Latest news

Dimitry Belorossov has been sentenced to four and a half years in U.S. prison for his part in using the Citadel banking Trojan and for running a botnet.

The accused Russian cyber criminal, who went by the name Rainerfox, plead guilty to conspiring to commit computer fraud.

Belorossov ran a Citadel command and control server and controlled over 7000 victim computers. According to the court docs, the "botnet contained personal information from the infected victim computers, including online banking credentials for US-based financial institutions, credit card information, and other personally identifying information."

While Rainerfox was not accused of building the Trojan, he "provided online assistance with the goal of developing suggested improvements to Citadel, including posting comments on criminal forums on the internet and electronically communicating with other cyber-criminals via email and instant messaging."

Belorossov, who lives in Russia, was picked up while vacationing in Spain and was extradited to the U.S. The young developer/hacker will also have to pay $320,000 in restitution.

Adblock, the popular ad blocking software for Chrome and Safari has been sold this week, although it is unclear to who.

The extension has over 40 million users, so clearly there was some value there although it is a bit strange that we don't know the amount of the sale, or to whom. When asked, Adblock says the buyer asked to not be named and therefore they could not disclose.

Creator Michael Gundlach will also be leaving the company, with previous director Gabriel Cubbage now taking over under the new owner.

Users are understandably worried about the future of the software given the fact that the buyer could be an advertising company (we have no idea) who will look to cut deals with companies to although their ads through, for example. Most likely, however, the buyer was Adblock Plus.

A data breach at a credit agency has exposed personal data of over 15 million T-Mobile customers, or potential customers, the carrier has warned.

Experian, which processes credit applications on behalf of T-Mobile, has publicly disclosed a security breach detected on Sept 15th, which may affect millions of T-Mobile's customers. The data breach affected a server that contained personal information for consumers who applied for T-Mobile USA postpaid services between Sept. 1, 2013 and Sept. 16, 2015.

While no payment card information or banking information was exposed during the breach, the information that was accessible may put millions of individuals at increased risk of identity theft. The server stored records containing names, addresses, social security number, date of birth, ID information (drivers license, passport numbers etc.) and other information used for T-Mobile's credit assessment.

While the social security numbers and I.D. information was encrypted on the server, Experian has determined that the encryption may have been compromised.

Experian has notified federal and international law enforcement agencies of the hack and is cooperating with the investigation. It is also notifying the individuals who may have been affected and is offering free credit monitoring and identity resolution services for two years through ProtectMyID.

Microsoft has announced six Xbox One holiday bundles that will go on sale before the end of 2015, here is a quick comparison of what they all offer.

Microsoft has gone a little Bundle crazy this year, but we will only focus on the six detailed in the past week and not previously announced bundles, such as the Halo 5 bundle or the Xbox One Elite bundle. We'll take a look at what's on offer, when they are available (and for pre-order) and what they will cost.

The six new Xbox One bundles announced this week by Microsoft are:

• Xbox One Rise Of The Tomb Raider Bundle
• Xbox One 1TB Holiday Bundle
• Xbox One The LEGO Movie Videogame Bundle
• Xbox One Special Edition Gears Of War Bundle
• Xbox One With Kinect Bundle
• Xbox One Fallout 4 Bundle

So let's take a look at what comes with each bundle!

Xbox One Rise Of The Tomb Raider Bundle

The Rise of the Tomb Raider bundle will be available starting in November for $399 USD. Here's what you get:

• Xbox One console with 1TB HDD
• Full-game download of the highly anticipated Rise of the Tomb Raider
• The exclusive Tactical Survival Kit Content Pack, which contains a new outfit and weapon skin for Lara
• Full-game download of Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition

You can pre-order the bundle now from the Microsoft Store.

Xbox One 1TB Holiday Bundle

The Xbox One 1TB Holiday Bundle will be available starting 28 October for $399 USD. Here's what you get:

• 1TB Xbox One console
• Xbox One wireless controller with 3.5mm headset jack
• Gears of War: Ultimate Edition
• Rare Replay, featuring 30 iconic games from Rare
• Ori and the Blind Forest full game download
• Xbox 360 Gears of War collection

You can pre-order it from the Microsoft store now.

Xbox One The LEGO Movie Videogame Bundle

The Xbox One The LEGO Movie Videogame bundle will be available in October for $349 USD. Here's what's included with the bundle:

• 500GB Xbox One console
• Xbox One wireless controller with 3.5mm headset jack
• The LEGO Movie Videogame

It is already available from the Microsoft Store and other outlets.

Xbox One With Kinect Bundle

The Xbox One with Kinect Bundle will be available starting in October for $499 USD. The bundle will include:

• Xbox One 500GB Console
• Kinect for Xbox One
• Full game download of Dance Central Spotlight
• Full game download of Kinect Sports Rival
• Full Game Download of Zoo Tycoon

The exact date isn't announced yet but it is available to pre-order from Microsoft already.

