WannaCry Hacker Arrested

Marcus Hutchins a British Cyber-Security researcher will appear in court in Vegas, whilst attending the Black Hat and Def Con cyber security conferences, charged with his involvement with Kronos – malware which steals banking logins from infected computers.

Hutchins stopped the WannaCry Cyber-Attack which hit the NHS in May and the FBI arrested him on Wednesday, with the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre were surprised at his arrest.

The US Department of Justice released a statement on his arrest stating that:

“Marcus Hutchins… a citizen and resident of the United Kingdom, was arrested in the United States on 2 August, 2017, in Las Vegas, Nevada, after a grand jury in the Eastern District of Wisconsin returned a six-count indictment against Hutchins for his role in creating and distributing the Kronos banking Trojan….The charges against Hutchins, and for which he was arrested, relate to alleged conduct that occurred between in or around July 2014 and July 2015.”

It is alleged that Hitchins created and sold Kronos on the dark web, Jane Hutchins, Marcus’ mother said that it was ‘highly unlikely’ that her son was involved saying that he spent his time preventing attacks from occurring. With those who work with Hutchins coming to the defence feeling that the US justice system have made a “huge mistake” Digital rights groups have said they are “deeply concerned” by his arrest.

Cyber-attorney Tor Ekeland has said that Mr Hutchins could face “40 years in jail” if found guilty, even though the case states no victims. But is worried about the outcome of this case for legitimate programmes, speaking on Radio 4’s Today:

“I can think of a number of examples of legitimate software that would potentially be a felony under this theory of prosecution.”

Hutchins has been granted £23,000 bail and at the time of writing it is unknown if he was able to pay this. He left court unshackled but ordered to leave his hands behind his back.

His defence lawyer Ms Lobo told the BBC that he has pled not guilty and the federal indictment against him is “pretty flimsy, pretty slim compared to what we normally see in a US indictment”

It is claimed that he software was sold for $2,000 in digital currency in June 2015 and Dan Cowhig, prosecuting, told court room that Hutchins confessed during a police interview that he was the “author of Kronos malware and indicated that he sold it”

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Fake but looks totally REAL Barack!

The University of Washington have created technique that allows them to make a fake Barack Obama that makes him say whatever they want and it look really real!

 

They have used a neural network AI to model the shape of Obama’s mouth and to get the visual/audio they mapped the model to 14 hours footage of President Obama. Now they are able to match any audio to fake Obama by this method or by using an impersonator.

SCARY STUFF! (But also kinda cool)

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UK Government Plans To Ban Petrol/Diesel Cars By 2040

Reports by the Guardian and Financial Times have suggested that by 2040 the Government are setting up to ban the sale of Petrol and Diesel cars, as part of an air quality plan – this includes hybrids, electric only vehicles from 2040 would then only be possible. This is apparently a reaction to a recent government report which stated that smog kills at least 40,000 people each year in the UK.

However this would hinge on the ability to actually manufacture these electric cars and make them affordable to every car user in the country, the worldwide electric vehicle us currently facing potential shortages of battery materials such as lithium and cobalt.

Other countries are undergoing a similar plan with France having the same timescale and India hoping to introduce this ban by 2030.

 

Husband Storage Pods

According to ‘The Paper’ a mall in Shanghai has set up storage pods to leave their husbands whilst they go shopping. But, it sounds like FUN! Inside each pod, there is a chair, a monitor, computer and a gamepad where guys can play retro 1990’s games. It’s currently free but it is said to be charging users via a QR code scanned on their phone in the coming months.

Mr Yang told ‘The Paper’ that it was a great idea and he enjoyed playing Tekken 3, whilst Mr Wu, while he thought they were a great idea, he wanted ventilation and air con as he complained that after 5 minutes he was drenched in sweat!

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Drone’s Soon May Require TESTS!

The UK are pushing forward with more regulations on Drones. British Government have ruled that any RC aircraft that weighs over 350g (0.55lbs) will have to take a safety awareness test. Hoping that this will reduce the numbers of those flying drones near airports, as well as introducing geofencing to physically prevent the drones from flying into airspace.

