly like the real one. The fake app works in the background to steal data or spy on the user. The security firm found a repackaged version of a Starbucks app, for example, and said users can avoid the problem by installing the official app from the Apple and Google app stores.

Or, hackers will create fake apps from scratch. One hacker created an app called "Amazon Rewards" even though no such apps exists in the official app stores, Skycure found. Such fake apps promise rewards to get people to download the apps. With the fake Amazon Rewards app, Skycure found it was actually a trojan that spreads by using SMS messages with fake Amazon vouchers and a link to a fake website. It even accesses the user's contact list so that it can send SMS messages to even more people.

In a separate report on Monday, RiskIQ found more than 1,000 Black Friday-specific apps that were malicious or that could be used to trick a user into downloading malware or giving up login credentials or credit card information.
RiskIQ also found that of the biggest five leading e-commerce brands, there were more than 1 million apps that RiskIQ have been blacklisted that were using the brands in the title of app or the description of the app. That 1 million "is a huge number but we monitor hundreds of online stores and millions of apps," said James Pleger, director of security and threat research at RiskIQ, in an interview.
Many of the blacklisted apps can be found in hundreds of third-party app stores outside of the Apple and Google app stores that don't have the most rigid requirements for banning malicious apps, he said.

RiskIQ also found that the five major e-commerce brands were connected to nearly 2,000 blacklisted URLs that contained their branded names and the words "Black Friday" that RiskIQ linked to phishing, malware or spam.
RiskIQ creates its blacklists by collecting data via scanning, crawling and sensing internet traffic on mobile apps, web pages and social websites. The company runs apps in sandboxes to see how they behave and then looks at underlying code for malicious code tied to known hacker signatures.

Skycure developed its list of fake Wi-Fi zones in malls by checking the Wi-Fi networks used by its tens of thousands of enterprise and consumer end users in millions of monthly security tests from July through September. All those users had installed a free Skycure app, available for both consumers and enterprise customers to download from Google Play or Apple App Store or at www.skycure.com.

Both companies issued tips for how consumers can protect themselves against fake apps and fake Wi-Fi.
To guard against fake or insecure apps they recommend:

Download apps only from Google and Apple official app stores.
Beware of apps that ask for suspicious permissions like access to contacts, text messages, stored password or credit card information.
Be skeptical of favorable reviews for apps, since rave reviews can be forged. Also examine the developer of the app to see if the app comes from an unusual developer or if the app description uses quirky spelling or poor grammar. A Google search will tell more about the developer.
Read the warnings on your device and don't click "Continue" if you don't understand the exposure level.
Update your device to the most current operating system.
Disconnect from the network if your phone behaves oddly, has frequent crashes or receives a warning notice.
When visiting shopping sites on the web, look for the "s" in HTTPS when you visit; without the S there could be weak encryption.

To protect against fake and insecure Wi-Fi:

Avoid "free Wi-Fi networks" since 10% of malicious networks use the word "free" in their name.
If a Wi-Fi zone is named as if it is hosted by a store and the store isn't nearby, don't connect.

Skycure has posted a handy tool on its website to help users identify mobile threats at any destination.
Experts also urged consumers to use common sense. RiskIQ's Pleger suggested the age-old maxim:"If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is."

One independent analyst, Jack Gold at J. Gold Associates, noted that both RiskIQ and Skycure sell cybersecurity services and products to enterprises and have a financial stake in drawing attention to risky Wi-Fi and apps. For connecting to free Wi-Fi, he said that there isn't much of a threat in doing a search or getting directions because a user isn't passing important confidential information.
"However, if you are connected to a malicious network and you log in to a website or into an app that sends your credentials in the clear, then, yes, this could be compromised," Gold said. "Many apps now use a VPN tunnel that encrypts data but not all do. If you download a malicious app, all bets are off whether you get them from a malicious Wi-Fi network or click and download in the app store."

