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ComputerWorld Independent 

Apple is forcing the ads industry to change

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Credit to Author: Jonny Evans| Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2019 07:44:00 -0800

Advertising has become too personal.

Modern systems learn too much about your personal life, tastes and aspirations, and while this is manna from heaven for advertisers, it’s an invasion of privacy for the many. And Apple is changing the equation.

Intelligent Tracking Prevention

Apple has built a technology that reduces the quantity of data advertisers can harvest from your online life. It is called Intelligent Tracking Prevention and The Information tells us that since the tech debuted in 2017:

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ComputerWorld Independent 

Patch Tuesday brings a reprise of the Autopilot debacle, now quashed, and another Win7 nag

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Credit to Author: Woody Leonhard| Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2019 07:33:00 -0800

Patch Tuesday in December rarely brings anything worthwhile — everybody’s on vacation, or wants to be on vacation — and this month’s no exception. We got patches for 36 separately identified security holes and two new advisories, full of sound and fury but covering very little.

The one “exploited” security hole — CVE-2019-1458 Win32k Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability — shouldn’t cause any heartburn. Microsoft says:

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ComputerWorld Independent 

Blockchain/IoT integration accelerates, hits a 'sweet spot' for the two technologies

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Credit to Author: Lucas Mearian| Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2019 03:00:00 -0800

Three-quarters of companies implementing IoT have already adopted blockchain or plan to use it by the end of 2020, an indicator of the growing connection between the two, according to a survey of 500 U.S. companies by Gartner.

While the marriage between the two technologies has been expected to be crucial for  industry digital transformation, the adoption rate is happening at a “much faster pace than expected,” Gartner said.

“Among the blockchain adopters, 86% are implementing the two technologies together in various projects,” Avivah Litan, a Gartner vice president and report author,  wrote in a blog. She called IoT integration “a sweet spot” for blockchain, the much-hyped distributed ledger technology.

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ComputerWorld Independent 

Android security checkup: 16 steps to a safer phone

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Credit to Author: JR Raphael| Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2019 04:00:00 -0800

Android security is always a hot topic on these here Nets of Inter — and almost always for the wrong reason.

As we’ve discussed ad nauseam over the years, most of the missives you read about this-or-that super-scary malware/virus/brain-eating-boogie-monster are overly sensationalized accounts tied to theoretical threats with practically zero chance of actually affecting you in the real world. If you look closely, in fact, you’ll start to notice that the vast majority of those stories stem from companies that — gasp! — make their money selling malware protection programs for Android phones. (Pure coincidence, right?)

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ComputerWorld Independent 

Microsoft to end updates to Windows 7's free AV software, Security Essentials

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Credit to Author: Gregg Keizer| Date: Mon, 09 Dec 2019 11:05:00 -0800

Microsoft will not provide new malware signatures for its home-grown Security Essentials software after it retires Windows 7 in five weeks.

“No, your Windows 7 computer is not protected by MSE ((Microsoft Security Essentials)) after January 14, 2020,” the company said in a support document mainly concerned about the Extended Security Updates (ESU) being shilled to enterprises. “MSE is unique to Windows 7 and follows the same lifecycle dates for support.”

Security Essentials, a free antivirus (AV) program that launched in 2008, was originally limited to consumers. However, in 2010, Microsoft expanded the licensing to small businesses, defined as those with 10 or fewer PCs. Two years after that, MSE was replaced by Windows Defender with the launch of Windows 8.

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ComputerWorld Independent 

All about the latest iPhone location privacy scare

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Credit to Author: Jonny Evans| Date: Fri, 06 Dec 2019 07:05:00 -0800

That story going round that claims iPhone 11 devices are secretly harvesting your location information even though you’ve told them not to do so? You don’t need to worry about it, and here’s why:

What’s the story?  

The tale begins when a security researcher noticed the devices seemed to be sending out location data even when Location Services were switched off on the iPhone.

He thought this was weird, but Apple reassured him that this was “expected behaviour” – and while the company took a little time to figure out what to say about this, it’s answer is convincing, once you know what it means.

What Apple said

The matter relates to iPhone 11’s U1 chip, which brings in an exciting (yet veteran) technology called Ultra Wideband (UWB).

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ComputerWorld Independent 

All’s clear to install Microsoft’s November patches

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Credit to Author: Woody Leonhard| Date: Thu, 05 Dec 2019 07:46:00 -0800

The November passel of patches didn’t include anything earth-shattering; there were no emergency security breaches storming the gates, but good patching hygiene dictates that you get your machine braced for the next round.

If you install patches manually one by one (“Group B,” which I don’t recommend for mere mortals), you need to make sure you have the proper Servicing Stack Updates in place. They’ve all changed in the past month.

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ComputerWorld Independent 

Throwback Thursday: Bank error in your favor, collect $100,000

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Credit to Author: Sharky| Date: Thu, 05 Dec 2019 03:00:00 -0800

It’s the late 1980s, and this pilot fish is working as a teller at small suburban bank with a few branches.

“Automation is catching on, but slowly,” says fish. “We have terminals to process deposits, withdrawals and money orders — but at the end of the day, the branch manager still takes our totals and enters them into a handwritten ledger.”

The terminals use a text-based menu for everything, but for some operations that require a manager’s approval — say, printing a cashier’s check — the manager must walk over, hold down an override key and type in a password to let the teller access the check-printing menu.

Fish notices that the console beeps now and then during the password process. But it doesn’t happen every time, and there’s no pattern he can detect.

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ComputerWorld Independent 

Microsoft Patch Alert: November patches behave themselves – with a few exceptions

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Credit to Author: Woody Leonhard| Date: Tue, 03 Dec 2019 10:29:00 -0800

What a relief. The only major patching problem for November came from Office, not Windows. We had a handful of completely inscrutable patches – including two .NET non-security previews that apparently did nothing – but that’s the worst of it.

November saw the last security patch for Win10 version 1803. Win10 version 1909 got released, gently. We also had a much-hyped “exploited” zero-day security hole in Internet Explorer (again) that didn’t amount to a hill of beans (again).

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