TMO Link

Link

Linksys Velop Tri-Band Routers Now Support HomeKit

Andrew Orr ·

Linksys Velop Tri-Band Routers now support Apple’s HomeKit through a free update available in the Linksys app.

Through ‌HomeKit‌, Velop users can choose to firewall off ‌HomeKit‌ accessories to prevent them from communicating with other WiFi devices on a home network and untrusted internet services to prevent hacking attempts and provide better security for connected home devices.

HomeKit-compatible Velop Tri-band model numbers that work with ‌‌HomeKit‌‌ include A03, WHW0301, WHW0301B, WHW0302, WHW0302B, WHW0303, and WHW0303B.

Good news for owners of these routers.

Link

Mark Zuckeberg Fights European Regulators

Andrew Orr ·

In a court filing in Dublin, Ireland, Facebook says if a decision by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission is upheld, the company would have no choice but to abandon Europe because of its bad business practices.

If the decision is upheld, “it is not clear to [Facebook] how, in those circumstances, it could continue to provide the Facebook and Instagram services in the EU,” Yvonne Cunnane, who is Facebook Ireland’s head of data protection and associate general counsel, wrote in a sworn affidavit.

The decision Facebook’s referring to is a preliminary order handed down last month to stop the transfer of data about European customers to servers in the U. S., over concerns about U. S. government surveillance of the data.

Link

AT&T Wants You to be Impressed by its ‘6G’ Claim

Andrew Orr ·

The 5G 2020 iPhone hasn’t even been launched yet, but AT&T wants you to think that 5G isn’t good enough and you should be looking forward to 6G. AT&T Communications CEO Jeff McElfresh doesn’t want you to forget about his company.

I do believe that you will see many of the iPhone subscribers move to upgrade to the device […] I think customers, based on the pressures of the economy that we’re all facing today, will make a calculated decision as to what they want to do. And we’re going to be there to offer them any device that Apple launches here shortly.

McElfresh added that AT&T already has engineers working on next-generation 6G networking, noting that it will take years before the technology fully materializes. No further details were shared about these efforts.

Why a company would be bragging about their nonexistent 6G network is beyond me, unless of course there’s money involved somewhere. It has to be about money, because not only does AT&T plan to give you a paltry $10 for an ad-subsidized plan, AT&T CEO John Stankey wants more taxpayer money, aside from the US$400 billion dollars the telecom industry already squandered.

Link

How the United States is Ensuring Votes are Secure

Andrew Orr ·

Max Eddy writes an examination of election engineering and how the U.S. can ensure voting security. The part I think is fascinating is the work of Sam Curry, CSO of cybersecurity company Cybereason. His team has been simulating election attacks to figure out how best to protect our elections.

He’s observed numerous strategies and has advice on how best to protect an election. The people playing the role of defenders, usually given the role of law enforcement, “must create open lines of communication between government departments and also media sources and social media companies,” said Curry. Knowing who to call and when to call them and having a reliable back-up system in case one fails (or is intentionally sabotaged) are all critical.

Link

iOS 14 Reveals Facebook Spying on Your Camera Through Instagram

Andrew Orr ·

Facebook is being accused of accessing peoples’ cameras through Instagram, thanks to a iOS 14 feature that tells you when your camera is active.

Facebook denied the reports and blamed a bug, which it said it was correcting, for triggering what it described as false notifications that Instagram was accessing iPhone cameras.

In the complaint filed Thursday in federal court in San Francisco, New Jersey Instagram user Brittany Conditi contends the app’s use of the camera is intentional and done for the purpose of collecting “lucrative and valuable data on its users that it would not otherwise have access to.”

Facebook: “It’s a bug because you weren’t supposed to know we were doing this.”

Link

Apple One Can Cope with a User Having Multiple Apple IDs

Charlotte Henry ·

Apple One, the soon to be available services bundle, will still work for users who use different logins for different services. 9to5 Mac picked up on a reply from an in-the-know source.

One of those to raise the question on Twitter was Microsoft’s senior cloud advocate Christina Warren. Apple’s Chris Espinosa replied advising that he has checked and confirmed that all will be well. Espinosa was Apple employee #8, having originally started writing software and manuals for the company after school at the age of 14. He has worked on everything from BASIC programs for the original Apple I though classic Mac OS, AppleScript, Xcode, macOS and the iOS Family Sharing system.

Link

Readdle’s Apps are Ready for iOS 14 Features

Andrew Orr ·

Readdle is ready for iOS 14, having recently updated its suite of apps for iOS 14. Spark, Documents, Calendars, Scanner Pro, and PDF Expert are all set. Here are some new things. Documents: Widgets for recent and favorite files, music, and file actions; picture-in-picture on iPhones. PDF Expert: Scribble for Apple Pencil; widgets for recents and favorite PDFs; faster folder navigation. Calendars: Widgets for events, tasks, and conference calls; faster search for events; create events with your voice. Scanner Pro: Widgets for important documents and fast scanning; search through OCRed text with Spotlight; annotate your scans. Spark: Set Spark as your default email app; widgets for important emails and calendar; OAuth support for Office 365 accounts.

