Samsung has added a new medication tracking feature to its Health app and it’s expected to launch in the US when the app updates later this week. Using the new feature, you can set up alerts to remind yourself when to take medications and get reminders for when to request refills from your doctor.
When you enter a new medication into the app, you can log the shape and color of the pill, information about your prescribed dosage and the time you are scheduled to take the medication. The tool, which competes with the likes of GoodRx and Apple’s Medication app, will give you an overview of a drug’s use and possible side effects, including warnings about potential contraindications. Samsung says the information found within the app is backed by evidence-based content licensed from Elsevier, a publishing company that specializes in medical content.
To start using the new medication tracking tool when it launches, you need a smartphone with at least Android 8.0 and your Samsung Health app version needs to be updated to version 6.26 or later. The feature’s availability also might vary by device.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/samsung-adds-medication-tracking-to-its-health-app-174053413.html?src=rss
Four astronauts are getting ready to travel to the Moon and back for NASA’s Artemis 2 mission, and the space agency is making sure that the crew is well-prepared in case things go wrong during the 10-day journey through space.
A worrying number of UK authorities are still unaware of the impending switch-off of 2G and 3G mobile networks, according to Local Government Association (LGA) figures. From a report: While 38 percent of respondents were fully aware, 27 percent were only partially aware, and 7 percent had no idea at all that the axe would be falling by 2033 at the latest. The numbers worsened when the researchers spoke to respondents in senior management. Almost half (48 percent) were “partially aware” the UK’s 2G and 3G mobile networks were due to be switched off and 14 percent were not at all aware.
The actual switch-off will happen over the next few years. UK mobile operators have told government they do not intend to offer 2G and 3G mobile networks past 2033 at the latest, and there is a high likelihood that some networks will be shut down earlier. The UK government said it welcomes plans to end services ahead of time. Vodafone, for example, intends to pull the plug on 3G once and for all from January 2024. Although most consumers, with their 4G and 5G devices, will likely be unaware of the end when it comes, the same cannot be said of local authorities. According to the survey, almost two-thirds of respondents (63 percent) reported that their authority was still using devices or services reliant on 2G and 3G networks.
Enlarge/ British Airways Aerospatiale BAC Concorde taking off with afterburners blazing. (credit: aviation-images.com/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
If you’re a bit of a plane nerd—and if you’re reading this site, the odds are good that you are—a rather interesting eBay auction ended over the weekend. The auction site knows it as item number 116001533010; a less anodyne description would be a Rolls-Royce Olympus 593 turbojet engine, one of four that powered a Concorde—complete with afterburner attached.
The world’s first and most successful supersonic airliner, Concorde was an ambitious and extremely expensive joint project developed by the UK and France. The initial plans started in 1956, with the first in a series of studies commissioned by the British Ministry of Supply, which set about exploring the idea of a supersonic transport plane—then, as now, the sole preserve of military jets.
A parallel effort was also underway across the Channel in France, with both countries coming up with fairly similar designs. At some point, bean counters on both sides of la manche realized that the cost of developing such an extreme aircraft was perhaps better shared than borne alone, and in 1962 the two projects—one headed by the British Aircraft Corporation, the other by Sud-Aviation combined—were merged.
Vizio has released a software update for its Home platform across all current models in its lineup, which makes the new interface respond faster than before. The company says TV sets that receive the update will power up twice as fast, while apps will now load instantly. This improvement in speed also leads to quicker switching between apps so that moving from one streaming service to another doesn’t affect people’s viewing experience.
In addition, the latest version of the OS is meant to surface recommendations and return search results in both voice and text formats much faster than its predecessor. The hope is that users would benefit from the upgrade by spending less time looking for content and more time actually watching them. The updated Home platform also comes with a new left-side navigation menu, as well as hierarchy sorting, to make it easier to browse for new shows and movies.
