How Syrian Electronic Army “hacked” the New York Times, Twitter and the Huffington Post

As of this moment, the website of the New York Times is inaccessible to many people. It’s apparently the victim of an attack by the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA), the group of hackers that supports Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and who started out by hacking their ideological foes before it occurred to them they’d get more press by going after more visible targets.

But here’s the thing: Unlike previous attacks by the SEA, for example against the Twitter accounts of The Guardian, it seems more likely that this time, the SEA didn’t manage to filch passwords from anyone within the Times itself. As the Times itself has just reported, there has been an “attack on the company’s domain name registrar, Melbourne IT.” The same registrar apparently also hosts the domain names of other sites the SEA claims to have hacked, including Twitter and the Huffington Post, which also .....full news @QUARTZ

WeChat passes 100 million users outside China

 

The figures show a boom in popularity for the app, which now has 30 million more users than a month ago and 50 million more than three months ago.

The service, combined with its Chinese-only counterpart Weixin, now has a total of 235.8 million users, according to Tencent Holdings Ltd., China’s largest internet company by market value.

In comparison WhatsApp, its American equivalent, now has 300 million active monthly users worldwide.

The main foreign markets for the messaging app were India, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore, Tencent Holdings ........full news @The Telegraph

Nissan will have a driverless car on the road by 2020

 

Nissan has just joined Google in the race to make driverless cars a reality. 

The Japanese automaker is aiming to have such driverless autos on the road by 2020.

"Nissan Motor Company's willingness to question conventional thinking and to drive progress is what sets us apart," said CEO Carlos Ghosn, in a press release. 

 

Nissan intends to start testing such vehicles by 2014. It's unclear how long Nissan has been testing the .....full news @CNN

India-born Satya Nadella in race for next CEO of Microsoft

Satya Nadella , Executive Vice President 
Microsoft's Cloud and Enterprise group

India-born Satya Nadella, currently heading Microsoft's Cloud and Enterprise group, is listed among likely successors to CEO Steve Ballmer, who is set to retire within a year.

As executive vice president, Nadella "runs a group that continues to churn out growth and profits", noted Seattle Times in a story on the start of a guessing game among Microsoft watchers, since Ballmer's impending departure was announced.

"There is no single clear successor to a lightning rod of a leader who remains one of the most identifiable CEOs in .......read full news @businesstoday

Guy Hacks Google Glass to Steer Drone

 

 

Outfitted with Google Glass, Blaine Bublitz controls a drone softly floating in the air before him with just a slight tilt of the head.

Bublitz, from the coding company IcedDev, used a JavaScript code to turn Google Glass into a basic control system for a quadcopter drone, thus allowing him to control the device by moving his head .... read full news @Mashable

iPhone 5S A7 processor will be 31 percent faster than the current A6 chip

The next-generation A7 processor in the iPhone 5S will be roughly 31 percent faster than the current A6, according to a tweet by Fox News' Clayton Morris. His sources have also mentioned a "separate chip devoted to motion tracking".

It's unclear how Apple would use motion tracking abilities, but it could be developing a new control scheme that uses motion gestures like Samsung has built into its Galaxy S series of smartphones. 

The iPhone 5S is expected to be unveiled at a media event on September 10 ......full news @MacRumours

India overtakes Japan to become third largest Internet population

 

India has bypassed Japan to become the world’s third largest Internet user after China and the United States, and its users are significantly younger than those of other emerging economies, global digital measurement and analytics firm comScore has said in a report. 

India now has nearly 74 million Internet users, a 31 per cent increase over March 2012, the report says.

“Mobile phone based Internet usage is a key component of Indian Internet usage, and I’d say the recent growth is being driven by mobile Internet usage,” Nilotpal Chakravarti, spokesperson of the Internet and Mobile Association of India told The Hindu on Thursday. In addition, many Netizens were using dongles to access the Internet.

Three-fourths of India’s online population is under 35 as against just over ha .......full news @THE HINDU

First unofficial photo of the iPhone 5s in its new color, champagne

 

image courtesy : nydailynews

TechCrunch has published the first photos of the iPhone wearing its new shiny coat. In addition to the traditional black and white, Apple's next smartphone will reportedly be available in a pale gold color dubbed "champagne."

While this new, flashier color is said to be obtained simply by anodizing the smartphone's aluminum shell, fans of all that glitters can already acquire iPhones ........ full news @nydailynews

Haswell-based MacBook Pros expected to ship in September

Taiwanese manufacturers have begun to ship components for new MacBook Pros based on Intel's fourth-generation Haswell processors to assembly plants, according to a Thursday report by Hong Kong-based supply chain monitor EMSOne.

