Tag Archive for: express

Log4j explained- The New Indian Express

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By Associated Press

Security pros say it’s one of the worst computer vulnerabilities they’ve ever seen. Firms including Microsoft say state-backed Chinese and Iranian hackers and rogue cryptocurrency miners have already seized on it.

The Department of Homeland Security has sounded a dire alarm, ordering federal agencies to urgently find and patch bug instances because it’s so easily exploitable — and telling those with public-facing networks to put up firewalls if they can’t be sure. A small piece of code, the affected software often undocumented.

Lodged in an extensively used utility called Log4j, the flaw lets internet-based attackers easily seize control of everything from industrial control systems to web servers and consumer electronics. Simply identifying which systems use the utility is a challenge; it is often hidden under layers of other software.

The top U.S. cybersecurity defense official, Jen Easterly, deemed the flaw “one of the most serious I’ve seen in my entire career, if not the most serious” in a call Monday with state and local officials and partners in the private sector. Publicly disclosed last Thursday, it’s catnip for cybercriminals and digital spies because it allows easy, password-free entry.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, which Easterly runs, stood up a resource page Tuesday to deal with the flaw it says is present in hundreds of millions of devices. Other heavily computerized countries were taking it just as seriously, with Germany activating its national IT crisis center.

A wide swath of critical industries, including electric power, water, food and beverage, manufacturing and transportation, were exposed, said Dragos, a top cybersecurity firm. “I think we won’t see a single major software vendor in the world — at least on the industrial side — not have a problem with this,” said Sergio Caltagirone, the company’s vice president of threat intelligence.

Eric Goldstein, who heads CISA’s cybersecurity division, said no federal agencies were known to have been compromised. But these are early days.

“What we have here is a extremely widespread, easy to exploit and potentially…

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Krishna cops get top spot in performance- The New Indian Express

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By Express News Service

VIJAYAWADA:   Krishna district superintendent of police (SP) Siddharth Kaushal said the district police stood first in the State in implementing six Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in policing, and gave awards to the respective wing heads here on Saturday. 

At a review meeting on key performance indicators, he praised the officials for topping the list.  Addressing the media, Siddharth Kaushalsaid the indicators–Crime and Criminal Tracking Network System (CCTNS), Investigating Tracking System for Sexual Offenses (ITSSO), Inter-Operable Criminal Justice System (ICJS), Mobile Security Device Checker (MSDC), SC/ST investigation tracker operated by AP Crime Investigation Department and e-office–plays a major role in day to day policing, and are widely used by both central and State agencies in prevention and detection of crime. 

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Security Experts Warn of Apple Pay Express Transit Hack That Enables Large Unauthorized Visa Payments From Locked iPhones

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Researchers in the U.K. have demonstrated how large unauthorized contactless payments can be made on locked iPhones by exploiting Apple Pay’s Express Transit feature when set up with Visa.

apple pay express transit london
Express Transit is an ‌Apple Pay‌ feature that allows for tap-and-go payment at ticket barriers, eliminating the need to authenticate with Face ID, Touch ID, or a passcode. The device does not need to be wakened or unlocked to use Express Transit.

Computer Science researchers from Birmingham and Surrey Universities demonstrated to the BBC how the attack works by exploiting a weakness in the Visa contactless system through the use of a small piece of commercially available radio equipment, which is placed near the phone and masquerades as a ticket barrier.

An Android phone running an app developed by the researchers is used to relay signals from the iPhone to a contactless payment terminal and modifies the communications to fool the terminal into acting as if the ‌iPhone‌ has been unlocked and a payment authorized.

In demonstrating the attack, researchers made a contactless Visa payment of £1,000 from a locked ‌iPhone‌. The scientists only took money from their own accounts. The researchers said the Android phone and payment terminal used don’t need to be near the victim’s ‌iPhone‌ as long as there’s an internet connection.

Apple told the BBC the matter was an issue with the Visa system.

“We take any threat to users’ security very seriously,” said Apple. “This is a concern with a Visa system but Visa does not believe this kind of fraud is likely to take place in the real world given the multiple layers of security in place. In the unlikely event that an unauthorized payment does occur, Visa has made it clear that their cardholders are protected by Visa’s zero liability policy.”

The researchers said the attack might be easiest to deploy against a stolen ‌iPhone‌, although there’s no evidence that the hack has been used in the wild. Visa said payments were secure and attacks of this type were impractical outside of a lab.

“Visa cards connected to Apple Pay Express Transit are secure, and cardholders should continue to use them with confidence,” said a Visa spokesperson….

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The best ways to speed up, optimise and improve Windows 10- The New Indian Express

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Although Windows 10 is an efficient system, its performance is bound to dwindle due to bugs, viruses, malware or hardware glitches. Swati Aggarwal, technical lead at IBM India Pvt Ltd, walks you through the best ways to speed up, optimise and improve its performance. 

Restart the device
Shutting down and restarting the device is the first thing to do. It improves performance as shutting down closes all the running applications and processes. The data stored in memory gets cleared, solving technical issues. 

Disable startup apps
Many applications can configure themselves to start automatically during a startup and continue to run in the background, wasting valuable system resources that can significantly slow down the experience. If you want to speed up Windows 10, you should disable all these applications. 

Disable apps, re-launch on start-up
Windows 10 has a feature that can restart the apps from your last session after a reboot even before you sign in. Although this is a useful feature that can speed up the process to resume where you left off quickly, it can also impact the system performance.

Uninstall non-essential apps
Usually, new devices come bundled with many applications you do not need, including the usual bloatware and system tools that you will never use and that only waste space on the hard drive. When trying to increase the system’s performance, remove non-essential applications. 

Install quality apps only
Here is a well-known piece of advice. Old and poorly designed apps, and apps that load unnecessary features, can negatively affect performance. Also, just because an app comes from a known company does not mean it is good.

Typically, you want to install apps available from the Microsoft Store, which have been checked for security and performance. If the app is not available through the store, only download apps from trusted sources and confirm they were designed for Windows 10. 

Use drive defragmentation
If you have a device with older hardware with a traditional rotating platters hard drive, organising the data can increase the machine’s responsiveness. 

Perform malware scan
When a device starts to operate slow, this could be a…

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