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The federal authorities have finally arrested the alleged mastermind behind the world's largest and most notorious BitTorrent distribution site Kickass Torrents (KAT) , the US Justice Department announced on Wednesday. After The Pirate Bay had suffered copyright infringement hardship, Kickass Torrents (KAT) became the biggest and most-used pirate site on the Internet, attracting millions of daily unique visitors. However, the site appears to be offline after its alleged owner Artem Vaulin , a 30-year-old Ukrainian national was apprehended in Poland today, and the US government has requested his extradition. Although some proxy sites seem to be currently up and running, its main site, https://kat.cr , appears to be down worldwide and most of the other Kickass Torrents domains, including kickasstorrents.com, kastatic.com, thekat.tv, kat.cr, kickass.cr, kickass.to, kat.ph, have been seized by the authorities. Charges Filed Against Kickass Torrents Owner According to cri

As far as security is concerned, Google is going very strict with the newest version of its mobile operating system. Until now, Google has not done more than just alerting you of the potential threats when your Android device runs the check as part of the boot process. Android Marshmallow 6.0 does nothing more than just warning you that your device has been compromised, though it continues to let your device boot up. 1. Android Nougat 7.0 Getting Strictly Enforced 'Verified Boot' In Android Nougat , Google has taken the security of its Android operating system to the next level by strictly enforcing verified boot on devices. Among multiple layers of security protection, Android uses verified boot - since Android version 4.4 KitKat - that improves its device's security by using cryptographic integrity checking to detect if your device has been tampered with. Now, Android Nougat will strictly enforce the boot check, giving you far more than just a warning.

The introduction of Open AI's ChatGPT was a defining moment for the software industry, touching off a GenAI race with its November 2022 release. SaaS vendors are now rushing to upgrade tools with enhanced productivity capabilities that are driven by generative AI. Among a wide range of uses, GenAI tools make it easier for developers to build software, assist sales teams in mundane email writing, help marketers produce unique content at low cost, and enable teams and creatives to brainstorm new ideas.  Recent significant GenAI product launches include Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, and Salesforce Einstein GPT. Notably, these GenAI tools from leading SaaS providers are paid enhancements, a clear sign that no SaaS provider will want to miss out on cashing in on the GenAI transformation. Google will soon launch its SGE "Search Generative Experience" platform for premium AI-generated summaries rather than a list of websites.  At this pace, it's just a matter of a short time befo

In Brief Do you own an iPhone? Mac? Or any Apple device? Just one specially-crafted message can expose your personal information, including your authentication credentials stored in your device's memory, to a hacker. The vulnerability is quite similar to the Stagefright vulnerabilities , discovered a year ago in Android, that allowed hackers to silently spy on almost a Billion phones with just one specially-crafted text message. Cisco Talos senior researcher Tyler Bohan, who discovered this critical Stagefright-type bug in iOS, described the flaw as "an extremely critical bug, comparable to the Android Stagefright as far as exposure goes." The critical bug (CVE-2016-4631) actually resides in ImageIO – API used to handle image data – and works across all widely-used Apple operating systems, including Mac OS X, tvOS, and watchOS. All an attacker needs to do is create an exploit for the bug and send it via a multimedia message (MMS) or iMessage inside a Tagg

Another blow to the Tor Project : One of the Tor Project's earliest contributors has decided to quit the project and shut down all of the important Tor nodes under his administration. Lucky Green was part of the Tor Project before the anonymity network was known as TOR. He probably ran one of the first 5 nodes in the TOR network at its inception and managed special nodes inside the anonymity network. However, Green announced last weekend that "it is no longer appropriate" for him to be part of the Tor Project, whether it is financially or by providing computing resources. TOR, also known as The Onion Router , is an anonymity network that makes use of a series of nodes and relays to mask its users' traffic and hide their identity by disguising IP addresses and origins. The TOR network is used by privacy-conscious people, activists, journalists and users from countries with strict censorship rules. Crucial and Fast TOR Nodes to be Shut Down Soon Alongs