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Moto Z and Moto Z Play got Android device updates with the version Nougat

2017-01-20T12:28:00.001-08:00

The Nougat train is starting to slowlyspeed up and chug down the tracks. We learned more this week about Motorola and Samsung’s plans for upgrades on their phones. And new Nvidia Shield owners got a minor software
bump that should fix an annoying bug with the remote.

Each week, we round up all the major software updates to hit the Android ecosystem, including phones and tablets on U.S. carriers, unlocked phones, smartwatches, and Android TV devices. Making sure your device is running the latest available software is a good housekeeping practice, ensuring you have the latest features with fewer bugs and security holes.

Motorola

Moto Z: The Verizon version already has Nougat and is Daydream ready, but the unlocked model has been languishing in update purgatory. This is backwards compared to how it usually works. Android Police confirmed some more details from Motorola: Nougat will come to the Moto Z in February. Hopefully that will tide you over a bit, although it’s surely frustrating.

Moto Z Play: Yes, you’re also getting Nougat. However, you’re going to have to wait until March, according to the report. It’s frustrating, given that unlocked phones don’t have to wait for a carrier to approve an update.

Samsung

Nougat schedule: Samsung made its Nougat announcement official. Along with giving a sneak preview of how Nougat will look, the company also confirmed the following phones will get the Nougat update “in the first half of the year”: Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 edge and S6 edge Plus, Galaxy Note 5, Galaxy Tab A, Galaxy Tab S2 (unlocked version), Galaxy A3, and Galaxy A8.

Nvidia

Shield TV: A minor software bump went out this week that fixes an issue where the controller on the new Android TV box would stop working intermittently. The existing Shield is also set to get Nougat very soon.

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The Realm Mobile Platform makes easier use of database in mobile apps

2017-01-19T10:54:00.002-08:00

Realm is introducing version 1.0 of its Realm Mobile Platform, which uses the company's object database for synchronizing data on mobile devices. It supports development of "offline first" native mobile experiences.

The platform features the Realm Mobile Database, which is an embedded object database supporting Android and Apple iOS clients, and Realm Object Server, for object synchronization and event handling to synchronize data across devices. The Object Server can be deployed on servers or in the cloud.

Object databases had been considered eye-opening data management technology back in the 1990s, Realm Chief Marketing Officer Paul Kopacki acknowledged. "It was always a great idea. The world wasn't ready for it 20 years and the technology and the technology wasn't all the way there."

But Realm now sees a local, object database as more of a fit for mobile applications. Business logic doesn't have to be translated to SQL tables like it would with a relational database -- an unnatural transformation, he said. "It's painful, it's slow, it makes your code a lot more convoluted."

Realm does feature a data connector API to link a mobile application with back-end databases like Oracle, MongoDB, Hadoop, and Postgres. This benefits developers because they do not need to write complex networking code, handle serialization/deserialization, or write logic to deal with conflicts or no-connection scenarios. Also featured in the platform is a built-in backup capability to preserve app data.

An example of how the platform would work: A real-time collaboration application, with two devices sharing a whiteboard. Realm would provide services like synchronization, conflict resolution and offline accommodation.

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Gaming World Presents Sniper Elite 4, Silent but deadly

2017-01-19T10:48:00.000-08:00

It’s easy for me to poke fun at the Sniper Elite series. It is, after all, predominantly known for over-the-top violence and the ability to shoot Nazis in their *ahem* testicles. And that’s still true as we head into the fourth Sniper
Elite iteration—I saw plenty of exploding rib cages and skulls during my demo last week.

Sniper Elite 4 is a proper evolution though. While the series may never wholly shed its grindhouse B-movie feel, there’s an increasingly smart stealth game hidden underneath the fountains of blood and guts.

Technology is to thank. I’d actually forgotten, but Sniper Elite 3 was one of the last “cross-generation” games, better looking than its predecessor but still shackled by the limitations of the last console generation. And so while Sniper Elite 3 took some tiny steps forward, giving the player multiple paths to objectives and allowing for a bit more creativity, it still felt somewhat like a linear series of arenas.

