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... Developed by China-based Maxthon International, the browser is available for all major platforms in more than 50 languages. In 2013, after the NSA surveillance scandal broke, the company boasted about its focus on privacy and security, and the use of strong encryption. Researchers at Fidelis Cybersecurity and Poland-based Exatel recently found that Maxthon regularly sends a file named ueipdata.zip to a server in Beijing, China, via HTTP. Further analysis revealed that ueipdata.zip contains an encrypted file named dat.txt. This file stores information on the operating system, CPU, ad blocker status, homepage URL, websites visited by the user (including online...

A new piece of sophisticated malware has been discovered on the networks of an unnamed European energy company with what researchers believe is the potential to shut down an energy grid. Endpoint protection firm Sentinel One Labs discovered the malware and dubbed it SFG, revealing it not only collects information on the infected system but opens a backdoor through which a destructive payload could be launched. It affects all versions of Windows and has been produced to overcome next-generation firewalls and anti-virus software. The malware also shuts down when put into a sandboxed environment or a virtual machine to escape...

Back in March, the Supreme Court stated that it would hear Samsung’s appeal in the company’s never-ending design patent battle with Apple. While Apple had urged the Supreme Court not to hear the case, saying that Samsung “had its day in court,” it was revealed on the court’s website today that the case will be heard on October 11th. The Supreme Court had initially announced its decision to hear the case in March, but a date was unknown until tonight. The hearing will center around two patents that Apple has claimed Samsung infringed upon. The long-winded battle seemingly came to an...

German Holocaust memorials and research centers are concerned about how players are able to catch Pokemon right at sites meant to honor those murdered by the Nazis. Pokemon Go has only been available in Germany as of sometime before noon on Wednesday and already it’s causing controversy. The Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe told The Local that the Holocaust memorial in Berlin has been reported as a site where people could find and catch Pokemon creatures through the augmented reality game. “This is a memorial space for the six million Jews who were murdered and it is...

Microsoft has patched today a critical security vulnerability in the Print Spooler service that allows attackers to take over devices via a simple mechanism. The vulnerability affects all Windows versions ever released. Security firm Vectra discovered the vulnerability (CVE-2016-3238), which Microsoft fixed in MS16-087. At its core, the issue resides in how Windows handles printer driver installations and how end users connect to printers. Exploit executes payload under SYSTEM user By default, in corporate networks, network admins allow printers to deliver the necessary drivers to workstations connected to the network. These drivers are silently installed without any user interaction and...

Microsoft has revealed its forthcoming Azure Stack won't run on the hardware of customers' choosing, an about-face on its earlier position that the hybrid cloud product would be vendor-agnostic. The company's senior director of cloud platform marketing Mark Jewett today said Azure Stack would only be initially available with hardware from Microsoft partners Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, Dell and Lenovo. Jewett said Microsoft would "prioritise" Azure Stack delivery via "turnkey integrated systems" in the initial general availability release. "We’ve been working with systems vendors on integrated systems for a while now and see this as the best approach to bring Azure innovation...

Microsoft's bold claims about Edge turn out to be true. If you want to watch true 1080p content on Netflix over your PC, you need to use Microsoft’s Edge browser. On Wednesday, Microsoft claimed that its Edge browser was the only one of the big four browsers—which also includes Chrome, Firefox, and Opera—to offer 1080p resolution while playing Netflix content. A quick test of all four browsers by PCWorld proved this claim to be true, with the other three browsers capped at 720p. Why this matters: Microsoft’s been busy trying to rehabilitate the reputation of Edge, which suffered after the...

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Arlington National Cemetery, both in Washington, DC area, have both issued appeals for players to avoid hunting Pokemon on their sites. "Playing Pokemon Go in a memorial dedicated to the victims of Nazism is extremely inappropriate," said Andy Hollinger, director of communications at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., in a statement sent to CNNMoney. "We are attempting to have the Museum removed from the game," the statement said. Arlington, the burial ground for the nation's war dead, tweeted out a somber request: "We do not consider playing 'Pokemon Go'...

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Want to use Nano Server? Software Assurance is non-optional Microsoft has released details of how Windows Server 2016 will be released and maintained, and as with Windows 10 it includes a "Windows as a service" model of frequent operating system updates. Windows Server 2016 will be launched at the company's Ignite conference, which runs from September 26 to 30 in Atlanta, Georgia. As with the current release, there will be three editions: Datacenter, Standard and Essentials. Several things are new, though. One is that Windows Server 2016 will be priced and licensed per core, rather than per physical processor. Another...

