A security firm says hackers have hijacked 180,000 routers in Brazil alone so far this year. They target people who haven't changed the default login for the router's control system. According to Avast, there have been more than 4.6 million attempts ... to modify router settings remotely. Although the attacks were targeted at people using particular Internet service providers in Brazil, there's no reason the same tactics couldn't work elsewhere. The goal of the attacks is to change the DNS settings on a router. In simple terms, that's like the address book that a router uses to turn a website ... (view more)
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Two lawyers have been jailed for five and fourteen years respectively for an online copyright scam. The pair uploaded adult material with the specific aim of suing those who downloaded it. John Steele and Eric Hansmeir have been convicted on fraud ... and money laundering charges for their activities as "Prenda Law." The pair bought the rights to adult films and even produced their own material. They then uploaded it to file sharing sites and waited until people downloaded it. $3,000 Settlements Accepted Prenda Law then got court orders for Internet service providers to identify the ... (view more)
Google has admitted that staff listen to some recordings from the Google Home smart speaker. It says it's only for quality control purposes. It made the comments after a contractor in the Netherlands went to local media to talk about his work, in ... which he was paid a "few cents" to transcribe comments and questions made by people using the voice controlled device or phone app. According to the worker, some of the clips he heard did not appear to be people intentionally using the device. This included one case of a mother scolding a child and another clip which the worker suspected ... (view more)
Infopackets Reader Jamil S. writes: " Dear Dennis, Lately I have been inundated with Microsoft virus alerts in my web browser claiming that my PC is infected and to call a 1-800 number to fix the problem. There is no way to dismiss the window. The ... Microsoft virus alerts appear suddenly and without warning, even if I'm on Amazon.com (for example). Sometimes the alerts have a very loud verbal pronouncement of a virus and insist that I call the number on the screen. Does Microsoft send virus alerts? Or is this fake? I have scanned my PC and it says no viruses. What gives? " My response: Does ... (view more)
Microsoft has warned users about a complicated but cunning malware attack that might not be caught by all security tools. The "Astaroth" malware doesn't actually exist as a file in its own right. The main risk to users from Astaroth is that it ... includes a keylogger. This means it can access everything victims type, including passwords and other sensitive data. That's one of the reasons sites such as online banks often ask users to type specific characters (such as third and eighth) rather than an entire password. Malware Hides Within Windows What makes Astaroth so hard to detect is ... (view more)
Chinese phone maker Huawei says its making a rival to Android that will be "up to 60 percent faster." The problem is it will be missing many key Google applications. Huawei started work on the new mobile operating system after an executive order ... from the US President that limits American companies supplying the Chinese company, something said to relate to security concerns. Following the order, Google announced it would no longer supply Huawei with new editions of Android or security updates for the existing system. While it could still use Android, which is an open source system, ... (view more)
An airline faces a fine of more than $200 million after its customers were hit by a hacking scandal. Around 500,000 worldwide customers of British Airways were affected by the breach. British Airways reported the breach in September last year. It ... doesn't appear that the hackers were able to get into BA's system and take any customer data that way. Instead, traffic to the site was hijacked. The attack is believed to have begun last June and involved the hackers exploiting security flaws in the design of BA's site. They were able to intercept traffic to the site and redirect visitors to a bogus ... (view more)
A premium email service has been slammed for letting users track other people's locations simply by sending a message. It's not a new issue, but has raised legal and ethical questions. The email service is called Superhuman and costs $30 a month. ... That covers a host of features, such as being able to "unsend" a message before its read, plus an "artificial intelligence" tool to decide and highlight which incoming messages are most important. While reviewers are split between whether it's a fantastic service for power users or just a jumped-up Gmail, one designer has laid into Superhuman for a ... (view more)
One of the most important services on the Internet went down for around an hour this week, causing widespread problems on other sites. The glitch is a reminder of how fragile some aspects of the Internet are. Cloudflare is a website that offers ... several free and paid services designed to make websites more efficient. Two of its main services are traffic filtering and web caching. The former involves web traffic between a user and a website going through Cloudflare. During this process, the client machine is checked for signs of malicious activity. This can involve attempted hacking, but also ... (view more)
Microsoft is to remove all electronic books sold through its official store. Users will get a refund while those who have made virtual notes on the book will get a bonus payment. Unlike most rival electronic book services, Microsoft had no dedicated ... electronic reading device and did not even offer an e-reader app. Instead, people who bought books through the Microsoft Store had to read them through a web browser. It's probably not a surprise that Microsoft has pulled the plug and will no longer be hosting the books online, most likely as it is ending the relevant licensing with publishers ... (view more)