Link

Apple Gave FBI Access to Rioter’s iCloud Account

Andrew Orr ·

According to court documents, Apple gave the FBI access to a rioter’s iCloud account who was accused of setting police cars on fire in Seattle this summer.

As FBI officers were investigating a Seattle man suspected of setting police cars on fire, they turned to Apple for help […] Apple disclosed the name, email, phone number, and residential address associated with Jackson’s account, then subsequently granted the FBI access to the contents of Jackson’s account in response to a court-ordered search warrant.

Apple was served a lawful subpoena in regards to a lawful investigation, as it does frequently. But the main point is that it contrasts with claims from President Trump and A.G. Barr that Apple hinders investigations because they can’t unlock iPhones. Apple can’t do that, but if a person backs content up to iCloud, then it can be accessed.

Link

Spotify Doesn’t Like the Apple One Bundle, Calling it Unfair

Andrew Orr ·

Spotify doesn’t like the Apple One bundle, saying that Apple is abusing its dominant market position.

Once again, Apple is using its dominant position and unfair practices to disadvantage competitors and deprive consumers by favoring its own services. We call on competition authorities to act urgently to restrict Apple’s anti-competitive behavior, which if left unchecked, will cause irreparable harm to the developer community and threaten our collective freedoms to listen, learn, create, and connect.

Bundles save people money, therefore bundles are good for customers. As for competitors? At least Apple pays artists more. As for the dominant position claim, as of 2019 Apple Music has more paid subscribers in the U.S., but Spotify has more paid users in the world. As Neil Cybart said, this is just guerilla warfare of companies piling on against Apple because they’re not making as much money. As I say, cutthroat capitalism.

Link

CISA Believes China Hacked US Government Systems

Andrew Orr ·

According to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Chinese-affiliated hackers have compromised U.S. government computer systems.

“This beaconing is a result of cyber threat actors successfully completing cyber operations that are often designed around emergent vulnerabilities and reliant on existing exploitation tools,” the advisory states. “CISA observed activity from a Federal Government IP address beaconing out to the threat actors’ [command and control] server.”

Get we just get it together for 10 seconds, please?

Link

FCC Tests Eero Wi-Fi 6 Mesh Routers WIth BTLE, Zigbee

Andrew Orr ·

The FCC has been testing Eero’s Wi-Fi 6 mesh routers. Not much is known about these devices, including a launch date, but it appears that these products will have Bluetooth Low Energy and Zigbee to enable smart home automation connectivity.

Although the underside diagram for Gateway and Extender is shaped somewhat like the second-generation Beacon design, we don’t see any plugs shown—so it seems unlikely that they will be wall-wart designs like the Beacon’s or like Eero competitor Plume. We expect the new generation of devices will likely be desktop-style designs, with external power supplies.

Link

Gaming Company Razer Leaked 100,000 Users’ Data

Andrew Orr ·

In August, security researcher Volodymyr Diachenko found a server owned by Razer that exposed the data of over 100,000 users. It took the company over three weeks to get around to fixing the issue.

The cluster contained records of customer orders and included information such as item purchased, customer email, customer (physical) address, phone number, and so forth—basically, everything you’d expect to see from a credit card transaction, although not the credit card numbers themselves. The Elasticseach cluster was not only exposed to the public, it was indexed by public search engines.

Link

China Would Rather TikTok Be Shut Down Than Sold

Andrew Orr ·

A report on Friday says that China would rather TikTok be shut down instead of being sold to a U.S. company.

However, Chinese officials believe a forced sale would make both ByteDance and China appear weak in the face of pressure from Washington, the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the situation.

ByteDance said in a statement to Reuters that the Chinese government had never suggested to it that it should shut down TikTok in the United States or in any other markets.

Here’s what I think this means. China is all about the AI, and based on reports its algorithms seem to be more advanced than even invasive Facebook. China doesn’t want the U.S. to know just how more advanced it’s algorithms are. Read: China export ban of such technology.

Link

Import and Export ProtonMail With This New Tool

Andrew Orr ·

Proton released a new tool that lets you import and export ProtonMail. It’s available to paying customers to help you migrate from other email services.

Like all Proton apps, the Import-Export app’s code is open source, which allows anyone to verify its code for themselves. This level of transparency is necessary so that users can be confident their privacy is protected. It also makes it easier for cybersecurity experts to perform checks and audits of our apps, increasing their overall security.

Link

Fight For The Future Launches ‘Save Online Free Speech’ Campaign

Andrew Orr ·

Digital rights group Fight for the Future has launched a new campaign to save online free speech. The goal is to stop an executive order that would “gut Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, put the FCC and FTC in charge of policing online speech, and open the floodgates for widespread Internet censorship.”