When Vizio rolled out its redesigned Home interface in June, it already had features created to make it easier and faster for viewers to find new things to watch. They included new navigation tools, recommendations and a reworked onscreen keyboard. According to a Vizio representative, the new update will roll out in the coming weeks and will include “all 2021 and newer model year VIZIO Smart TVs and select TVs from the 2020 model year.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/vizios-latest-smart-tv-update-enables-faster-startups-and-app-switching-170043935.html?src=rss
If you ever enrolled in the Apple Family Sharing with a family member between 2015 and 2019, you may entitled to a cut from the $25 million legal settlement Apple agreed to pay. MacRumors did some math and claims you could get between $30 to $50 if you qualify.
samleecole writes: The LAION-5B machine learning dataset used by Google, Stable Diffusion, and other major AI products has been removed by the organization that created it after a Stanford study found that it contained 3,226 suspected instances of child sexual abuse material, 1,008 of which were externally validated.
LAION told 404 Media on Tuesday that out of “an abundance of caution,” it was taking down its datasets temporarily “to ensure they are safe before republishing them.” According to a new study by the Stanford Internet Observatory shared with 404 Media ahead of publication, the researchers found the suspected instances of CSAM through a combination of perceptual and cryptographic hash-based detection and analysis of the images themselves.
Welcome back to our weekly gaming news roundup. As the year comes to a close, we’re looking back on 12 months of massive change for the video game industry, driven by acquisitions, layoffs and unionization. You can read my story on consolidation for more on gaming’s tough year.
This week’s stories
No Game Pass for Baldur’s Gate 3
Baldur’s Gate 3 is officially the Game of the Year and after months as a PlayStation console exclusive, it’s finally available on Xbox. However, if you’re waiting for it to become available on Game Pass, stop. Baldur’s Gate 3 is never coming to Xbox or PC Game Pass, according to Larian Studios founder Swen Vincke. It’s a fantastic, big and lengthy game sold at a standard price of $70 — take it or leave it.
The Last of Us Online is dead
Naughty Dog has canceled The Last of Us Online, its multiplayer spinoff that’s been in the works for years. This isn’t too surprising, considering the lack of updates about the game, but it is now official. Naughty Dog said it didn’t have the resources to support a live-service game and also create new single-player narrative experiences, which are historically its thing. The studio has more than one of these games in development right now.
2023 was a pivotal year in games
2023 was a year of upheaval in video games. There were three main factors molding the industry: consolidation, layoffs and unionization.
In terms of consolidation, the biggest story of the year was the approval of Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard King for $69 billion. Microsoft is now the third-largest video game business in the world by revenue, right behind Sony and Tencent. Today, the Xbox umbrella covers nearly 40 studios, including Arkane, Bethesda, id Software, Infinity Ward, Mojang, Ninja Theory, Playground Games, 343 industries, and Turn 10.
Sony is more subtle than Microsoft about its attempts at total domination, but it owns 21 development teams, including Bungie, Guerrilla Games, Haven Studios, Insomniac, Naughty Dog and Sucker Punch Productions. It’s made a lot of purchases in the past three years, and invested heavily in studios like Epic Games and FromSoftware.
And then there’s Tencent, which has thousands of tentacles spread across the industry. Tencent owns a portion of Bloober Team, Paradox Interactive, PlatinumGames, Remedy, Roblox and Ubisoft, among others. It has a majority stake in Supercell, Tequila Works, Techland and others. It fully owns Riot Games, Funcom and, of course, others. It also runs multiple internal development companies and publishing labels.
Tencent also owns a 40 percent stake in Epic Games. This alone means any time you buy a game built on Unreal Engine, Tencent is getting a cut. If you played something this year, Tencent was probably involved.
There are clear short-term benefits of being bought by a larger company, but there are downsides to relinquishing independence. Acquired studios are held accountable by people outside of the actual development of a game, and the bigger the company, the further away its bosses are from the creative process.
The most extreme negative outcomes for an acquired indie studio are, of course, layoffs and closures. We saw a lot of these in 2023.
An estimated 9,000 people lost their jobs in the video game industry this year, up from about 1,000 in 2022. This is a crisis level of loss, and it was spurred by over-eager acquisition sprees by the companies at the top. Embracer Group, which owns more than 100 video game studios, laid off more than 900 people and it completely shut down multiple studios.
Unity laid off about 900 people this year. In November, the company reported a yearly revenue increase of 69 percent and executives told investors, “We continued to manage costs well.”
