The notorious Emotet botnet software began uninstalling itself from some one million computers Sunday. The uninstall command was part of an update sent to the infected computers by law enforcement servers in the Netherlands after Emotet's infrastructure was compromised in January during a multinational operation mounted by eight nations. [More...]

U.S. senators heading antitrust issues have flagged Apple's new AirTag effort as potentially anticompetitive after Tile CEO CJ Prober started complaining because Apple could put his company out of business. Let's talk about Apple, vendor lock-in, and antitrust. Then we'll close with the product of the week, the new AMD-powered Surface Laptop in beautiful black. [More...]

Some 400 million patients worldwide are affected by more than 7,000 rare diseases; yet treatments for rare genetic diseases remain an underserved area. The father of a boy born with a rare disease created the RareCamp project, and the OpenTreatments Foundation, to enable patients to create gene therapies for rare genetic diseases; then work with their doctors and nonprofits to develop drugs. [More...]

Apple introduced a new version of its iMac desktop and a powerful upgrade of its iPad Pro tablet at an online event Tuesday. Both are based on Apple's M1 chip. Ordering for the new iMac starts on April 30, with shipments starting in the second half of May. TechNewsWorld spoke with several analysts to get their reactions to the these and other Apple products hitting the market in the coming weeks. [More...]

DuckDuckGo has announced an add-on to the Chrome browser that blocks Google's new scheme to provide marketers with information for targeting advertising at Internet users. The scheme called FLoC -- Federated Learning of Cohorts -- is being tested in Chrome, in some cases without the knowledge of the browser's users. [More...]

GTC21, this year's Nvidia GPU Technology Conference, was terrific as always. The alleged focus was on AI and autonomous cars. But, as I watched presentation after presentation from folks out of the entertainment industry, I realized that if you started putting some of these various elements together, they effectively predicted the end of movies as stand-alone, costly entertainment. [More...]

A recent study from Consumer Reports' Digital Lab reveals that 96 percent of Americans agree that more should be done to protect consumer privacy. But don't expect to see a whole new alternative Internet emerging any year soon. Instead, you will see a focus on software offerings built around privacy and security rather than hardware. [More...]

A set of flaws in a widely used network communication protocol that could affect millions of devices has been revealed by Forescout Research Labs and JSOF Research. The nine vulnerabilities discovered by security researchers dramatically increase the attack surface of at least 100 million Internet of Things devices, exposing them to potential attacks that could take the devices offline or to be hijacked by threat actors. [More...]

Jonathan Cran, founder and CEO of Intrigue, a cybersecurity startup based in Austin, Texas, used his company's network security tools to compile a list of Fortune 500 companies still exposed to last month's Microsoft Exchange breach. Potentially, many of those companies may not know their networks are compromised. [More...]

Startup information security firm Intrigue has announced a US$2 million seed round led by LiveOak Venture Partners for a new attack service management platform that helps secure enterprise networks. The Intrigue tools scan all public, exposed attack surfaces inside and outside a company. The seed funding will also support the security and developer communities contributing to Intrigue Core. [More...]

Social media has become the home of fake news, unscrupulous advertising, places to dole out abuse, and disseminate alternative history. Let's talk about what is likely to happen to social media companies; and how they might work to prevent that outcome. We'll close with the product of the week, a category-busting new smartwatch from OnePlus. [More...]

Businesses fearful their workers may be targeted by fraudsters will want to take a look at the free Tax Scam Awareness Kit offered by Proofpoint. The kit, for both Windows and macOS, includes materials for an employee education campaign about tax fraud, three educational videos, an infographic, answers to frequently asked questions about tax scams, and a tax scam flyer. [More...]

A rich cache of data on some 533 million Facebook users was posted to a hacker forum over the weekend and is available to download for practically free. In a statement provided to TechNewsWorld by Facebook, the company said it is confident the posted information is old data that originated from a weakness in its contact importer feature that was discovered and fixed in August 2019. [More...]

When technology is advancing very rapidly, the leading providers of an evolving class of products are on very different pages. I'm talking about Cisco and Microsoft -- and while neither's approach is wrong, neither is complete -- and together they can build what's needed for our hybrid workplace future. Let's talk about the advantages of a simulated workplace done right, and we'll close with the product of the week, a new graphics card from AMD. [More...]