Category: reader

Spotify Now Provides Unlimited Free Music on its Desktop App

Until now, Spotify’s free accounts provided unlimited as-supported streaming via its desktop client for six months, until it then imposed a cap on your streaming. Now, though, that cap is being scrapped. Read more…        

View original post here:
Spotify Now Provides Unlimited Free Music on its Desktop App

Point-of-sale malware infecting Target found hiding in plain sight

Cyberslayer Independent security journalist Brian Krebs has uncovered important new details about the hack that compromised as many as 110 million Target customers, including the malware that appears to have infected point-of-sale systems and the way attackers first broke in. According to a post published Wednesday to KrebsOnSecurity, point-of-sale (POS) malware was uploaded to Symantec-owned ThreatExpert.com on December 18, the same day that  Krebs broke the news of the massive Target breach . An unidentified source told Krebs that the Windows share point name “ttcopscli3acs” analyzed by the malware scanning website matches the sample analyzed by the malware scanning website . The thieves used the user name “Best1_user” to log in and download stolen card data. Their password was “BackupU$r”. KrebsonSecurity The class of malware identified by Krebs is often referred to as a memory scraper, because it monitors the computer memory of POS terminals used by retailers. The malware searches for credit card data before it has been encrypted and sent to remote payment processors. The malware then “scrapes” the plain-text entries and dumps them into a database. Krebs continued: Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Continue reading here:
Point-of-sale malware infecting Target found hiding in plain sight

Google Play Movies & TV comes to iOS, minus the store and offline support

Google loves itself some iOS apps. Its newest addition to Apple’s platform is Google Play Movies & TV , Google’s video content store. To call the app a “store” on iOS is a bit of a misnomer, as buying content from the iOS app isn’t possible, thanks to Apple’s restrictions. What it  can do is play existing content that you’ve purchased on an Android device or through the Google Play Web interface . There isn’t much to the app. Movies and TV shows are broken out into separate categories, and everything is displayed as a large thumbnail. The individual content pages show a short description, a minimal list of credits, and the all-important “play” button. The app supports Google’s Chromecast via a button in the top right corner, and that’s about it. It’s simple, but a movie player doesn’t really need to be complicated. Compared to the Android version, there are a few things missing. The lack of a store means Google’s recommendation engine is missing too, which leads to of a lot of blank-looking pages. The biggest omission is offline support—there is no way to download a video for later offline viewing, so make sure you have a great Internet connection before pressing “play.” In fact, the app doesn’t work over a cellular connection at all—Wi-Fi is required. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Visit site:
Google Play Movies & TV comes to iOS, minus the store and offline support

Creator of PGP e-mail encryption making secure Android “Blackphone”

Blackphone Phil Zimmerman, creator of PGP e-mail encryption , is leading a team of security industry executives building an Android phone with a variety of built-in privacy tools. “I’ve been interested in secure telephony for longer than I’ve been interested in secure e-mail,” Zimmerman said in a video on so-called Blackphone ‘s website. “I had to wait for the rest of the technology infrastructure to catch up to make it possible to do secure telephony. PGP was kind of a detour for me while waiting for the rest of the technology to catch up to make really good secure telephony possible.” The narrator of the Blackphone video ominously says, “Technology was supposed to make our lives better. Instead we have lost our privacy—we have become enslaved.” The Blackphone website says the phone will use “PrivatOS,” an Android-based operating system, while letting users “make and receive secure phone calls; exchange secure texts; exchange and store secure files; have secure video chat; browse privately; and anonymize your activity through a VPN.” Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

See more here:
Creator of PGP e-mail encryption making secure Android “Blackphone”

Critical Microsoft, Adobe, and Oracle updates: Like dental floss for your PC

drueckert.com I was still wiping the sleep from my eyes this morning when the nagging voice kicked in: before trawling the Internet for news, you better install yesterday’s security updates. It wasn’t a pleasant thought, given the raft of patches released yesterday by Microsoft, Adobe, and Oracle for a variety of products. But as someone who has covered computer security for eight years, I’ve come to make updating a top priority. And for good reason. A large percentage of the booby-trapped websites that surreptitiously install malware on visitors’ machines exploit vulnerabilities that have already been patched. The recent hack on Yahoo’s ad network , for instance, targeted two security flaws in the Java software framework that Oracle had fixed 17 and 24 months ago, Trend Micro reported in a blog post . Those who visited compromised Yahoo servers with up-to-date systems were immune to those attacks. By contrast, people using unpatched software were exposed to malicious payloads that installed the Dorkbot and Gamarue trojans, as well as malware that turned visitors’ machines into Bitcoin miners. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

See the original post:
Critical Microsoft, Adobe, and Oracle updates: Like dental floss for your PC

Chrome updates bring data compression to all Android and iOS users

Google has been testing data compression in mobile versions of Chrome for what seems like ages , but today it’s finally ready to bring that efficiency to the masses. Both the Android and iOS versions of the browser now let all users squeeze website content to reduce their data use — and, in some cases, their phone bills . There’s also a pair of platform-specific upgrades in the pipeline. Android fans will get to create web shortcuts on their home screens, while iOS users will see the automatic translation bar that has been available on Android since last year. Whichever version of Chrome you’re running, you’ll want to grab its latest update through one of the source links. Filed under: Cellphones , Tablets , Mobile , Google Comments Source: App Store , Google Play

Originally posted here:
Chrome updates bring data compression to all Android and iOS users

The 22 Most Misleading Viral Photos (Explained)

By CRACKED Readers  Published: January 15th, 2014  Viral photos: We love them, we hate them, and while we’re still hating them we pass on the information we learned. But, in our continuing quest to sift through the bullshit for you, we asked our readers to debunk some of the most famous viral photos

Read the original post:
The 22 Most Misleading Viral Photos (Explained)

Google Chrome 32 Is Out: Noisy Tabs Indicators, Supervised Users

An anonymous reader writes “Google today released Chrome version 32 for Windows, Mac, and Linux. The new version includes tab noise indicators, a new look for Windows 8 Metro mode, and automatic blocking of malware downloads. You can update to the latest release now using the browser’s built-in silent updater, or download it directly from google.com/chrome.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read this article:
Google Chrome 32 Is Out: Noisy Tabs Indicators, Supervised Users

The NSA Uses Radio Waves to Monitor 100,000 Computers Without Internet

We already know that the NSA intercepts computer deliveries to introduce backdoors into hardware , but now a story in the New York Times suggests that the Agency uses radio technology to spy on 100, 000 computers that aren’t connected to the internet. Read more…        

See more here:
The NSA Uses Radio Waves to Monitor 100,000 Computers Without Internet