Important announcements
A new Russian censorship law bans proxies and VPNs
President Vladimir Putin has signed a law that prohibits use of technology to access websites banned in Russia, including virtual private networks (VPNs) and proxies. The new law will come into effect on 1 November, Reuters reports. According to Leonid Levin, the head of Duma’s information policy committee, the new law is designed to guard against illegal content rather than enable government censorship.
You can read more here.
Amazon suspends the sales of Blu phones for including preloaded spyware
Blu has been suspended from selling on Amazon after cybersecurity experts detailed how software preloaded onto its devices collects sensitive user data and sends it overseas. “Because security and privacy of our customers is of the utmost importance, all BLU phone models have been made unavailable for purchase on Amazon.com until the issue is resolved,” Amazon said in a statement.
More info are available here.
OpenAI framework was used to create malware that can not be detected
In a demonstration at the DEF CON hacking convention Hyrum Anderson, technical director of data science at security company Endgame, showed off research that his company had done in adapting Elon Musk’s OpenAI framework to the task of creating malware that security engines can’t spot. The system basically learns how to tweak malicious binaries so that they can slip past antivirus tools and continue to work once unpacked and executed.
You can read more here.
Top new products
Samsung Galaxy Note 8
The Galaxy Note8 will be announced on August 23 in New York City. The phone will have a 6.4-inch display and a dual-lens camera on back with 3x optical zoom.
More info here.
Honor 6A
The phone has a 5-inch 720p display, Snapdragon 430 processor, 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage. It comes with a 13 MP main camera, a 5 MP front camera and a 3,020 mAh battery.
More info here.
Motorola Moto X4
The phone will have a 5.2-inch screen, 64GB of internal storage, Qualcomm Snapdragon 630 processor and a 3000mAh battery. It will come with dual cameras on the back with 12MP and 8MP sensors.
More info here.
Top interesting info
Apple and Google removed over 300 trading apps from their online stores
The Australian Securities & Investments Commission said that Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Google have removed over 300 binary trading applications from their online stores after intervention by the Commission. Binary options platforms encourage investors to make apparently simple bets on whether shares or currencies will rise or fall in value over time.
You can read more here.
Apple removes VPN apps from China App Store to comply with government
Apple sent notifications to developers in China explaining their VPN app was removed from the App Store. “We have been required to remove some VPN apps in China that do not meet the new regulations,” Apple told the New York Times in a statement. The new regulations in China require developers offering VPNs to obtain a government license.
More info can be found here.
Mozilla launches Firefox Send encrypted file-sharing platform
Mozilla has launched a new website that makes it really easy to send a file from one person to another. The site is called Send and after a file has been downloaded once, it will be deleted. It’s designed for quick and private sharing between two people, not for long-term hosting or distributing files to a large group.
You can read more here.
