Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Venmo, the popular mobile payment service, has redesigned its app. That’s normally news you could safely ignore, but this announcement is worth a closer look. In addition to making some navigational tweaks and adding new purchase protections, the PayPal-owned platform is finally shutting down its global social feed, where the application […]
Tag: Biz & IT
An explosive spyware report shows limits of iOS, Android security
Enlarge / A report this week indicates that the problem of high-caliber spyware is far more widespread than previously feared. (credit: Pau Barrena | Getty Images) The shadowy world of private spyware has long caused alarm in cybersecurity circles, as authoritarian governments have repeatedly been caught targeting the smartphones of activists, journalists, and political rivals […]
Kaseya gets master decryptor to help customers still suffering from REvil attack
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images ) Kaseya—the remote management software seller at the center of a ransomware operation that struck as many as 1, 500 downstream networks—said it has obtained a decryptor that should successfully restore data encrypted during the Fourth of July weekend attack. Affiliates of REvil, one of the Internet’s most cutthroat ransomware groups, […]
AT&T nightmare: Woman had to wait 3+ months for broadband at new home
Enlarge / Lovie Newman tells News 4 San Antonio about having to wait nearly four months for AT&T Internet service. (credit: News 4 San Antonio) AT&T reportedly forced a San Antonio woman to wait nearly four months to get Internet service at her new home, and she didn’t get close to solving the problem until […]
Saudi Aramco confirms data leak after $50 million cyber ransom demand
Enlarge / The Hawiyah Natural Gas Liquids Recovery Plant, operated by Saudi Aramco, in Hawiyah, Saudi Arabia, on Monday, June 28, 2021. (credit: Bloomberg | Getty Images) Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil producer, confirmed on Wednesday that some of its company files had been leaked via a contractor, after a cyber extortionist claimed to […]
Ars AI headline experiment finale—we came, we saw, we used a lot of compute time
Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images) We may have bitten off more than we could chew, folks. An Amazon engineer told me that when he heard what I was trying to do with Ars headlines, the first thing he thought was that we had chosen a deceptively hard problem. He warned that I needed […]
Home and office Routers come under attack by China state hackers, France warns
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) China state hackers are compromising large numbers of home and office routers for use in a vast and ongoing attack against organizations in France, authorities from that county said. The hacking group—known in security circles as APT31, Zirconium, Panda, and other names—has historically conducted espionage campaigns targeting government, financial, aerospace and […]
Lyft ditches Google Maps for Here, partners with Argo AI
Enlarge / Lyft will switch its map provider from Google to Here. (credit: Lyft) The ride hailing company Lyft is changing up its maps, which until now have been powered by Google. Lyft will now use Here instead. Lyft says the switch means a better search database for places and addresses as well as more […]
Two-for-Tuesday vulnerabilities send Windows and Linux users scrambling
Enlarge The world woke up on Tuesday to two new vulnerabilities—one in Windows and the other in Linux—that allow hackers with a toehold in a vulnerable system to bypass OS security restrictions and access sensitive resources. As operating systems and applications become harder to hack, successful attacks typically require two or more vulnerabilities. One vulnerability […]
Our AI headline experiment continues: Did we break the machine?
Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images) We’re in phase three of our machine-learning project now—that is, we’ve gotten past denial and anger, and we’re now sliding into bargaining and depression. I’ve been tasked with using Ars Technica’s trove of data from five years of headline tests, which pair two ideas against each other in […]