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Internet of Things (IoT) is the latest buzz in the world of technology, but they are much easier to hack than you think. Until now we have heard many scary stories of hacking IoT devices , but how realistic is the threat? Just think of a scenario where you enter in your house, and it's sweltering, but when you head on to check the temperature of your thermostat, you find out that it has been locked to 99 degrees. And guess what? Your room thermostat is demanding $300 in Bitcoins to regain its control. Congratulations, Your Thermostat has been Hacked! This is not just a hypothetical scenario; this is exactly what Ken Munro and Andrew Tierney of UK-based security firm Pen Test Partners have demonstrated at the DEFCON 24 security conference in Las Vegas last Saturday. Two white hat hackers recently showed off the first proof-of-concept (PoC) ransomware that infects a smart thermostat. Ransomware is an infamous piece of malware that has been known for locking up comput...

After the failure of Facebook's Free Basics -- an initiative to provide free Internet access -- in India due to the violation of Net Neutrality principles, Facebook has reintroduced its plan to provide Internet access in rural India, but this time: The social networking giant is planning to launch a commercial WiFi service in India. Facebook is testing a WiFi service in rural India, allowing people with no internet connection to buy affordable data packages from their local internet service providers (ISPs) in order to access the Internet via local hotspots. Dubbed Express Wi-Fi , the program is in sync with Mark Zuckerberg's Internet.org -- the platform Facebook used for its Free Basics to bring the Internet to all. India banned Free Basics in the country on net neutrality grounds. Net Neutrality advocates argued that by offering some websites and services for free, people are discouraged from visiting other sites. Now, Facebook has partnered with state-owned ...

Android has Fallen! Yet another set of Android security vulnerabilities has been discovered in Qualcomm chipsets that affect more than 900 Million Android smartphones and tablets worldwide. What's even worse: Most of those affected Android devices will probably never be patched. Dubbed " Quadrooter ," the set of four vulnerabilities discovered in devices running Android Marshmallow and earlier that ship with Qualcomm chip could allow an attacker to gain root-level access to any Qualcomm device. The chip, according to the latest statistics, is found in more than 900 Million Android tablets and smartphones. That's a very big number. The vulnerabilities have been disclosed by a team of Check Point researchers at the DEF CON 24 security conference in Las Vegas. Critical Quadrooter Vulnerabilities: The four security vulnerabilities are: CVE-2016-2503 discovered in Qualcomm's GPU driver and fixed in Google's Android Security Bulletin for July ...

On this day 25 years ago, August 6, 1991, the world's first website went live to the public from a lab in the Swiss Alps. So Happy 25th Birthday, WWW! It's the Silver Jubilee of the world's first website. The site was created by Sir Tim Berners-Lee , the father of the World Wide Web (WWW), and was dedicated to information on the World Wide Web project. The world's first website, which ran on a NeXT computer at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), can still be visited today, more than two decades after its creation. The first website address is https://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html . "The WorldWideWeb (W3) is a wide-area hypermedia information retrieval initiative aiming to give universal access to a large universe of documents," the world's first public website reads, going on to explain how others can also create their own web pages. "The project started with the philosophy that much academic information sh...

Pokémon GO has become the world's most popular mobile game since its launch in July, but not everyone loves it. Pokémon GO has officially been banned in Iran. The Iranian High Council of Virtual Spaces – the country's official body that oversees online activity – has prohibited the use of the Pokémon GO app within the country due to unspecified " security concerns, " BBC reports . The Iranian council did not detail why the country has actually banned its citizen from playing the wildly popular game. Although many countries, including Russia and China, have expressed security concerns over the smash hit augmented reality game, Iran has become the first country to introduce an official ban of Pokémon GO. Since its launch, Pokémon GO has officially been released in more than 35 countries so far with over 100 Million downloads and continues to make an estimated $10 Million in daily revenue. Despite strict Internet restrictions in Iran, Pokémon fans have still ...