OLL SINCE GROUP

30/08/2021

‘𝐀 𝐒𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐇𝐨𝐩𝐬𝐜𝐨𝐭𝐜𝐡 𝐆𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐀𝐩𝐩 𝐒𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰’: 𝐂𝐨𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐀𝐩𝐩 𝐂𝐄𝐎 𝐋𝐚𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐬 𝐎𝐮𝐭 𝐚𝐭 𝐀𝐩𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐚 𝐓𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝

Hopscotch, a coding app for kids on Apple's App Store, opened up about its recent frustrations over an update issue and persistent rejections from the company. The rejections were later found to be “a mistake” caused by a “glitch” in Apple's automated software. In a heated tweet thread, Hopscotch's CEO Samantha John vented out her frustration and anger at the tech giant. She mentioned that when her team submitted a bug fix update, the app got rejected because their “promoted in-app purchases had identical titles and descriptions which could be confusing to users”. Though all looked good to her, she changed the descriptions and resubmitted the app.

However, the app got rejected once again. John submitted an appeal to the company, noting that the rejection “made no sense”. Apple wrote back, saying that the rejection feedback was valid. John, then, tweeted a photo of the mail she received from the App Store.

John stated that they submitted a bug fix update to Hopscotch and “wanted to get it out quickly to get ahead of the school year”. But things went awry.

In subsequent tweets, she added about the rejection of the app, replying to the message, and resubmitted the app.

27/08/2021

𝗠𝗶𝗰𝗿𝗼𝘀𝗼𝗳𝘁 𝗪𝗮𝗿𝗻𝘀 𝗧𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗮𝗻𝗱𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗔𝘇𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗖𝗹𝗼𝘂𝗱 𝗖𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗼𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝗖𝗼𝘀𝗺𝗼𝘀 𝗗𝗕 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮𝗯𝗮𝘀𝗲𝘀

Microsoft on Thursday warned thousands of its cloud computing customers, including some of the world's largest companies, that intruders could have the ability to read, change or even delete their main databases, according to a copy of the email and a cyber security researcher.

The vulnerability is in Microsoft Azure's flagship Cosmos DB database. A research team at security company Wiz discovered it was able to access keys that control access to databases held by thousands of companies. Wiz Chief Technology Officer Ami Luttwak is a former chief technology officer at Microsoft's Cloud Security Group.

Because Microsoft cannot change those keys by itself, it emailed the customers Thursday telling them to create new ones. Microsoft agreed to pay Wiz $40,000 (roughly Rs. 30 lakhs) for finding the flaw and reporting it, according to an email it sent to Wiz.

"We fixed this issue immediately to keep our customers safe and protected. We thank the security researchers for working under coordinated vulnerability disclosure," Microsoft told Reuters.

Microsoft's email to customers said there was no evidence the flaw had been exploited. "We have no indication that external entities outside the researcher (Wiz) had access to the primary read-write key," the email said.

“This is the worst cloud vulnerability you can imagine. It is a long-lasting secret,” Luttwak told Reuters. “This is the central database of Azure, and we were able to get access to any customer database that we wanted.”

Luttwak's team found the problem, dubbed ChaosDB, on August 9 and notified Microsoft August 12, Luttwak said.

The flaw was in a visualisation tool called Jupyter Notebook, which has been available for years but was enabled by default in Cosmos beginning in February. After Reuters reported on the flaw, Wiz detailed the issue in a blog post.

Luttwak said even customers who have not been notified by Microsoft could have had their keys swiped by attackers, giving them access until those keys are changed. Microsoft only told customers whose keys were visible this month, when Wiz was working on the issue.

Microsoft told Reuters that "customers who may have been impacted received a notification from us," without elaborating.

The disclosure comes after months of bad security news for Microsoft. The company was breached by the same suspected Russian government hackers that infiltrated SolarWinds, who stole Microsoft source code. Then a wide number of hackers broke into Exchange email servers while a patch was being developed.