Japanese telecommunication giant SoftBank has confirmed that the company intends to acquire UK chip designer ARM Holdings for almost $32 Billion (£24.3 Billion) in an all-cash deal. ARM has also agreed to this offer from SoftBank and said that its board would recommend the all-cash deal to shareholders. SoftBank will pay nearly $22.5 per ARM share, which is 43 percent more than ARM's closing share price on Friday and 41 percent more than ARM's all-time high closing share price. The deal is the largest-ever acquisition of a European technology business, first reported by The Financial Times. Wondering Why is ARM really Worth $32 Billion? Founded in 1990, Cambridge-based ARM Holdings designs microchips for a variety of smartphones and powers more than 95 percent of the smartphones in the market. Whether it is Apple's iPhones or iPads, Samsung's Galaxy smartphones, Amazon's Kindle e-readers, the cheapest Nokia phones or Internet-connected devices li

Smart hackers could exploit a loophole that could allow them to steal a significant amount of cash from Google, Microsoft and Instagram using a Premium rate phone number. Security researcher Arne Swinnen from Belgium has discovered an ingenious way to steal money from big tech companies like Google, Microsoft, and Instagram using their two-factor authentication (2FA) voice-based token distribution systems. Swinnen argues that any attacker with malicious intent could create fake Google, Microsoft or Instagram accounts, as well as premium phone services, and then link them together. The attacker could then request 2FA voice-based tokens for all fake accounts using an automated scripts, placing legitimate phone calls to his service to earn him quite a nice profit. Swinnen created accounts on Google, Microsoft Office 365 and Instagram and then tied them to a premium phone number instead of a regular one. As a result, whenever one of these three services would call the account'

Pokémon GO launched just two weeks ago, and people have been getting crazy to catch 'em all. Users, on an average, are spending more time engaged with the new Pokémon GO app than any other apps like Snapchat. But, before downloading and playing Nintendo's new location-based augmented reality game, users are required to keep the following points in their minds: 1. Unofficial Pokémon GO app might contain Malware Since Pokémon GO is currently available in only a few countries, many third-party gaming websites are offering tutorials due to huge interest surrounding the app, recommending users to download the APK from a non-Google Play link. Users need to "side-load" the malicious app to install the APK by modifying their Android core security settings, which allows their device's OS to install apps from " untrusted sources ." However, researchers have discovered that many of these online tutorials are linked to malicious versions of the Pokém

Online privacy is an Internet buzzword nowadays. If you are also concerned about the privacy of your web surfing, the most efficient way is to use TOR – a free software that lets users communicate anonymously by hiding their actual location from snoopers. Although TOR is a great anonymous network, it has some limitations that could still allow a motivated hacker to compromise the anonymity of legions of users, including dark web criminals as well as privacy-minded innocents. Moreover, TOR (The Onion Network) has likely been targeted by the FBI to arrest criminals , including the alleged Silk Road 2 lieutenant Brian Richard Farrell, who was arrested in January 2014. Even the TOR Project accused the FBI of paying the researchers of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) at least $1 Million to disclose a technique that could help the agency unmask TOR users and reveal their IP addresses as part of a criminal investigation. So, what's next? Is there an alternative? Well, most p

No software is immune to being Hacked! Not even Linux. The Ubuntu online forums have been hacked, and data belonging to over 2 Million users have been compromised, Canonical just announced. The compromised users' data include their IP addresses, usernames, and email addresses, according to the company, who failed to apply a patch to secure its users' data. However, users should keep in mind that the hack did not affect the Ubuntu operating system, or it was not due to a vulnerability or weakness in the OS. Instead, the breach only affected the Ubuntu online forums that people use to discuss the OS, said BetaNews, who initially reported the news. "There has been a security breach on the Ubuntu Forums site," Jane Silber, Chief Executive Officer at Canonical wrote in a blog post . "We take information security and user privacy very seriously, follow a strict set of security practices and this incident has triggered a thorough investigation." "C

Especially after the Snowden revelations of global  mass surveillance by US intelligence agencies at home and abroad, various countries demanded tech companies including Google, Apple, and Microsoft to set-up and maintain their servers in respective countries in order to keep their citizen data within boundaries. The US government has powers to comply US-based tech companies with the court orders to hand over their customers' data stored on servers, even if the data centers are beyond US borders. Now, the recent court decision has proven that the data centers and servers located outside the US boundaries are safe haven. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York ruled Thursday that the United States government cannot force tech companies to give the FBI or other federal authorities access to their non-US customers' data stored on servers located in other countries. US Government Can't go Beyond its Boundaries to Collect Data Yes, the Stored Communicatio