RaviJoshi

In late 2017, Microsoft launched Windows 10 on ARM to let users run its operating system on the ARM processor-powered laptops, especially the ones powered by Snapdragon chips. The company also released a bunch of devices in partnership with OEMs like Asus, HP, and Lenovo, and marketed them as “Always Connected Devices.”

Earlier this year, when a project named aarch64-laptops started gaining traction on GitHub, it seemed like a great idea to run Linux on ARM laptops. The project initially allowed users to run Ubuntu on Snapdragon-powered laptops like NovaGo TP370QL, HP Envy x2, and Lenovo Mixx 630. Now, it has been revealed that Red Hat is working with Fedora team to bring Fedora Linux to such devices.

Red Hat is known for its commitment to the Linux hardware and it seems like this joint effort will be enough to clear different roadblocks. Red Hat’s Peter Robinson, in a tweet, mentioned that such Fedora running ARM laptops are coming “very soon.”

Source : fossbytes

‘Secret function’ in UC browser allows hackers to compromise Android devices

Doctor Web, a leading Russian anti-malware company, published in a report that the mobile device browser – ‘UC Browser’ – could be exploited by remote attackers to automatically download and launch new software components, bypassing Google Play servers.

For those unaware, UC Browser, which is developed by China-based Alibaba-owned UCWeb is one of the most widely used mobile device browsers in India and China and has more than 500 million users worldwide.

According to the report from Doctor Web firm, while UC Browser itself is not embedded with malicious software, it does feature a ‘secret function’ since at least 2016 that allows developers to download new libraries and modules from its servers and install them on users’ mobile devices at any time and without any authentication.

UC Browser downloads the plug-in via the insecure HTTP protocol, and not the encrypted HTTPS protocol, which allows remote attackers to perform Man-in-the-Middle (MiTM) attacks and load malicious modules into targeted devices.

“Since UC Browser works with unsigned plug-ins, it will launch malicious modules without any verification,” the researchers say.

“Thus, to perform a MITM attack, cybercriminals will only need to hook the server response from http://puds.ucweb.com/upgrade/index.xhtml?dataver=pb, replace the link to the downloadable plug-in and the values of attributes to be verified, i.e., MD5 of the archive, its size, and the plug-in size. As a result, the browser will access a malicious server to download and launch a Trojan module.”

The researchers demonstrated a PoC video that shows a potential victim downloading a PDF document via UC Browser and trying to view it. To open the file, the browser tries to download the corresponding plug-in from the command and control server. However, due to the MITM substitution, the browser downloads and launches a different library. This library then creates a text message that says, “PWNED!”

“Thus, MITM attacks can help cybercriminals use UC Browser to spread malicious plug-ins that perform a wide variety of actions,” researchers explain.

“For example, they can display phishing messages to steal usernames, passwords, bank card details, and other personal data. Additionally, trojan modules will be able to access protected browser files and steal passwords stored in the program directory.”

This feature allows browser developers to download and execute arbitrary code on users’ devices without having to install a full new version of UC browser app. It also fails to comply with the Play Store policy, as it tries to bypass the Google servers.

“This violates Google’s rules for software distributed in its app store. The current policy states that applications downloaded from Google Play cannot change their own code or download any software components from third-party sources,” the researchers say.

“These rules were applied to prevent the distribution of modular trojans that download and launch malicious plugins.”

The researchers found this malicious feature has affected UC Browser as well as UC Browser Mini and all versions of UC Browser released to this date. Doctor Web specialists contacted the developer of both browsers, but they refused to comment on the matter. As a result, the malware analysts reported the issue to Google.

At the time of writing, the compromised applications, UC Browser, and UC Browser Mini are “still available and can download new components, bypassing Google Play servers,” researchers say.

Doctor Web analysts have suggested owners of Android devices to think whether they should continue using these programs or remove them and wait until they are updated to fix potential vulnerabilities.

SOURCE: TECHWORM

A Lithuanian man scammed Facebook and Google into paying over more than US$122 million just by sending them random fake invoices.

