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Showing posts from December, 2019

Russia successfully disconnected from the internet

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  RuNet disconnection tests were successful, according to the Russian government. The Russian government announced on Monday that it concluded a series of tests during which it successfully disconnected the country from the worldwide internet. The tests were carried out over multiple days, starting last week, and involved Russian government agencies, local internet service providers, and local Russian internet companies. The goal was to test if the country's national internet infrastructure -- known inside Russia as RuNet -- could function without access to the global DNS system and the external internet. Internet traffic was re-routed internally, effectively making Russia's RuNet the world's largest intranet. The government did not reveal any technical details about the tests and what exactly they consisted of. It only said that the government tested several disconnection scenarios, including a scenario that simulated a hostile cyber-attack from a foreign country. The expe

Chrome 79 for Android Update Rollout Restarts With Fix for App Data Deleting Bug

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A Google spokesperson has confirmed that the rollout of Chrome 79.0.3945.93 for Android has begun. Earlier this week, Google paused the rollout of Chrome 79 for Android users after a bug was reported by developers. This bug led to the deletion of user data and resetting of some mobile apps. However, a fix has now been found, and it has been added to the rollout of Chrome 79.0.3945.93 for Android. The update rollout has commenced once again, and Android users must keep a lookout for this update, especially users who were affected by the bug. A Google spokesperson confirmed that the rollout of Chrome 79.0.3945.93 for Android has begun, and it brings a fix for the app data deleting bug. The update was paused earlier this week after the Chromium bug tracker labelled the data deletion issue as ‘catastrophe'. Essentially, users of specific apps found that all the data inside the apps were lost after updating to Chrome 79. It seemed like the apps simply did a reset without any interventio

Google: Search is changing, so here's how you'll now see news search results

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  Google is using its latest machine-learning techniques to improve news suggestions for mobile users. Google Search mobile users in the US looking for a specific news topic will now see a carousel of relevant stories at the top of the results page, plus new related coverage. That related coverage to top stories can be seen in additional cards beneath each main card in the carousel. This feature should make it easier for users to make informed decisions about which articles to click through to,  according to Google .   "Within each story, the new structure will make more room for high-quality content – beyond just the most recent coverage – as well as more diverse sources, to bring more context and perspective to the day's news," it says in a blogpost. Google recently revealed how its new BERT machine-learning generated models are improving how Search understands what humans are looking for when they type a query.     BERT is short for Bidirectional Encoder Representation

Data of 21 million Mixcloud users put up for sale on the dark web

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  Emails, usernames, and strong-hashed passwords sold for $2,000. A hacker has breached online music streaming service Mixcloud earlier this month, and is now selling the site's user data online, on a dark web marketplace. The hack came to light on Friday, when the hacker contacted several journalists to share news of the breach and to provide data samples. Accordig to a sample of the stolen data, the hacker is selling Mixcloud user information that includes details such as usernames, email addresses, hashed password strings, users' country of origin, registration dates, last login dates, and IP addresses. The breach appears to have taken place on or before November 13, which is the registration date for the last user profile included in the data dump. Tech news sites TechCrunch and Motherboard also verified the data authenticity through other means, as well. Mixcloud confirmed the breach in a blog post on Saturday. The company said that most users had signed up through Faceboo