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Ransomware targeting the Android operating system has grown by over 50% in just a year, as more consumers switch from their PCs to their smartphones, making the mobile OS ecosystem a more worthwhile target for cybercriminals. According to a report by security firm ESET , the largest spike of crypto-malware attacks came during the first half of 2016. It was also found that so-called "police ransomware" on the lock-screen has been the dominant type of ransomware for Android, effectively scaring victims about some crime it claims they committed, which has led many of them to pay up to the criminals. Android ransomware detection from 2014-2016, spiking in April 2016 | via ESET Aside from this, the researchers have also found that the perpetrators have increased their efforts into keeping a low profile by encrypting the malware's payload deep within the infected apps. In ESET's whitepaper called " Trends in Android Ransomware (PDF)," it was indicated th...
Google confirmed yesterday it was shutting down its Site Search service, which is the commercial version of the free service Google Custom Search, also known as Custom Search Engine (CSE). Google announced the news with the following message, published on the Google Site Search website . On April 1, 2017, Google will discontinue sales of the Google Site Search. All new purchases and renewals must take place before this date. The product will be completely shut down by April 1, 2018. Site Search customers moved to CSE accounts A Google spokesperson confirmed to Fortune that past April 1, 2018, or when current paid accounts reach their quota end, Google will move all Site Search customers to CSE accounts. This means website won't lose search functionality out of the blue. Site Search and CSE are sister services that allow website owners to use Google's very own search technology to power search features for their sites. As an example, Bleeping Computer uses ...
Reliance Jio will use Spreadtrum chipsets to enable 4G VoLTE calls on the Rs 1,500 feature phones Reliance Jio is reportedly planning to unveil its feature phones with added 4G VoLTE support and will be priced between Rs 999 and Rs 1,500. The phones will come with bundled free calls alongside other services. In a report published by Hindustan Times, Reliance Jio will use Spreadtrum chipsets to enable 4G VoLTE calls on the Rs 1,500 feature phones. The report cites unnamed sources that Reliance Jio is “expectedly in talks” with Qualcomm and MediaTek, which accounts for a huge chunk of the processors used in smartphones nowadays. The Reliance Jio VoLTE feature phones may become a platform for the company to promote its bundled apps, such as Jio Chat, Live TV, Video-on-demand, and JioMoney. Reliance Jio’s VoLTE feature phones are also expected to have cameras on the front and back. Two 4G VoLTE feature phones by Reliance Jio are said to be in the works. However there is no...
Microsoft’s purchase of LinkedIn is one of the most expensive tech deals in history. It may not be one of the smartest Jun 18th 2016 | SAN FRANCISCO | From the print edition “IMAGINE a world where we’re no longer looking up to tech titans such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook...because we are one of them.” So wrote Jeff Weiner, boss of LinkedIn, in an open letter on June 13th. Not much imagination is necessary. Microsoft had just announced it would pay $26.2 billion to buy the professional social network, making it the third-largest acquisition in the history of the tech industry. The deal was accompanied by substantial promises from Mr Weiner and Microsoft’s boss, Satya Nadella, that the deal would transform businesses’ and workers’ productivity worldwide. Those pledges seem fanciful. Microsoft is paying a high price for a firm that has suffered its fair share of setbacks. Although LinkedIn is the largest professional social...
SAN FRANCISCO: An overall positive mood under a business-friendly government in India has reassured software cloud services major Oracle to expand its base in the country via its diverse portfolio of integrated cloud platforms and new-age Java. Responding to an IANS question on the second day of the Oracle's OpenWorld 2015 conference on October 26, Oracle CEO Mark Hurd said that he is committed to expanding Oracle's reach in the burgeoning cloud and software market in India. "We are seriously working on the expansion plans in India. It is really a good time for this," he told IANS, adding that Loic Le Guisquet, Oracle's president for the Europe, Middle East and Africa region and Asia Pacific, has already initiated the expansion plan. In a latest media interview, Guisquet was quoted as saying that Oracle has initiated a huge recruitment drive for cloud in India to expand its base as the demand for information technology is growing faster in India than other regi...
We've all heard of Silicon Valley - home to headline-grabbing US firms like Apple, Google, Facebook and Twitter among many others - but there are several other global cities that are just as important in the worldwide electronics and IT business. We are talking about the places where electronics are actually manufactured, where tech startups are sprouting like nowhere else, and where the IT sector dominates. Silicon Valley might be where it all started, but California has plenty of competition. Let's start with the capital of computing for the Western world, which gets its name from the humble silicon chip (Semiconductor Valley doesn't sound nearly as good) despite it being increasingly a centre of startup, venture capital, product design and tech concepts rather than finished products. Although it represents one of the world's biggest ever entrepreneurial explosions, Silicon Valley has become such a generic term for the US-based tech industry that it...
MUMBAI/DELHI: Indian IT firms are beginning to rebuild part of their bench as they look to prepare for a digital wave that is seeing smaller deal sizes, making it harder to grow at the same pace and profitability during the technologies transition. For years, IT companies have been cutting down on bench to boost operational efficiency and get a margin boost. But as they need to train people for digital operations, some companies are bringing the bench back. "We will need a little bit of a bench for digital," TK Kurien, chief executive of Wipro, has said. It plans to train 10,000 on digital technologies next month. Even Tata Consultancy Services, the largest player in the Indian IT services industry, said it was raising its hiring target to 75,000 for the year, and hoped to exceed its goal of training 100,000 employees on digital technologies in FY16. "The reason for raising the hiring target for the year is to be able to have a little bit of a bench," N Chandrase...
A year after announcing ‘Smart Cities’ project, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has finally decided to “define” it. The Prime Minister gave a vision of a smart city, “as one which was a step or two ahead of people's aspirations.” Technology, transportation, energy efficiency, walk-to-work, cycling were some elements mentioned by Modi, during the launch of the initiative yesterday. Reuters He said smart city aspirants are being selected through a process of competition and with effective citizen participation ending the ‘top down’ approach and leading to ‘people centric’ urban development. "It will be a ground up approach." Smart cities will be selected through competition and each city will get central funding of Rs 100 crore a year for five years. There is clarity now on the selection criteria and funding part, but many – especially the IT, the infrastructure and realty sectors – were left slightly in the dark as all were looking forward to some announcement...
FOG COMPUTING Fog computing is a term created by Cisco that refers to extending cloud computing to the edge of an enterprise's network . Also known as Edge Computing or fogging, fog computing facilitates the operation of compute , storage and networking services between end devices and cloud computing data centers . Cisco introduced its fog computing vision in January 2014 as a way of bringing cloud computing capabilities to the edge of the network and as a result, closer to the rapidly growing number of connected devices and applications that consume cloud services and generate increasingly massive amounts of data. By handling these services that make up the Internet of Things (IoT) at the network edge, data can in many cases be processed more efficiently than if it needed to be sent to the cloud for processing.
What is "the cloud"? Moving to the cloud. Running in the cloud. Stored in the cloud. Accessed from the cloud: these days is seems like everything is happening “in the cloud”. But what exactly is this nebulous concept? The short answer is that it's somewhere at the other end of your internet connection – a place where you can access apps and services, and where your data can be stored securely. The cloud is a big deal for three reasons: It doesn't need any effort on your part to maintain or manage it. It's effectively infinite in size, so you don't need to worry about it running out of capacity. You can access cloud-based applications and services from anywhere – all you need is a device with an Internet connection. That's important because there's a shift going on from office-based work to working on the move. This shift is reflected in computer hardware sales: in 2015 about 270 million desktop and laptop computers will be ...