Users of Google’s Malaysia website got redirected Tuesday to a hacked site. A Google Malaysia spokesperson told Reuters the company has contacted the group that administers the domain name to address the issue. Likewise, Chinese hackers are said to be spying on governments in Southeast Asia and India, according to researchers at the Internet security company FireEye.
According to a new report from the Internet security company Symantec, in 2014 directed attacks and data breaches increased 40 percent over the previous year, with five out of six large companies being targeted by cybercriminals. The report said more than 317 million new pieces of malware were created in 2014 – nearly one million new threats per day.
Two new reports released this week said the vast majority of hack attacks are successful because users click on suspicious and tainted links in their emails, companies don’t patch regularly for security flaws, or technicians fail to configure the systems correctly.
Google has just added a new security feature to its Android devices – a “trusted Voice” smart lock that uses your voice as a password. However, when the feature is enabled, users get a warning that “Trusted Voice” is not as secure as traditional lock screen methods.
Virtual Reality (VR) is evolving quickly, offering intriguing new perspectives and possibilities for interacting with everyday things. But it remains unclear who will ultimately use this technology, other than early adopters. Never the less, a new report from Digi-Capital predicts that the VR market will grow into a $30 billion market by 2020
Apple claims it wants to free people from the tyranny of their smartphones, but its watch only brings more bells and whistles into their lives, adding to the distractions already created by mobile devices. Writer Stephen Pulvirent offers some dos and don’ts to keep Apple watch wearers from becoming a beeping, tapping, peeking nuisance.
Aida Akl is a journalist working on VOA's English Webdesk. She has written on a wide range of topics, although her more recent contributions have focused on technology. She has covered both domestic and international events since the mid-1980s as a VOA reporter and international broadcaster.
Like it or not, some of your personal data is probably on the Internet. And even if you diligently try to protect the information about you that’s “out there,” it could still end up in the hands of an identity thief. Whether it’s on a compromised company server, or on a laptop left on a bus, or a USB drive dropped in a parking lot, your data isn’t entirely under your control. But if an identity thief finds it, don’t panic. There are steps you can take to fight back.
The first line of defense is prevention.
Begin, at the very least, with some type of current anti-malware and anti-virus tools, as well as the latest security patches for your operating system. What identity thieves are unable to get off Internet servers, they will try to get directly from victims through phishing attacks, said Jeff Blyskal, Consumer Reports’ Senior Editor in California.
Unwary Internet surfers landing on a malicious website could end up with malware on their computers, as can users inadvertently downloading something, or opening an unsolicited email attachment that looks legitimate but is in fact loaded with malware.
“The ‘success’ of malware depends on it remaining undetected, so malware writers take great care to make sure that there are few, if any, obvious indicators that a PC has been compromised,” said Andy Browne, Malware Labs Director at Lavasoft. “Even if you can identify that an infection has taken place, it’s often too late – the damage may [have] already been done.”
Over time, the infected PC can yield a treasure trove of user names, passwords, addresses, credit card numbers, bank account details and other critical information that is “surreptitiously siphoned off the compromised computer as they are typed in,” he explained.
Don’t open unsolicited email and attachments or click on attached links from people you don’t know, advised Blyskal, especially if the sender claims to be your financial institution requesting key information.
“Even if it looks like it’s from your bank or from your credit card company or somebody who looks official, don’t click on the links in there because sometimes when you do that it links to a crook’s or a hacker’s … website,” he said. “And then when you go punching in your name and your password, you’re giving it to the bad guys basically, so don’t click on those things.”
In the United States, that could mean giving away your social security number. A stolen social security number could allow the thief to take out a loan or earn income, taxable to the victim, or use medical services, which are in your name.
“That’s more insidious,” he added, “but it’s very rare. It’s only about … 0.25 percent of the population … that happens to in a given year.”
If an identity thief gets away with critical information, it is important to act quickly, said Browne.
“If someone believes they are a victim of identity fraud involving credit or debit cards, they must report it to their bank as soon as possible,” he advised. “The bank will investigate and report any criminal activity to the police. If someone is victim to another type of identity fraud, they must report the matter to the relevant organization.”