Xbox One Special Edition Gears Of War Bundle

The Xbox One Special Edition Gears of War Bundle will be available starting in November for $349 USD. The bundle includes:

• Xbox One 500GB Cirrus White console and controller
• Full download of Gears of War: Ultimate Edition
• Superstar Cole multiplayer skin
• Early access to the Gears of War 4 Beta

While not exclusively part of the bundle, it is worth pointing out that for a limited time, when you play Gears of War: Ultimate Edition on the Xbox Live service, you will also receive the Xbox 360 Gears of War collection playable on Xbox One for free. This bundle is exclusive to Walmart in the United States.

Xbox One Fallout 4 Bundle

The Xbox One Fallout 4 Bundle will be available 10 November for $399 USD. You can already pre-order the bundle today. This what you will get in the bundle:

• 1TB Xbox One console
• Xbox One wireless controller with 3.5mm headset jack
• Fallout 4 full game download
• Fallout 3 full game download, now playable on Xbox One
• 14-day Xbox Live Gold trial

For me, the Fallout 4 bundle would appeal the most, but it comes down to personal preferences. Microsoft previously announced a whole bunch of bundles available in multiple territories to cater to different tastes as the holidays approach.

Facebook has made some major updates to their profiles policies this week, allowing videos, temporary profile pics and more.

Reads Facebook's post:

TiVo's latest set-top box, the Bolt, is making a play to be your primary streaming device.

The Bolt supports cable and Verizon FiOS, has inputs for an OTA antenna and supports Wi-Fi and Ethernet making it very versatile.

Currently, the box supports 4K video from Netflix and YouTube, and has quite a few popular streaming apps like Amazon Instant Video, Xfinity, Pandora, Spotify and Vudu. Notably missing, however, is Hulu. At least at launch.

"From a hardware perspective, it's about changing and future-proofing the platform, getting 4K and speeding up the speed," said Jim Denney, TiVo's vice president of product management and strategy. "From the user standpoint, it's about getting you through your content more quickly and then really being that one-stop shop for all of your content, letting you organize easily as you navigate to it and through it."

New features also include "SkipMode" and "QuickMode," the first of which allows you to skip ads from 20 major channels and the latter of which helps speed up your video by up to 30 percent while correcting the pitch of the audio, allowing you to get through a program quicker (I guess if you are very busy?).

The Bolt with a 500GB HD will cost $299, and 1TB will set you back $399. You get one year free of TiVo with either purchase, but it costs $149 year afterwards.

Microsoft accidentally posted specs for its highly-anticipated Lumia flagships, ahead of any official confirmation.

The Lumia 950 and 950 XL (codenamed Cityman and Talkman) will be Microsoft's Windows 10 reference devices, and there have been various leaks over the past nine months that appear to have been accurate given the new listings.

If you want the 950, you are getting a 5.2-inch WQHD display, Windows 10, 32GB internal storage (with a microSD slot for more) and a 20MP camera with a Carl Zeiss lens and optics. The 950 XL is basically the same, spec wise (from what we can see) except it will have a larger 5.7-inch WQHD display.

Although unlisted, both devices are expected to also have USB Type-C connections, wireless charging, Windows Hello biometric unlocking support, and support for the Surface Pen stylus.

Microsoft has an event set up for October 6th, where we expect to get an official unveiling of the devices and a new Surface tablet, as well.

Why is everybody seemingly running with open arms to HTML5, and away from Adobe Flash?

Back in 2007, it was considered a drawback that Apple would snub Adobe's Flash plugin in the browser on its brand new iPhone, and it would later continue to ignore Flash products in future iPhones, iPods and iPads. Adobe even stated that Apple's decision meant that users were being denied a full web experience, citing the extremely high rate of Flash support on Desktop web browsers and its use on millions of webpages.

It wasn't until 2010 that Steve Jobs explained to customers why Flash won't be supported in Apple's mobile products. Chief among Jobs' concerns were the proprietary nature of Flash, its chequered security track record and its efficiency for video playback. Jobs' favoured the comparably open HTML5 standard to Flash, and the advantage of hardware decoding for H.264 video (which Flash supported by then, but hardware decoding support was inconsistent between sites).

Security concerns stood out for Jobs for good reason. The Adobe Flash plugin for major web browsers has been a consistent target for hackers seeking vulnerabilities as a means to attack web users. New Adobe Flash security flaws are still very common, and it seems Adobe is in a constant race to save the image of Flash.

Are you one of the estimated 3.3 million Americans caught up in this common scam this year?