A recent fix for a printer flaw that allowed computer takeovers had to be redone repeatedly. Another Exchange flaw last week prompted an urgent US government warning that customers need to install patches issued months ago because ransomware gangs are now exploiting it.

Problems with Azure are especially troubling, because Microsoft and outside security experts have been pushing companies to abandon most of their own infrastructure and rely on the cloud for more security.

But though cloud attacks are more rare, they can be more devastating when they occur. What's more, some are never publicized.

A federally contracted research lab tracks all known security flaws in software and rates them by severity. But there is no equivalent system for holes in cloud architecture, so many critical vulnerabilities remain undisclosed to users, Luttwak said.

25/08/2021

𝐅𝐚𝐜𝐞𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐁𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐍𝐅𝐓 𝐅𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐬 𝐀𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐠𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐃𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐥 𝐖𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐭

Facebook is considering building products and features related to nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, the digital assets that have taken off with the rise of blockchain technology.

“We're definitely looking at the number of ways to get involved in the space because we think we're in a really good position to do so,” Facebook executive David Marcus said Tuesday in an interview on Bloomberg Television.

Marcus leads F2, or Facebook Financial, the internal group developing the company's Novi digital wallet. That wallet could be used to hold NFTs, he said. “When you have a good cryptocurrency wallet like Novi will be, you also have to think about how to help consumers support NFTs,” he added. “We're definitely thinking about this.” He wasn't more specific about what kinds of NFT-related products Facebook might build.

Facebook's digital wallet is “ready now,” Marcus said, but the company has been waiting to launch it until it can do so alongside Diem, the digital currency previously known as Libra, which Marcus co-founded from within Facebook in 2019.

Plans are for Diem to offer a so-called stablecoin backed by the US dollar, but it's unclear when the coin will be introduced. The project faced immense pushback from lawmakers and regulators when it was unveiled, and while Facebook is still a partner on the project, Diem is now run independently.

Marcus said Facebook would consider launching the Novi wallet without Diem “as a last resort,” but he believes both are necessary to change the way people make payments. The social media giant's hope is that people will use Facebook's wallet to transfer Diem, which could reduce costly fees and lower the time it takes to send money cross-border.

16/08/2021

𝐅𝐨𝐫𝐠𝐞𝐭 𝐅𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐔𝐧𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐤, 𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐑𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐇𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐅𝐢𝐠𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐎𝐮𝐭 𝐚 𝐖𝐚𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐌𝐨𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐖𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐓𝐞𝐞𝐭𝐡

A team of Indian researchers has developed what appears to be a first-of-a-kind human authentication through teeth for mobile and other hand-held devices. The team says that the app acquires biometric samples using the camera on a mobile handset. The app has specific markers that register the teeth of a human for authentication, similar to existing apps that record the entire face.

The name of the study is "Deepteeth: A Teeth-Photo Based Human Authentication System for Mobile and Hand-Held Devices". It has been authored by Geetika Arora, Rohit K Bharadwaj, and Kamlesh Tiwari from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani. Explaining the functioning of the app, the team, in the abstract of the paper, writes that the region of interest (RoI) is extracted using markers and the obtained sample is then enhanced using contrast limited adaptive histogram equalization (CLAHE) for better visual clarity.

The team says that to the best of their understanding, this is the first work on teeth-photo-based authentication for any mobile device, adding the results have shown “perfect accuracy.” Upon further reading the paper, you find a diagram explaining how teeth-photo authentication works. The app, using the front camera of your mobile device, acquires the impression of your teeth first. This is followed by ROI extraction and enhancement. The next function of the app is “deep feature extraction” followed by “enrol/verify and identify.”

The next step is where the authentication really begins. The enrolled extraction then compares the teeth impression with the database, following which the app makes the “decision” on whether or not it matched with the right person.

In conclusion, the authors write that they observed that the less explored teeth-photo has very high recognition and identification accuracy with the special feature proposed in the study.