That also includes alerting all other related parties, filing a fraud alert, and freezing your credit report, said Blyskal.
“Put a security freeze on your credit report,” he added. A security freeze “basically shuts down access to anybody getting your credit report who doesn’t already have a business relationship with you.”
Once a security freeze is in place, a new lender trying to give the identity thief the credit information he might be asking for will not be able to access your credit reports. And if you decide to take out a loan, you’ll need to temporarily lift the freeze.
Don’t wait to be victimized. If you hear that your department store or health insurance company or bank has been compromised, get on the phone. Ask for a replacement card, especially if it is a debit card, which is more risky and troublesome, since the crooks can take the money out of your bank account.
You’ll get your money back eventually, said Blyskal, because “the bank is not supposed to give your money to people who are not authorized to have it.”
That might take a couple of days, though. But don’t panic, he advised. Take the matter seriously and take action.
“If you see unauthorized charges, jump on it and protect yourself,” he said.
Aida Akl is a journalist working on VOA's English Webdesk. She has written on a wide range of topics, although her more recent contributions have focused on technology. She has covered both domestic and international events since the mid-1980s as a VOA reporter and international broadcaster.
A Pew Research Center survey of more than 1,000 teens aged 13-17 found that 91 percent of them go online using their mobile devices. Black and Latino teens used the Internet more frequently, with 34 percent of black teens and 32 percent of Latino teens saying they go online “almost constantly.”
Barely a month old, a one-armed robot named Sawyer has already made a name for itself as the new kid on the robotics block. Prospective employers may want to take a look at his skills. Sawyer can assemble goods on a factory floor day after day without tiring, taking toilet breaks, or asking for a raise. But one problem Sawyer can’t solve is how to revolutionize manufacturing.
A new report by Forrester Research Inc. say retailers should stop wasting so much time courting millennials because they’re often broke. Instead, they should target older shoppers with more money to spend, the analysts say.
In its quest to generate new revenue Google-owned YouTube will offer a commercial-free paid subscription service. Speculation is YouTube will charge about $10 a month for the no-ads plan.
The startup social network Kakaxi hopes to “link food to the story behind it” by utilizing devices “planted” in the farm that allow farmers to share time lapse videos of crop growth. It will also record measures like temperature, humidity, day length, sap flow and soil conditions in its database.
Warner Bros. is joining one of the hottest trends in video games: combining the power of physical toys sold at retail with video games that can bring those toys to life. Its a battle for modern kids who are growing up in the digital age.
Aida Akl is a journalist working on VOA's English Webdesk. She has written on a wide range of topics, although her more recent contributions have focused on technology. She has covered both domestic and international events since the mid-1980s as a VOA reporter and international broadcaster.
Researchers with Dutch security company Fox-IT found that advertisements distributed by Engage Lab, one of Google’s advertising partners in Bulgaria, redirect users to the Web-based Nuclear Exploit Kit. This particular exploit attempts to install malware on users’ computers by targeting vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash Player, Oracle Java and Microsoft Silverlight.
When Ozzie the goose broke his leg, it eventually had to be amputated at the joint, which left the bird struggling. But an animal lover launched an appeal for help on South African radio station RSG. Three tech companies responded and came together to give Ozzie a 3-D-printed prosthetic leg and a new lease on life.
Google has denied claims by a coalition of U.S. consumer advocacy groups that its YouTube Kids mobile app targets young children with deceptive advertising. The coalition said the app is so full of commercials that it is hard to differentiate entertainment from advertising.
Researchers with enterprise security company Veracode, found that Internet of Things (IoT) household devices they tested are significantly lacking in security and could potentially open the door to exploits, data theft and even stalking. In some cases, IoT devices come with default passwords that are often left unchanged.
What happens to your information when it gets hacked, stolen and abused? Security company Bitglass recently did an experiment to track what happens to data, using fake information. The company deposited the data on a number of file sharing sites and websites frequented by cybercriminals. In 12 days, the data was accessed from five continents and 22 countries.
