Archives for May 2018

Are Lasers The Answer To Completely Wireless Computing And Charging?

May 7, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Researchers at the University of Washington just might change the face of computers and computing forever. It may seem like the stuff of science fiction, but based on their research, the day may soon be coming when computing devices are completely un-tethered, requiring no wires for either power or recharging.

The team was able to successfully charge a smartphone from across a room using nothing more than lasers. Right now, their approach has an effective range of about forty feet. Devices are detected by way of acoustic “chirps” which occur below the threshold of human hearing. Once a target device is located, the laser charging system sends power to them using laser light, with no damage to the target device.

Right now, the power transfer is limited to just a couple of watts. However, the researchers don’t see any obstacles that would prevent scaling of the power transfer, meaning it could easily be modified to power PCs.

Wireless Power Transfer (WPT) is not a new idea. In fact, it’s in use today in such things as smartphones and electric toothbrushes. The problem, at least until now, has been a matter of range, which has been virtually nonexistent until the University’s game-changing experiments.

The big breakthrough wasn’t in sending power to a device via laser. Scientists have known that was possible for quite some time. The issue though, was that when lasers (or microwaves) were used to send power, they were invariably hazardous to humans in the area. In addition, they often fried the electronics they were attempting to power. The research team seems to have solved for both of those problems.

While the technology is still quite some distance from being commercially available, this is a huge leap forward. This could forever change the way we interact with our computing devices, and that change could come much sooner than anyone ever imagined.

Joseph Martin

President & CEO
I hope you enjoyed this article. My mission is to take your stress away from dealing with IT problems. Call (252) 565-1235 or send me a message at our contact us page if you have a question, comment or want help.

Bank Employee Steals Info On Over A Million Customers

May 5, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Atlanta-based SunTrust Bank is the 12th largest bank in the US. They have a major problem, and so do roughly a million and a half of its customers. According to CEO William Rogers, an unidentified employee of the firm printed a vast amount of private customer information, including their names, addresses, phone numbers and account balance information.

Rogers stressed that social security numbers, account numbers, driver’s license numbers, user IDs, and passwords were not exposed. In a recent press release, he had the following to say:

“In conjunction with law enforcement, we discovered that a former employee while employed at SunTrust may have attempted to print information on approximately 1.5 million clients and share this information with a criminal third party.

We and third parties have done forensic analysis on these accounts and we have not identified significant fraudulent activity regarding the effect of the accounts.”

Even so, this is a blow to the company’s image, and the lost trust won’t be easily regained. It also underscores how vulnerable companies are to internal threats.

In response to the attack, SunTrust is offering ongoing IDnotify identity protection (offered through Experian) to all its current and new clients at no cost.

The company’s handling of the issue so far has been about as good as can be expected. The unfortunate reality is that there aren’t many good ways of stopping a rogue employee from making off with sensitive customer data or proprietary company information. Better auditing protocols and controls can help, but only to a certain extent. While those kinds of policies make it easier to detect when an internal theft has occurred, they do nothing to actually prevent them.

This puts management in a tricky spot. Employees have to be trusted with sensitive data in order to do their work, which also increases risk. There aren’t many good solutions here beyond better vetting of employees, but of course, that is by no means a magic bullet either.

Joseph Martin

Apple Recall Affects Some Macbook Pro Batteries

May 4, 2018 by Joseph Martin

If you recently bought a 13-inch MacBook Pro (without a Touch Bar), you’ll want to head to Apple’s website. The company didn’t make a big announcement, but they’ve quietly introduced a battery replacement program that impacted what the company described as a “limited number” of laptops.

The company didn’t provide many details, but apparently, on certain machines an unknown component failure can cause the built-in battery to swell. There’s no danger of an explosion and no fire hazard associated with the failure, but the company is playing it safe and offering to replace the batteries on any affected laptop, free of charge.

According to details on Apple’s website, the laptops in question were manufactured between October 2016 and October 2017. If you visit the webpage, you can enter your machine’s serial number to see if your machine is affected, and thus eligible for the free replacement.

At this time, it’s unclear precisely how many machines this issue has impacted. But clearly, Apple wants to put this issue to rest as quickly as possible.