Epic Games fired about 830 people in 2023, including a chunk of the team at Fall Guys studio Mediatonic, which it purchased in 2021. EA dropped more than 1,000 employees this year, including significant cuts at Codemasters, a studio it purchased in 2021. CD Projekt RED, Sega, Ubisoft, and Microsoft’s 343 Industries also laid off at least 100 people each.
Looking back on the carnage this year, it feels like a warning — as consolidation efforts increase, more studios will be controlled by just a handful of companies, and they’ll be vulnerable to moves like mass layoffs and closures. We’re laying the foundation for the future of video games right now, and consolidation only makes the industry smaller and more generic. What will rampant consolidation mean for all of these acquired studios in five years’ time? What will it mean when these teams aren’t shiny, new investments any longer, and the people at the top are ready to get lean again?
Unionization is one approach that can help protect the livelihoods of people in the video game industry, and there was progress on this front in 2023. Developers at multiple studios now have union support, from small indies to AAA powerhouses. Microsoft is currently the home of the industry’s largest union, with representation for more than 300 quality assurance workers at ZeniMax Media.
Other companies with unions established in the past two years include Avalanche Studios, Anemone Hug, CD Projekt RED, Experis Game Solutions, Keywords Studios, Sega of America, Tender Claws and Workinman Interactive. We love to see it — and for the industry to remain stable, we need to see more of it.
Now playing
I’ve been unable to get The Talos Principle II out of my head since I previewed it and interviewed the developers a few months ago, and I’m finally, happily playing the game in its totality. I’m playing on a Steam Deck OLED, and I’m having a great time solving laser puzzles and talking about the meaning of life with a bunch of robots. I highly recommend you try the same.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/2023-was-a-year-of-layoffs-and-acquisitions-this-weeks-gaming-news-163028348.html?src=rss
Researchers have developed an AI-powered robot they claim can beat the physical marble game Labyrinth faster than humans are capable of. Thomas Bi and Raffaello D’Andrea of ETH Zurich created CyberRunner, which combines model-based reinforcement with the dexterity required to beat a game that requires physical skill, coordination and precision.
For the uninitiated, the aim of the game is to guide a marble through a maze without falling into any holes. The player controls the movement of the ball by rotating two dials, which tilt the board.
CyberRunner learns through experience. A camera observes the game and an algorithm learns more about it from each attempt. “Based on its understanding of the game it recognizes which strategies and behaviors are more promising,” the researchers say. As such, the robot kept getting better at the game.
The researchers gave CyberRunner and several humans around six hours of practice with the game. While the humans by and large struggled to beat Labyrinth after that time, CyberRunner was able to conquer it in just under 14.5 seconds. The researchers claim that’s faster than any previously recorded time.
CyberRunner became so adept at the game that it was able to use some unintended shortcuts. The researchers had to step in and instruct the AI to follow the maze’s correct path.
We’ve seen AI models outperform humans in other games, such as chess, Go and Dota 2. However, we haven’t seen too many instances of AI performing better than humans in games that require a physical skill component.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/watch-an-ai-robot-learn-how-to-demolish-humans-at-a-marble-maze-game-161554199.html?src=rss
2023 was an important year for patients with sickle cell disease. Prior to CRISPR, the only cure for the life-long ailment was a bone marrow transplant, which is notoriously dangerous and costly. This month, the FDA approved Vertex’s “Casgevy,” a CRISPR-based therapy for the treatment of sickle cell disease in patients 12 and older. The landmark approval made the therapeutic the first genetically edited therapy to reach the general market.
Casgevy, which also received the greenlight from regulators in the UK for another blood disorder called beta thalassemia, works by being administered in a single-infusion of genetically modified stem cells to a patient. Clinical study participants that took Casgevy were free from symptoms associated with sickle cell disease, like periodic episodes of extreme pain due to blocked blood flow through vessels, for up to a year.