Evaldas Rimasauskas, a 50-year-old Lithuanian citizen, who plead guilty in New York’s Southern District Court last week faces up to 30 years in prison depending on whether or not he’s found guilty of wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and three counts of money laundering charges. The sentencing date has been set for July 24.

After being arrested by Lithuanian authorities in March 2017, Rimasauskas was extradited to the US in August 2017.

“As Evaldas Rimasauskas admitted today, he devised a blatant scheme to fleece US companies out of US$100 million, and then siphoned those funds to bank accounts around the globe,” Manhattan US attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said in a statement.

“Rimasauskas thought he could hide behind a computer screen halfway across the world while he conducted his fraudulent scheme, but as he has learned, the arms of American justice are long, and he now faces significant time in a US prison.”

Although the companies were not named in the indictment, a Lithuanian court order in 2017 has identified Google and Facebook as the victims.

Between 2013 and 2015, Rimasauskas and other unnamed co-conspirators sent official-looking invoices to Google and Facebook by impersonating the Taiwan-based hardware manufacturer, Quanta Computer Inc. Both the companies “regularly conducted multimillion-dollar transactions” with the Asian company. He defrauded Facebook and Google of US$99m and US$23m respectively.

Simultaneously, Rimasauskas registered and incorporated a company in Latvia with the same name, and then opened bank accounts in Latvia and Cyprus. His emails “purported to be from employees and agents” of Quanta Computer and “were sent from email accounts designed to create the false appearance” of being genuine.

Once the invoices were paid, Rimasauskas would quickly transfer the funds to different personal bank accounts around the world including Latvia, Cyprus, Slovakia, Lithuania, Hungary, and Hong Kong.

Additionally, he would also forge invoices, contracts and letters to look as if they have been executed and signed by from Facebook and Google to convince the banks to transfer the funds.

Rimasauskas has agreed to forfeit about $50m. Speaking on the incident, both companies said they recovered all or most of the money. A Facebook spokesperson said, “Facebook recovered the bulk of the funds shortly after the incident and has been cooperating with law enforcement in its investigation.”

Similarly, Google in a statement said: “We detected this fraud and promptly alerted the authorities. We recouped the funds, and we’re pleased this matter is resolved.”

SOURCE : TECHWORM

Google Doodle on Tuesday celebrated 30 years of the World WIde Web, an invention that changed the future of the human world.

The internet is a huge network of computers all connected together, but it was the world wide web that made the technology into something that linked information together and made it accessible to everyone. In essence, the world wide web is a collection of webpages found on this network of computers – your browser uses the internet to access the world wide web.

The world wide web was invented by Sir Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 – originally he was trying to find a new way for scientists to easily share the data from their experiments. Hypertext (text displayed on a computer display that links to other text the reader can immediately access) and the internet already existed, but no one had thought of a way to use the internet to link one document directly to another

On March 12, 1989, 33 years old, Sir Tim Berners Lee, working at Europe CERN lab had submitted the ‘Information Management: A proposal’ to his boss which we today know as the birth of the World Wide Web.

The first recorder response of this boss was, “Vague but exciting”.

Initially, Berners-Lee envisioned “a large hypertext database with typed links” named “Mesh”, to help his colleagues at CERN (a large nuclear physics laboratory in Switzerland) share information amongst multiple computers.

Berners-Lee’s boss allowed him time to develop the humble flowchart into a working model, writing the HTML language, the HTTP application, and WorldWideWeb. app the first Web Browser and page editor. By 1991, the external Web Servers were up and running.

There are three main ingredients that make up the world wide web. URL (uniform resource locator), which is the addressing scheme to find a document; HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol), which connects computers together; and HTML (hypertext markup language), which formats pages containing hypertext links.

The Web was made public in April 1993, Its popularity started spreading from November with the launch of Mosaic, the first search engine to accept pictures. That revolutionised the Web, making it user friendly.