Mozilla’s Firefox 37.0 Internet browser was recently patched to fix a critical security bug that broke HTTPS encryption without the user’s knowledge. But as problems persist, Mozilla has disabled the encryption system in version 37.0.1 and will re-enable it in the future.
Microsoft recently applied for a “Microsoft Payments” license that would enable it to be a money transmitter in the United States – a move that suggests the company is looking to develop its own mobile payments platform to take on Apple Pay and the upcoming Samsung Pay.
Aida Akl is a journalist working on VOA's English Webdesk. She has written on a wide range of topics, although her more recent contributions have focused on technology. She has covered both domestic and international events since the mid-1980s as a VOA reporter and international broadcaster.
These two tech giants don’t agree on much, but writer Chris O’Brien argues that Google and Apple, both fierce competitors in the smartphone market, see smartphones as a malady inflicting phone addiction and anti-social behavior on society. And the two giants, both heavily invested in wearable tech, suggest that wearable computing is the answer.
Olivier Janssens, elected last month to the board of the Bitcoin Foundation that promotes bitcoin development, said the organization is “effectively bankrupt.” Two other board members took issue with that statement, saying the group is not bankrupt, although it needs restructuring.
Google is reportedly discussing possible partnerships to establish a global network that would allow Americans to use their mobile phones internationally without incurring expensive roaming costs.
A new flexible and non-flammable battery that produces two volts of electricity can recharge a phone to full capacity in about a minute. Stanford University researchers who developed the aluminum-ion battery said their product has the potential to replace existing lithium-ion batteries, which occasionally burst into flames.
Like fashion, technology seems to recycle old ideas after a while. Some of those ideas may have been ahead of their time when they first appeared or they simply ran into stiff opposition. Either way, as time moves forward, ideas evolve and re-emerge as new products. Writer Ron Miller looks at some of them.
As the world moves closer toward a fully-automated, hopefully smarter future, writer Samantha Murphy Kelly cooks up a wish list of some of the inventions that she’d like to see that could greatly impact people’s lives.
Apple is displaying its new watch under glass in its stores, as a gentle nudge to customers to buy the product online instead of spending hours – sometimes days – waiting in line in front of stores. The move reflects a significant shift in the mindset for Apple Store purchases.
Aida Akl is a journalist working on VOA's English Webdesk. She has written on a wide range of topics, although her more recent contributions have focused on technology. She has covered both domestic and international events since the mid-1980s as a VOA reporter and international broadcaster.
An illustration for the game ‘Hush’ depicts a mother and her infant, courtesy Jamie Antonisse.
Twenty one years ago, on April 7, 1994, Hutu militias armed with clubs and machetes began a 100-day genocidal massacre of Rwanda’s minority Tutsi. When they were done, an estimated 800,000 people had perished.
In 2008, Jamie Antonisse, then a student at the University of Southern California’s Interactive Media MFA program, selected for a class project the ideas of “human rights” and “singing” as a topic and mechanic for the experimental game Hush.
The more he thought about it, singing appealed to Antonisse as an “empathetic, emotional mechanic.”
“What if this game was not about trying to solve a human rights crisis?” he said in an email interview. “What if it was about trying to survive? What does it mean, what does it feel like to sing for your survival?”
The idea gave birth to Hush, a game inspired by the horrors of the Rwandan genocide that had “crystallized” in his mind as “one of the most terrible [and under-reported] tragedies in recent history.”
Hush, a four-month collaboration that included Antonisse, Devon Johnson, Chris Baily, Joey Orton and Brittany Pirello, is about “feeling powerless in the face of violent oppression,” said Antonisse.
The award-winning game puts the player in the role of a mother in a Rwandan Tutsi community trying to calm her baby with a lullaby. As Hutu militias descend on her village, she continues to sing, shielding her child from the terror outside.
Few games focused on human rights and social action at the time. Those that did were “very idealistic attempts to fix the problem of human rights abuse logically,” he added.
Antonisse said that as an outsider, he was uncomfortable creating a piece of historical fiction about the Rwandan tragedy. But he found people wanted more games along these lines “despite our moral questions surrounding this game – our uncertainty about whether we had the ‘right’ to create a piece about this tragedy without first-hand experience.”
