Month: December 2018

Enlarge (credit: Microsoft)

Microsoft has issued an emergency update that fixes a critical Internet Explorer vulnerability that attackers are actively exploiting on the Internet.

The memory-corruption flaw allows attackers to remotely execute malicious code when computers use IE to visit a booby-trapped website, Microsoft said Wednesday. Indexed as CVE-2018-8653, the flaw affects all supported versions of Windows. The vulnerability involves the way Microsoft's scripting engine handles objects in memory in Internet Explorer.

In a separate advisory, Microsoft said the vulnerability is being used in targeted attacks, but the company didn't elaborate. Microsoft credited Clement Lecigne of Google's Threat Analysis Group with discovering the vulnerability. No other details were available about the vulnerability or exploits at the time this post was being reported.

Enlarge / Unlikely allies Alice Monaghan (Sasha Lane), Hellboy (David Harbour), and Major Ben Daimio (Daniel Day Kim) must team up to defeat an evil sorceress intent on wiping out mankind. (credit: Dark Horse Entertainment)

The first trailer for the forthcoming Hellboy reboot dropped today, giving us our first, fiery look at director Neil Marshall's darker, grittier vision for the popular Dark Horse Comics superhero.

Writer/artist Mike Mignola's Hellboy comics have already been adapted into two feature films—Hellboy (2004) and Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008)—both starring Ron Perlman with Guillermo del Toro at the helm. So why are we getting a reboot? Del Toro had planned on making a third installment, but he preferred his own script over Andrew Cosby's and left the project. Perlman didn't want to make another sequel without the director. So the film became a reboot instead, with David Harbour (Stranger Things) stepping into the lead role.

Hellboy is a half-demon from Hell who was summoned to Earth as a baby by Nazi occultists and raised by a surrogate human father, Professor Trevor Bruttenholm. He's the head of the US Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense (B.P.R.D.), in case you forgot. The adult Hellboy is basically a big red devil with cloven hooves, a tail, filed-off horns, and the Right Hand of Doom (made of stone). It makes him a formidable asset to the B.P.R.D. The first Hellboy film was an origin story, as we follow the character from his first days on Earth as an infant to grappling with his destiny as the bringer of the apocalypse.

Enlarge / Mark Zuckerberg may be in for another round of hearings, thanks to the latest NYT report on Facebook's sharing of user data with partners. But was it really "sharing?" (credit: Getty Images)

A report by The New York Times on Tuesday evening laid out a series of apparently scandalous revelations about how Facebook gave other technology companies access to users’ private information, including friends lists and private messages. The report, however, may have exaggerated the scope of Facebook partners’ access to that data, which in many cases was limited to application integration.

Still, while Facebook executives have responded to the report by claiming that all access to user data was given with explicit permission from the users, the report does raise concerns that Facebook was not entirely transparent about how far those permissions went. For just one example, look at how Facebook harvested phone call records and SMS data on Android devices through Facebook applications.

In a statement issued Tuesday night, Facebook's director of developer platforms, Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, wrote of the integration features offered to Facebook partners:

Enlarge (credit: TechBargains)

Greetings, Arsians! Courtesy of our friends at TechBargains, we have another round of deals to share. Today's list is headlined by a range of deals on Amazon devices, including the new Fire TV Stick 4K for $35. That's $15 off its usual going rate.

Not everyone needs a dedicated media streamer when smart TVs are the norm, but if you do, the Fire TV Stick 4K is an excellent option for a device in this price range. It supports both HDR10 and Dolby Vision, the hardware is sufficiently fast, and its remote includes dedicated volume and power buttons, which were sorely missing from past Fire TV devices. The built-in Alexa commands are generally more robust than the voice controls on similar devices, and the device comes with dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi (unlike the competing Roku Premiere+, which is saddled with single-band 802.11n Wi-Fi and isn't quite as reliable in rooms with crowded networks).

The potential issue with all Fire TV devices is Amazon's interface—it tends to prioritize Amazon-made services and isn't as neatly organized as Roku's OS. It also lacks dedicated support for Google Play apps. Roku's Streaming Stick+ is still an excellent alternative for those who want a more neutral UI, but if you're looking to pay as little as possible for a modern 4K HDR streamer, the Fire TV Stick 4K is a good buy when it's this cheap.