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Mozilla has warned Firefox users that its decision to reject SHA-1 certificates has caused an unfortunate side effect: some man-in-the-middle devices, such as security scanners and antivirus products, are failing to connect to HTTPS sites.

The browser maker advised any netizens affected by the interference to install the latest version of Firefox, which reinstates support for SHA-1.

Indeed, 'tis the season for browser upgrades. As Ars reported on Tuesday, Microsoft has been furiously nudging Internet Explorer holdouts over to the latest versions of its browser.

(credit: Comcast)

Time Warner Cable is warning that login credentials for 320,000 customers may have been stolen. The TV cable and Internet service provider told Reuters that e-mail passwords may have been harvested by malware installed on customers' computers or that the potentially compromised passcodes may have been the result of data breaches of other companies that stored Time Warner Cable customer information. The company is still investigating how the data was obtained, but so far has found no indications that its systems were breached.

A Time Warner spokesman told the news agency that the company issued the warning after receiving notification from the FBI that some customer e-mail addresses and passwords "may have been compromised." As a precaution, company officials are sending e-mails and direct mail correspondence advising customers to update their passwords.

The Time Warner advisory comes a day after Web host provider Linode said it was resetting user passwords following signs of a breach. The reset came after an investigation of "the unauthorized login of three accounts [that] has led us to the discovery of two Linode.com user credentials on an external machine. This implies user credentials could have been read from our database, either offline or on, at some point." The database contains usernames, e-mail addresses, "securely hashed" passwords, and encrypted two-factor seeds.

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LAS VEGAS—On the Monday night before CES kicked off properly, several hundred journalists and VIPs assembled under a purple-lit tent in a vacant lot to witness the reveal of a new electric vehicle from a startup called Faraday Future. The company, flush with cash thanks to the owner of LeTV (think Chinese Netflix) had touted the event for some time, promising to show us what it called a "Tesla-killer."

As it turned out, the car underneath the sheet wasn't actually a Model S rival, nor will it be going into production. Rather, we saw a race-inspired concept called the FF Zero 1, a 1000-hp electric vehicle that the company chose to show instead. As you can see in the video above, the following day we sat down with Richard Kim, Faraday Future's head of design, to talk about the car.

(credit: Ehang)

The Chinese startup company Ehang unveiled yesterday at CES what it claims is the first passenger drone, capable of carrying one person for about 20 minutes. According to a report in The Guardian: "The cabin fits one person and a small backpack and is fitted with air conditioning and a reading light. It is designed to fit, with propellers folded, in a single parking spot." The company hopes to sell the device for $200,000 to $300,000 (£140,000 to £200,000) later this year.

The Ehang 184 Autonomous Aerial Vehicle (AAV) weighs 200 kilograms (440lbs), and has four sets of paired electric motors. The company claims the batteries can be charged in two to four hours. The drone is controlled via a tablet, which is used to set the flight path before take-off. According to the company's website: "Ehang 184 AAV flies in a inverted U shape. It takes off and lands vertically, point to point direct flight based on altitude and latitude of the origin and termination point. Take Off/Landing points are landing targets pre-set with Ehang Logo. The landing camera will position the landing targets automatically and accurately."

Since the passenger has zero inflight control over the machine, safety is naturally a major concern. The company claims: "Even with one propeller malfunctions, it can still land in the nearest possible area safely." In addition, if any other components malfunction or disconnect, "the aircraft will immediately land in the nearest possible area to ensure safety."