Antonisse said Hush has been taught in game design courses across the United States “as an example of how one can address a serious subject through gameplay.”
“Hopefully it has inspired other people to make games that are more than power fantasies, games that tell stories of the disenfranchised and the underserved,” he said.
Antonisse later got a chance to work on two other games – Spectre, which was inspired by his grandmother’s battle with dementia, and the Treasure of Bell Island, a game intended for soldiers returning from war with traumatic brain injuries.
Gamers as storytellers, not spectators
Thirty years since gaming entered pop culture, more games dealing with serious topics like preserving life, emotional trauma and human diversity are emerging.
A screenshot from the trailer for This War of Mine, courtesy 11 bit studios.
As games continue to evolve, they are becoming as much works of art as entertainment, said Pawel Miechowski, a senior writer at Poland’s 11 bit studios. Last year, his company released This War of Mine, a game inspired by the1992-96 Siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnian War and focuses on the hardships civilians must endure to stay alive as they are caught in the crossfire.
This War of Mine centers around the “human desire to live and [the] heavy emotional and physical difficulties people need to face to survive the siege of their city,” said Miechowski.
“Imagine yourself in such [a] situation, when you’re short on everything [food, water, medical care], but you still need to get those to save your friends or family,” he said. “And at the same time you want to stay human rather than turning into a bandit, stealing and robbing other civilians.”
Developers have since created an add-on to the game called War Child that features works from well-known artists. The additional component can be purchased for a low price; and all proceeds benefit U.K-based non-profit, War Child, which helps children in conflict zones.
Miechowski said these types of games can teach and can involve players interactively in telling serious stories, instead of treating them as spectators, as a movie would. In games, he said the player “is the storyteller. His/her actions and decisions create the … story and consequences of those decisions.”
He said perhaps it’s time for games to “grow up and be as mature [a] form of art as movies already are.”
“I’d like to think Hush is on the right side of that conversation,” Antonisse said, “and maybe helped get it going.”
“The idea of using game mechanics to help people through difficult situations is enormously interesting,” he said. “And I’d love to do more with that.”
Aida Akl is a journalist working on VOA's English Webdesk. She has written on a wide range of topics, although her more recent contributions have focused on technology. She has covered both domestic and international events since the mid-1980s as a VOA reporter and international broadcaster.
The Germanwings Flight 9525 that was deliberately slammed into the French Alps last week, killing 150 people, has ignited renewed calls among aviation experts to develop and deploy software that can control an aircraft and automatically steer it to safety if it loses altitude.
More than 200 Silicon Valley black leaders from nearly every big player in tech – Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook, among many others – gathered recently in Palo Alto, California for a “Silicon Valley Diversity Brunch.” The attendees, all successful black men and women in the tech sector, now want to help make it easier for a new generation of black tech workers to find acceptance and success in Silicon Valley.
New research from Yale University, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, found that people who searched online felt they had greater knowledge than those who used other sources to obtain information. The research, a result of a series of experiments involving more than 1,000 participants, showed that the Internet makes people think they are smarter.
Google will stop trusting digital certificates issued by the China Internet Network Information Center for its Chrome browser due to last week’s trust breach that led to the issuance of unauthorized credentials for Gmail and Google domains.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) said Wednesday the distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) that hit code-sharing site GitHub last week took place because someone tampering with traffic to Chinese sites that use JavaScript analytics and Baidu advertising tools replaced the code that sends data traffic to GitHub. The code-swapping happened because the Chinese websites were not using encrypted HTTPS traffic in their URLs, according to EFF software engineer Bill Budington.
A new feature from Facebook called Riff allows users to create short videos and add them to their news feeds with hashtags. The idea is to encourage friends to follow suit, adding more videos to tell their stories. The service is the latest move from Facebook toward undermining the popular YouTube as a destination for social videos.
South Korea is scrapping a 1999 law that required online vendors to adopt Microsoft ActiveX in order to use the Korea Information Security Agency cipher needed for online transactions. The requirement also forced all users to download Internet Explorer. Once a new SSL encryption system that supports all browsers is in place, South Koreans will be able to pick the browser of their choice.