The page allows visitors to easily submit a comment to the FCC opposing the executive order and similarly misguided proposals to gut Section 230, by filling out a form and selecting from a dropdown menu of humorous adjectives describing the order, such as “ass-backwards,” “despicable,” and “legally unsound.”

Update: Andrew Orr discussed this article on Security Friday.

Link

Adobe Spark Adds Animations for Web Tools, New Asset Management

Andrew Orr ·

Adobe Spark introduced a couple of new updates. First, Animations is coming to Spark web tools, previously only available in the iOS and Android apps. It also gains new asset management features to its integration with Creative Cloud Libraries.

The trick to capturing attention on social media (and keeping it) is to add sensory, evocative triggers to your content, in the first two seconds that your viewer scrolls past your post. Second best to being able to scratch and sniff pixels, motion is one of those triggers that has the power to capture attention and make your audience feel something. When you evoke emotion in your audience, you’re that much closer to getting them to pay attention, swipe up, buy, or take some other desired action.

Link

Reboot Your iPhone Weekly as a Security Measure

Andrew Orr ·

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes has a tip for iPhone owners: Reboot it at least once a week as a security measure.

Not only does this clean the systems RAM and get it ready to do more work, it also helps protect against remote exploits by making it harder for hackers to keep control of your iPhone — hacks don’t survive reboots.

A good, practical, and easy tip for Apple users.

Link

Prison Phone Service ‘Telmate’ Leaks Data of Inmates

Andrew Orr ·

Telmate, owned by Global Tel Link, makes an app for prisoners to send messages and calls to friends and family. It exposed a database of private messages, call logs, and personal information numbers in the tens of millions. Why? The database wasn’t secured with a password.

Comparitech security researcher Bob Diachenko on August 13, 2020 discovered the unsecured database and immediately reported it to Global Tel Link, the company that owns and operates Telmate. The company, to its credit, responded within two hours and secured the database an hour later, but it’s possible that other unauthorized parties accessed it prior to Diachenko’s disclosure.

Link

Big Tech Sues Patent Office Over Legal-Related Rule

Andrew Orr ·

Apple, Cisco, Intel, and Google have sued the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office over it’s recent rule that it can refuse to adjudicate patent claims while litigation about them is pending in court.

The rule, which was introduced by the USPTO in March and became final in May, deals with the agency’s obligations around inter partes review (IPR) — a sort of expert-court process for assessing whether patent claims are valid. USPTO says deferring to an ongoing court case is more efficient than setting up a parallel review internally.

Link

US Court Rules NSA Mass Surveillance Program Illegal

Andrew Orr ·

Seven years after NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden exposed the agency’s mass surveillance of Americans, a U.S. appeals court has deemed it illegal.

The ruling will not affect the convictions of Moalin and his fellow defendants; the court ruled the illegal surveillance did not taint the evidence introduced at their trial. Nevertheless, watchdog groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, which helped bring the case to appeal, welcomed the judges’ verdict on the NSA’s spy program.

Link

Amazon Removes Adverts For Staff 'Spies'

Charlotte Henry ·
Amazon has removed adverts looking for union ‘spies’, BBC News reported. The initial title for the roles was ‘intelligence analysts’ but the company later said the wording “was not an accurate description of the role.”
Initially, Amazon indicated that it was standard practice for large businesses to employee people to carry out such activity. But overnight the adverts were withdrawn. Amazon later said: “The job post was not an accurate description of the role – it was made in error and has since been corrected.” Marianne Rawlins, principal at management consultancy Bradley Risk Management, told the BBC: “The job description implies labour spying, and that has been illegal in the US for 80 years. I expect that sadly it is pretty common among big corporations, but putting it is black and white for all the world to see looks like a mistake.”
Link

News Publishers Consider Abandoning iOS Over Privacy Feature

Andrew Orr ·

Over at The Verge, Casey Newton wrote about the increasingly heated battle between Apple and advertisers. There are a couple of tidbits I wanted to comment on.

If you believe that free, ad-supported news is beneficial to a healthy democracy, it’s worth noting that all these pro-privacy changes come at a cost.

Free is great, free news is greater, and transparency is greatest. I believe discussing a healthy democracy involves advocating for open source software, which would necessitate a stance against Apple. So I don’t disagree, and as Mr. Newton notes, we need strong privacy laws as well. He also shares an interesting link to Vox, in which some news publishers are considering abandoning iOS if they can’t monetize their users.

Link

Mophie Releases Two 15W Wireless Chargers

Andrew Orr ·

On Tuesday mophie announced the release of two 15W wireless chargers, including a pad and a stand. Each one is available on mophie.com today and will come to other retailers in the future. The wireless charging pad is US$49.95 and the wireless charging stand is US$59.95. Charlie Quong, vice president of product, power at ZAGG Brands:

Wireless charging adoption has picked up quickly in the last few years. It makes the process of topping off your smartphone battery throughout the day, like in your home or office, completely uncomplicated. mophie wireless charging accessories are designed to simplify power, particularly for those who dislike carrying numerous charging cables and adapters for different mobile devices.