If you haven't been targeted with it, you likely know friends or family who have been. It is simple, but very effective and common enough that Microsoft feels the need to educate the public about it.

It would work something like this: You receive a phone call from an unknown or blocked number, and a polite sounding person on the other end is revealed as an employee of Microsoft, calling to inform you that your PC or other device has been compromised with malicious software. The polite employee then offers to help.

At this point, you may be asked to follow instructions that will either take you deep into your operating system settings, or to a webpage where you can download a client that will allow this nice person to fix your problem for you. The software will allow the other person access to your computer.

After this point however, things will likely take a clearly suspicious turn as you will inevitably be enlightened on the fee you will need to pay for fix the "problem". It would not be uncommon for your device to be locked at this point until you pay the fee, and unfortunately a lot of people do pay up. So many pay up, in fact, that Microsoft predicts that tech support scams of this nature will hit an estimated 3.3 million Americans this year, and generate $1.5 billion for the scammers.

Nintendo's latest Mario game, 'Super Mario Maker,' is already a major hit.

The console title has seen 1 million sales since its launch on September 11th for the Wii U.

Super Mario Maker is notable because it allows players to create their own Mario levels, and so far 2.2 million courses have been built. In total, the courses have been played 75 million times.

"The game has captured and unlocked the imaginations of gaming fans of all ages," says Reggie Fils-Aime, COO of Nintendo of America. The game has "brought their dedication to Nintendo to a whole new level."

Source:
Time

Struggling smartphone company HTC has sent out invites for a new product launch on October 20th.

The "virtual event" will be streamed on HTC's website, and the event will showcase the latest HTC One, and apparently the device will run on Android Marshmallow. The invite says "Meet the Marshmallow from HTC," suggesting the new phone will run the latest operating system from Google.

If you are interested in the latest HTC device (not sure many will be), head over to HTC Launch at 12PM eastern on the 20th.

According to sources, Twitter is building a new product that will allow users Tweet messages that are longer than 140 characters.

Anything definite about the product is still unknown, but the sources claim it will allow current Twitter users to publish longer-form content to the microblogging service.

In addition, Twitter is also looking into how they count the characters, with the possibility of not including links, image URLs or user handles in the character count moving forward. Twitter users have long complained about having to destroy their grammar just to fit in an @user.

New CEO Jack Dorsey appears to be for the changes, a bold move that shows he seems to care about changing the status quo at the struggling company.

Twitter's current interim CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey will be named permanent CEO later this week, according to new reports.

Somehow, Dorsey will also continue to be CEO of Square, the popular payment processing company he co-founded in 2009.

Dorsey appears to have the backing of investors, who pushed up Twitter's stock 5% today on the report. Twitter revenue boss Adam Bain also supports the co-founder, who has been interim chief for a few months following the firing of former CEO Dick Costolo. "Having Jack back has been really exciting. There's an amazing thing bringing the founder back, bringing a product-driven founder back to the company," Bain said recently. "I came to the company five years ago partly to work with Jack in his role as chairman. He's been somebody who's been thinking about Twitter for so long, so we brought Jack back and for me it was just a continuation of a conversation we've been having for five years."

Twitter's stock is down 68 percent since early 2014, and has even fallen below its IPO price as it struggle to gain users and monetize those users.

Apple has announced this week that their Music, iTunes Movies and iBooks services are now available in China.

Music will feature prominent Chinese artists like Eason Chan, Li Ronghao, JJ Lin and G.E.M. in addition to the international stars seen in other markets.

For iTunes Movies, Apple says there will be a large selection of movies made by Chinese studios in addition to the classic Hollywood fair.

"Customers in China love the App Store and have made it our largest market in the world for app downloads," said Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. "One of the top requests has been more great content and we're thrilled to bring music, movies and books to China, curated by a local team of experts."

Chinese fans will get a 90-day trial to Apple Music, and will cost 10 RMB/month ($1.57 USD) afterwards. The popular family plan will also be available at 15 RMB/month for up to six family members. Movies on iTunes will start at 5 RMB ($0.80) and up to 18 RMB to buy an HD version ($2.85 USD). Books are practically free at 0.5 RMB (8 cents).

According to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Android now has 1.4 billion active users around the globe, a huge milestone for the mobile platform.

The last number we had heard was 1 billion back in June 2014, so it seems Android activations are moving exponentially fast.

Despite the numbers, Android has likely peaked in overall market share, at around 82 percent, even with strong emerging market growth.

"We've added 400 million active devices and the momentum is happening around the world -- especially in emerging economies. In many, many places. In countries like Indonesia and Vietnam Android has literally doubled in the last year. And what's exciting about this is in most of these cases these are people who are adopting a smartphone for the first time," added Pichai. "We are well on the way to bringing the next billion users online."