Fallout 4: Vault-Tec Workshop will launch on July 26 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC. Bethesda announced the release date for the upcoming add-on in a post on its official site. Additionally, the studio said it will be sending out closed beta keys to select fans later this week. The Vault-Tech Workshop DLC allows players to build their own vault that can be decked out with various furniture, which will attract new inhabitants who can be trained and used to fight off any danger that may pose a threat to your vault.

Microsoft's July round of patches fixes a vulnerability that could be used to bypass the Secure Boot protection feature if an attacker simply adds a policy to the target Windows systems. Microsoft mandates Secure Boot on newer PCs designed to run Windows. The feature is implemented in the unified extensible firmware interface (UEFI) code that checks the Windows boot loader before it starts up the operating system, to ensure it is digitally signed by Microsoft. Secure Boot can, however, be bypassed completely by applying a Windows group policy, providing attackers with full access to systems thought to be locked down....

Microsoft security bulletins are released on the second Tuesday of each month.

Apple Faces Patent Lawsuit Over iPhone's Battery Technologies Tuesday July 12, 2016 12:04 pm PDT by Joe Rossignol Somaltus, LLC has filed a complaint against Apple today in an Eastern Texas district court, accusing the iPhone maker of infringing upon its 2010 patent related to complex battery technologies. The small Frisco, Texas-based firm also filed lawsuits against Asus, Lenovo, Samsung, Sony, and Toshiba over the same patent. The lawsuit claims that the iPhone 6s and any similar devices sold by Apple infringe upon U.S. Patent No. 7,657,386, titled "Integrated Battery Service System," and seeks unspecified monetary damages or, alternatively, a...

Well it seems the battery gods have heard our call and bestowed upon us a miracle.Researchers at the University of California Irvine (UCI) may have discovered a way to drastically increase the life of modern day batteries. And the best part is that they stumbled upon this solution by accident.To be more specific, the discovery was made by fifth-year PhD student, Mya Le Thai. Mya was working on an electrolyte gel that was to substitute the electrolyte liquid currently found in batteries in an attempt to make it more affordable. But in a coincidental twist of fate (thank you...

Microsoft says Windows 10 is fresh yet familiar, which is a nice way of saying it's a do-over for people who didn't like Windows 8. But what an impressive do-over it is. In fact, Windows 10 surpasses Apple's upcoming OS X El Capitan in some key areas, like multitasking and personal assistance. It's not that El Capitan isn't a worthy upgrade for Mac owners; it finally offers split-screen capability, along with revamped apps and performance improvements. Windows 10 offers PC users just a bit more. After using both the near-final version of Windows 10 and the public beta of El...

Ethiopia has blocked social media sites across the country after questions from end-of-year university exams were posted online last month, sparking a national scandal. The online leak of national of the exam papers, which many have called an embarrassment for the government, forced the tests to be postponed. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Viber have been inaccessible in the Horn of Africa's most populous country since Saturday morning, and will continue to be so until the national school examinations are concluded on Wednesday, according to government officials. A government spokesman said the ban was aimed at stopping students taking university entrance...

End-to-end encryption vexing to some officials . Facebook says it has begun to offer users the option of securing their messages with end-to-end encryption, a service that soon may allow more than a billion account holders — potentially including jihad and other terror groups — to message one another below the radar of law enforcement surveillance. ... By implementing end-to-end encryption, Facebook aims to give its users a way of communicating over the network’s proprietary Messenger application in a manner intended to make correspondence undecipherable to anyone other than the sender and recipient, a possibility that alarms law enforcement officials....

Last of Steve Ballmer's old guard heads for the exit Kevin Turner’s departure as Microsoft’s chief salesman after 11 years marks the final passing of the Redmond old guard. Chief operating officer Turner - KT, as he was known - was a chief of the old-school corporate kind; sales, marketing and Microsoft’s stores all reported into Turner. His departure is part of a massive sales shake up that is doing away with the COO’s role. Judson Althoff, who was president of North America sales is now executive vice president of worldwide commercial sales, and the former head of sales and...

Microsoft has released build 14383 of Windows 10 Anniversary, for both PC and mobile, in preparation for its public launch on August 2nd 2016. Most "Insider" builds feature a watermark on the desktop, showing the version and build number, but that has gone in this build. "This is because we’re beginning to check in final code," said engineer Donar Sarkar in the announcement blog post, though we are promised more builds before release day. There are a bunch of fixes in this build but they are minor, as you would expect at this point in the release cycle. "We fixed...