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‘Devil’s Ivy’ Bug Hits IoT Devices; China Begins VPN Crackdown

Posted July 20th, 2017 at 12:57 pm (UTC-4)
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Today’s Tech Sightings: ​Millions of IoT Devices Hit by ‘Devil’s Ivy’ Bug in Open Source Code Library Cybersecurity experts have been warning about potential risks to Internet of Things (IoT) devices for months. Now, millions of IoT devices, including Axis Communications’ security cameras, are vulnerable to remote attacks because of a flaw in a widely-used […]

Facebook Rejects Pakistan Policy Change; ‘GhostCtrl’ Malware Returns

Posted July 18th, 2017 at 12:01 pm (UTC-4)
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Today’s Tech Sightings: Facebook Denies Pakistan Policy Change Request Facebook informed the Pakistani government it was not interested in complying with its request to change authentication policies from email addresses to telephone numbers. Last week, Pakistan asked Facebook to make the change in order to track fake account owners and those who engage in hate […]

Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Give Away Your Cellphone Number

Posted July 14th, 2017 at 11:30 am (UTC-4)
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Cellphone numbers are slowly becoming personal identifiers – a role all-important social security and national numbers have fulfilled for decades. But these mobile gateways to your life are left unprotected in an age of hacking, data mining, and sheer negligence. For the past 50, 60, 70 years, social security numbers have been the key that […]

Report: AI Will Deepen Social Divides; India Leads Global Facebook Use

Posted July 13th, 2017 at 12:33 pm (UTC-4)
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Today’s Tech Sightings: New Report Says Robots, AI Will Make Social Inequality Even Worse A new report from UK charity Sutton warns that developments in automation and artificial intelligence will deepen the divide between rich and poor in the UK unless the government takes action. The report suggests it will be easier for richer people […]

Millions of Verizon Records Leaked; Tech Giants Rally for Net Neutrality

Posted July 12th, 2017 at 12:51 pm (UTC-4)
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Today’s Tech Sightings: Millions of Verizon Customer Records Exposed in Security Lapse Up to 14 million Verizon subscriber records were left unprotected on an Amazon storage server in Israel. An employee of Israel-based NICE Systems left the information unsecured on the server and available for download with little difficulty. The leak includes sensitive records of […]

China Eyes VPN Ban; Wednesday Set as Net Neutrality Day of Action

Posted July 11th, 2017 at 12:30 pm (UTC-4)
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Today’s Tech Sightings: China Will Block All VPNs by February 2018 The Chinese government has notified internet carriers that they have until February 1, 2018 to block all Virtual Private Networks (VPN) connections and shut down unauthorized VPN operators. Thanks to the country’s Great Firewall, a lot of internet services, including Western social media networks […]

With Blockchain, Sub-Saharan Women Move Forward Without Bias

Posted February 24th, 2017 at 11:30 am (UTC-4)
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Blockchain, the technology underlying digital currency Bitcoin, is making it easier for Sub-Saharan African women farmers to establish their economic credentials and negotiate gender bias. If you are a woman farmer in Sub-Saharan Africa and you go to a bank to borrow, you have to bring like seven pieces of paper, you might have to […]

The Biggest Online Threats; Robots Help Sick Kids Attend School

Posted February 22nd, 2017 at 12:00 pm (UTC-4)
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Today’s Tech Sightings: The 15 Biggest Threats Online, Ranked A new report from the European Union Agency for Network and Information Security puts hacking for profit at the top of a list of leading online threats. The report says the trend will continue, aided by new tools and malware to boost the criminal business. Malware […]

The Benefit – or Not – of Health Trackers; Kaspersky Launches New OS

Posted February 21st, 2017 at 1:03 pm (UTC-4)
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Today’s Tech Sightings: Scientists Warn Health Apps Could Be Doing More Harm Than Good Health apps might encourage better lifestyles, but researchers warn many of the thousands of available apps – ranging from fitness trackers to insulin monitors often are not based in real science. Researchers say there is no way to determine if the […]

Suspected Russian Hackers Target Macs; a Visor for the Legally Blind

Posted February 15th, 2017 at 1:04 pm (UTC-4)
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Today’s Tech Sightings: Russian Cyberspies Blamed for US Election Hacks Now Targeting Macs Bitdefender cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a Mac OS Trojan that probably was used by the Russian hackers blamed for breaching the U.S. Democratic National Committee last year. The program, called Sofacy or X-Agent, has been around for other operating systems, but researchers […]