Mosaic was later replaced by the likes of internet Explorer, Google Chrome, and Mozilla Firefox.

Thanks to the web the number of internet users explodes, from several million in the early 1990’s to more than 400 million people in 2000

The 2000’s marks the beginning of wireless internet for all.

“You should have complete control of your data. It’s not oil. It’s not a commodity,: he told a small group of journalists gathered at Europe’s physics lab CERN, where he first came up with the idea for the web 30 years ago.

Explore More :

Where The World Wide Web Was Born

Microsoft says it will end support for Windows 7 devices that don’t download and install its next update that brings SHA-2 encryption algorithms.

Microsoft really wants you to update your PCs 

Microsoft has already announced ending support for Windows 7 OS by 2020. The company is now making sure Windows 7 users don’t interrupt official updates, especially the one scheduled to release on March 12.

Microsoft is making a big transition with its next big update as it moves to SHA-2 code, a more secure encryption algorithm. Currently, Windows 7 PCs run on the older SHA-1 codes.

“Customers running legacy OS versions (Windows 7 SP1, Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 SP2) will be required to have SHA-2 code signing support installed on their devices by July 2019. Any devices without SHA-2 support will not be offered Windows updates after July 2019,” saidMicrosoft.

Microsoft is going to release support for SHA-2 signing later this year. It also plans to update some dated versions of Windows Server Update Services (WSUS).

“Unfortunately, the security of the SHA-1 hash algorithm has become less secure over time due to weaknesses found in the algorithm, increased processor performance, and the advent of cloud computing. Stronger alternatives such as the Secure Hash Algorithm 2 (SHA-2) are now strongly preferred as they do not suffer from the same issues,” the company explained.

Microsoft has been making efforts to move users running on older Windows versions to its newer Windows 10. While the latest software saw fast adoption initially due to free upgrade schemes, it’s still marginally ahead of decade-old Windows 7 OS.

According to a recent Net MarketShare report, Windows 10 runs on about 39.22% of devices whereas Windows 7 is on 36.90% as of December 2018.

SOURCE: HINDUSTANTIMES

Chinese Programmer Gets Jailed For Withdrawing $1 Million In Cash Using An ATM Flaw

senior Chinese bank programmer was arrested after he withdrew more than 7 million yuan (around $1,000,000) in “free” cash by exploiting an ATM flaw. He has been given a prison sentence of 10 and a half years : REPORTS

Qin Qisheng, 43, a former manager in Huaxia Bank’s technology development center in Beijing, discovered a flaw in the bank’s main operating system in 2016. According to the report, the loophole enabled Qisheng to make cash withdrawals from the ATM around 12 a.m. As the bank’s system was not working properly, the cash withdrawals made by Qisheng were not recorded and also no alert was raised.

Apparently, Qisheng who had discovered the flaw in 2016, had inserted a few scripts in the banking system in November that year, which suppressed cash withdrawal alerts. From November 2016 to January 2018, Qisheng withdrew between 5,000 yuan and 20,000 yuan ($740 to $2,965) from a dummy account the bank used for testing. By the start of last year, Qisheng had collected over $1,000,000, that he added it to his personal bank account. He also did not inform his superiors what he was doing.

In January last year, a subsidiary branch in Cangzhou, Hebei detected and verified the irregular activity in the dummy account during a manual check. The incident was reported by the bank to relevant authorities

Once Qisheng was caught, the bank decided to not continue to press charges against him and accept his explanation that he had simply been trying to investigate the ATM flaw. Qisheng had kept the money in his personal account and invested some of it in the stock market. While Huaxia bank said that he should have reported these activities, they requested police to drop the case if he returned the money.

Although Qisheng returned the money, the authorities did not accept the explanation and was detained in March. The Chaoyang district court found him guilty of theft in December and awarded him a jail sentence of 10 and a half years with a fine of 11,000 yuan ($16,000).

Even though Qi had returned all the money to the bank before his arrest, it was not enough to let him go, the district court said. It also added that the request by Huaxia bank to pardon Qi was not legitimate.

