Technology

With the Xperia 1 IV, Sony today introduced its latest top smartphone. According to Sony, the biggest eye-catcher is the triple camera, which includes a unique optical telephoto zoom lens. In addition, the device strongly focuses on gaming and audio functions.   The Xperia 1 IV features an ultra-wide 16mm lens, a 24mm wide lens and an optical zoom. That periscopic lens, placed across the phone's width, works in the same seamless way as a classic zoom. According to the Japanese electronics giant, that, in combination with the range of 85-125 mm, is a first on a smartphone. All lenses also have a 12MP Exmor RS for a mobile image sensor with 120fps. This allows the phone to capture 4K footage with 5x slow motion with any lens. There's also a 3D iToF sensor for depth information and AI...

SentinelLabs, SentinelOne's threat research team, has discovered two serious flaws in Avast and AVG. The vulnerabilities in the antivirus programs went undiscovered for a decade and could potentially affect tens of millions of users.   So far, SentinelLabs has found no evidence of abuse. The vulnerabilities in Avast and AVG (acquired by Avast in 2016) allow attackers to modify privileges so they can disable security products, compromise the operating system, or perform malicious operations unimpeded. According to Avast, the security risk has crept into Avast 12.1, the software version released in January 2012. Given the longevity of this flaw by over a decade, SentinelOne estimates that tens of millions of users may have been affected by it. SentinelLabs' findings were proactivel...

Last year, Facebook wrongly blocked some 17,000 pages in Australia, saying it accidentally when wanted to block news channels. Documents now show that this was a deliberate blunder to avoid stricter regulations.   When Australian lawmakers worked on law in 2020 that would require players like Google and Facebook to pay for the news shared on their platforms, Facebook went off the rails. The proposal would cost the company money and could set a precedent for other countries. After a first draft of the law was passed, Facebook decided to preemptively shut down all Facebook news pages, formally saying it would otherwise violate the law. But that's where it went wrong. Not only news pages were shut down, but thousands of other pages. Including Facebook pages of hospitals and NGOs, just...

Heroku has had the passwords of all of its user accounts changed. The move comes about a month after the company's OAuth tokens were stolen.   Cloud platform Heroku has asked its users to change their passwords before the company resets them itself. API tokens will also expire, so apps running on the platform may no longer work until a new token is created. According to Heroku itself, it is a response from the PaaS vendor to a "security incident" in which some of the user accounts were compromised. However, that incident happened almost a month ago. In April, OAuth tokens from Heroku and another company, Travis CI, were stolen, GitHub said in a security report. Those authentication tokens allowed attackers to download data from GitHub from various organizations. GitHub reported th...

Spotify gained more users in the first quarter, despite the outcry about comedian Joe Rogan's podcasts earlier this year. The originally Swedish company now has 422 million monthly active users, an increase of 19 percent compared to a year earlier.   There are now 182 million paid subscribers of all users. However, Spotify came into disrepute early this year after several major artists, such as singer Neil Young decided to remove their music from the service. According to the musicians and other critics, comedian Joe Rogan would spread disinformation about the coronavirus in his Spotify podcast. Spotify has also withdrawn from Russia because of the war in Ukraine. As a result, the company lost 1.5 million paying subscribers in the country. In addition, Spotify still had to deal wi...

Unknowns have stolen a series of NFTs by posting a phishing link on Bored Ape Yacht Club's Instagram account. The latter is the 'exclusive' group for owners of a jpeg with a bored monkey on it.   NFTs remain a magnet for robberies. The industry makes it a practice to give away free stuff to generate more hype, but that can also be used against those enthusiasts. It happened this week at Bored Ape Yacht Club, the so-called clubhouse of holders of a Bored Ape NFT. Those are jpegs of cartoon monkeys with a receipt on the blockchain, making them worth millions of dollars in certain circles. This week, the brand's Instagram account was taken over by a fraudster who posted a link to an 'airdrop'. This would allow NFT holders to claim free ownership in the Bored Ape Yacht Club metaverse, ...

Some hackers have found an efficient way to retrieve someone's personal data: they pose as an agent who urgently needs the information 'for a matter of life or death'.   The method is as simple as it is genius. When formally requested information from a social network or other technology company, it must go through a court petition. But in life-or-death cases, the procedure takes too long, and you are asked to pass on the information in advance. Security researcher Brian Krebs discovered that this is where things go wrong. With the help of hacked e-mail accounts of police officers, criminals can credibly and successfully send such data requests. No concrete cases are mentioned, but the providers of such accounts promote the option to request data from Snapchat, Apple, Uber, Instag...