Not so, here. Sniper Elite 4 is the fulfillment of its predecessor’s ambitions, more akin to the open-ended stealth of Far Cry, Metal Gear Solid V or Hitman. Which is not to say Sniper Elite 4 is on a level with those; its stealth systems are more simplistic, its AI soldiers a bit dumb at times, and its World War II setting and story nothing you haven’t seen before.

But Sniper Elite 4 feels like a proper sniping game. We played a single level of its Italian campaign, tasked with taking down a Nazi general and four other high-ranking officers on a sprawling island packed with isolated villages, military checkpoints, docks, and a large villa headquarters. It took me about an hour to complete, and I didn’t even bother taking down most of the enemy guards.

Best of all: You don’t have to. I think that’s what appeals to me most about Sniper Elite 4 so far. Skirting around fortified positions, sneaking up from the rear and shooting a single officer is just as legitimate a tactic as taking down every Nazi in sight. That’s a welcome change from Sniper Elite 3, which often packed maps full of choke-points to force the player into a confrontation.

The wide-open approach also allows you to take on objectives in any order you want. It’s clear that the mission’s canonical culmination is killing off the general, but due to the route I took across the island he was actually the second target I assassinated. I then mopped up, back through a village and a military checkpoint I’d bypassed earlier, eventually escaping by way of a secluded cliffside dock.

As I said, I don’t think the game’s as novel as some of its stealth contemporaries. Nor does it want to be. Hitman’s crowds, wacky disguises, and one-off weapons lend its missions more of a free-for-all sandbox feel, for instance. They give players a reason to return, to try out new routes. In Sniper Elite, your job is...well, sniping. That’s your ol’ faithful, and you won’t be sneaking into an enemy base disguised as an upscale chef. You get in position, you shoot a Nazi through his sensitive bits, you leave.

Group activity

I’ll undoubtedly have more to say about Sniper Elite’s singleplayer when the game releases next month. The big question is whether I’ll play more of its multiplayer offerings.

It’s half-good. There’s a co-op Horde Mode spinoff here, fending off waves of Nazis in the company of three buddies. We played through two rounds of this and it’s solid, albeit familiar. There’s no big story hook or anything like with Call of Duty’s ongoing Zombies mode, but it’s pretty damn fun calling out targets and trying to pick them off before you’re overrun.

The best moment came maybe twenty minutes in to a run, when a tank threatened to wipe out our whole team. I managed to run up behind it and toss down TNT, but before we managed to blow it up I was shot and began “Bleeding Out”—basically stuck prone, with only a pistol.

And in Saving Private Ryan fashion I then shot my own TNT, blew up the tank, and won the round for our team. Pretty spectacular.

Less interesting, at least for me, is Sniper Elite 4’s player-versus-player. You know how the worst part of Battlefield is that everyone plays a sniper, sits a million miles back from the objective, and running in just means you’ll die of an unseen head wound? Now imagine an entire game built around that idea.
Yeah, I don’t know. Multiplayer in a slow sniper game isn’t the greatest, especially when it’s a point-capture mode that forces you to get in close and resort to Sniper Elite 4’s less accurate assault rifles and pistols.

I’d be happier (I think) with an Elimination-style mode which played more to the game’s sniping strengths, but even that seems like an odd fit. Sniper Elite just doesn’t seem like an obvious candidate for a thriving player-versus-player community, though maybe there’s a niche of sniping aficionados who’d find it fascinating. Hell, take all of the snipers out of Battlefield. I’d be happy with that.
Anyway, Sniper Elite 4 releases on February 14, so if you don’t have any hot Valentine’s plans perhaps you’d be happy shooting Nazis in the genitals. We’ll have a full review when the game gets closer. Count me as pleasantly surprised though—at least for the moment.

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Facebook plans new data center outside US in Denmark

2017-01-19T10:38:00.003-08:00

Facebook has chosen Odense in Denmark as the site of its third data center outside the U.S.