Infopackets Reader Gloria D. writes: " Dear Dennis, The other day I went to uninstall a program on my Windows 10 PC using Control Panel -> Programs and Features, and noticed there were about 20 or more Java updates installed on my system. I ... regularly receive messages from the Windows 10 Action Center that there is a new Java update available and that I need to download it due to security updates, which I always do. Therefore, I have four questions: is it safe to remove old Java updates? If so, which Java updates can I uninstall? Can I remove older Java versions? Is the latest Java ... (view more)
Officials in Lake City, Florida have voted to pay half a million dollars to hackers to regain access to computer files. It's the second such payment by a local government in the state in as many weeks. Lake City's government computer system was hit ... by a ransomware attack in which hackers remotely encrypt files and then demand payment to unlock them. They asked for 42 units of the digital cryptocurrency Bitcoin, worth roughly $500,000. That payment method makes it much harder to trace the recipients. The good news in this case is that public safety networks are unaffected and that all ... (view more)
The man who co-created the USB plug says its greatest annoyance was simply a matter of cost. Ajay Bhatt says that in the original design of the USB-A cable, the plugs were not reversible in order to keep costs down, which would then help get the ... format established. Bhatt discussed his work in an interview with National Public Radio (NPR). He talked about the often baffling experience in which users would try to plug a USB cable in, find that it would not fit, flip it over, find it didn't fit (again), then flip it back to its original orientation and find that inexplicably it now fit. It's a ... (view more)
A report suggests that thousands of apps on the Google Play store are in fact counterfeits made to look like the legitimate app, but instead pose a major security risk to users. The study says such apps ask for dangerous levels of access to the ... phone or are packed with advertising. The study is a joint effort of the University of Sydney and Australia's national science research agency CSIRO. It took two years to carry out and involved trawling through 1.2 million apps to look for potential counterfeits. Rather than have humans check each app uploaded to Google Play (which would be entirely ... (view more)
Infopackets Reader Debra P. writes: " Dear Dennis, Lately I have been inundated with Windows 10 popup notifications that come from websites I've visited previously. I also receive a lot of email alerts. The popups are coming from bottom right corner ... of my screen and I have no idea how to stop it. Can you please tell me how to disable all Windows 10 notifications ? " My response: I asked Debra if she would like me to connect with her using my remote desktop support service in order to have a closer look, and she agreed. Below I will discuss my findings. How to Fix: Disable All Windows 10 ... (view more)
Infopackets Reader Simon J. writes: " Dear Dennis, Last week I had a fake 'virus warning' error message pop up in Chrome while I was viewing Amazon.com. It said my computer was infected and to call a 1-800 number to 'fix' the 'problem'. After ... reading your articles, I knew it was a scam. At any rate, I did an antivirus and antimalware (malwarebytes) scan on the system - both said my system was clean. Flash forward a few days later and I got another fake 'virus warning' in Chrome. At this point I uninstalled Chrome, then deleted the c:\users\[my user name]\appdata\local\google\chrome folder ... (view more)
Mozilla has issued an emergency patch for the Firefox browser that is a must-install. It fixes a security gap that hackers are actively exploiting on compromised websites that serve up malicious code. How to Patch Firefox For most users, restarting ... Firefox should be enough to trigger the update. Users can also click the menu icon near the top right of the browser (the three vertical bars), then scroll all the way down near the bottom and click the "(?) Help" sub menu, then click the "About Firefox" option, which will trigger the update. Once the update has been downloaded, Firefox ... (view more)
Microsoft has warned the latest Windows 10 update could produce a completely black screen for some users. It's easily fixable and shouldn't be a permanent problem. Microsoft hasn't given any details of why the problem occurs, or if it affects people ... with a particular piece of hardware or software in place. It's only saying that a "small number of devices" appear to be affected. The problem is listed as being with Windows 10 version 1809 and 1803. Those are the two major updated versions of Windows 10 which were released last year. Version 1803 was released in April, 2018, while 1809 was ... (view more)
Samsung has warned owners of its Smart TV ranges to run virus checks. It then quickly deleted the warning after a negative response online. The company posted on Twitter with a 19 second video showing how to access a sub-menu that would start a ... virus scan. The post read: "Scanning your computer for malware viruses is important to keep it running smoothly. This also is true for your QLED TV if it's connected to WiFi! Prevent malicious software attacks on your TV by scanning for viruses on your TV every few weeks. Here's how." The video showed that users needed to go through no fewer than 11 ... (view more)
Facebook is launching an app that tracks what apps users use on their devices. In return, compensation will be provided. Facebook says only users over 18 years of age can take part in the 'research'. The app is named "Study" and is openly billed as ... being a "market research tool" for Facebook. It's designed for Facebook to learn more about its users, which the company says will help improve its services. Study will collect and transmit details of what apps are on the user's phones, how much time they spend using those apps, and - in some cases - what specific featured they ... (view more)
