Tag: privacy-rights

Windows 8.1 to go RTM in “late August”

During its Worldwide Partner Conference in a rainy and humid Houston today, Windows CFO Tami Reller announced that Windows 8.1, the free update to Windows 8, will be made available to OEMs by “late August, ” with devices reaching the market by the holiday season. Windows 8 was released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012. Microsoft is promoting a faster release cadence across its entire range of products, and Windows 8.1 is arguably the first mass-market consumer product from the company that will benefit from this new release schedule. Read on Ars Technica | Comments

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Windows 8.1 to go RTM in “late August”

Attackers sign malware using crypto certificate stolen from Opera Software

Alan Cleaver Hackers penetrated network servers belonging to Opera Software, stole at least one digital certificate, and then used it to distribute malware that incorrectly appeared to be published by the browser maker. The attack was uncovered, halted, and contained on June 19, according to a short advisory  that Opera published Wednesday morning. While administrators have cleaned the system and have yet to find any evidence of any user data being compromised, the breach still had some troubling consequences. “The attackers were able to obtain at least one old and expired Opera code signing certificate, which they have used to sign some malware,” Wednesday’s advisory stated. “This has allowed them to distribute malicious software which incorrectly appears to have been published by Opera Software or appears to be the Opera browser. It is possible that a few thousand Windows users, who were using Opera between June 19 from 1.00 and 1.36 UTC , may automatically have received and installed the malicious software.” Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Attackers sign malware using crypto certificate stolen from Opera Software

Microsoft, like Google, asks secret court if it can publish data sharing total

In a new legal filing made public on Wednesday, Microsoft submitted a motion (PDF) to the notoriously secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) saying that the company “continues to seek—to correct the misimpression, furthered by such inaccurate media reporting, that it provides the United States Government with direct access to its servers and network infrastructure and, thereby, indiscriminately discloses Microsoft users’ information to the Government.” The filing was submitted on June 19, 2013, just one day after Google’s similar motion . Like Google, Microsoft said it “seeks to report aggregate information about [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] orders and [FISA Amendments Act] directives separately from all other local, state, and federal law enforcement demands.” Tech companies are presumably attempting to get FISC to allow them to release this information so that they can show there isn’t a hand-in-glove relationship between these corporations and the federal government. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Microsoft, like Google, asks secret court if it can publish data sharing total

Hands-on with Windows 8.1 Preview: Windows 8 done right

Late last month, Microsoft announced a raft of interface changes that Windows 8.1 would introduce. We’ve been giving them a spin. As you might guess from the name, Windows 8.1 is an update to (and improvement on) Windows 8. The new user interface introduced in that operating system—the Start screen, touch-friendly “Modern” apps, the charms bar—is retained in Windows 8.1. What we see is a refinement and streamlining of these concepts. The new Start screen is a pleasing evolution of the old one. The differences are visible as soon as you log in. In 8.1, the Start screen offers a lot more flexibility over layout and tile sizing. By default, the Weather tile takes advantage of this, using a new double-height tile size to show the forecasts for both today and tomorrow, in addition to the current conditions. Read 22 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Hands-on with Windows 8.1 Preview: Windows 8 done right

Encrypted e-mail: How much annoyance will you tolerate to keep the NSA away?

Aurich Lawson In an age of smartphones and social networking, e-mail may strike many as quaint. But it remains the vehicle that millions of people use every day to send racy love letters, confidential business plans, and other communications both sender and receiver want to keep private. Following last week’s revelations of a secret program that gives the National Security Agency (NSA) access to some e-mails sent over Gmail, Hotmail, and other services—and years after it emerged that the NSA had gained access to full fiber-optic taps of raw Internet traffic—you may be wondering what you can do to keep your messages under wraps. The answer is public key encryption, and we’ll show you how to use it. The uses of asymmetry The full extent of the cooperation between the NSA and various technology companies is unclear. It will probably remain that way for the foreseeable future. For the time being, however, it seems likely that the standard cryptographic tools used to secure data “in flight”—that is to say, the SSL that protects data traveling between machines on the Internet—remain secure as long as certain best practices are used. Read 55 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Encrypted e-mail: How much annoyance will you tolerate to keep the NSA away?

How OS X “Mavericks” works its power-saving magic

Apple execs talk up the new features in OS X Mavericks. At yesterday’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) keynote, Apple made some bold claims about the future of battery life in its laptops. A new 13-inch Macbook Air, for instance, should now run a full 12 hours on a single charge , up from 7 in the previous model. Assuming that testing bears out Apple’s numbers, how did the company do it? The obvious part of the answer is “Haswell”—but that turns out to be only part of the story. The power efficiency gains found in Intel’s new Haswell CPUs should provide modest gains in battery life, and such gains were widely expected. Back in January, Intel claimed that the new Haswell CPUs featured the “largest generation-to-generation battery life increase in the history of Intel” and said that the chips were the first of its architectures designed “from the ground up” for Ultrabooks and tablets. The new chips run at lower clockspeeds and at lower wattages. Less expected was the announcement of OS X 10.9 “Mavericks” and its own focus on mobile power usage. While Apple made a few comments during the keynote about the new technologies meant to enable longer battery life, more information appeared later in the day with the separate release of a Core Technology Overview (PDF) document that offers a high-level look at some of the Mavericks internals. Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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How OS X “Mavericks” works its power-saving magic

Apple unveils OS X 10.9, “Mavericks”

Apple today unveiled OS X 10.9 at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), showing off the first major revision of the Mac’s operating system since last year’s Mountain Lion . Apple has apparently run out of cat names and is now naming releases after places in California, where OS X is developed. The new OS X is thus named ” Mavericks .” Developers are being given a preview version of Mavericks today. It will be available to the general public in the fall. New features include tabs in the Finder, allowing multiple Finder windows to be drawn together in tabs. Apple is bringing tagging to documents—any tags you add to a document will appear in the Finder sidebar and in iCloud. Multiple tags can be added to each document, and these tags will allow new search capabilities. Mavericks will make life easier for users who have multiple monitors. Menus will be spread across the different displays, and users will be able to take a window full-screen on one display without disturbing the desktop on another display. HDTVs connected to Apple TV boxes can also act as displays. Mission Control has been “super charged for multiple displays,” Apple said, making it easier to drag apps and windows from one monitor to another. Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Apple unveils OS X 10.9, “Mavericks”