CRISPR, which modifies precise regions of a human’s DNA strands, was once thought to be a far off scientific innovation. Human cells were first modified using CRISPR in clinical trials in China back in 2016. Less than a decade later, these landmark approvals have set the stage for future nods by regulators for other CRISPR-based therapies that can treat things like HIV, cancers and high blood pressure. “Gene therapy holds the promise of delivering more targeted and effective treatments,” Nicole Verdun, director of the Office of Therapeutic Products within the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research said in a recent press release.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
CRISPR-based gene editing can be designed as a therapeutic for a number of diseases. A scientist can either delete, disrupt or insert segments of DNA to treat conditions by either targeting specific genes or engineering new cell therapies. The editing process can occur ex vivo (outside the body), in the same way Casgevy does, or in vivo (inside the body). Using CRISPR, sickle cell patients’ blood stem cells are modified in a lab before they are re-infused via a single-dose infusion as part of a hematopoietic transplant.
Neville Sanjana, a core faculty member at the New York Genome Center and associate professor in the Department of Biology at New York University, runs the Sanjana lab, which develops gene therapies for complex diseases like autism and cancer. “One of the really fundamental characteristics of CRISPR is its programmability,” Sanjana told Engadget. While working at the Zhang lab at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Sanjana says he helped design the “guide RNA” that became the blueprint for Vertex’s Casgevy. “CRISPR screens can be powerful tools for understanding any disease or genetic trait,” Sanjana said. Right now, he said biomedical folks are focused on applying CRISPR-based therapies for really serious inheritable diseases.
While it does “set a precedent” to have these first CRISPR-based gene therapies out there, it could also mean that regulators and the general public will regard future innovations in the space as “less novel,” Katie Hasson, a researcher with the Center for Genetics and Society (CGS) told Engadget. The CGS is a public interest and social justice organization that is focused on making sure gene editing is developed and distributed for good. Hasson explained, it doesn’t mean that because one got approved that all other innovative therapies to come after it will not get as much scrutiny.
LIVE NOW: The media call on the approval of the first gene therapies to treat sickle cell disease is happening now!
Beyond therapeutics, gene editing has very broad applications for the discovery and understanding of diseases. Scientists can use CRISPR to explore the origins of things like cancer and pave paths for therapeutics and incurable diagnoses, but that’s not all there is to it. Scientists still need to conduct “considerable experimental research” when it comes to bringing an actual therapeutic to fruition, Sanjana said. “When we focus on therapeutic activity at a particular site in the genome, we need to make sure that there will not be any unintended consequences in other parts of the genome.”
Still, the spotlight will always shine a brighter light on the flashy developments of CRISPR from a therapeutic standpoint. Currently, a new gene editing method is being developed to target specific cells in a process called “cancer shredding“ for difficult-to-treat brain cancer. Scientists have even discovered a pathway to engineer bacteria to discover tumorous cells. However, there are barriers to using CRISPR in clinical practice due to the lack of “safe delivery systems to target the tissues and cells.”
“Maybe by curing one disease, you might give them a different disease — especially if you think of cancer. We call that a secondary malignancy,” Sanjana said. While there is strong reason for concern, one cure creating a pathway for other diseases or cancers is not unique to CRISPR. For example, CAR T cell therapy, which uses an entirely different approach to cell-based gene therapy and is not reflective of CRISPR, is a lifesaving cancer treatment that the FDA discovered can, in certain situations, cause cancer.
“We definitely don’t want any unintended consequences. There are bits of the genome that if you edit them by mistake, it’s probably no big deal but then there are other genes that are vitally important,” Sanjana said. Direct assessment of “off-target effects” or events in which a gene edit incorrectly edits another point on a DNA strand in vivo is challenging.
The FDA recommends that after a clinical trials’ period of investigatory study looking at the efficacy of a gene editing-based therapy, there needs to be a 15-year long term follow up after product administration. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said that the agency’s approval of Casgevy follows “rigorous evaluations of the scientific and clinical data.” Right now, researchers are focused on improving the precision and accuracy of gene editing and having the proper follow up is absolutely well merited, Sanjana explained. “The process right now is a careful one.”
Hasson believes that the 15-year recommendation is a good start. “I know that there is a big problem overall with pharmaceutical companies actually following through and doing those long term post-market studies.”