Mozilla has confirmed a premium (paid) version of the Firefox browser is on the way. It says it won't charge for any features that are currently free. The details are still quite hazy and Mozilla is still considering exactly what will be in the paid ... version of the "enhanced" browser. It plans to launch it in October, 2019 and will most likely be an on-going subscription service rather than a one-off payment. (Source: techradar.com ) One feature that looks very likely to be included is a Virtual Private Network or VPN . This uses a combination of s ecure s ocket l ayer encryption ( ... (view more)
Infopackets Reader Joni D. writes: " Dear Dennis, I have a gmail account, and over the years I've signed up for a few newsletters and promotions. Long story short, my gmail inbox contains 44,000 emails in total; 38,000 of those emails are located in ... the 'promotions' folder. I've logged into gmail.com and tried to mass delete my gmail inbox, but I have no idea how to do that. Selecting 50 items per page and clicking 'delete' would take years to clean out my inbox. Do you know how I can mass delete my gmail inbox , spam, promotions and similar from my gmail account? " My response: I rarely ever ... (view more)
Psychiatry experts say using the Internet could "affect our brain's structure, function and cognitive development." An international group of researchers say that as a result of Internet use, we may be losing our abilities to concentrate on a single ... task. The theory has to do with the way many people access the Internet - particularly with email and social media, which often means getting a string of notifications that oftentimes demand immediate attention. This means people spend less time consistently working on one task uninterrupted, which then creates a "use it or lose it" effect on ... (view more)
Mozilla has made two major changes to make Firefox browsing easier and safer. It's adding a robust password manager and and enhanced cookie blocking feature that will help avoid dubious online tracking. The password manager is called Firefox ... Lockwise. For now it's only available as a browser extension, rather than being built into the browser itself. It's the same service that was previously available on mobile devices as "LockBox." The basic functions of Lockwise include being able to store login credentials and access from multiple devices, and are much the same as on third-party ... (view more)
Developers have been shocked to discover their apps for the Windows Store are carrying scam advertising. They are blaming Microsoft for not properly vetting the ads it inserts into the apps. The apps in question are for Windows 10 and are part of ... the "modern Windows experience" which lets users get software from an the official Microsoft Store similar to Google Play (for Android) and Apple's App Store (for iOS devices). The only difference is that Windows also allows users to download and install programs directly from software developers. App makers who use the Windows Store have ... (view more)
If you're still on Windows 7 or earlier, you need to make sure you have a recent security patch installed as soon as possible. It fixes a very serious operating system exploit, dubbed "BlueKeep". Note that a firewall and antivirus will not block ... operating system exploits , which is why using an unsupported operating system is incredibly dangerous . The bug is in the way that Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) works. Remote Desktop Protocol lets somebody on one computer see and control another computer in another location. It has some extremely useful applications such as working away ... (view more)
Infopackets Reader Tina J. writes: " Dear Dennis, I recently did a clean install of Windows 10 May 2019 Update (version 1903) on my main PC. My C drive is an SSD and only has 120GB of available space. As such, I have modified my the location of my ... Documents, Pictures, Music, and Video so that it points to the D drive which has 2TB of available space. In the past this hasn't been an issue, but since the Windows 10 May 2019 update, I cannot redirect my Pictures or Documents folder to the D drive - though both the Music and Videos folders had no problems changing locations. When I try to move ... (view more)
Microsoft says it is working on a "modern operating system" for the computers of the future. It avoided using the term "Windows" and the features and characteristics it describes share a lot with Google's Chrome operating system. The details came in ... a talk by Microsoft executives at Computex, a conference in Taipei. They demonstrated some of the latest laptops that run Windows, but then discussed how future PCs will have continually evolving requirements. The company's write-up of the talk says Microsoft is investing in "modern OS" experiences and uses that term eight times in a single ... (view more)
The latest Windows 10 update, which is rolling out now, has thrown up at least three highly reported problems for users. The most significant is that some computers are losing WiFi access. The Windows 10 May 2019 update affects some computers which ... have a Qualcomm WiFi adaptor and don't yet have the latest driver for it. A driver is a small piece of software that helps a hardware device or component interact with an operating system. Some users in this situation have suffered what Microsoft is calling an "intermittent loss of WiFi connectivity." It's responded by blocking the update from ... (view more)
The National Security Agency (NSA) is refusing to comment on claims a tool it developed has been used in a ransomware attack on the Baltimore city government. The New York Times says the attackers used a tool called "EternalBlue." The attackers have ... encrypted Baltimore government systems and demanded between $76,000 and $114,440 (depending on the account) to restore access. Officials have refused to pay and used workarounds including some manual processing of files and switching to Gmail for internal communications. It seems the attack was carried out using EternalBlue, which is ... (view more)
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