Compact drones are just as bad as the larger drones too due to their exposed rota’s, a drone weighing 400lbs can crack the windscreen of a helicopter, it may not cause an airplane windscreen to crack, but you can still cause a lot of damage and a disaster if you aren’t careful. So stay away from airports!

Registration is nothing new, but it begs the question, will you be willing to buy a drone knowing you’d have to take a test to legally be able to fly it?

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Ollo Clip

The Olloclip is in an incredible piece of hardware, it’s a small device that attaches on to your iPhone’s camera that gives it that extra edge over the original camera that photographers crave: the fisheye, wide-angle and macro lenses.

Now Olloclip sell a range of lenses, such as the flagship Olloclip 4 in 1 lens that has two type of Macro 10x and 15x as well as the wide angle and the fisheye, the Telephoto + CPL Lens (Circular Polarizing Lens) and the latest Vista kit which includes Telephoto (2x) and a Super Wide lens. If you want to improve your iPhone photography look no further than the Olloclip.

To buy your own Olloclip please click here!

The iPod shuffle’s death marks the end of an era

This week Apple announced that they would be killing off the ipod nano AND shuffle! 
When the nano was launched in 2005 it stole the show from the Motorola ROKR as they were launched alongside each other.
The nano has always been at the lower end of the priority list for Apple as it remained frozen in time even thought it remained a constant on Apples product list.
The nano took the entire idea of an iPod and distilled it down to the purest essence of listening to music, with just a few physical playback controls on the front of the device – no screen, no click wheel, no touch interface.
It’s easy to understand why Apple are kiling off the shuffle, it’s a budget product with a minimal profit margin, but it will be dearly missed.

Facebook Stories unlocks public sharing

Facebook has now added the ability to post stories…

…and make them public, meaning you do not have to be friends on facebook to be able to watch a person’s Facebook story.

It’s essentially a clone of snapchat and instagram stories but results have shown that there’s more interaction on people viewing your story rather than interacting with a post you have posted on your page.

Facebook has proudly shared the rapid traction of Instagram Stories, both of which have over 250 million daily users. That makes them bigger than Snapchat, which has 166 million daily users for its whole app.

Amazon’s race to make Alexa smarter

Amazon bosses are now pushing themselves to the limit to make the Alexa speaker smarter. 

Dave Limp – the man behind Alexa is not satisfied with the the function of the speaker as it is.

He now has thousands of  engineers inside Amazon adding to its capability every day and then another tens of thousands of developers adding to the skills, this means in the coming years Alexa will be significantly smarter that she is now.

Alexa will understand 15000 commands compared to it’s nearest rival which is Google home and that only understands under 400 questions/commands, Alexa will also be able to understand context.

iOS 11 HOT POINTS

 

Here are some of the features that iOS 11 will be bringing this September/October:

  • Apple Music gets user profiles and playlist sharing – Apple Music subscribers can now create a social profile and advertise what they are listening to and share the playlists that they have made. 
  • Screenshot sharing tools – When you take a screenshot now it shows you a preview in the bottom left of the screen, once you click it you can go ahead and “mark it up” save and/or share it. 
  • Know when an app is sharing your location – At all times! When an app uses your location in the background, in iOS 11 it is more transparent, with a blue bar highlighting so. 
  • Volume Indicator – Is now smaller and located in top right hand of the screen
  • WIFI Sharing – If an iOS device running iOS11 is nearby you can now share your WiFi signal without having to share wifi passwords. 
  • Do not disturb when driving – Your phone (if you set it to) will go completely blank when it registers that you are driving, no on screen notifications, no screen at all in fact, you can also set it to auto-reply to messages to let others know you’re driving.
  • Facebook/Twitter login support removed.  – No one knows why
  • Pay people within iMessage – Working via an iMessage app (much like gifs) you can send money to loved ones, the money will appear in Apple Pay as a cash card and this can be used like any other form of payment in your Apple Pay Wallet. 
  • Control Center  – Is now one page, bigger and a lot lot cleaner! With the ability to add setting/remove various settings too!
  • App store gets a makeover – BIG PHOTOS! 

Please see above the Top 11 features that the guys over at EverythingApplePro found!

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