About those alleged backdoors in Microsoft products...

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Date: Jul 29, 2014 8:05 AM
Subject: About those alleged backdoors in Microsoft products...
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Privacy groups call for action to stop Facebook's off site user tracking plans How to find the hotels, beaches and airports with the best Wi-Fi Network World Daily News AM July 29, 2014 Share this email About those alleged backdoors in Microsoft products... Four of Microsoft offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chengdu, China, were raided as part of an official government investigation. Microsoft China spokeswoman Joan Li confirmed that Investigators of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce were investigating the company and Microsoft would "actively cooperate"' with the Chinese government. The South China Morning Post reported that the investigation may involve antitrust matters.In May, China cited computer security concerns and banned Windows 8 from being installed on government PCs. After China claimed Microsoft had backdoors in the OS to allow for U.S. government spying, Microsoft issued the following five statements:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE   Issue highlights 1. Privacy groups call for action to stop Facebook's off site user tracking plans 2. How to find the hotels, beaches and airports with the best Wi-Fi 3. New products of the week 07.28.2014 4. Georgia Tech launches early warning system for cyberthreats 5. Using Instagram on public Wi-Fi poses risk of an account hijack, researcher says 6. RoboBees to save US agriculture ... in about 20 years 7. Facebook to require Messenger app for mobile chat 8. Qualcomm planting seeds for 4K video, silicon brains in mobile devices 9. 10 amazing (and bizarre) drone discoveries 10. Testbed will help clouds and networks shake hands WEBCAST: Cisco Systems Innovations that Protect Against Advanced Attackers This webinar will explore new technologies and process for protecting endpoints from advanced attackers and how innovations like continuous data collection combined with big data analytics are pushing the envelope for what security teams can do during and after an advanced attacker puts them in their sights. Learn more >> Privacy groups call for action to stop Facebook's off site user tracking plans U.S. and EU privacy and consumer groups called on privacy regulators to stop Facebook's plans to gather the Internet browsing patterns of its users while they visit other sites.The groups, gathered in the Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD) asked the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Irish Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) to stop Facebook collecting the web browsing activities of Internet users in order to target advertising. They made the request in a letter sent to the authorities on Tuesday. Facebook's European headquarters is in Ireland, giving the Irish data protection commissioner responsibility for defending its European users' personal data and privacy rights under EU law.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE How to find the hotels, beaches and airports with the best Wi-Fi Hotel chains like the Radisson, Hilton, and Doubletree usually end up near the top of the list of approved places to stay for business trips. But if you're looking for high-speed Wi-Fi, you might be better off avoiding them.Within the past week, several sites have emerged as storehouses of information on just which hotel chains—and airports, and even beaches—offer the fastest Wi-Fi service. And as you might expect, better Wi-Fi service often means venturing outside the most typical locations.+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD 9 tips for CIOs as summer vacations hit +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE New products of the week 07.28.2014 Our roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow. Product name: ActiveBatch Extension For System Center Configuration ManagerTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE WHITE PAPER: APC by Schneider Electric Avoiding Pitfalls of Evaluating/Implementing DCIM Solutions This paper describes common pitfalls of evaulating and implementing DCIM Solutions and provides practical guidance on how to avoid them. Learn More. Georgia Tech launches early warning system for cyberthreats Georgia Institute of Technology's applied research arm has launched an early warning system to help organizations prepare for possible cyberattacks.The Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) developed the open source system called BlackForest, which will complement the institute's malware and spear-phishing intelligence systems.[Georgia Tech warns of emerging threats in cloud, mobile]GTRI describes BlackForest as being on the "cutting edge" of anticipating when cybercriminals may be planning a distributed denial-of-service attack or the latest malware variations under development.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE Using Instagram on public Wi-Fi poses risk of an account hijack, researcher says A configuration problem in Facebook's popular Instagram application for Apple devices could allow a hacker to hijack a person's account if they're both on the same public Wi-Fi network.Stevie Graham, who describes himself as a "hacker at large" based in London, wrote on Twitter that Facebook won't pay him a reward for reporting the flaw, which he said he found years ago.Graham wrote he hopes to draw more attention to the issue by writing a tool that could quickly compromise many Instagram accounts. He cheekily calls the tool "Instasheep," a play on Firesheep, a Firefox extension that can compromise online accounts in certain circumstances.