security

A small but significant change was made to the Play Store this week, and it affects all Android apps. Google is now adding a "small" string of security metadata to all Android APKs, which is designed to ensure the apps are authentic and have come from the Play Store or other approved source. In other words, it's DRM (digital rights management), but Google's intent is to improve the security of the Android platform by making it harder for fraudulent apps or those with malicious code to be installed.

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As Facebook tries to recover its damaged reputation following controversies over how it handles users' personal data, it seems the social media giant still has a few other privacy issues to work on. It was discovered this week that the company had accidentally emailed analytic reports intended for developers to outside testers.

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With Google working its way into many different facets of every day life, it can be pretty difficult to keep tabs on all of the data it has on you. Perhaps brought on by controversy that has hit Google's competitors in recent months, such as Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal, or the EU's new laws on data privacy and protection, the company is looking to make it easier to access the wealth of information in your Google Account. Among other things, this means a redesigned Account page aimed at ease of navigation.

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We put almost everything inside our phones, from our personal data to our money. So why not our car keys as well? After all, smart homes can already be locked or unlocked using our mobile devices anyway. That’s the future, frightening or otherwise, that car manufacturers are already building. Now the Car Connectivity Consortium (CCC) is working together to create an open standard around that, called the Digital Key specification, which is now marking its 1.0 release on the road towards seamless mobile device-to-vehicle connectivity.

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Home security is getting smarter, or at least that’s what the fast growing smart home market is trying to say. Pundits, however, warn of how the IoT rush could cause lapses in security, which has been proven time and again. Nowhere is that more troubling than when smart locks themselves are involved. One newcomer to that market is Tapplock, and its fingerprint-secured smart lock may not be so secure after all.

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Issues of control aside, there are technical and practical benefits to getting your Android apps from Google Play Store instead of third-party repositories or, worse, free-floating APKs. The biggest problem with that, however, is that installing apps, or even just browsing, requires an Internet connection, which might not be available at all times in all markets. Realizing that their ideal scenario doesn’t exactly reflect reality, Google is now taking steps to make sure that apps downloaded from Google Play Store and shared offline can be verified as safe and treated like any normal Google Play Store app.

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The US Department of Homeland Security has issued a warning over a new type of malware out of North Korea. The DHS worked with the FBI to unearth and reveal the existence of a malware variant it says is known as "TYPEFRAME." Analysts with the two government agencies analyzed a total of 11 samples of the trojan, including infected Windows files.

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Apple and authorities play a non-ending game of cat and mouse (we leave you to decide which is which) when it comes to iPhones. Apple closes security holes and makes it harder for anyone to compromise an iPhone or an iPad. Law enforcement, on the other hand, are constantly looking for ways to break into encrypted devices in the name of justice. The latter group now has a helping hand in the form of forensic hackers like Grayshift who say that they have already found a way around Apple’s upcoming security feature.

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Ring's take on the DIY home security system, Ring Alarm, is up for preorder, promising the unusual combo of professional monitoring without demanding professional installation. Ring Alarm was announced as Ring Protect back in October last year, but sales were held up after a legal battle.

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The ubiquity of voice-controlled smart assistants like Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple Siri, and even Microsoft Cortana should probably motivate an audit of our platforms’ security features. Because more often than not, the almost overarching powers given to these virtual assistants come at the price of, well, giving them too much power. Cortana may not be the most famous one of the bunch but, considering it’s pre-installed on every Windows 10 PC, especially laptops and tablets, then it has even more potential to do harm, as this McAfee report proves.

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Once upon a time, OK not so long ago, browsers such as Chrome and Firefox fought for supremacy over browser extensions. That war has seemingly simmered down but the remnants threaten the security of at least one of them. Chrome browser extensions have, unfortunately, been one of the major sources of malware for its users. Now Google is stepping in and will tighten security by soon preventing extensions from being installed from outside its own Chrome Web Store.

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What use is having a lock when you leave the door wide open anyway. That’s the puzzle that OnePlus 6 owners are now facing after it was discovered how the phone may be fundamentally insecure right at the very gates. According to a security researcher, it is possible to flash any modified boot image on to the OnePlus 6, regardless of whether the bootloader is locked or not. The only consolation users have is that the hacker will need physical access to the device to accomplish this easy break-in.

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