That’s where new approaches come into play. Base editing, a CRISPR-derived genome editing method that makes targeted changes to DNA sequences, has been around since 2016. Drugs that use base editing have already made headway in the scientific community. Verve Therapeutics developed a gene edited therapy that can lower cholesterol in patients with a single infusion. At higher doses, Verve said the treatment has the potential to reduce proteins associated with bad cholesterol for 2.5 years. Base editing, like CRISPR, has many potential applications for treatment and discovery. For example, base editing could repair a gene mutation that causes childhood blindness. Researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine also found base editing could help understand what genetic changes influence a patient’s response to cancer therapies.
Base editors use CRISPR to bring another functional element to a specific place in the genome. “But it doesn’t matter whether it’s CRISPR cutting or base editing… any time you’re modifying DNA…you would want to know what the off target effects are and you can bet that the FDA wants to know that too. You’re going to need to collect data using standard models like cell culture, or animal models to show there are zero or near zero off-target impacts,” Sanjana said.
CRISPR-based therapies already show high therapeutic potential for conditions beyond sickle cell disease. From blood based treatments, to edited allogeneic immune cells for cancers, there are a number of human clinical trials underway or expected to start next year. Trials for gene-edited therapies that target certain cells for cancer and autoimmune diseases are expected to begin in 2024.
Boston Globe via Getty Images
It won’t be until 2025 before we get a better understanding of how Excision BioTherapeutics’ CRISPR-based therapy works to treat HIV. The application of gene editing as a therapeutic for Alzhiemer’s is still in the early stages, with mice at the forefront of research. Similarly, University College London researchers proved that CRISPR has promise as a potential therapeutic for treatment-resistant forms of childhood epilepsy. In a recent study, a gene edited therapy developed in the lab was shown to reduce seizures in mice.
But the clinical process of getting CRISPR to safely and effectively work as it’s intended isn’t the only hurdle. The pricing of CRISPR and related therapies in general will be a huge barrier to access. The Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI), a research group that hopes to advance ethical use of these gene editing in medicine, estimates that the average CRISPR-based therapy can cost between $500,000 and $2 million per patient. The IGI has built out an “Affordability Task Force” to tackle the issue of expanding access to these novel therapies. Vertex’s sickle cell treatment costs a cool $2.2 million per treatment, before hospital costs. David Altshuler, the chief scientific officer at Vertex, told MIT Tech Review that wants to innovate the delivery of the therapeutic and make it more accessible to patients. “I think the goal will be achieved sooner by finding another modality, like a pill that can be distributed much more effectively,” Altshuler said.
“Access is a huge issue and it’s a huge equity issue,” the CGS’ Hasson told Engadget. “I think we would also like to look at equity here even more broadly. It’s not just about who gets access to the medication once it comes on the market but really how can we prioritize equity in the research that’s leading to these treatments.” The US already does a poor job of providing equitable healthcare access as it is, Hasson explained, which is why it’s important for organizations like CGS to pose roundtable discussions about implementing guardrails that value ethical considerations. “If you support people having access to healthcare, it should encompass these cutting edge treatments as well.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/2023-was-a-big-year-for-crispr-based-gene-editing-but-challenges-remain-160009074.html?src=rss
The European Union on Wednesday added three adult content companies – Pornhub, Stripchat and XVideos – to its list of firms subject to stringent regulations under new online content rules. From a report: The new rules, known as the Digital Services Act (DSA), require companies to conduct risk management, undergo external and independent auditing, and share data with authorities and researchers. In April, the EU designated five Alphabet subsidiaries, two Meta Platforms units, two Microsoft businesses, X and Alibaba’s AliExpress among 19 companies under the rules. Such designated companies will have to do more to tackle disinformation, give more protection and choice to users and ensure stronger protection for children or risk fines of as much as 6% of their global turnover. “Pornhub, Stripchat and XVideos meet the user thresholds to fall under stricter #DSA obligations,” the bloc’s industry chief Thierry Breton said. “Creating a safer online environment for our children is an enforcement priority under the DSA.”
Researchers from the Stanford Internet Observatory say that a dataset used to train AI image generation tools contains at least 1,008 validated instances of child sexual abuse material. The Stanford researchers note that the presence of CSAM in the dataset could allow AI models that were trained on the data to generate new and even realistic instances of CSAM.