The Haswell architecture, which made its Apple debut at WWDC 2013 in the MacBook Air, is designed to take advantage of improvements in transistor manufacturing processes to increase power efficiency and computational performance. Like its predecessor Ivy Bridge, Haswell chips are...... full news @Apple Insider

Nokia launches Lumia 925, 625 smartphones in India

Viral Oza, Director-Marketing, Nokia India launches the new Nokia Lumia 925 and 625 smartphones during a press conference in New Delhi on Thursday [image courtesy : The Hindu]

The new Nokia Lumia 925 offers advanced lens technology, PureView camera and Nokia’s next generation imaging software to deliver clearer, sharper pictures and video as well as enhanced low-light imaging – all packed in a suavely designed, slim and stylish metal-polycarbonate body.

The Nokia Lumia 625 flaunts a large 4.7-inch super-sensitive LCD screen with the added impetus of an exclusive video content app offering access to over 3000 movies across Hollywood, Bollywood and regional genres for streaming and downloading, the company said in a statement.

Launching the new devices, Viral Oza, Director-Marketing, Nokia India said, “The Nokia Lumia 625 is our largest smartphone screen to date and offers a superior entertainment companion to our consumers, while with the Nokia Lumia 925, we have introduced metal to the Lumia range in a .....read full news @INDIA BLOOMS

Pesky calls, SMSes, connection of banks, firms to be terminated

      
     Over 25,000 entities have been blacklisted for making pesky calls and SMSes and they will not get a phone connection for the next two years, Telecom minister Kapil Sibal said.



"A total of about three lakhs telephone connections of un-registered telemarketers have been disconnected by the access service providers and the name and address of 25,295 such subscribers have been put in the blacklist," he said in the Rajya Sabha.

As per Trai guidelines, only registered telemarketers can make promotional or marketing calls and only to those numbers which are not registered with do-not-disturb list.

The registered telemarketers have been allocated special number series, starting with 140 for making .......Read More @TimesofIndia

Google Puts Waze Traffic Data on the Map

image courtesy:pocketgpsworld.com

Google on Tuesday announced that it is incorporating real-time traffic data from Waze into its popular Google Maps mobile application.

"Users of Google Maps for Mobile will now benefit from real time incident reports from Waze users," explained Brian McClendon, vice president of Google Maps. "This means when Wazers report accidents, construction, road closures and more on Waze, the updates will also appear on the Google Maps app for Android and iOS in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, France, Germany, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Switzerland, UK and the US."

Waze provides real-time, crowdsourced traffic reports and was acquired by Google in June. Tuesday's announcement represents one of the first visible fruits of that union.

Google declined to ......full news @TECHNEWSWORLD

Mark Zuckerberg has a plan to bring internet access to everyone

 

 

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is ambitious, if nothing else. Whether you're into the social networking scene or not, you have to credit the whiz kid for building the world's largest social playground with over a billion active users around the globe. That's impressive, but it pales in comparison to what he wants to do next. The social star now wants to connect every person in the world to the Internet, and he has a plan to get it done.

It's really more of a rough draft, as Zuckerberg himself makes clear in a multi-page outline (PDF) of a new initiative to bring Internet access to all. He's not alone, either. Zuckerberg is joined by some big names in founding Internet.org, a global partnership aimed at making Internet access available to the next 5 billion people. In addition to Facebook, other founding members include Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera, Qualcomm, and Samsung.

"Everything Facebook has done has been about ..........read full news @MAXIMUMPC

Apple adds new rules on children's apps to iOS developer guidelines

Apple has paved the way for the launch of its new Kids category on its App Store by adding new rules for children's apps to its developer guidelines.

The newly-added "Kids Apps' section of Apple's App Store Review Guidelines sets out the company's policy on privacy, advertising and use of in-app purchases in iOS apps aimed at children younger than 13.

It comes after several months of news stories about children racking up big bills buying virtual items in mobile games without their parents' knowledge, and ahead of the publication this autumn of a report on children's apps by the UK's Office of Fair Trading.