Battery swelling is a strange symptom, but surprisingly, this is not the first time Apple products have suffered from similar issues. Not long ago, Apple’s 42mm Smart Watches suffered a similar problem, prompting the company to issue a similar recall. The company also recently extended their warranty on first-gen Apple Watch models by two years, offering free battery replacements for up to three years after the date of purchase.

These recent moves have caused iPhone owners to cry foul. On the heels of the Apple “Throttling” drama last year, the company offered a discounted battery replacement program to help bring older iPhones with failing batteries back to full speed. While Apple’s $29 discounted battery price is a significant savings over the regular price of $79, some users argue that the batteries should have been free for these products as well.

Joseph Martin

Researchers Find Major Vulnerabilities In Banking Apps

May 3, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Do you do your banking online? If so, there’s bad news in the form of a report recently released by the security firm “Positive Technologies.”

The company tested a variety of websites using a proprietary tool they developed in-house, which scans websites for security flaws. While flaws were found across a wide range of industries, literally every banking site Positive Technologies tested was found to have serious security flaws.

The particulars varied from one bank to the next, but the security flaws included:

XML external entity errors

Arbitrary file reading and modification flaws

Expired or nonexistent SSL certificates

Poor or nonexistent encryption

Some banking websites were so flawed that a hacker could execute a ‘man in the middle’ attack and execute malicious code to infect the user’s machine. They could potentially make off with all their money and with more than enough information to steal their identity.

Some 80 percent of sites tested were found to be vulnerable to XSS (cross-site scripting) attacks.

Regardless of the specific vulnerability, the big, terrifying takeaway from the Positive Technologies report is simply this: Of the financial sites they tested, 100 percent of them were found to have vulnerabilities.

These are the people who are tasked with safeguarding your money, and they’re obviously not doing enough to keep their websites secure.

Firewalls and basic detection protocols are simply not enough. The hackers of the world have matured and gotten better at what they do, and security professionals simply haven’t been improving as quickly. This is the reason we’re seeing such a massive spike in high profile data breaches. The reason is that each year is a new, record-breaking year, beating out the one before, often by a wide margin.

Until that changes, everyone is at risk. Given how important the internet has become to international commerce and modern life, that’s simply unacceptable.

Joseph Martin

Major Server Ring Distributing Malware Taken Down

May 2, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Score one for the good guys. A researcher from BrilliantIT was recently able to figure out how infected computers would connect to EITest’s command and control server, and using that information, was able to bring down their entire network.

If you haven’t heard of EITest before, the true significance of that statement might not be registering.

EITest first appeared in 2011. In its original incarnation, it was little more than an annoyance. It was a collection of compromised servers used to direct web traffic to poisoned websites, where the owners could infect unsuspecting users with their homegrown malware.

In 2013, EITest’s owners got savvy, relentlessly grew their network to more than 52,000 compromised machines and started renting their network out to hackers around the world to drive traffic to their poisoned websites. This unleashed a torrent of wildly destructive malware. Ever since, it’s been a thorn in the side of IT professionals everywhere.

Using the crack discovered by BrilliantIT, researchers were able to redirect all traffic to a sinkhole, effectively shutting the network down altogether.

Since then, it appears that the hackers have made one halfhearted attempt to regain control of their network, and then apparently gave up on the idea.

While this is undeniably good news, EITest isn’t the only traffic distribution network on the Dark Web, and even if the hackers have given up on the idea of recovering access to their old network, there’s nothing stopping them from building a whole new one. That’s not to undercut the significance of the victory here, but rather, merely to point out that it’s a temporary win and reprieve, at best. They’ll be back. They always come back.

Good news is rare on the security front, and when it is found, we should all take a moment to celebrate. Kudos to the team at BrilliantIT!

Joseph Martin

Are Lasers The Answer To Completely Wireless Computing And Charging?

Bank Employee Steals Info On Over A Million Customers

Apple Recall Affects Some Macbook Pro Batteries

Researchers Find Major Vulnerabilities In Banking Apps

Major Server Ring Distributing Malware Taken Down

Contact Info

Navigation