LAION, the non-profit that created the dataset, told 404 Media that it “has a zero tolerance policy for illegal content and in an abundance of caution, we are temporarily taking down the LAION datasets to ensure they are safe before republishing them.” The organization added that, before publishing its datasets in the first place, it created filters to detect and remove illegal content from them. However, 404 points out that LAION leaders have been aware since at least 2021 that there was a possibility of their systems picking up CSAM as they vacuumed up billions of images from the internet.
According to previous reports, the LAION-5B dataset in question contains “millions of images of pornography, violence, child nudity, racist memes, hate symbols, copyrighted art and works scraped from private company websites.” Overall, it includes more than 5 billion images and associated descriptive captions. LAION founder Christoph Schuhmann said earlier this year that while he was not aware of any CSAM in the dataset, he hadn’t examined the data in great depth.
It’s illegal for most institutions in the US to view CSAM for verification purposes. As such, the Stanford researchers used several techniques to look for potential CSAM. According to their paper, they employed “perceptual hash‐based detection, cryptographic hash‐based detection, and nearest‐neighbors analysis leveraging the image embeddings in the dataset itself.” They found 3,226 entries that contained suspected CSAM. Many of those images were confirmed as CSAM by third parties such as PhotoDNA and the Canadian Centre for Child Protection.
Stability AI founder Emad Mostaque trained Stable Diffusion using a subset of LAION-5B data. Google’s Imagen text-to-image model was trained on a subset of LAION-5B as well as internal datasets. A Stability AI spokesperson told Bloombergthat it prohibits the use of its test-to-image systems for illegal purposes, such as creating or editing CSAM.“This report focuses on the LAION-5B dataset as a whole,” the spokesperson said. “Stability AI models were trained on a filtered subset of that dataset. In addition, we fine-tuned these models to mitigate residual behaviors.”
Stable Diffusion 2 (a more recent version of Stability AI’s image generation tool) was trained on data that substantially filtered out ‘unsafe’ materials from the dataset. That, Bloomberg notes, makes it more difficult for users to generate explicit images. However, it’s claimed that Stable Diffusion 1.5, which is still available on the internet, does not have the same protections. “Models based on Stable Diffusion 1.5 that have not had safety measures applied to them should be deprecated and distribution ceased where feasible,” the Stanford paper’s authors wrote.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/researchers-found-child-abuse-material-in-the-largest-ai-image-generation-dataset-154006002.html?src=rss
Electric scooter company Bird is flying south for the winter, and it might be a very different kind of fowl by the time it returns. The Miami, Florida-based micro-mobility company known for allowing rambunctious, helmetless e-scooterists to fly down city streets declared bankruptcy Wednesday, saying it was entering…
QR code-based phishing attacks appear to be on the rise. For this “new” hacking vector, someone gets a phishing email asking them to scan a QR code, that code redirects to a malicious link (usually to steal credentials) and an account takeover occurs. Local news organizations have warned the public to watch out, security leadership publications tell executives to be careful and security companies really, reallywant youtocall itquishing.
The fanfare around these attacks, however, mostly outweighs the threat of using QR codes in your daily life. Phishing has been, and will likely always be, a prevalent way to trap victims, and what we’re seeing when people talk about QR code attacks is just another way to do that. That’s why despite how the reports may generalize the dangers of QR codes as a whole, some common sense security practices that you already use to avoid phishing can help you avoid this tactic, too. Other, advanced QR-based attack vectors outside of phishing are likely too technically complicated and low reward for bad actors to attempt, or for you to worry about.
Phishing attacks that work by pointing a victim to a malicious link are incredibly common, and QR codes are essentially just another way to execute them. QR codes are “jumping into a security gap,” said Randy Pargman, director of threat detection at security firm Proofpoint. It forces a victim away from their computer and onto a cell phone or another device, adding a level of distraction. Plus, people are more likely to fall for a phishing link on a mobile device, according to Pargman.
The smaller scale makes it harder to tell what’s legit, for example you can’t easily see a full link to point out discrepancies, and we generally tend to feel safer in our handheld world. Scanning a QR code on a phone takes a victim away from their computer. That could mean it has fewer security plugins installed on its browser that would warn you to stay away from suspicious sites, although more browsers have automatic protections against both. Or, if it’s taking you from a work device to a personal device, a security team probably supports the computer, but not your cell phone, with extra protections in place to stop you from falling victim. But on the flip side, this is a lot less efficient for scammers to set up. It assumes the victim has access to two devices, rather than just clicking a link.