“On the one hand, [the bank] said that the accused’s behaviour was in violation of the rules. On the other hand, he said that he could conduct relevant tests. This is self-contradictory,” said the judge.

After the trial, Qin filed an appeal arguing that he did not deserve such a severe punishment. The second and final ruling by the Beijing Intermediate People’s Court upheld the verdict.

“After reviewing the papers, speaking to the appellant and listening to the opinions of the defenders, we believed that the facts of the case were clear and decided not to have another trial,” the court said.

“The case is closed.”

Huaxia Bank has rectified the ATM flaw to avoid any internal theft incident in the future. Huaxia bank has yet to respond on the issue.

TECHWORM.NET

• 

Microsoft today launched a marketing campaign pitting Office 2019 and Office 365 against each other. The goal? To prove Office 2019 isn’t worth buying — you and your company should go with Office 365 instead.

When Microsoft announced Office 2019 in September 2017, the company said the productivity suite was “for customers who aren’t yet ready for the cloud.” And when Microsoft launched Office 2019 in September 2018, the company promised it wouldn’t be the last: “We’re committed to another on-premises release in the future.”

And yet, Microsoft would much rather you join the ranks of Office 365’s 33.3 million subscribers. If you must, Office 2019 is available for purchase. But Office 365 is really what the company wants you to buy.

Office 365 includes fully-installed Office applications — the latest versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. But those apps keep getting better over time, with new capabilities delivered every month. Most importantly, Office 365 is connected to the cloud, so you can access your content from any device, coauthor with anyone in real-time (regardless of whether or not they’ve purchased a copy of Office) and use the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to create impactful content with less effort. On the flipside, Office 2019 also delivers full installs of the Office apps we know and love — but they’re “frozen in time.” They don’t ever get updated with new features, and they’re not cloud-connected. Also, Office 2019 doesn’t support real-time coauthoring across apps, and it doesn’t have the amazing AI-powered capabilities that come with Office 365.

The guidelines give platforms 24 hours to remove unlawful content

Social media companies are gearing up for battle against India’s proposed internet guidelines that require them to actively monitor content. The new IT rules — which arrive amidst looming general elections — dictate that the likes of Facebook and Twitter must remove any unlawful content that can affect the “sovereignty and integrity of India” within 24 hours.

According to Reuters, lobby groups representing Facebook and other companies are working with law firms to draft objections to the guidelines to be filed with India’s IT ministry. Industry execs and local activists claim the proposed rules are another form of censorship and could be used to suppress dissent.

Efforts by WhatsApp are already underway to curb the spread of misinformation in India after fake news circulated via the Facebook-owned app spilled into real-world violence last year. The changes, introduced at the behest of the Indian government, spanned the labelling of forwarded messages and limiting the ability to forward texts to multiple chats at once.

Similar laws have been enacted by other countries including Vietnam,, which requires tech companies to store user data locally and remove offensive material within 24 hours. Germany also necessitates that hate speech be taken down within the same time frame, while Australia recently passed its anti-encryption bill into law despite protests from Apple.

India’s new draft rules are open to comments from the public until January 31st, after which they will be adopted as law.

SOURCE : ENGADGETS

Top Software And The Programming Language In Which They Are Written.

most popular software are forks of different coding languages which means that tech companies use different programming languages to make the software. However, some software also uses a single coding language. Here are some popular software and their programming languages.

Google Search :

BackRub (Google’s first incarnation) was written in Java and Python. Now, Google’s front end is written in C and C++ and its famous crawlers (Spyders) were written in Python. However, the crawler kept crashing, and indexes got stale with old information, therefore Google developed a new crawler (capable of incremental index updates) written in C++.

Google Chrome :

Google Chrome is written in C++, Assembly and Python

Adobe

All Adobe products (Photoshop, Acrobat, Illustrator, etc) are written in C/C++ and embed Javascript (Adobe calls their implementation ActionScript), and then the UI etc. are written in Javascript.

