Important announcements
A new vulnerability uses antivirus software to infect systems with malware
Austria-based security consultant Florian Bogner discovered the vulnerability and dubbed it AVGater. It essentially works by relocating malware from an AV quarantine folder to a sensitive location on a PC. Bogner, who works for Kapsch, says he has notified the vendors of all the antivirus programs that contained the flaw. Some of the companies have released updates that address the issue, including Emisoft, Ikarus, Kaspersky, Malwarebytes, Trend Micro, and ZoneAlarm. Bogner says the best way to prevent being affected by AVGater is to keep the antivirus programs up to date.
You can read more here.
Mozilla replaces Yahoo with Google search on the new Firefox browser
Google will be Firefox’s default search provider on desktop and mobile. The decision was “based on a number of factors including doing what’s best for our brand, our effort to provide quality web search and the broader content experience for our users”, said Denelle Dixon, Mozilla’s chief business and legal officer.
More info are available here.
A research claims that Android is the most targeted platform by malware
According to Nokia’s anual Threat Intelligence Report, Google’s Android platform is by far the most targeted by malware in 2017, with 68-percent of malware instances occurring on this platform. Nokia attributes that primarily to the fact that apps are able to be side-loaded onto an Android device, despite the efforts of Google to secure the Google Play Store via Google Play Protect. The majority of attacks were delivered in the form of applications that contained hidden malicious software.
You can read more here.
Top new products
HTC Vive Focus
HTC Vive Focus has an AMOLED display and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor. It is a standalone headset, which means it has everything (compute, display, battery, etc) and doesn’t rely on a host PC or a smartphone.
More info here.
Infinix Zero 5
Infinix Zero 5 has an octa-core MediaTek Helio P25 processor, a 5.98-inch FHD display and 6 GB RAM. It will come with a 16 MP front camera and on the back a dual camera with 12 MP and 13 MP sensors.
More info here.
Huawei Honor V10
The Honor V10 will have a Kirin 970 processor, a 6-inch display and a 4,000mAh battery. It will come with Android 8.0 Oreo OS and will be launched on November 28.
More info here.
Top interesting info
Huawei announced a smart city control centre
Huawei’s Intelligent Operation Centre uses big data, machine learning, and AI to provide a dashboard to collect, monitor, and analyse information to be used in city planning and management. “The underlying infrastructure of the IOC comprises distributed cloud datacentres and ubiquitous city networks that collect, integrate, and share city information, enabling real-time visibility of the city,” Huawei said.
You can read more here.
Duolingo will add a Chinese language course
The language learning app has provided Spanish and German since it was in private beta back in 2011, but didn’t add Asian languages until recently, Japanese was added in May and Korean in September. The company said that a Chinese course was one of the most requested language courses in the service’s history.
More info can be found here.
Google Pixel 2 camera doesn’t work well with LED lighting
Pixel 2 cameras show odd flickering and banding under LED lights. One user on the Google Product Forum explains that LED lights flicker at a certain frequency and in order to avoid this showing up, users need to be able to set the shutter speed of the camera to the same frequency as the lights. Unfortunately, there’s no such option available on the Pixel 2 series for now.
You can read more here.
