Link

Apple Pay Support Comes to Qatar

Jeff Butts ·

Believe it or not, some countries still don’t have Apple Pay support. We can now count Qatar as one of the countries that does offer support for Cupertino’s digital wallet, after a recent announcement by Qatar bank QNB.

QNB is one of the largest financial institutions in the region and operates a number of subsidiaries in 31 countries, including many neighboring states. While the company announced Apple Pay availability for all customers, it appears the service is currently limited to people living in Qatar.

“We are proud for taking the initiative of bringing Apple Pay to the Qatari market. QNB has a reputation of providing its customers with state-of-the-art technologies,” said Heba Al-Tamimi, general manager at QNB Group’s Retail Banking arm.

Link

Smart Home Cameras, Baby Monitors Affected by Software Bug

Andrew Orr ·

A flaw in the ThroughTek “Kalay” network affects millions of IoT devices including smart baby monitors, DVRs, smart cameras, and other products.

this latest vulnerability allows attackers to communicate with devices remotely. As a result, further attacks could include actions that would allow an adversary to remotely control affected devices and could potentially lead to remote code execution.

Due to how the Kalay protocol is integrated by original equipment manufacturers (“OEMs”) and resellers before devices reach consumers, Mandiant is unable to determine a complete list of products and companies affected by the discovered vulnerability.

Link

Mastercard Moves to Phase Out Use of Magnetic Stripe by 2024

Andrew Orr ·

Mastercard announced on Monday a plan to phase out usage of magnetic stripes on its cards, and says it is the first payments network to do so.

Based on the decline in payments powered by magnetic stripes after chip-based payments took hold, newly-issued Mastercard credit and debit cards will not be required to have a stripe starting in 2024 in most markets. By 2033, no Mastercard credit and debit cards will have magnetic stripes, which leaves a long runway for the remaining partners who still rely on the technology to phase in chip card processing.

Tips

Get Free Bitcoins from 23 Faucets That Pay

MarthaTyron ·

Bryan Chaffin explains how Bitcoin faucets work and which faucets you can trust to pay. [Update: reformatted the guide, removed several defunct faucets, updated all descriptions, and added some new earning opportunities, too. – Bryan]

News

US Government Still Wants an iOS Backdoor

Jeff Butts ·

Some thought efforts to force an iOS backdoor were over. In fact, Cupertino may have won the battle in 2016, but the war wages on. Jeff Butts outlines the latest stalled efforts, and how they are probably just a setback for the government.

Link

GitHub No Longer Accepts Passwords, Use Security Keys Instead

Andrew Orr ·

GitHub will no longer accept passwords when authenticating Git operations and will require the use of strong authentication factors. Yubico also posted about the announcement here, and its 2FA hardware keys are an acceptable solution for GitHub users.

In December, we announced that beginning August 13, 2021, GitHub will no longer accept account passwords when authenticating Git operations and will require the use of strong authentication factors, such as a personal access token, SSH keys (for developers), or an OAuth or GitHub App installation token (for integrators) for all authenticated Git operations on GitHub.com. With the August 13 sunset date behind us, we no longer accept password authentication for Git operations.