Aida Akl is a journalist working on VOA's English Webdesk. She has written on a wide range of topics, although her more recent contributions have focused on technology. She has covered both domestic and international events since the mid-1980s as a VOA reporter and international broadcaster.
UltraHaptics, a British company, has come up with technology that uses sound waves to project sensations of tactile, three-dimensional shapes through the air and to the user. So for example, air pressure changes are perceived as suspended, tangible interfaces. That could potentially mean a person can recreate buttons and consoles wherever needed for remote control or a whole range of other possibilities.
Facebook is releasing an “accessibility toolkit” that outlines its policies on disability and making the service accessible to all. The company’s Empathy Lab focuses on understanding accessibility needs and designing mobile and desktop components for people with disabilities in mind.
Apple’s recycling program, launched in 18 retail shops in China, lets customers trade in old devices to upgrade to more recent products. But according to consumers, Apple is only paying about $240 for iPhone 5 returns – and less for older models. That’s about 1,500 yuan. To put things in perspective, the iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6, and iPhone 5s cost 6,088 yuan ($973), 5,288 yuan ($846) and 4,488 yuan ($718), respectively.
Following a study done in collaboration between Google and the University of California, Berkeley, Google disabled up to 192 Chrome browser extensions that surreptitiously injected rogue ads into websites visited by users. For the uninitiated, some of these ad installers can be deadly for your computer; and removing them can be a real nightmare.
Facebook has rejected a report from the University of Leuven’s Center of Interdisciplinary Law and ICT in Belgium that claimed Facebook’s privacy policy violates European Union laws. The social media giant said the authors never contacted Facebook to seek clarifications or solicit comment. The report claimed Facebook’s information-gathering for commercial gain has been expanded to include smartphone tracking.
If you haven’t visited com.google yet, it’s the tech giant’s wacky, April Fools’ Day statement, so to speak. Com.google basically presents visitors with the real Google site in reverse, as in mirror mode.
Aida Akl is a journalist working on VOA's English Webdesk. She has written on a wide range of topics, although her more recent contributions have focused on technology. She has covered both domestic and international events since the mid-1980s as a VOA reporter and international broadcaster.
Technology trade shows have a name for them: so-called booth babes, meaning scantily-dressed women hired to tout tech gadgets. Now, some associations are banning this culture, saying it is demeaning to women. Adding insult to injury, a recent study from research group Joint Venture Silicon Valley showed that women in Silicon Valley get paid on average 39 percent less than their male counterparts.
A new partnership between Google and Johnson & Johnson seeks to advance surgical robotics using Google’s robotics companies, some of which have created rescue bots of all kinds. The partners hope to build a better system to help surgeons get real-time analytics for a more informed decision-making process.
They might be on their way to becoming an aviation nuisance in some parts of the world, but drones are putting up a good flight in others. Unmanned aerial vehicles are helping monitor and protect wildlife, deliver medicines to remote areas and enhance emergency response, among other good things.
Start-up DroneDeploy, who wants to make farms and other businesses more efficient, has launched a new mobile app that is compatible with the world’s most popular drones. The app allows for the automation of drone flights, data-crunching and delivery, and basically makes it less of a chore to operate a commercial drone.
A relentless distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) targeted code repository GitHub for days. Normal service was restored Monday. And while no group has taken responsibility for the GitHub attacks, there are indications that the attackers – China or its sympathizers – didn’t appreciate dissidents using GitHub to host software that helps people get around China’s Great Firewall.
Joining the Internet of Things (IoT) bandwagon, IBM will invest three billion dollars over the next four years to build an IoT unit. The new unit’s first task will be establishing a cloud-based open platform that will make various services and tools available to developers and manufacturers.
Aida Akl is a journalist working on VOA's English Webdesk. She has written on a wide range of topics, although her more recent contributions have focused on technology. She has covered both domestic and international events since the mid-1980s as a VOA reporter and international broadcaster.
Millions of people around the world play Minecraft or use its textured cubes to unleash their creativity, sometimes recreating entire cities. But UN-Habitat has taken Minecraft to a whole new level to involve young people in renovating their world.