Denmark's moderate climate will allow the company to use
outdoor air and indirect evaporative cooling to keep temperatures in the data center down, and servers will be powered entirely with renewable energy, the company said Thursday.

Most of Denmark's renewable energy comes from wind power, a highly variable resource. On one day in 2015, it was able to satisfy the nation's entire electricity demand with wind power, and also become a net exporter of electricity. At other times, around a quarter of the country's electricity demand is met by wind power, according to the latest figures from Eurostat, the European Union's statistical agency.

Other factors attracting Facebook to Odense, Denmark's third-largest city, included access to the internet backbone and a local talent pool for building and operating the data center, according to a blog post from Niall McEntegart, the company's director for data center operations outside the Americas.

Ultimately, Facebook expects to employ over 100 in operations at the site.
Facebook's existing European data centers are in Clonee in Ireland and Luleå in Sweden, on the edge of the Arctic Circle. Thanks to the free air cooling, over the last year the Luleå site has achieved a power usage effectiveness -- the ratio of total power consumed to power devoted to computing tasks -- of just 1.09.

Denmark's renewable energy also caught Apple's eye back in 2015, when it was planning its European data center expansion. It chose a site near Viborg, about three hours' drive from Odense, for its facility, which is expected to open this year.

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LinkedIn improved desktop version with new features

2017-01-19T10:33:00.003-08:00

LinkedIn’s desktop interface is getting a fresh coat of paint. The professional social network unveiled Thursday the largest overhaul to the desktop version of its website since the service launched.

The redesign is all about bringing changes from the company’s mobile app to its desktop experience, according to Chris Pruitt, LinkedIn’s director of engineering. Users will see a redesigned feed, tweaked profiles, new messaging capabilities and a revamped search box.

The company wants to unify the experience of using its desktop and mobile products, something that Pruett said LinkedIn’s most engaged users have been clamoring for. What’s more, the changes should make the product more useful and less cluttered.

Case in point: those incessant notifications that users saw in their desktop news feeds, encouraging them to congratulate a connection on a new job or wish someone a happy birthday have now been relegated to the redesigned notifications page. That page will give users the ability to see richer information at a glance, like who has been looking at their profile and job opportunities they might be interested in.

One of the biggest improvements with the redesign is an update to the desktop messaging system. The Messaging Overlay, as LinkedIn calls it, floats on top of the social networking site, giving users easy access to IM conversations that they’re carrying out through the service.

Messaging on LinkedIn used to be a lot more like sending formal email messages, but the company has been moving away from that model and towards a more Facebook-esque instant messenger setup that focuses on letting users quickly connect with short missives.

It’s also capable of offering users contextual chat suggestions. For example, the chat overlay could suggest that users message their connections at a particular company when looking at that company’s job listings.

Users will also be able to use a new unified search box that gives them the opportunity to search almost all of LinkedIn in one place. Right now, users can find profiles, jobs, companies, groups and schools. In the future, the company will also add the ability to search posts.

To make all of this work, the new desktop experience is built on some of the same APIs that power the LinkedIn mobile app, so that it will be easier for the company to quickly roll out new features in the future.

The moves are aimed at boosting user engagement with LinkedIn on the desktop. Currently about 60 percent of the social network’s traffic comes from mobile, and 40 percent comes from the desktop web.

Thursday’s news comes just a few weeks after Microsoft closed its acquisition of the enterprise social networking company. Furthermore, it comes as Facebook tries to push further into the world of enterprise productivity with its Workplace product, which was made publicly available last year.

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Now a days Anti-Virus is getting worse at detecting theats

2017-01-19T10:25:00.000-08:00

Is anti-virus software getting worse at detecting both known and new threats?
Earlier this week, Stu Sjouwerman, CEO of security awareness training company KnowBe4, looked at the data published by the Virus
Bulletin, a site that tracks anti-virus detection rates. And the numbers didn't look good.

Average detection rates for known malware went down a couple of percentage points slightly from 2015 to 2016, he said, while detection rates for zero-days dropped in a big way - from an average of 80 percent down to 70 percent or lower.

