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Just last week iPhone and iPad users were dealing with an iOS text bug that caused the app to crash and iPhones to reboot , now a similar bug has been found that takes out Skype — the popular video chat and messaging service. Yes, Microsoft-owned Skype VoIP client is also affected by a bug that crashes almost every single version of the Skype client on both desktops and mobile phones with a single message containing just eight characters. Also: The impacts are so bad that it requires a re-install in order to get things working hitch-free again. Just Send 'https://:' and Crash Skype If a user receives a message during a conversation on Skype containing the text string " https://: " (without the quotes), it reportedly crashes Skype when running on Windows, Android, or iOS operating system, according to reports on Skype forums . However, Skype app for Mac and the modern touch-optimized version of Skype app for Windows 8.1 are reportedly unaffecte

Until now Unix and Linux system administrators have to download a third-party SSH client software like Putty on their Windows machines to securely manage their machines and servers remotely through Secure Shell protocol or Shell Session (better known as SSH ). This might have always been an awkward feature of Windows platform, as it lacks both – a native SSH client software for connecting to Linux machines, and an SSH server to support inbound connections from Linux machines. But… Believe it or not: You don't need to deal with any third-party SSH client now, as Microsoft is working on supporting OpenSSH. Yes, Microsoft has finally decided to bring OpenSSH client and server to Windows. The PowerShell team at Microsoft has announced that the company is going to support and contribute to OpenSSH community in an effort to deliver better SSH support in the PowerShell and Windows SSH software solutions. So, the upcoming version of Windows PowerShell – the co

Identities now transcend human boundaries. Within each line of code and every API call lies a non-human identity. These entities act as programmatic access keys, enabling authentication and facilitating interactions among systems and services, which are essential for every API call, database query, or storage account access. As we depend on multi-factor authentication and passwords to safeguard human identities, a pressing question arises: How do we guarantee the security and integrity of these non-human counterparts? How do we authenticate, authorize, and regulate access for entities devoid of life but crucial for the functioning of critical systems? Let's break it down. The challenge Imagine a cloud-native application as a bustling metropolis of tiny neighborhoods known as microservices, all neatly packed into containers. These microservices function akin to diligent worker bees, each diligently performing its designated task, be it processing data, verifying credentials, or

A zero-day software vulnerability discovered deep in the firmware of many Apple computers could allows an attacker to modify the system's BIOS and install a rootkit , potentially gaining complete control of the victim's Mac. The critical vulnerability, discovered by well-known OS X security researcher Pedro Vilaca, affects Mac computers shipped before mid-2014 that are allowed to go into sleep mode. While studying Mac security, Vilaca found that it's possible to tamper with Apple computer's UEFI (unified extensible firmware interface) code. UEFI is a low-level firmware designed to improve upon computer's BIOS, which links a computer's hardware and operating system at startup and is typically not accessible to users. But… Vilaca found that the machine's UEFI code can be unlocked after a computer is put to sleep and then brought back up. " And you ask, what the hell does this mean? " Vilaca wrote in a blog post published Friday. " It means th

In this era of Global surveillance, we all are worried about the privacy of our communication and sensitive data. There is no guarantee that our data is not being snooped on, but there is a solution — PGP (Pretty Good Privacy). PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) is more than 20 years old technology but is yet not widely adopted. PGP is an open source end-to-end encryption standard to encrypt e-mails, protecting you against companies, governments, or criminals spying on your Internet connection. But... ...the tool is too complicated for most of the people to implement and use. However, Facebook is now encouraging its users to use PGP and communicate by sending encrypted emails, adding the popular OpenPGP email encryption standard as an extra layer of security for the cautious. According to the latest announcement , you can now upload your Public PGP key to your Facebook profile so that anyone with your public key can send you encrypted emails. By giving such option to

Next time when someone sends you a photo of a cute cat or a hot chick than be careful before you click on the image to view — it might hack your machine. Yes, the normal looking images could hack your computers — thanks to a technique discovered by security researcher Saumil Shah from India. Dubbed " Stegosploit ," the technique lets hackers hide malicious code inside the pixels of an image, hiding a malware exploit in plain sight to infect target victims. Just look at the image and you are HACKED! Shah demonstrated the technique during a talk titled , " Stegosploit: Hacking With Pictures, " he gave on Thursday at the Amsterdam hacking conference Hack In The Box. According to Shah, "a good exploit is one that is delivered in style." Keeping this in mind, Shah discovered a way to hide malicious code directly into an image, rather than hiding it in email attachments, PDFs or other types of files that are typically used to deliver