Ask Google or Siri: “What is Taiwan?” “A state”, they will answer, “in East Asia”. But earlier in September, it would have been a “province in the People’s Republic of China.” From a report: For questions of fact, many search engines, digital assistants and phones all point to one place: Wikipedia. And Wikipedia had suddenly changed. The edit was reversed, but…
Tag: attack
Russian Malware ‘Patches’ Chrome and Firefox To Fingerprint TLS Traffic
An anonymous reader quotes ZDNet: A Russian cyber-espionage hacker group has been spotted using a novel technique that involves patching locally installed browsers like Chrome and Firefox in order to modify the browsers’ internal components. The end goal of these modifications is to alter the way the two browsers set up HTTPS connections, and add a per-victim fingerprint for the TLS-encrypted…
Tardigrades Could (Maybe) Survive a Nuclear Attack. And Now We Know How.
Scientists deciphered a key ingredient in tardigrades’ arsenal of superpowers, learning how a unique protein protects the microscopic water bears from harmful radiation. Source: https://www.livescience.com/tardigrade-protein-radiation-protection.html
Firefox Promises UK Government DNS-Over-HTTPS Won’t Be Default in UK
“Despite looking to make DNS-over-HTTPS the default for its American users, Mozilla has assured culture secretary Nicky Morgan that this won’t be the case in the UK,” reports Gizmodo: DNS-over-HTTPS has been fairly controversial, with the Internet Services Providers Association nominating Mozilla for an ‘Internet Villain’ over the whole thing, saying it will “bypass UK filtering obligations and parental controls, undermining…
How TikTok Censors Videos That Do Not Please Beijing
According to leaked documents revealed by the Guardian, TikTok instructs its moderators to censor videos that mention Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence, or the banned religious group Falun Gong. “The documents […] lay out how ByteDance, the Beijing-headquartered technology company that owns TikTok, is advancing Chinese foreign policy aims abroad through the app,” writes Alex Hern for the Guardian. From the report:…
Mysterious Avid Issue Knocks Out Mac Pro Workstations Across Hollywood
A possible computer virus attack has knocked out Mac Pro workstations for many film and TV editors across Los Angeles. According to Variety, the issue — which is causing the workstations to refuse to reboot — is widespread among users of Mac Pro computers running older versions of Apple’s operating system as well as Avid’s Media Composer software. From the report:…
Challenging Facebook and Google, Apple’s New OS Warns Users When Data Is Collected
An anonymous reader quotes Forbes: Apple’s updated operating system will now show you how often your location has been recorded and by which apps. It will do this proactively via a pop up, which shows a map of where you have been tracked, including the option to allow or limit it. Previously, many apps were able to track you in the…
GNU’s Former Kernel Maintainer Shares ‘A Reflection on the Departure of Richard Stallman’
Thomas Bushnell, BSG, founded GNU’s official kernel project, GNU Hurd, and maintained it from 1990 through 2003. This week on Medium he posted “a reflection on the departure of RMS.” There has been some bad reporting, and that’s a problem. While I have not waded through the entire email thread Selam G. has posted, my reaction was that RMS did not…
Ubisoft To Send Cease & Desist Requests To DDoS Services Attacking ‘Rainbox Six Siege’ Players
An anonymous reader writes: Ubisoft plans to send cease & desist legal letters to operators of DDoS-for-hire services, also known as DDoS booters or DDoS stressors. The company said it plans on making this step as part of a global action plan to curb DDoS attacks aimed at Rainbox Six Siege multiplayer servers. The French video game company has been under…