A couple of years ago, the Lotus Gardens in Mumbai, India looked like this:
The Lotus Gardens is shown in Mumbai before being redesigned. (Mumbai Environmental and Social Network)
Now the space looks like this:
The new, redesigned playground at Mumbai’s Lotus Gardens in India.. (Mumbai Environmental and Social Network)
The transformation is the result of a unique partnership between UN-Habitat — the United Nations Program for Sustainable Cities and Minecraft creator Mojang to redesign run-down public spaces in developing countries.
“We use Minecraft for community participation within a broader global program on public space,” said Pontius Westerberg, UN-Habitat‘s Transparency Affairs and Digital Projects Officer in Kenya. “Public space is really important for the well-functioning of cities; and we’re working globally, mainly in the Global South, on improving and building new public spaces.”
While UN-Habitat does not engage Minecraft players for its renovation projects, Westerberg told TECHtonics in a Skype interview that “Minecraft is a really good tool for that” because it “doesn’t require very much prior computer or IT knowledge.”
Recalling a project in Haiti, he said UN-Habitat worked with people who “barely, if at all, used computers.”
“And after a couple of hours with Minecraft, they can really start expressing themselves,” he said. “It’s a fantastically easy medium to pick up.”
Westerberg said he was amazed at how quickly the people he collaborates get the hang of Minecraft — sometimes in a couple of days. “And that is kind of enough to really get some really good ideas about how to improve public spaces,” he said.
A project typically starts when city authorities come forward with a request to rehabilitate a public site. UN-Habitat then works with city authorities and local communities and partners to implement the project.
In the process, UN-Habitat looks for people who “would like to express their ideas about how the site should be redesigned or redeveloped,” said Westerberg. And the main focus is to work with people who are part of the community that is being developed.
“Depending on the site, it will be the urban poor, in a sense,” he explained.
Westerberg stressed the need to involve the community in the design and maintenance of public spaces.
“You basically get much better outcomes when the people who live and work around the space are involved from the beginning,” he explained. “And it is basically a democratic issue. It’s about community participation.”
But inviting young people to meetings to get their opinions on redesign or urban planning can be a challenge. Young people, said Westerberg, often don’t show up for the meetings or are too shy to speak up when they do attend.
To work around this problem, UN-Habitat collects all the necessary information, maps and pictures about the space that is to be redesigned and then sends it to FyreUK — a group Westerberg described as a Minecraft collective, of sorts.
“They will basically design the space as it currently looks, but in Minecraft,” he said. “And then we run community participation workshops with young people, where they are … asked to redesign the space in Minecraft.”
Teams collaborate on a Minecraft design at a UN-Habitat workshop in Lima, Peru. (Eugenio Gastelum, UN-Habitat)
Depending on the size of a given project, community workshops could involve up to 60 people, as was the case in a Lima, Peru project. But Westerberg said smaller groups are more manageable.
“Usually what happens is that we don’t have good enough Internet connection to do it on a server,” he said. “So in most places … we have basically had a local copy of the Minecraft map, put it on computers — usually we have two-to-three people sitting around this computer and then they’ll kind of work together in a group in that way.”
That’s how the dilapidated town square in Katmandu Valley’s Kirtipur in Nepal was renovated. This is what it looked like before the renovation:
Dey Pukhu in Kirtipur, Nepal, before it was renovated. (UN-Habitat)
When the idea started, UN-Habitat worked with young people and local groups to run a community participation process to redesign the town square.
That was in December 2013. The work was completed a few months ago.
A combo shows the redesign concept in Minecraft (bottom) and the real world (top) redesign of a public space in Kirtipur, Nepal. (UN-Habitat)
UN-Habitat is now working on a new project in Nepal — renovating a run-down park on the edge of Kirtipur — with community participation. Its collaboration with Mojang, which was recently bought by Microsoft, is expected to continue — at least for the time being, said Westergerg.
If you want to help or to learn more about these projects, visit blockbyblock.org.
Aida Akl is a journalist working on VOA's English Webdesk. She has written on a wide range of topics, although her more recent contributions have focused on technology. She has covered both domestic and international events since the mid-1980s as a VOA reporter and international broadcaster.
