Researchers from FireEye found that the malicious component, nicknamed Kemoge, has been seeded inside what appear to be legitimate apps offered on third-party application stores.

“This is another malicious adware family, possibly written by Chinese developers or controlled by Chinese hackers, spreading on a global scale that represents a significant threat,” wrote Yulong Zhang, a staff research scientist with FireEye.

Whomever created Kemoge repackaged legitimate apps with the malware and then promoted them on websites and through in-app ads to persuade people to download them.

Zhang listed a dozed affected apps: Sex Cademy, Assistive Touch, Calculator, Kiss Browser, Smart Touch, Shareit, Privacy Lock, Easy Locker, 2048kg, Talking Tom 3, WiFi Enhancer and Light Browser.

Third-party apps stores are considered risky places to download Android apps, as hackers frequently upload malicious apps to them. Google performs a security check on apps in its Play store, although harmful ones occasionally sneak in.

Kemoge not only displays unwanted ads, but it’s also loaded with eight root exploits that target a wide range of Android devices, Zhang wrote. A successful attack using those exploits means an attacker would have complete control over the device.

Kemoge will collect a device’s IMEI (International Mobile Station Equipment Identity) and IMSI (International Mobile Subscriber Identity) numbers, information on storage and apps, and send the information to a remote server.

That command-and-control server was still running, Zhang wrote. An analysis of traffic exchanged between an infected device and the server showed Kemoge also tries to uninstall antivirus apps.

FireEye came across an app called Shareit in Google’s Play store that was signed by the same digital certificate as the malicious one found on the third-party source.

The Google Play version of ShareIt did not have the eight root exploits or contact the command-and-control server, but it did have some of the same Kemoge code libraries. It now appears to be gone from Google Play.

Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/mobile-category/kemoge-malware-menacing-android-phones.html

IBM scientists demonstrated a new way to shrink transistor contacts in chips, thus speeding up the replacing of silicon transistors with carbon nanotubes which the firm has been working on for several years.

The company said that the breakthrough brings it closer to creating fully scaled carbon nanotube technology that will power future computing technologies while increasing performance and “opening a pathway to dramatically faster, smaller and more powerful chips”.

Carbon nanotube chips have many benefits over traditional silicon. Transistors in silicon are approaching a point of physical limitation. They have been made smaller year after year, but shrinking the size of the transistor, including the channels and contacts, without compromising performance is becoming increasingly difficult.

Carbon nanotube chips could improve the capabilities of high-performance computers because they allow these contacts to be so small that they are virtually transparent.

This means that the size of the semiconductor can decrease dramatically, while the substrate of carbon nanotubes makes the chip more energy efficient and is a soft and flexible material that could allow new device form factors.

Shu-jen Han, IBM’s manager of nanoscale science and technology, told us in an interview that wearable technology is one of the most exciting areas that this technology could transform owing to the unique property of the substrate, allowing new form factors with better performance and battery life.

However, the breakthrough isn’t about the carbon nanotube material being a better replacement for silicon, but more of an engineering innovation that addresses part of the problem in successfully rolling out better performing and more efficient chips.

“We know what the issue has been, and the limits of the technology, for years. What we solved here is a device-level issue, a one-dimensional structure. We need to make a wafer of them, a high-quality wafer, which does not exist yet,” Shu-jen said.

The next stage for IBM’s research group is to scale up the carbon nanotube technology to make reliable mass produced chips before they can make a difference to businesses and consumers.

Shu-jen said this could take five to 10 years, but could enable big data to be analysed faster and allow cloud data centres to deliver services more efficiently and economically.

Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/computing-category/ibm-makes-carbon-nanotube-breakthrough.html

Google and Microsoft have reached a broad agreement on patent matters, with a legal settlement ending some 20 lawsuits between the companies in the U.S. and Germany. Financial terms weren’t disclosed, but the deal brings a laundry list of lawsuits to a close.

“Microsoft and Google are pleased to announce an agreement on patent issues,” they said in a joint statement. “As part of the agreement, the companies will dismiss all pending patent infringement litigation between them, including cases related to Motorola Mobility.”

They also agreed to collaborate on patent matters and work together “to benefit our customers.”

The suits that have been settled include those related to mobile phones, video encoding and Wi-Fi technologies. That doesn’t mean Microsoft has given up its campaign to collect royalties from Android device makers for the mobile operating system’s alleged infringement of Microsoft patents.

It’s not clear from the statement what patent matters the companies will be working on together in the future, but changes have already begun. The two companies agreed earlier this month to work together (alongside other firms like Netflix and Mozilla) on a royalty-free video codec.

It remains to be seen if the settlement will lead to more work between Microsoft and Google in other areas. A major sticking point for consumers has been the lack of a Google-made YouTube app for smartphones and tablets running Windows.

Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/aroundnet-category/microsoft-google-cease-fire-in-global-patent-deal.html

We say reportedly as we have not been able to contact Hilton ourselves and can rely only on reports. They are pretty solid reports, however, and they concern a problem at the company that happened between 21 April and 27 July.

Brian Krebs, of KrebsOnSecurity, started this off with a report about a payment card breach. Krebs said that he had heard about the breach from various sources, and that Visa – the card provider – has mailed potentially affected parties with a warning, and the news that it is the fault of a bricks and mortar company.

Visa did not name the company, but affected parties, or banks to be more precise, have uttered it to Krebs. Its name is Hilton.

“Sources at five different banks say they have now determined that the common point-of-purchase for cards included in that alert had only one commonality: they were all were used at Hilton properties, including the company’s flagship Hilton locations as well as Embassy Suites, Doubletree, Hampton Inn and Suites, and the upscale Waldorf Astoria Hotels & Resorts,” he wrote.

“It remains unclear how many Hilton properties may be affected by this apparent breach. Several sources in the financial industry told KrebsOnSecurity that the incident may date back to November 2014, and may still be ongoing.”

Krebs has a statement from the Hilton organisation in which the firm defended its security practices, and revealed that it is aware of the potential problem and is looking into it. This is a common theme among the breached, and should soon become part of mission statements.

“Hilton Worldwide is strongly committed to protecting our customers’ credit card information,” said the company in the statement to Krebs.

“We have many systems in place and work with some of the top experts in the field to address data security. Unfortunately the possibility of fraudulent credit card activity is all too common for every company in today’s marketplace. We take any potential issue very seriously, and we are looking into this matter.”

We have asked Visa and Hilton for their comments.

Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/computing-category/was-the-hilton-hotel-chain-hacked-in-april.html

Coming in three incredible versions, Fedora 23 Cloud, Fedora 23 Server and Fedora 23 Workstation, this new edition picks up where the old one left off and runs with it.

The biggest news for fans is the use of compiler flags to help improve security. These are designed to help protect Fedora 23 beta binaries against memory corruption vulnerabilities, buffer overflows and similar issues.

This is the latest iteration of Red Hat’s Linux-based operating system that likes to think of itself as the leading-edge open source operating system across all use cases. It’s hard to believe, but absolutely true.

The dazzling array of updates starts with Red Hat Fedora Server Beta, which offers a new role through the rolekit service in the form of a cache server for web applications, with the underlying functionality delivered by memcached.

Also new is the fact that rolekit can now be triggered by anaconda kickstart to determine what function should be started with the next reboot, and I think we can all agree that’s been a long time coming.

Cockpit also sees some big changes, including a basic cluster dashboard for Kubernetes, Support for SSH key authentication and support for configuring user accounts with their authorised keys and compatibility with multipath disks.

Meanwhile in Fedora 23 Workstation Beta, the fun keeps coming with a preview of GNOME 3.18. Changes to the software application will allow it to offer firmware updates and access to Libreoffice 5. Improvements have also been made to Wayland, with the ultimate aim being to make it the default graphic server in a future release.

Sadly, that’s where the thrillride ends as Cloud Beta contains very little new of note – but we are warned to stay tuned for news of Fedora 23 Atomic Host, said to be coming soon. We’re literally on the edge of our seats and will bring you the news as soon as we get it.

Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/computing-category/red-hat-releases-fedora-23-to-address-security-issues.html

The average download speed on U.S. 4G networks inched up to 10Mbps (bits per second) in the June-August quarter, according to research company OpenSignal. That was an improvement from 9Mbps in the previous quarter, but the country’s global ranking fell from 43rd as users in other countries made much larger gains.

The U.S. was one of the first countries with commercial LTE service when Verizon Wireless launched its network in late 2010. But other countries that adopted the system later started with better technology, and some have secured more frequencies or rolled out enhancements that U.S. carriers haven’t embraced as much, OpenSignal said.

New Zealand scored the highest average speed in the quarter with 36Mbps, coming up from nowhere in the rankings. But perennial standouts like South Korea and Singapore kept getting faster, too. The average LTE speed in Korea is now 29Mbps (up by 4Mbps), and in Singapore it’s 33Mbps, up by 5Mbps.

OpenSignal collects data on cellular performance through a free app that mobile subscribers can use to measure the speed they’re getting and find faster networks. The results announced Wednesday are based on readings from more than 300,000 users worldwide, the company said.

Countries like Hungary, the Dominican Republic and Morocco beat the U.S. in average LTE speed, but they aren’t necessarily smartphone paradises. Mobile users in America can use LTE more of the time, for example, because their carrier’s networks are built out. Subscribers in the U.S. are on LTE 78 percent of the time, on average, making the country No. 10 for what OpenSignal calls “time coverage.” Moroccan LTE may be fast, but 49 percent of the time, users there don’t get it, for example.

Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/mobile-category/u-s-falls-to-55th-place-worldwide-for-lte-speeds.html