August 2019 – Page 64 – news.buyenne.com

Mobile Payment: Mit QR-Code-Kooperation zum europäischen Standard

Die Mobile Wallet Collaboration will ein einheitliches QR-Format als technische Grundlage für ein vereinfachtes Handling etablieren. Die Allianz aus sechs europäischen Bezahldiensten und Alipay aus China ist eine ernstzunehmende Konkurrenz für Google, …

‘Google Blocked TorrentFreak From Appearing in Search Feature’

Documents released by whistleblower Zachary Vorhies suggests that Google actively blocked hundreds of sites, including TorrentFreak, from its Google Now service. The blocklist doesn’t provide a specific reason for the blockade, but other sites are flagged for having a high user block rate or for peddling hoax stories. Vorhies has shared the documents with the US Department of Justice.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

At TorrentFreak, we have written hundreds of articles about website blocking and censorship. Today, we’re featured in one ourselves.

Leaked Google documents reveal that TorrentFreak.com shows up in one of Google’s previously unknown blocklists, which actively hides our domain from the Google Now service.

Google Now was a Google search feature that presented users with informational cards, to provide users with more details on subjects of interest to them. While the brand no longer exists, the feature is still present in the Google Android app and its feed.

The controversial blocklist is part of a treasure trove of files that were leaked by whistleblower Zachary Vorhies, who shared them with Project Veritas. The entire collection of files uncovers many previously unknown policies and actions from Google.

“These documents were available to every single employee within the company that was full-time. And so as a fulltime employee at the company, I just searched for some keywords and these documents started to pop up,” Vorhies said.

The Google Now blocklist, which is available here, contains nearly 500 domain names. The file starts with APKMirror, eBay and some Google sites, and then continues with several torrent related sites including The Pirate Bay, RARBG and EZTV, as well as some that no longer exist.

TorrentFreak.com is grouped in with the torrent sites. While the list doesn’t give a reason for the block, it appears that it’s related to the subject of piracy.

The list then continues with sites that are tagged due to having a “high user block rate.” These include quite a few conservative websites. As the description suggests, they may have been filtered because a lot of users block these sites.

Further down the list, there are also a dozen sites that are supposedly “flagged for peddling hoax stories.”

This isn’t the first Google leak story by Project Veritas. The outlet previously published internal Google documents about what it described as “algorithmic unfairness.”

Google obviously wasn’t happy with the leaks. The company reportedly sent a threatening letter to Vorhies after it uncovered his identity, and the San Fransisco police later visited the Google insider for a “mental health” check.

The turn of events triggered Vorhies to release the documents in public and step out of the shadows. In addition to sharing the information publicly, he also sent the data dump to the US Department of Justice’s antitrust division.

TorrentFreak is not able to independently verify the authenticity of the blocklist or any of the other materials that were leaked. It’s also not clear whether the list is up-to-date and still actively used.

We reached out to a Google spokesperson to find out more. including why our site appears on this list, but at the time of writing, we have yet to hear back.

A full copy of all the leaked files, which also contains other documents about censorship, hiring practices, and psychological research, is accessible via Project Veritas. The site also published a detailed video interview with the whistleblower.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Turning the Nintendo Switch into Android’s best gaming hardware

You got your Google OS in my Nintendo hardware!

Android on the Nintendo Switch. Just think of all the Nintendo apps you're missing out on.

The Nintendo Switch is, basically, a game console made out of smartphone parts. The quad-core Nvidia Tegra X1 ARM SoC would be right at home in a smartphone or tablet, along with the 4GB of RAM, a 720p touchscreen, and a 4310mAh battery. Really, the only things that make the Switch a game console are the sweet slide-on controllers and the fact that it is blessed by Nintendo, with actually good AAA games, ecosystem support, and developer outreach.

With such a close relation to smartphone hardware, it only makes sense that people would eventually load some smartphone software onto the Nintendo Switch—and around Ars, we've recently made everyone's favorite handheld run Android. Such a thing might sound like a hardware hacker's pipe dream, but thanks to work from a group called "Switchroot," you can now get a pretty good build of Android up and running on Nintendo's console.

A project like this is only possible thanks to two of the Internet's biggest hacking communities joining forces—you've got the best of the Nintendo Homebrew scene combining with the best of the Android custom ROM community. And as we recently discovered, getting Android running on the Switch is a whirlwind tour of huge community projects and discoveries all in the name of doing whatever you want with hardware you own.

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T-Systems: Telekom räumt Regelverstöße bei Brasilien-Tochter ein

Bei T-Systems Brasilien soll es Unregelmäßigkeiten gegeben haben. Das hat ein Beschäftigter benannt, und fühlt sich deswegen von der Telekom bestraft. Der Konzern bestreitet dies. (T-Systems, IBM)

A look at the Windows 10 exploit Google Zero disclosed this week

This privilege escalation vulnerability has lurked within Windows for 20 years.

As you can see, we're an unprivileged local user who's not allowed to monkey with things under C:WindowsSystem32. [credit: Jim Salter ]

On Tuesday, Tavis Ormandy of Google's Project Zero released an exploit kit called ctftool which uses and abuses Microsoft's Text Services Framework in ways that can effectively get anyone root—er, system that is—on any unpatched Windows 10 system they're able to log into. The patches for this vulnerability—along with several other serious issues—went out in this week's Patch Tuesday update.

We independently verified Ormandy's proof-of-concept, and it's precisely what it says on the tin: follow the directions and you get an nt authority\system privileged command prompt a few seconds later. We also independently verified that applying KB4512508 closed the vulnerability. After applying the August security updates, the exploit no longer works.

The full writeup of Ormandy's findings is fascinating and incredibly technically detailed. The TL;DR version is that Microsoft's Text Services Framework, which is used to provide multilingual support and has been in place since Windows XP, includes a library called MSCTF.DLL. (There's no clear documentation demonstrating what Microsoft intended CTF to stand for, but with the release of this tool, it might as well stand for Capture The Flag.)

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