Plus, people tend to scan the QR codes, even if they’re from an unfamiliar source, because we’re so used to it, according to Fae Carlisle, principal security engineer at VMware Carbon Black. “People are regularly told to scan a QR code to show them a map of a place, to vote in a competition, to visit Instagram, etc,” Carlisle said. “Because of inherent trust, people go along with it.” Hackers seemingly saw this trend and figured out they could exploit it.
While the application of QR codes to phishing attacks is fairly straightforward, the hype around their use in other malicious vectors mostly ends there. Security professionals advise against scanning unknown QR codes, in the same way you shouldn’t plug a random thumb drive into your device. But, while you should always be on guard to protect against phishing attacks, you don’t really have to worry about using QR codes in your daily life because it’s still rare to see them used as a hacking tactic.
This matters because when we think of QR codes, we don’t usually think of getting them in emails. You’re probably more familiar with them from real world interactions, like a call to action on a flier or a scan-to-order menu at a restaurant. Looking at my own inbox and desktop, the instances of getting a QR code are few and far between, with maybe the exception of some multifactor authentication apps and cross-login for VPNs. Basically, for a hacker going after everyday targets, the less effort the better, and plastering a poisoned QR code all over physical space in the hopes someone will scan it is a whole lot of work, according to Pargman. Bulk sending phishing emails is just a heck of a lot more efficient.
While it’s also possible to imagine a link takeover situation, where the destination of legitimate QR codes is redirected to a malicious URL, that really hasn’t been seen yet. Not only is it a lot of effort, but it would require an attacker to identify a widely-used QR code. That would mean sourcing the code information, and then hoping it was worth the work. “Quishing” may be legit, but avoiding QR codes at all costs probably goes a step too far.
If something seems off about scanning a QR code, pause before proceeding. “If you’re scanning a menu of the restaurant’s and it’s asking you to login to your Gmail account to access the menu, that’s a highly unexpected step,” said Olesia Klevchuk, product marketing director at security company Barracuda Networks. “Those are the kinds of things we want to be on the lookout for.” But if you just want to learn more about an exhibit at a museum or have a contactless check-in at the gym, you probably have nothing to worry about.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/qr-code-attacks-probably-arent-coming-for-your-scan-to-order-menus-153006742.html?src=rss
Mutant Mayhem’s Jeff Rowe talks keeping Shredder back for the sequel. Wyatt Russell discusses’ Thunderbolts filming schedule. Get a look at Jadis’ return for Walking Dead: Ones Who Live. Plus, get a look at Adam Sandler’s new sci-fi movie for Netflix, Spaceman. To me, my spoilers!
Apple’s financial services, including Apple Pay, Apple Cash, Apple Card and Wallet, have been experiencing service disruptions for some users since 6:15AM this morning, the company reports. As of 10:04AM ET, those services still have outage notices on Apple’s System Status page. As AppleInsider notes, it’s unclear how widespread the issues are, but the company has experienced intermittent Apple Pay issues earlier this year.
On a personal note, I was able to use Apple Pay without issue around 9AM ET to make a pick-up order at Starbucks. After launching in 2014, it took a while for Apple Pay (and other contactless payments options) to reach widespread support in the US. These days you can tap your phone or Apple Watch to pay at most major retailers (except for Home Depot, for some reason). Depending on how long this outage lasts, Apple may end up losing some consumer trust as users have to dig out their credit cards, or, God forbid, cash to grab their morning lattes.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-pay-apple-card-and-wallet-are-facing-outages-151139333.html?src=rss
Three of the world’s biggest pornography sites will be hit with new regulatory curbs including stricter requirements on age verification, after EU regulators determined the adult platforms fell within the scope of a landmark law designed to police content online.
Xvideos, Pornhub, and Stripchat will be from April subject to the obligations of “very large online platforms” under the Digital Services Act (DSA), according to three people familiar with the move.
That designation applies to platforms with more than 45 million users and has so far been applied to tech groups such as Facebook, Wikipedia, and TikTok.