And even though it takes a little longer to train initially, once deployed it is highly efficient for identification or verification. According to the study, the proposed model works perfectly with a small size sample and is, therefore, power-efficient and suitable for mobile devices.

“We have also proposed a novel method for the regularisation of the deep learning architecture by combining margin and mutual information in the backbone feature representation,” the researchers wrote in the study

13/08/2021

𝑾𝒊𝒏𝒅𝒐𝒘𝒔 11 𝒕𝒐 𝑭𝒆𝒂𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒆 𝑹𝒆𝒗𝒂𝒎𝒑𝒆𝒅 𝑺𝒏𝒊𝒑𝒑𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑻𝒐𝒐𝒍, 𝑪𝒂𝒍𝒄𝒖𝒍𝒂𝒕𝒐𝒓, 𝑴𝒂𝒊𝒍, 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝑪𝒂𝒍𝒆𝒏𝒅𝒂𝒓 𝑨𝒑𝒑𝒔, 𝑴𝒊𝒄𝒓𝒐𝒔𝒐𝒇𝒕 𝑹𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒂𝒍𝒔

Microsoft is all set to revamp built-in apps with Windows 11. The tech giant has begun testing of updated Snipping Tool, Calculator, Mail, and Calendar apps with Windows Insider members in the Dev Channel. While some apps bring significant changes, the others are more in style with the new look introduced with Windows 11. For instance, the Snipping Tool is replacing the classic Snipping Tool and Snip & Sketch apps to bring an updated experience of screen capture in Windows 11.

Senior Program Manager Lead for Windows Inbox Apps, Dave Grochocki announced the arrival of the new updated Windows apps via a blog post. The new Snipping Tool for Windows 11 will include new visuals. It will come with added functionality like the WIN + SHIFT + S keyboard shortcut from Snip & Sketch and richer editing. There will also a new settings page and screenshots can be taken using the WIN + SHIFT + S keyboard shortcut. Once a screenshot is taken, the snipping menu will bring up options like Rectangular Snip, Freeform Snip, Windows Snip, and Fullscreen Snip. The new Snipping Tool will provide editing tools for annotations and improved cropping. The Snipping Tool will also sync with the Windows Theme, so if the dark mode is turned on, then the app will also appear in the grey scheme.

12/08/2021

𝐂𝐨𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐌𝐚𝐝𝐞 𝐄𝐚𝐬𝐲: 𝐍𝐨𝐰, 𝐂𝐨𝐝𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐒𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐄𝐧𝐠𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐡 𝐖𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐎𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐀𝐈 𝐂𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐱 𝐒𝐨𝐟𝐭𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐞

As we move towards a fully digital era, the importance of coding will surely increase. Basic knowledge of coding is a key way to follow the evolving technology. Most people, however, try to avoid learning it, primarily because they mistakenly feel they don't need to as long as they can enjoy the end product. Also, the coding language could be a little complex to many. To make this easier for the general public, artificial intelligence (AI) research company OpenAI is launching a new tool called OpenAI Codex that will translate natural English language into code.

While this machine learning (ML) tool will help programmers accelerate their work, it will also help amateurs learn how to code. All the user has to do is give instructions in English language and OpenAI Codex will itself translate it into code to throw up the desired result on the screen.

A demo video by OpneAI shows how the tool works by creating a video game. The user first copied an image of a spaceship from the Internet. Then, the user asked the tool to “add this image of a rocketship” and pasted the link of the image next to the command. The software wrote the code for it itself and added the image to the workspace. Similarly, the user gave it commands in ordinary, everyday language to animate the rocketship and bounce it off horizontally across the screen wall. All these commands were interpreted and executed by OpenAI Codex flawlessly.

The company says it is making the software available in private beta via their API, a software intermediary that allows two applications to talk to each other. It said the tool is more proficient in Python but also works fine with JavaScript, Go, Perl, PHP, Ruby, Swift, and Typescript. OpenAI Codex will be free initially to allow programmers and amateurs to try it.

