Month: September 2016

Enlarge / Go ahead and click it. You know you want to.

Clickers gonna click. Despite mandatory corporate training, general security awareness, and constant harping about the risks of clicking on unverified links in e-mails and other documents, people have been, are now, and forever will click links where exploit kits and malware lurk. It's simply too easy with the slightest amount of targeted work to convince users to click.

Eric Rand and Nik Labele believe they have an answer to this problem—an answer that could potentially derail not just phishing attacks but other manner of malware as well. Instead of relying on the intelligence of users, Rand and Labele have been working on software that takes humans completely out of the loop in phishing defense by giving clicks on previously unseen domains a time out, "greylisting" them for 24 hours by default. The software, a project called Foghorn, does this by intercepting requests made to the Domain Name Service (DNS).

Greylisting has been used in spam filtering for e-mails, where it deliberately delays e-mails delivered from previously unseen sources and sends temporary errors back to the sender for a few minutes or hours. Spam greylisting operates under the assumption that a real mail server will re-attempt delivery, while spambots likely will not.

A New York appeals court is putting the brakes on actress Lindsay Lohan's lawsuit against the makers of Grand Theft Auto V. The appellate court concluded Thursday that the game is riddled with satire and, hence, Take-Two Interactive Software is shielded by the First Amendment from allegations of misappropriation of likeness.

Lohan claimed that elements of the video game—which features washed out celebrities, criminals, and paparazzi—were too close to her in real life. Among other things, she alleged that a minor character named Lacey Jonas in the game was a "look-alike" and that the game violated her "privacy rights under New York law." She also alleged that the game unlawfully exploited her "signature peace sign pose."

Mob Wives star Karen Gravano, another plaintiff in the case, similarly alleged that the game unlawfully used her likeness with the character Andrea Bottino.

Enlarge (credit: Getty | Brian B. Bettencourt )

A new Alzheimer’s disease drug may be able to clear away goopy piles of toxic proteins in patients' brains—hallmarks of the progressive disorder. The drug is an antibody directed at the proteins themselves, and the promising results come from a small, phase I safety trial.

To date, no other drug has shown this much brain-clearing power. If the results hold up in larger trials, the drug has the potential to prevent or even reverse the progression of the disease. But researchers caution that excitement should be tempered; it's far too early to decipher the drug’s true potential. Similar antibody-based drugs have given promising results in early trials but went on to fail spectacularly in larger studies—in some cases even causing death.

“I am cautiously optimistic about this treatment, but trying not to get too excited,” Tara Spires-Jones, interim director of the Centre for Cognitive and Neural Systems at the University of Edinburgh, said in a media statement. “This was a small phase I study with 20-30 people in each treatment group. We will have to wait and see whether the promising results reported here are repeated in the larger phase III trials of this drug that are currently underway worldwide.”

Enlarge (credit: frankieleon)

In an interview with Irish public broadcaster RTÉ, Apple CEO Tim Cook said Thursday that the company planned on bringing billions of dollars held overseas back to the United States to be subject to American taxes.

"We provisioned several billion dollars for the US for payment as soon as we repatriate it, and right now I would forecast that repatriation to occur next year," Cook said.

The interview came two days after the European Commission ordered Ireland to collect €13 billion (£11.1 billion/$14.5 billion) in back taxes from Apple, after the company benefitted from years of a sweetheart deal and dubious, but legal, tax shenanigans.

Enlarge / Apple is cleaning its (app) house ahead of this fall's big releases.

Apple is making a few small tweaks to its App Store Review Guidelines for developers ahead of the release of iOS 10 and macOS Sierra this fall. The changes, which Apple is currently telling registered developers about via e-mail, are meant to cut dead wood out of the App Store and to make it easier for users to find better apps. These are the latest in a series of App Store changes implemented since Apple worldwide marketing SVP Phil Schiller was given the reins back in December of 2015.

The biggest change is that Apple will begin to remove older, outdated apps from the App Store that no longer follow current review guidelines or that haven't been updated to support new APIs or features. Removing old apps will also cut down on the number of apps that haven't been updated for compatibility with newer iOS versions or iDevices.

Apple isn't saying exactly what criteria it will use to remove apps, just that it is "implementing an ongoing process of evaluating apps for these issues, notifying their developers, and removing problematic and abandoned apps." People who have already downloaded these apps will still be able to download them, developers will be given 30 days to issue an update before their app is removed, and if their apps are removed they will still be associated with that developer's account and other developers won't be able to use the names for other apps.

Enlarge / Prepare to see less activity on Hanjin ships thanks to a bankruptcy filing this week. (credit: Josh Hallett)

TV manufacturers have moved on to another set of standards, hoping to convince us to pay up for new sets, but adoption of standards such as 4K resolution and "high dynamic range" (HDR) displays may very well live and die by finding the right price point in stores. That won't be easier for Korean monitor makers in the coming months, however, thanks to the Tuesday bankruptcy filing by major South Korean shipping company Hanjin.

South Korean electronics company LG made a Thursday announcement confirming that it would immediately cancel all overseas shipments with Hanjin—primarily because the company's ships, crates, and other major shipping assets have been seized at various ports across the world and are not being allowed entry at other ports out of fears that Hanjin will not be able to pay required fees. Other manufacturers of major mechanical and large-electronic products, including Samsung, have also confirmed feeling the Hanjin-related pinch. As a result, shipping rates are jumping drastically.

As Reuters reports, shipping rates have jumped "about 55 percent" on the routes normally trafficked by Hanjin ships—and companies like Hyundai, which operates its own shipping business, are enjoying the spoils. In the meantime, slowed and stranded shipments could have an immediate impact on product prices for big-ticket electronics, especially as retailers ramp up for the American holiday shopping season. Air freight is often relied upon more heavily for smaller-sized electronics like smartphones, so Hanjin's woes shouldn't impact prices on those products. But whether due to rarity or higher shipping prices, things probably won't get any cheaper for any larger products made by South Korean companies this fall and winter.