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"The Joker malware circumvents the Google Play app vetting process through a combination of code tweaks, execution method variation, and changes to how it downloads the payload allowing it to function, steal information, and trigger the WAP service sign-ups. Google has removed the 16 infected apps from the Play Store and disabled them on devices where they are installed, thought to be in the region of 120,000 devices. "

"Ring is effectively building the largest corporate-owned, civilian-installed surveillance network that the US has ever seen. An estimated 400,000 Ring devices were sold in December 2019 alone, and that was before the across-the-board boom in online retail sales during the pandemic. Amazon is cagey about how many Ring cameras are active at any one point in time, but estimates drawn from Amazon's sales data place yearly sales in the hundreds of millions. The always-on video surveillance network extends even further when you consider the millions of users on Ring's affiliated crime reporting app, Neighbors, which allows people to upload content from Ring and non-Ring devices."

"Costco customers at four of the retailer's Chicago-area warehouses may have had their payment information compromised after employees discovered five card-skimming devices during routine PIN pad inspections at the end of August. "We promptly removed the skimmers, notified law enforcement, and engaged a forensics firm to analyze the devices," A Costco spokesperson told FOX Business in a statement. "It appears that these skimmers had the ability to capture information on the magnetic stripe of a payment card, including name, card number, expiration date, and CVV.""

"A duo of researchers at the University of Waterloo and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have turned this old assumption of impracticality on its head with their description of a Wi-Fi localization exploit they call Wi-Peep. They have outlined how an inconspicuous and inexpensive device can locate hidden Wi-Fi devices without their cooperation."

"What distinguishes Fog Reveal from other cellphone location technologies used by police is that it follows the devices through their advertising IDs, unique numbers assigned to each device. These numbers do not contain the name of the phone's user, but can be traced to homes and workplaces to help police establish pattern-of-life analyses."

"But on the downside it has led to a loss of face-to-face contact, which can have negative consequences, particularly when it comes to education. What's more, there are also health impacts to consider. New scientific research indicates that spending large amounts of time in front of the computer, or other devices such as tablets and cell phones, can be harmful to our health. This is largely due to the blue light emitted by electronic devices, which expose us to light-emitting diodes (LEDs)."

"A strain of of Android malware has infected 85 million victims across the globe, generating at least $300,000 every month for the gang behind it, thanks to millions of pop-up adverts and app downloads."

"But Lodge admits that the BYOD trend does have a number of flaws. His biggest concern? It encourages students to use technology during teaching time: "The major downside of BYOD is the potential for distraction. Students' own devices are likely to include all the applications they use on a regular basis. This cannot be controlled like it can be with computers provided by the institution.""

"Following backlash, the company said it removed the alarm function from the smartwatch, but reports maintain the employees are still being required to wear the device so their location can be tracked."

"It would be a bit glib-and more than a little clichéd-to call this some kind of technological dystopia. Actually, dystopia wouldn't be right, exactly: Dystopian fiction is generally speculative, whereas all of these items and services are real. At the end of September, Amazon announced a suite of tech products in its move toward "ambient intelligence," which Amazon's hardware chief, Dave Limp, described as technology and devices that slip into the background but are "always there," collecting information and taking action against it. This intense devotion to tracking and quantifying all aspects of our waking and non-waking hours is nothing new-see the Apple Watch, the Fitbit, social media writ large, and the smartphone in your pocket-but Amazon has been unusually explicit about its plans. The Everything Store is becoming an Everything Tracker, collecting and leveraging large amounts of personal data related to entertainment, fitness, health, and, it claims, security. It's surveillance that millions of customers are opting in to."

""Think about what information is going to be collected," she said. "And how comfortable you are with that information potentially flowing to just anybody … [Companies] are certainly sharing [user data] and they don't really have to tell you who they're sharing it with or why." Such items might include "smart devices" that track our behavior, such as sleep and fitness trackers, as well as popular self-discovery tools such as DNA testing kits. With the help of experts, we broke down the privacy implications of some of this season's latest offerings - so you can give the gift of privacy."

"DDoS attacks are also becoming more common. Brian Krebs, an independent security researcher, observed earlier this month that the "source code" to the Mirai botnet had been released by a hacker group, "virtually guaranteeing that the internet will soon be flooded with attacks from many new botnets powered by insecure routers, IP cameras, digital video recorders and other easily hackable devices""

"The blackouts coincided with exams for secondary and high-school students and were implemented as the ultimate step in the country's battle to stop students cheating using smuggled mobile phones and internet-connected devices in exam halls. While attempting to ban mobile phones from exams or setting up local jamming equipment might be a less draconian measure, shutting off the internet is undoubtedly efficient. However, the outage impacted every person and business in the parts of the country controlled by the Iraqi government, causing human rights campaigners, including Access Now, to condemn the move."

"The significance of the attack on Krebs is that it looks as though many of the attacks on him came from large numbers of enslaved devices - routers, cameras, networked TVs and the like. "Someone has a botnet with capabilities we haven't seen before," says Martin McKeay, Akamai's senior security expert. The DDoS arms race has just moved up a gear."

""It's accelerating because there's a wide-open, unprotected landscape that people can go to," says Chris Carlson, vice president of product management at Qualys. "It's a gold rush to capture these devices for botnets.""

"IDFC Bank has launched an app called Aadhaar Pay that aims to help millions of its citizens without a smartphone to pay for their purchases digitally with just their fingerprint.  Merchants will be able to download the app on their Android smartphones and attach a fingerprint scanner device. To make payments, buyers will only have to choose their bank name, input their unique Aadhaar number and scan their fingerprint, which acts as a password to make the payment directly from their bank account linked to their Aadhaar card."

"With all the personal data it collects, your wrist-mounted wearable computer is almost definitely going to betray you at some point, whether that's a reminder to get up and do another 5,000 steps this afternoon or accidentally giving away your ATM PIN. According to a new paper, ominously titled "Friend or Foe?: Your Wearable Devices Reveal Your Personal PIN" it is surprisingly simple to determine your PIN or password by reverse-engineering motion sensor data from a smartwatch or fitness tracker."

"In just a few short years, ransomware -- malware that encrypts all the files on the computer and then charges you for a key to restore them -- has gone from a clever literary device for technothrillers to a cottage industry to an epidemic to a public menace. "

"demonstrate a fiendishly clever procedure for getting data off of airgapped computers that have had their speakers removed to prevent acoustic data-transmission: instead of playing sound through the target computer's speakers, they attack its fans, varying their speeds to produce subtle sounds that humans can barely notice, but which nearby devices can pick up through their microphones."