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Intel Skylake die shot. (credit: Intel)

In January Microsoft announced that owners of systems using Skylake processors would have to upgrade to Windows 10 within 18 months of the announcement, and that users of Intel Kaby Lake systems, due to be released later this year, would only be supported in Windows 10.

This raised an obvious question: what will the situation be for users of Windows Server 2008, based on Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 R2, based on Windows 7, Windows Server 2012, based on Windows 8, Windows Server 2012 R2, based on Windows 8.1, and the as-yet unreleased Windows Server 2016, based on Windows 10? Specifically, which versions of the server operating system will support Skylake and Kaby Lake, and will server operators be required to upgrade to Windows Server 2016 to get support for these processors?

Today the company answered those questions, and surprisingly, given that the operating systems share so many underlying components, the answer is different.

(credit: Kārlis Dambrāns)

On Friday, an Apple executive explicitly confirmed what was stated in a government court filing earlier in the day: that in the early hours of the San Bernardino terrorism investigation, county officials may have inadvertently compromised their ability to access the data on the seized iPhone 5C.

Earlier this week, Apple was given an unprecedented court order to create custom firmware for the iPhone 5C that was used by Syed Rizwan Farook. That new firmware would remove a possible automatic wipe feature on the phone if a passcode is incorrectly entered 10 times and would remove a delay between passcode attempts intended to make brute-force entry more difficult. If Apple does comply, it would allow the government to enter PIN codes in rapid succession until it gained access to the phone. Apple CEO Tim Cook has publicly said it will resist this attempt, calling it a significant “overreach.” A court hearing has been scheduled for March 22, 2016, in nearby Riverside, California.

During the Friday call, the unnamed Apple executive said the company has been diligently working with the FBI to try to aid the terrorism investigation. After days of working with the FBI, the Apple proposed one final attempt to recover roughly six weeks of data that was locked on the phone.

Behold: VSS Unity, the spacecraft Virgin Galactic says will open up space to the rest of us. (credit: Virgin Galactic)

It’s been 16 months since SpaceShipTwo crashed into the Mojave Desert and killed the vehicle’s co-pilot Michael Alsbury. On Friday, Virgin Galactic sought to move on from that accident and put the company firmly back on a path toward delivering tourists to the edge of space by unveiling a new version of its spacecraft named VSS Unity.

“I’m really proud of the entire team,” said George Whitesides, chief executive of Virgin Galactic, in an interview with Ars. “It’s a bunch of folks who came to this company to open space up, and they’re not going to be deterred by the accident. They’ve been working really hard for a year and a half to finish this vehicle.”

The new spacecraft is in many ways the same as the original SpaceShipTwo, dubbed Enterprise, Whitesides said. It has the same basic airframe and propulsion systems. The biggest change is to the feather locking system, used to aid in the descent of the spacecraft. During the fatal flight on Oct. 31, 2014, Alsbury prematurely deployed the system while still making a powered ascent. Unity now includes a mechanical pin to prevent the feather lever from moving when the vehicle is flying in an unsafe flight regime.

GOP presidential contender Donald Trump is urging his followers to boycott Apple until it complies with the US government in its ongoing encryption battle. Apple is currently facing a court order requiring the company to assist authorities in unlocking an iPhone used by one of the two killers involved in a San Bernardino mass shooting that killed 14 and injured two dozen others in December 2015.

"First of all, Apple ought to give [authorities] the security to that phone," Trump told the crowd at a South Carolina rally on Friday. "What I think you ought to do is boycott Apple until they give that security number. I just thought of that—boycott Apple.”

Trump was initially discussing how he believes the US needs to bring back jobs from China before he stumbled into his Apple position. The comments come as the debate about encryption reached a fever pitch this week. On Friday, the Justice Department demanded that a federal judge make Apple comply with a Tuesday court order requiring Apple to create a custom firmware in the seized iPhone 5C used by Syed Rizwan Farook. That firmware would remove a possible automatic wipe feature on the phone if a passcode is incorrectly entered 10 times.

An Oregon man has admitted he tricked hundreds of people into divulging their Apple and Gmail passwords in a scheme that allowed him to steal nude images of more than a dozen victims, some of them celebrities.

Andrew Helton, 29, of Portland, entered the plea on Thursday to one felony count of unauthorized access to a protected computer to obtain information, according to documents filed in federal court in Los Angeles. Prosecutors said he gained illegal access to 363 Apple and Gmail accounts, including those belonging to members of the entertainment industry in Los Angeles. He then used the access to obtain data stored in the online accounts, including 161 sexually explicit, nude, or partially nude images of 13 people, some who were unidentified celebrities.

According to a plea agreement unsealed Friday, Helton engaged in a fraud campaign from March 2011 to May 2013 in which he sent e-mails that falsely claimed to come from Apple or Google. The phishing e-mails asked victims to verify their accounts by clicking on links that led to what looked like authentic Apple or Google login pages. When targets complied, their passwords were transmitted to Helton, who used them to illegally access account data.

(credit: Tavis Ormandy)

A reasonable expectation of security software is that at worst it should make your system no less secure than would be without the software. Sadly, it often seems that such hardware fails to meet even this low bar.

Comodo Internet Security is a security suite that includes anti-virus, firewalling, and sandboxing to allow applications to be run in a notionally secure unprivileged environment. By default, it also includes a component called GeekBuddy. GeekBuddy is a VNC server, providing full remote access to your system. In May of 2015 it was pointed out that this VNC server was running without a password—yes, really—providing, at the very least, local privilege escalation. Sandboxed applications such as Google Chrome, or even those running in Comodo's own sandbox, could connect to this VNC server and have full access to your system.

With the right (or rather, in this case, wrong) network configuration, the VNC server might even be exposed to remote attackers.

Vishal Mathur

This is what was sent to journalists... is that Wite-Out?

5 more images in gallery

A few days ago, an Indian device called the "Freedom 251" surfaced, so named because it only cost Rs. 251 (About $3.64), making it the "world's cheapest smartphone." If you thought a $4 smartphone seemed a little too good to be true, you may be right. There are now all sorts of questionable issues popping up with this device.

First up, it looks like the company might have done at least a visual switcheroo. When the product site first launched, it looked like this, showing a modern, high-end looking phone with very thin side bezels and three capacitive buttons on the bottom. After news coverage of the phone spread, the site was updated and all the phone images were replaced with a much uglier, much cheaper looking device with thick bezels and a single hardware home button.

Testers in India have gotten their hands on the device, and sure enough, it sports the newer, uglier design. The oddities don't stop there. The company selling the Freedom 251 is called "Ringing Bells" but the hardware sent to testers was actually built by Adcom and carries Adcom branding. On the front of the device is an Adcom logo, which was obscured with...Wite-Out? The the Adcom logo is actually covered up with a white blob right on top of the bezel. This editing can be easily removed to show the logo beneath.