11/08/2021

𝐍𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐨𝐧 𝐒𝐞𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐁𝐮𝐲 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐮𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐒𝐞𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐑𝐢𝐯𝐚𝐥 𝐀𝐯𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐎𝐯𝐞𝐫 $𝟖 𝐁𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐨𝐧

US cybersecurity giant NortonLifeLock is to buy Czech rival Avast for over $8 billion (roughly Rs. 59,560 crores) to create a leading consumer business, the pair announced Wednesday after the pandemic fuelled online activity.

The deal, equivalent to more than EUR 6.7 billion (roughly Rs. 58,400 crores), "is a huge step forward for consumer cybersafety and will ultimately enable us to achieve our vision to protect and empower people to live their digital lives safely", Norton chief executive Vincent Pilette said in a joint statement.

Ondrej Vlcek, chief executive of London-listed Avast, said that amid increasing global cyberthreats, the tie-up would allow for "enhanced solutions and services, with improved capabilities".

More than 500 million users will benefit from the new group's safety offerings, the statement added.

Pilette was set to become chief executive of the expanded group, while Vlcek is to join NortonLifeLock as president and become a member of the NortonLifeLock board.

The combined company, to be listed on the Nasdaq, will be dual headquartered in Prague and Tempe, Arizona.
Businesses worldwide are at threat from an increasingly lucrative form of digital hostage-taking, or ransomware attacks, that typically see hackers encrypting victims' data and then demanding money for restored access.

A massive ransomware attack on US tech firm Kaseya in July affected businesses from pharmacies to gas stations in at least 17 countries.

While Kaseya was little known to the public, analysts say it was a ripe target as its software is used by around 40,000 businesses, allowing the hackers to paralyse many companies with a single blow.

"At a time when global cyber threats are growing, yet cyber safety pe*******on remains very low, together with NortonLifeLock, we will be able to accelerate our shared vision of providing holistic cyber protection for consumers around the globe," Vlcek added Wednesday.

US cybersecurity officials last week announced that Amazon, Google, and Microsoft had enlisted to help them fight ransomware and defend cloud computing systems from hackers.

The tech giants are among firms signed on to be part of a Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative intended to combine government and private skills and resources to fight hackers, according to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

10/08/2021

𝐇𝐏 𝐄𝐧𝐯𝐲 𝟏𝟒 (𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟏), 𝐄𝐧𝐯𝐲 𝟏𝟓 (𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟏) 𝐖𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝟏𝟏𝐭𝐡 𝐆𝐞𝐧 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐥 𝐂𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐂𝐏𝐔𝐬, 𝐔𝐩 𝐭𝐨 𝟏𝟔.𝟓-𝐇𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐁𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐋𝐚𝐮𝐧𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐚

HP Envy 14 (2021) and HP Envy 15 (2021) laptops were launched in India on Tuesday. The new models come with 11th-generation Intel Core processors and are upgradable to Windows 11 (currently running on Windows 10 Home). Both HP Envy 14 (2021) and HP Envy 15 (2021) also include an all-new cooling system that uses Infrared (IR) thermal sensor, thin-blade fans, and heat pipes to maintain an optimal temperature. HP claimed that both new laptops are rated to deliver up to 16.5 hours of battery life on a single charge. In addition to the new Envy 14 and Envy 15 models, HP announced the launch of its native community of creators called the HP Creators' Garage. It has more than 200 pieces of curated content and members including digital creator Be YouNick, author Alicia Souza, Youtuber Sejal Kumar, and graphic designer Aniruddh Mehta.
HP Envy 14 (2021), HP Envy 15 (2021) price in India, availability

HP Envy 14 (2021) price in India starts at Rs. 1,04,999, while HP Envy 15 (2021) carries a starting price tag of Rs. 1,54,999. Both laptops come in a Natural Silver colour option and are available for purchase through HP World Stores and HP online portal as well as large retail outlets such as Reliance Digital, Croma, and multi-brand stores. The devices will also go on sale through leading e-commerce sites including Amazon and Flipkart.