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE RoboBees to save US agriculture ... in about 20 years What man breaks, man can fix … at least, that's what we like to think. Consider, for example, bees. Bees of all species are dying off in the US and Europe and over the last few years we've seen the commercial beekeeping industry decimated by a syndrome called colony collapse disorder (CCD). Researchers have been looking for the causative factors of CCD for several years and the leading culprit is now believed to be the cocktail of pesticides used by the agriculture industry. The problem with this problem is simple: No one wants to give up their pesticides. Not Big Agriculture (the Agriculture-Industrial Complex), not the pesticide manufacturers (e.g. Monsanto and Bayer), and not the government regulators (specifically the Environmental Protection Agency). To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE WHITE PAPER: Mobiquity Inc. BYOP: How Mobile and Social Are Creating New User Personas The digital world of mobile + social creates new customer segments and behaviors. Companies need to reorient their customer interactions around these segments to drive business impact. Learn More Facebook to require Messenger app for mobile chat You'll no longer be able to send messages from Facebook's main mobile app READ MORE Qualcomm planting seeds for 4K video, silicon brains in mobile devices Smarter contextual awareness, 4K video and augmented reality are just some of the new technologies that will be offered by smartphones and tablets over the next year or so, according to Qualcomm's product blueprints.Qualcomm is planting the seeds for these technologies in mobile devices by loading its chips with new wireless connectivity, computing, sensory and graphics features, said Keith Kressin, vice president of product management at the company.The company's goal is to make mobile devices intelligent, aided by chips that behave like silicon brains to provide better awareness of and perspective on location and surroundings.Qualcomm's ambitious mobile plans are best highlighted in the high-end Snapdragon 810 64-bit chipset, which is the company's fastest mobile processor.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE 10 amazing (and bizarre) drone discoveries From search-and-rescue missions to accidental discoveries of fossils and crimes, drones have been behind some fascinating discoveries. READ MORE Testbed will help clouds and networks shake hands A network testbed being constructed just south of San Francisco will help carriers and vendors develop standards for better cloud services, the Cloudethernet Forum says.The group's OpenCloud Project, announced on Monday, will combine commonly used networking and computing equipment with live traffic from service providers' commercial networks. It's the first place researchers will be able to test new technologies designed to make cloud services more reliable and easier to set up and manage.As enterprises put cloud-based services to work in conjunction with their own assets, it's become hard to set up fast, reliable connections among all the components being used, according to Cloudethernet Forum President James Walker. Cloud providers may try to deliver a certain level of performance, but they don't own the networks that link them to their customers, said Walker, who is also an executive at carrier Tata Communications.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE WHITE PAPER: BMC Software The Future of IT: A Customer First Approach Explore how customer-first policies can make use of social, mobile and cloud technologies to give workers the freedom and flexibility they desire to drive company productivity. Learn More. SLIDESHOWS Worst data breaches of 2014…So far We identified the worst of these for the first quarter of the year, and now we show you the worst for April though June. JOIN THE NETWORK WORLD COMMUNITIES As network pros you understand that the value of connections increase as the number of connections increase, the so called network effect, and no where is this more evident than in professional relationships. Join Network World's LinkedIn and Facebook communities to share ideas, post questions, see what your peers are working on and scout out job applicants (or maybe find your next opportunity). Network World on Facebook Network World on LinkedIn MOST-READ STORIES of 2014 1. 16 weirdest places you'll find Linux 2. 16 terrible computer pranks that could get you fired 3. Superclass: 14 of the world's best living programmers 4. 17 obscure Windows tools and tricks too powerful to overlook 5. 20 cool things you can do with a Raspberry Pi 6. 10 disturbing attacks at Black Hat USA 2014 7. 10 Linux distros to watch in 2014 8. Whatever happened to the IPv4 address crisis? 9. 20 top Android and iOS productivity apps for 2014 10. Top 10 security tools in Kali Linux 1.0.6 Follow Network World Share this email You are currently subscribed to networkworld_daily_news_alert as aquarianm@gmail.com. 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