Tens of millions of Android devices may have been infected by rogue apps that found a way past Google's security checks. The 'Judy' malware came through apps in the official Google Play store. Google makes a big deal about its Play Store being a ... safe place to get apps. If an app is obtained from another source other that the Play Store, users must specifically confirm any associated risk during app installation. That makes it particularly embarrassing for Google, considering that the Judy malware was able to slip through its security checks. The malware in question has been dubbed ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Sam R. writes: " Dear Dennis, I am running Windows 10 and I have installed RDP Wrapper (per your previous article). This allows more than one person to use the same Windows computer via remote desktop - this is very convenient if ... you have a 'server' computer and want to use it for multiple purposes. I have a question: I would like to be able to hide the remote desktop user accounts I want to use on the server from being displayed on the Windows 10 login screen. Do you know how I can do this? " My response: It is possible to hide user accounts from the Windows 7, 8 and 10 ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Sam T. writes: " Dear Dennis, I recently upgraded my motherboard and CPU to the Intel Core i7 7700k processor which is very fast! I loaded Windows 7 onto the machine and everything was working great - that is, until I went to ... check for Windows Updates and I received the error: ' Unsupported Hardware / Your PC uses a processor that is designed for the latest version of Windows. Because the processor is not supported together with the Windows version that you are currently using, your system will miss important security updates.' Is there any way to prevent this 'unsupported ... (view more)

Two biometric security measures have come into question after reporters and researchers claimed to have overcome them. A phone's iris recognition and a bank's voice log-in both appear to be less than perfectly secure. The Samsung Galaxy S8 - ... arguably the most high-profile and hyped phone currently running the Android system - includes an option to unlock the phone by simply looking at the camera. In a similar way to fingerprint recognition, it works on the idea that the patterns in the eye's iris are unique. Samsung described these patterns as "virtually impossible to ... (view more)

Security researchers say its highly likely hackers linked to North Korea were responsible for the recent widespread WannaCry ransomware attack . The same group, dubbed Lazarus, was previously blamed for two other high profile online attacks. ... According to security firm Symantec, the WannaCry attacks bore five distinct hallmarks of previous attacks thought to be the work of the Lazarus group. This includes shared code such as that used to spread the malware from machine to machine. Other common factors include the same IP address being used to issue commands to infected machines, and similar ... (view more)

A newspaper has published details of Facebook's secret rules about what is and isn't allowed on the site. It shows the extreme difficulty of balancing free speech with privacy and responsibility issues, as well as the sheer scale of moderating ... posts. While Facebook publishes general guidelines about content it considers inappropriate, it doesn't reveal the precise criteria its staff use when removing content. The Guardian newspaper says it has seen more than 100 documents that are used by Facebook moderators when training and when doing their work. (Source: theguardian.com ) Violent language ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Steve P. writes: " Dear Dennis, The company I work for is renting a dedicated Linux web server, which runs CentOS 6.5 and PHPList to manage their mailing list. Recently we were faced with a power outage on the server which then ... caused corruption in the PHPList database. When I look at mysqld.log I see a lot of error messages that 'mysqld: Table './phplist/phplist_usermessage' is marked as crashed and should be repaired'. I checked the database drive for errors using 'e2fsck -n /dev/sdb1' and am getting an error message that '/dev/sdb1: ********** WARNING: Filesystem still ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Vema H. writes: " Dear Dennis I just upgraded to Windows 10 and one thing that really bothers me is the taskbar thumbnail previews. For example, if I place my mouse over top of a task on the taskbar, a preview will show up. The ... problem is that most of the time I don't mean to do this, so part of the screen is being taken away by some task preview that I don't care about. Is there any way to disable the taskbar thumbnail previews? It's driving me nuts! " My response: I completely agree with you - I have never had any use for this feature which I believe started some time ... (view more)

A Texas man is suing a woman he dated for text messaging while the pair were watching Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2. Brandon Vezmar filed in small claims court seeking $17.31, the cost of his ticket for a 3D showing. According to the filing, ... reported in the Austin American-Statesman, the pair were on a first date after meeting online. Vezmar claims the woman "activated her phone at least 10-20 times in 15 minutes to read and send text messages." (Source: newsweek.com ) Texter Labeled Threat to Society He argues that this violated the theater's policy and spoiled the experience ... (view more)

A computer processor manufacturer is working on chips to implant into human brains. It could dramatically improve life for people with spinal or brain injuries, but is years from becoming a reality. The project is a partnership between the ... University of Washington's Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering and ARM, a company which dominates the market for processors in mobile devices. It will build on existing technologies which can read signals in the brain and then wirelessly transmit them to nerve stimulators, allowing people to control their hands and arms despite suffering from ... (view more)