Crooks are stealing code from the purveyors of Petya ransomware and using it to extort money from innocent victims, stiffing the creators of the malware out of the cut they are supposed to get. Rather than following the rules of licensing Petya, another criminal group is stealing and modifying the ransomware so they can use…
The U.S. Department of Justice yesterday argued that it should not have to reveal the maker of a tool used last year to crack an alleged terrorist’s iPhone or disclose how much it paid for the hacking job, court documents showed. That tool was used last year by the FBI to access a password-protected iPhone…
In a case of no honor among thieves, a group of attackers has found a way to hijack the Petya ransomware and use it in targeted attacks against companies without the program creators’ knowledge. A computer Trojan dubbed PetrWrap, being used in attacks against enterprise networks, installs Petya on computers and then patches it on…
U.S. Senator Cory Booker from New Jersey isn’t ready to talk about his rumored campaign for presidency in 2020, but he did sit down with Google’s senior counsel on civil and human rights Malika Saada Saar at South by Southwest on Friday to talk about the power of human connection and social justice. Oh, and…
Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian has a rosy view of the company’s future. Despite controversy over the online bulletin board’s role in the election of Donald Trump and the proliferation of white nationalism on its forums, Ohanian describes Reddit as “the global watercooler where people’s minds are changed about things.” Ohanian gave an impassioned defense of…
Microsoft gave its Cortana app for iOS a facelift Friday, replacing its old black and blue aesthetic with a new look that puts the assistant’s key features at users’ fingertips. The app now features Quick Actions, so that users can tap a couple buttons and get Cortana to create an alarm, set a reminder, or…
A day after it was revealed through WikiLeaks that the CIA has allegedly explored hacking vehicle computer-control systems, including BlackBerry’s QNX OS, the company said its software is safe. “We are not currently aware of any attacks or exploits against BlackBerry products or services, including QNX. Still, the news is a bit frightening, now that…
Gravity, an embeddable, lightweight programming language written in C, is an option for mobile application development while backing multiple programming variants. Supporting data-driven, functional, object-oriented, and procedural programming, Gravity was built for Creo Lab’s Creo design tool for the Mac, but it’s a standalone product, developer Marco Bambini said. Currently in beta, open source Gravity…
SAN FRANCISCO — Google this week made good on its plan to reposition Hangouts for the enterprise by splitting the almost four-year-old service into two separate apps. A video conferencing app, Hangouts Meet and team messaging app Hangouts Chat will serve as the enterprise equivalent to Google’s Allo and Duo apps for consumers. Meet, which…
The Moto Z Play is the latest in the Lenovo family of smartphones to get Android Nougat. But that’s not the only big update this week—Google’s Pixel and Nexus devices are getting several critical security patches. Each week, we round up all the major software updates to hit the Android ecosystem, including phones and tablets…