Month: April 2021

Enlarge / Boxes of Johnson & Johnson's Janssen COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination site in Florida. (credit: Getty | Paul Hennessy)

A panel of expert advisors for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday voted 10 to four (with one abstention) in favor of lifting the pause on the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine. The panel reaffirmed its recommendation for use of the one-shot vaccine in adults of all ages and sexes.

The reaffirmation will come with a new warning in the Food and Drug Administration’s emergency use authorization, which will note that the vaccine appears linked to an extremely rare—but life-threatening—condition that involves serious blood clots and low blood platelets, mainly in women younger than age 50. Experts have dubbed the condition "thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome," or TTS.

In a day of data presentations, analyses, and discussion, the panel—the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP)—heard all of the risks and benefits of resuming use of the vaccine or restricting its use in certain populations, such as in younger people.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

As many as 29,000 users of the Passwordstate password manager downloaded a malicious update that extracted data from the app and sent it to an attacker-controlled server, the app maker told customers.

In an email, Passwordstate creator Click Studios told customers that bad actors compromised its upgrade mechanism and used it to install a malicious file on user computers. The file, named “moserware.secretsplitter.dll,” contained a legitimate copy of an app called SecretSplitter, along with malicious code named "Loader," according to a brief writeup from security firm CSIS Group.

(credit: CSIS Group)

The Loader code attempts to retrieve the file archive at https://passwordstate-18ed2.kxcdn[.]com/upgrade_service_upgrade.zip so it can retrieve an encrypted second-stage payload. Once decrypted, the code is executed directly in memory. The email from Click Studios said that the code “extracts information about the computer system, and select Passwordstate data, which is then posted to the bad actors’ CDN Network.”

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  The Magic Keyboard with a 12.9-inch 2020 iPad Pro. [credit: Samuel Axon ]

Despite its apparently unwavering commitment to using the Lightning port in iPhones, Apple is not usually squeamish about ending support for old accessories and products when it heralds the latest, greatest version of something.

That's especially apparent this week, as it's been revealed that the new 12.9-inch iPad Pro won't work with the Magic Keyboard Apple made for its predecessor just one year ago.

French website iGeneration was the first to cover the news, explaining that although the 2020 and 2021 12.9-inch iPad Pro are mostly similar, the new one is 0.5 mm thicker. The site claimed to have seen Apple documentation saying that the older Magic Keyboard would not be supported. AppleInsider later claimed to receive confirmation directly from Apple that this is the case.

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  Carolyn Wolfman-Estrada, engineering program manager at Apple, presents AirTags (with one visible in her right hand). [credit: Apple ]

Apple began taking orders Friday for its new AirTags location-tracking product and the new purple color for the iPhone 12, but AirTag supply is already falling behind demand.

Announced earlier this week, AirTags are Apple's answer to the already established and relatively popular Tile product. Each AirTag is a small disc that can be attached to a valuable possession so you can track it with your iPhone if you lose it.

Each AirTag sends out a Bluetooth signal that nearby compatible devices in the "Find My" network detect. When a device detects the AirTag, it reports its location, and you can use the newly rebranded "Find My" app to locate it; Apple claims the process is anonymous, secure, and encrypted.