Month: August 2017

Enlarge / Hutchins in his office. (credit: Frank Augstein / AP)

Marcus Hutchins, the 23-year-old security professional who accidentally stopped the spread of the virulent WCry ransomware worm in May, was detained by law-enforcement authorities after attending the Defcon security convention last weekend, according to a close personal friend.

Hutchins was booked into the Henderson Detention Center in Nevada on Wednesday afternoon, according to a screenshot the friend captured of the facility website. When the friend visited the detention center on Thursday morning, he was told Hutchins was no longer there. The website mention of Hutchins was also gone. PJ Thomas, an administrator at the US Marshall office that the website referenced, said the agency has no record of Hutchins. The friend, citing privacy concerns, asked not to be identified by name in this article.

Screenshot showing Hutchins' detention. (credit: City of Henderson inmate search)

Hutchins spent the past week in Las Vegas as it hosted both the Black Hat and Defcon security gatherings. On late Wednesday morning, Hutchins and his friend parted ways as Hutchins left for the airport, where, his Twitter account shows, he tweeted over several hours. Then the account went silent—which the friend found odd, since Hutchins typically uses a plane's Wi-Fi service to stay in contact during flights. The first indication something was seriously wrong was when the friend heard from Hutchins' mother early Thursday morning, when she said Hutchins didn't arrive in the UK as planned.

If you'll recall, back at CES Asus announced the Zenfone AR, the second ever Google Tango phone. Today, a whopping 8 months later, the device is finally hitting the market. The MSRP is $599 for the 6GB RAM/64GB Storage version, or $699 for the 8GB/128GB version. Amazon has an unlocked version that will work on the big 5 carriers, while Verizon is selling a carrier-locked version as a "Verizon Exclusive."

Tango, if you don't remember is Google's augmented reality platform, born out of the company's Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) group. Tango takes a smartphone and crams it full of extra cameras and a IR projector for full 3D vision and six-degree-of-freedom (6DoF) tracking. There's a Tango store with apps specifically made for the hardware, but with limited hardware and (we'd imagine) even more limited sales, there's not a lot there to pick from.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | KrulUA)

Verizon Wireless is offering a new rewards program that requires opting in to another Verizon program that shares customers' Web browsing history with "vendors and partners."

The new program is called Verizon Up, a replacement for the similar Smart Rewards program, and it lets customers earn a credit for every $300 they spend on Verizon Wireless products and services. Credits can be used to claim rewards such as "streaming subscriptions, movie tickets, and discounts on device upgrades."

In order to enroll in Verizon Up, customers must also agree to enroll in Verizon Selects, a targeted advertising program that shares one's Internet and app usage history with other companies.

Enlarge / One of the ads displayed by a fraudulently updated version of the Web Developer extension for Chrome. (credit: dviate)

Twice in five days, developers of Chrome browser extensions have lost control of their code after unidentified attackers compromised the Google Chrome Web Store accounts used to issue updates.

The most recent case happened Wednesday to Chris Pederick, creator of the Web Developer extension. Last Friday, developers of Copy Fish, a browser extension that performs optical character recognition, also had their account hijacked.

In both cases, the attackers used the unauthorized access to publish fraudulent updates that by default are automatically pushed to all Chrome users who have the extensions installed. The tainted extensions were also available for download in Google's official Chrome Web Store. Both Pederick and the Copyfish developers said the fraudulent updates did nothing more than inject ads into the sites users visited. The Copyfish developers provided this account that provided a side-by-side comparison of the legitimate and altered code. Pederick has so far not provided documentation of the changes that were pushed out to the more than one million browsers that have downloaded the Web Developer extension.