In terms of launch offers, customers purchasing the new Envy 14 and Envy 15 models are entitled to receive a complimentary one-month credit worth up to Rs. 4,230 for purchasing Adobe's creativity and productivity software. There is also an exchange discount of up to Rs. 15,000 for customers exchanging their old HP laptops with the new models.
HP Pavilion Aero 13 Laptop With AMD Ryzen Processors Launched in India
HP Envy 14 (2021) was unveiled at CES 2021 in January. It is available in the US with a starting price of $999 (roughly Rs. 74,300). The model brought to India in August is the HP Envy 14-eb0021TX.

Oll Since Group is a software consultancy of 50+ that specializes in multi-platform software and device innovation.

09/08/2021

𝐌𝐢𝐜𝐫𝐨𝐬𝐨𝐟𝐭 𝐓𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐆𝐞𝐭 𝐚 𝐍𝐞𝐰 '𝐓𝐨𝐩 𝐇𝐢𝐭𝐬' 𝐅𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐈𝐦𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐬 𝐈𝐭𝐬 𝐒𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐅𝐮𝐧𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬

Microsoft Teams is getting a new feature aimed at improving its search functionality. Deemed as Top Hits, this new feature will be added to automatically generate the most relevant search results for the user.

According to an entry in the Microsoft 365 Cloud PC service roadmap, the Top Hits section will auto-suggest the most relevant results across chats, files, people, and other content stored or shared in the app.

With this feature, you should be able to find what you searched for faster as it will likely build on the AI-enabled search feature which already existed on Teams earlier. It will be on the lines of a universal search feature.
As per Microsoft, the Top Hits feature is still under development and is expected to roll out by the end of September.

Microsoft has been trying to make Teams popular by adding a whole bunch of features to it ever since COVID-19 began wreaking havoc globally.

These new additions include video calls, file sharing, etc. The company has also made it possible for Microsoft Teams users to merge works and personal accounts in the same app, at the same time.

This feature had rolled out just about a month ago, allowing people to use both their personal and work accounts on the same app on the Windows PC, thus removing the need to toggle between two different types of accounts.

Microsoft has also reportedly added a new video conferencing features to the platform, like Reporter mode, Standout mode, and Side-by-side modes over the pandemic.

In all these modes the background of the presenter on Microsoft Teams is removed from the presentation and is replaced with either the content that is going to be shown or the picture of the person presenting that particular chunk of content, or both depending on their preference.

07/08/2021

𝐀𝐩𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐥 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐩𝐡𝐨𝐭𝐨 𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐜𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐦 𝐨𝐧 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐲-𝐛𝐲-𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐲 𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐬

Apple will roll out a system for checking photos for child abuse imagery on a country-by-country basis, depending on local laws, the company said on Friday.

A day earlier, Apple said it would implement a system that screens photos for such images before they are uploaded from iPhones in the United States to its iCloud storage.

But Apple's photo check on the iPhone itself raised concerns that the company is probing into users' devices in ways that could be exploited by governments. Many other technology companies check photos after they are uploaded to servers.

In a media briefing on Friday, Apple said it would make plans to expand the service based on the laws of each country where it operates.

The company said nuances in its system, such as "safety vouchers" passed from the iPhone to Apple's servers that do not contain useful data, will protect Apple from government pressure to identify material other than child abuse images

Apple has a human review process that acts as a backstop against government abuse, it added. The company will not pass reports from its photo checking system to law enforcement if the review finds no child abuse imagery.

Regulators are increasingly demanding that tech companies do more to take down illegal content. For the past few years, law enforcement and politicians have wielded the scourge of child abuse material to decry strong encryption, in the way they had previously cited the need to curb terrorism.

A few resulting laws, including in Britain, could be used to force tech companies to act against their users in secret.

While Apple's strategy may deflect government meddling by showing its initiative or complying with anticipated directives in Europe, many security experts said the privacy champion was making a big mistake by showing its willingness to reach into customer phones.