"If the industry as a whole is dropping 10 to 15 points in proactive protection, that's really bad," he said. "Anti-virus isn't exactly dead, but it sure smells funny."
According to Sjouwerman, the Virus Bulletin is the industry's premier testing site. The tests are comprehensive, and consistent from year to year, so that a historical comparison is valid.
Several major vendors aren't included in these statistics, he said, because they declined to participate -- and implied that there might be a reason for that.
What's happening is that current anti-virus vendors aren't able to keep up with the attackers, he said, who can generate new malware on the fly.
"The bad guys have completely automated this process," he said. "It's now industrial strength, millions of new variants daily, in an attempt to overwhelm the existing anti-virus engines -- and guess what, the bad guys are winning."
He's not alone in pointing out the problems that anti-virus has been having lately, and other agree with the main thrust of his analysis.

"The report does sound pretty much in sync with what my feeling is, and what the industry is talking about," said Amol Sarwate, director of vulnerability labs at Qualys. "It's not an easy problem to solve. If they make antivirus too aggressive, it causes too many false positives. I think the hope for the future is a combination of multiple technologies. Anti-virus by itself cannot cut it any more."

It's bad, and it will continue to get worse, said Justin Fier, director of cyber intelligence and analysis at Darktrace.

"I would never tell a customer not to invest in it," he said. "But in regards to whether anti-virus is working any more -- I don't think so."
At its core, security reacts to events.

"It's hard to predict what the next big wave of malware or the next big attack platform is going to be and protect against it," he said.

Ransomware in particular is causing problems, said KnowBe4's Sjouwerman, because the malware is so profitable that the cybercriminals are putting more and more resources into development.

Criminals earned $1 billion from their ransomware last year, showing that it's consistently getting through defenses.

But there are some new, early-stage products that specifically target ransomware, he added.

"Some of them work, some of them don't -- this is still very early days," he said. "Sophos has acquired one of those companies and now have an additional module that specifically protects against ransomware, and that actually works fine, so Sophos is actually scoring well but they're one of the few that do."
Sophos, which offers both network and endpoint security products, is not included in the Virus Bulletin, but received a 100 percent score for blocking zero-day attacks in the latest antivirus reports.

"One of our major advantages is that we don't rely on any one technology," explained Dan Schiappa, senior vice president and general manager of end user and network security groups at Sophos. "We have a little mini analytics engine, and when it's scanning a file or looking at a behavior, it can call on a bunch of different pieces of technology to determine if it's malware."

The new Intercept X product, which is designed specifically for zero-day threats, looks at how malware attacks systems.

"There are only about 24 different ways that you can exploit a vulnerability," he said. "We might get a couple of new techniques a year, and as long as we keep up with those techniques, we're in pretty good shape. For example, one new technique is to get into the pre-boot environment, and we're building protections against that."

Some vendors dispute whether the results of this one set of tests is conclusive.
"Test scores tend to fluctuate as attackers create new techniques and defenders continue to innovate," said Mark Nunnikhoven, vice president of cloud research at Trend Micro.

Trend Micro was not included in the Virus Bulletin report.
"I can't speak to why we did not participate in this specific round of testing, we do have a lot of respect for Virus Bulletin," said Nunnikhoven.

Instead, he pointed out to his company's performance with AV Test. There, Trend Micro scored at 100 percent in 11 out of the last 14 zero-day detection tests for Windows 7 and Windows 10, and 99 percent on the other three tests.

In fact, average scores on the AV Test of zero-day detection have been going up, from under 97 percent in early 2015 to over 99.7 percent during the last Windows 10 testing round.

Another problem with some tests is how they measure successful detection, said David Dufour, senior director of engineering at Webroot.

Signature-based antivirus can spot malware early, but behavior-based systems have to wait for the malware to actually try to do something.

"Many testing methodologies still rely on older techniques measuring the number of threats that land on a machine," he said, "Rather than taking the time to understand that zero day and unknown malware will take time to identify."

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