Microsoft

Microsoft products (Word, Excel, Powerpoint) are written in C/C++, embed a VB engine and the UI etc. are written in VB. Microsoft’s Windows 10 operating system is written in C++ while its kernel is written in C.

Apple

Apple’s Mac OS X is written in Objective C while its kernel is also written in C. The IO PnP subsystem in Mac OS X uses Embedded C++.

Linux

Most of the Linux is written in C programming language. Most Apps are  written in Python, KDE is all C++.  All Linux kernels use Assembly code as well.

AutoCAD

The first release of AutoCAD is purely written in C and some parts in Assembly. The current version, however, is written fully in C++. The popular AutoCAD wrappers are written in AutoLISP, Visual LISP, VBA,  Dot NET and JavaScript.

YouTube

YouTube was initially written in PHP, but they switched to Python very early in their history. They stuck with Python all the way until they were acquired by Google.

Facebook

Most of the popular blue UI front end that we see today on Facebook is written in PHP, Much of it is written using XHP, and the runtime is HipHop for PHP. Facebook also uses a lot of JavaScript and Erlang.

Dropbox

The world’s most popular cloud storage App uses Python as its main programming language.

Quora

The creators of Quora, who used to work for Facebook, chose Python because it’s expressive and quick to write. LiveNode, one of the internal systems that manage the display of content on the web page, is partly written in Python.

Reddit

Reddit one of the biggest communities of the web and its registered users, people like you, provide the content. Originally written in Common Lisp, it was rewritten in Python in 2005 to gain greater development flexibility and access to Python’s plethora of code libraries.

SOURCE : TECHWORM.COM

Please wait for further updates..

Nobel laureates, including biochemist Avram Hershko and physicist Duncan Haldane, lowered a 8×8 time capsule 10 feet into the ground on the second day of the 106th Indian Science Congress.

Jalandhar: A smartphone, laptop, and science-text books are some of the things that will remain buried for 100 years in the time capsule on the campus of Lovely Professional University (LPU), Jalandhar. Students stared in awe as Nobel laureates, including biochemist professor Avram Hershko and physicist professor Duncan Haldane, pushed the button to lower the 8×8 feet time capsule 10 feet into the ground on Friday, the second day of the 106th Indian Science Congress (ISC).

A time capsule is a cache of objects considered typical of the present period, which is buried for future discovery. The date when the capsule is to be opened is usually inscribed on the container.

“Major developments in technology have taken place over the last few decades, even as new-tech capabilities are being added to our lives every few years. This time capsule would represent our technology know-how as it stands today. It will be a source of wonder and pride for the generation that digs this out in 2119,” said Ashok Mittal, chancellor, LPU.

The capsule contains 100 technology items, including a laptop, smart-phone, drone, virtual-reality headset, solar panels, consumer durables such as air filters, induction cookers, and air-fryer and Alexa—a cloud-based virtual assistant developed by Amazon that is capable of voice interaction.

A hard disk with the latest documentaries and movies, science textbooks for school students, and a camera was also kept inside.

“The idea was to capture today’s technological essence for future generations,” said Aakash Purohit, a final year student of computer science.

“We have also kept a central processing unit, a motherboard, a hard disk that we procured from our laboratories on the campus. So, when students unearth this in 2119, they will know about the technology that existed a century before their time. It is like recording this time in history,” he said.

Students said they also wanted to include small replicas of the Mars Orbiter Mission, Mangalyaan, which has been orbiting Mars since September 2014; Brahmos, the fastest cruise missile in the world; and the Tejas fighter jet to celebrate the country’s scientific achievements. However, they ended up selecting various items from their laboratories, the students said.

The idea was first put forward in early December and more than 25 students from various departments, including electronics, mechanical engineering, fashion, agriculture, design, and computer science, came together to design the time capsule — a box made of aluminium and wood with a glass door.

Students decided on the items that would be included in the time capsule. The area where the capsule has been buried would be cemented and earmarked.

SOURCE: LIVEMINT.COM