Japan officially accepted Bitcoin, and other digital currencies, as money. In particular, Japan recognizes them as having function similar to money. The specific legislation was at works for weeks and it is finally accepted. In addition, payments can be made directly to Bitcoin without the need of converting them to fiat currency. Banks will start investing in Bitcoin as assets for asset management and future gains.
How to decrypt ransomwares
Ransomwares are becoming very common since (apparently) only a small percentage is taking backups. Most people and organizations have valuable data laying in their hard drives without taking any backups. Creators of ransomwares are aware of this and they encrypt their files asking for money to provide them the key to unlock their files. In many cases, people and organizations are paying the ransom, creators make profit and they create more, more difficult to decrypt ransomwares. In this post we will provide the solution, how to encrypt some of the ransomwares, if you are the victim of those ransomware then you are luckier than others.
Move away from Arvixe – Horrible support
I’ve been using Arvixe as hosting provider for more than a year and I had problems since day one. At first support was very good and they were responding fast. After few months, I saw all kind of errors, 404, 500, 503 and more. Support was delaying to answer and by then they couldn’t find the issues. A couple of months ago I had 2 tickets opened for almost a month without response. After this month I got an email, I was happy that finally someone will help me with my issues. The email was that they closed all tickets due to huge number and to open again if it is critical. Not helpful at all. The huge number of support tickets doesn’t make me feel better, but worse. It only means that it is not only me with problems but a lot of others.
Android phones can be hacked due to a Chrome zero-day exploit
Security researches discovered a new Chrome zero-day exploit that can be used to hack any Android phone. Even the latest version has the vulnerability in the JavaScript v8 engine of the Chrome browser of the Android operating system. The browser comes pre-installed on almost all Android smartphones. All the hackers have to do is lure their victims to a malicious website. Exploiting that vulnerability, the website can gain administrative rights and install any malware application which will give them full access to the phone. The exploit was demonstrated at the PacSec conference in Tokyo 2015.
Firefox is the best web browser
I’ve created many posts to let the readers know which web browser is the best and most, if not all, of the times was Firefox. According to IT Pro, Firefox is still the best web browser out there and Mozilla made many changes since the last time. The comparison was done one month ago so it is up to date. I want to mention that the differences between the browsers are not big and it is a matter of preference. The main reason of my choice (Firefox) is the enhanced security and privacy, it proved it to me many times. Internet Explorer and Chrome auto accept any kind of certificate where Firefox doesn’t. Another reason is its add-ons, mostly because I hate ads so I want to block them. Google circumvented AdBlock Plus, one of the most popular ad blockers, to allow ads. The big plus of Firefox is that it is developed by Mozilla, a non-profit organization, and they have the user as priority and not the shareholders.
SSE – Solid State Electrolytes for long lasting batteries
So far we’ve heard about Solid State Drives (SSD) which are much faster than normal drives. Now, researches are looking for Solid State Electrolytes (SSE) which will help us have batteries that will last much longer. Today’s batteries are based on Liquid-State Electrolytes and they have their limitations. Researches from MIT and Samsung have developed a new material which can be used in future batteries to increase their storage, their life and make them safer. I would love to have a battery that lasts for a week (at least) with a single charge.
How to crash Skype
This post is not for technical gurus and hackers, everyone with a Skype can crash it. By sending a simple message the application crashes badly for both the sender and the receiver and it needs re-installation. This bug affects some new versions of Skype. The message is not a massive amount of characters but a simple short message. If you want to try it, send “http://:” and voila! I would never believe that such a bug exists in such a popular application for so long time. I believe Microsoft developers will try to blame the initial software developers that wrote the legacy code!
Microsoft Edge – The new web browser
Microsoft Edge is the new web browser by Microsoft. It will replace Internet Explorer in the new operating system, Windows 10. Microsoft Edge was known as project Spartan and Microsoft announced that they were paying thousands of dollars to the hackers that can find vulnerabilities to its new web browser. We all know that Internet Explorer is not good enough, lets hope that the new web browser will be as good as Firefox. It is designed to be basic and minimalistic and it will be shipped on all Windows 10 devices.
NSA and CIA are watching porn
No, I am not kidding, and you are reading it correctly. Agents from both NSA and CIA are tasked to watch videos including porn. The reason behind this is simple, Al-Qaeda and ISIS (Islamic State) send coded messages to their followers using pornography, reddit, twitter and any other way or social media suits their needs. Israeli Intelligence Agency noticed those messages terrorists are sending using images and videos with the technique called steganography. Steganography is the art/method to hide a message/file in another message/file. For example a shopping list that can contain a secret message, an image that can contain another file or image and so on. The advantage of steganography versus cryptography is that the message is publicly available to everyone and it doesn’t attract attention. I will show you a real example at the end of the article. Back to our news, CIA and NSA are watching nude photos and porn videos to find those message. Of course, terrorists are also using cryptography, advanced cryptography to avoid (delay as far as possible) decryption even with NSA supercomputers. Those nude pictures agents are watching all day long is not only from known terrorists but from everyone, they have surveillance programs were they capture almost anything so think twice the next time you will take a nude picture of your… self.
Apple shares your voice with 3rd parties
Apple is one of the worst companies when it comes to user privacy. They share everything, including your voice. You think that talking to Siri is personal and safe but it is not. The company admitted that they share audio collected by Siri to 3rd party companies (yes, more than one) and they do it for at least two years. Even if you trust Apple with your privacy, I can’t even imagine what you asked Siri about, can you really trust every 3rd party company and their employees? I don’t think so. If you believe that whatever you said to Siri isn’t confidential then think also about every email or sms you sent by using your voice (speech-to-text).