Apple's new guidelines cover four key points:

24.1
Apps primarily intended for use by kids under 13 must include a privacy policy
24.2
Apps primarily intended for use by kids under 13 may not include behavioral advertising (e.g. the advertiser may not serve ads based on the user's activity within the App), and any contextual ads presented in the App must be appropriate for kids
24.3
Apps primarily intended for use by kids under 13 must get parental permission or use a parental gate before allowing the user to link out of the app or engage in commerce
24.4
Apps in the Kids Category must be made specifically for kids ages 5 and under, ages 6-8, or ages 9-11

The rules aren't a huge surprise for children's app developers, with many having added privacy policies and .........read full@theguardian

3D printing creates model of baby in womb

An ultrasound is a regular procedure for expecting couples, and it’s not unusual for the parents to take a black and white print of the fetus home with them.

But the rapidly evolving technology of 3D printing is giving parents – and scientists – a much clearer view of their baby.

A clinic in Japan is offering to print models of fetuses from inside pregnant womens’ stomachs – and even giving them a copy to take home as a memoir of their pregnancy.

Technicians use MRI scans and a technology called Bio-Texture modeling, which converts the MRI data into a 3-D image.

Then a 3-D printer builds up........ more details @euronews

Instagram virus creates fake 'likes' and followers in lucrative marketing scam

A virus typically used to steal credit card information has been repurposed to target Instagram, generating fake "likes" and followers, and selling them online. 

As Reuters reports, these fake "likes" are then sold in batches of 1,000 on online forums, and can fetch surprisingly high prices. According to security firm RSA, 1,000 Instagram followers sell for around $15 online, while 1,000 "likes" selling for $30. The same number of credit card numbers, by comparison, go for as little as $6.

Concern mounts as Google confirms Android cryptographic vulnerability

 

Google has confirmed reports of a weakness in Android's Java Cryptography Architecture (JCA) that has left bitcoin wallets generated on Android devices vulnerable to theft.

The issue came to light last weekend, with reports that around $5,700 worth of the bitcoin cryptocurrency had been stolen as a result of the vulnerability on Android.

"We have now determined that applications which use the Java Cryptography Architecture (JCA) for key generation, signing, or random number generation may not receive cryptographically strong values on Android devices due to improper initialization of the underlying PRNG," explained Android security engineer Alex Klyubin in a post on Google's Android developers blog.

"Applications that directly invoke the .....read full new at Guardian

Google servers went offline for 5 minutes, web traffic plunged 40 percent

For five minutes early on Saturday morning, the Internet stood still as all Google services including Gmail, Drive, Maps and Chat suffered an outage and didn’t function.

The Google App Dashboard documented this brief outage as all apps provided by the search giant went down for around 5 minutes.

The app dashboard for Gmail had the following message for users:

We’re aware of a problem with Gmail affecting a significant subset of users. The affected users are able to access Gmail, but are seeing error messages and/or other unexpected behavior. 

A similar message was .....read full news at FirstPost

Cisco to cut 4,000 jobs despite strong profits

Cisco's chief executive John Chambers

The news came after it reported net income of $2.3bn (£1.5bn) in the fourth quarter, up from $1.9bn a year earlier.

Cisco's chief executive John Chambers said that "the economic recovery is slower and more inconsistent".

The cuts come as the company looks to reduce costs as it sees demand for its networking equipment remain uncertain. 

Cisco also predicted that its revenues in the current quarter would be at the lower end of analysts' forecasts. 

Its shares fell more than 9% in after-hours trading.

Mr Chambers said the job cuts were due to weaker sales in Japan, China and Europe, which had weighed on revenue growth.

"The environment in terms of our ......read full news @bbc.co.uk

US county abandons TCS project, files lawsuit

 

India's largest software services exporter, Tata Consultancy Services, has been slapped with a lawsuit by Orange County in California for making "a series of false promises and intentional misrepresentations" during the bidding process for a contract.

TCS declined to comment on the issue, citing it as a legal matter.

The issue relates to a contract for development of a tax collection and management system for Orange County in 2007-2008. TCS won the bid for the job for an amount of about $8 million.

According to the contract, Tata America International Corporation (TCS America) was to develop and implement the Property ..... read more @siliconindia.com

China to probe IBM, Oracle, EMC for security concerns

    China's Ministry of Public Security and a cabinet-level research centre are preparing to probe IBM, Oracle and EMC over security issues, a newspaper report said.

The report follows revelations by former US spy agency contractor Edward Snowden of widespread surveillance by the National Security Agency and his assertion that the agency hacked into critical network infrastructure at universities in China and in Hong Kong.

Documents leaked by Snowden revealed that the NSA has had access to vast amounts of Internet data such as emails, chat rooms and video from large companies, including Facebook and........read full news @timesofindia