Posted on Thursday November 29, 2018
More than 45,000 Internet routers have been compromised by a newly discovered campaign that's designed to open networks to attacks by EternalBlue, the potent exploit that was developed by, and then stolen from, the National Security Agency and leaked to the Internet at large, researchers say. From a report: The new attack exploits routers with vulnerable implementations of Universal Plug and Play to force connected devices to open ports 139 and 445, content delivery network Akamai said in a blog post. As a result, almost 2 million computers, phones, and other network devices connected to the routers are reachable to the Internet on those ports. While Internet scans don't reveal precisely what happens to the connected devices once they're exposed, Akamai said the ports -- which are instrumental for the spread of EternalBlue and its Linux cousin EternalRed -- provide a strong hint of the attackers' intentions. The attacks are a new instance of a mass exploit the same researchers documented in April. They called it UPnProxy because it exploits Universal Plug and Play -- often abbreviated as UPnP -- to turn vulnerable routers into proxies that disguise the origins of spam, DDoSes, and botnets.
Posted on Thursday November 29, 2018 | windows update, windows defender, windows 10, reset, registry files, refresh, clutter, bloatware
Is your PC running slowly? It could be because of all the digital clutter it has to deal with. Clutter can impede your computer's performance and eat away at its memory. To have your computer performing at top speed again, you need to get rid of these five types of clutter. Here's how to do it using built-in tools from Windows.
Posted on Wednesday November 28, 2018 | white hat, hacking, gray hat, cybersecurity, black hat
Newspaper headlines and Hollywood movies have shaped our understanding of computer hackers, but in the real world it's not so simple. Some hackers are making massive contributions to the field of cybersecurity, it just depends on which hat they're wearing that day. Take a few minutes to learn about white, black, and gray hat hackers.
Posted on Tuesday November 27, 2018 | windows, vmware fusion, virtualbox, universal copy and paste, siri, parallels desktop, macos, mac, desktop stacks, boot camp assistant
In the IT industry, continuous improvement is the name of the game. Whatever makes a business work faster, smarter, and more effectively is a welcome competitive advantage. If you're a Mac user, do you think you're taking advantage of all of the best time-saving tips out there? Here's a checklist you can use to find out how well you're using your machine.
Posted on Monday November 26, 2018 | upnp, security, iot, internet of things, hardware
Major companies like Google, Apple, and Microsoft are investing a lot of money in the Internet of Things (IoT). But just like any other technological trend, it comes with minor bugs and setbacks. Because of the diversity in IoT, developers have yet to develop large-scale security solutions. In the meantime, here are some things you can do to keep IoT cyberattacks at bay.
Posted on Saturday November 24, 2018 | Science
Standing desks have become trendy in recent years -- so much so that they have been promoted by some health officials as well as some countries. Research, however, suggests that warnings about sitting at work are overblown, and that standing desks are overrated as a way to improve health. From a report: Dr. David Rempel, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, who has written on this issue, said, "Well-meaning safety professionals and some office furniture manufacturers are pushing sit-stand workstations as a way of improving cardiovascular health -- but there is no scientific evidence to support this recommendation." Let's start with what we know about research on sitting, then explain why it can be misleading as it relates to work. A number of studies have found a significant association between prolonged sitting time over a 24-hour period and increased risk for cardiovascular disease. A 2015 study, for instance, followed more than 150,000 older adults -- all of whom were healthy at the start of the study -- for almost seven years on average. Researchers found that those who sat at least 12 hours a day had significantly higher mortality than those who sat for less than five hours per day. For convenience and comfort, it's nice to have options if you have various aches and pains -- "Alternating standing and sitting while using a computer may be useful for some people with low back or neck pain," he said -- but people shouldn't be under the illusion that they're getting exercise. A 2012 study in JAMA Internal Medicine followed more than 220,000 people for 2.8 years on average and found similar results. Prolonged sitting over the course of a day was associated with increased all-cause mortality across sexes, ages and body mass index. So did a smaller but longer (8.6 years on average) study published in 2015 in the Journal of Physical Activity & Health. Another study from 2015, which followed more than 50,000 adults for more than three years, also found this relationship. But it found that context mattered. Prolonged sitting in certain situations -- including when people were at work -- did not have this same effect.
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