The Electronics and IT Ministry, last week had sent notices to 21 smartphone companies, with a majority of them Headquartered in China, asking them to outline the procedures and processes adopted by them to ensure security and privacy of users data. Soon after, nine more companies, including Motorola, Honor, Asus, OnePlus, InFocus, were added to that list.
The latest update states that a total of twelve companies including HTC, Xiaomi,Vivo, Huawei and Lenovo, have responded to the notice, while others like Samsung, Oppo, Sony, etc. have acknowledged and requested an extension. The ministry official said that agreeing to the requests, the government is likely to extend the [...]
Android N is the next big update to Android, and while Google already showed off Android N earlier this year. The official announcement focuses on important Security issues and productivity while ensuring better performance.
With the new Vulcan framework, Google will give developers direct access to the GPU and reduce CPU overload.
We have already seen the preview of Android N, and a lot of the features, including multi-window. And new notification customizations.
Those with eligible devices can enroll for the beta updates. Also, if you haven’t already you can submit your name options for the next [...]
This are heating up in Apple’s fight with the FBI. On the eve of a Congressional hearing about the Department of Justice’s fight with Apple over unlocking San Bernardino terror suspect’s iPhone, a court in Brooklyn in a separate case has rejected an FBI request to order Apple to unlock the phone of a drug dealer.
The Department of Justice of the United States had first sought access to the phone in the Brooklyn case in October, months before a court in California ordered Apple to help authorities gain access to the phone of a terror suspect.
In stark contradiction to the San Bernardino terror case, Judge James Orenstein has ruled that “he did [...]
As the plot thickens in this complex saga of privacy vs security, Apple has seen a lot of big names put their weight behind its argument but today in a change of trends, one of the biggest names that the tech industry has ever seen has come out surprisingly in open support of the FBI.
Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates has backed the Federal Bureau of Investigation in its legal battle against Apple over encryption in an iPhone used by one of the shooters in December’s San Bernardino attacks.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Gates dismissed the notion that Aple’s CEO Tim Cook is propagating that granting the FBI access [...]
The FBI got hold of the iPhone of dead San Bernardino terrorism suspect, Syed Rizwan Farook back in December, but sophisticated encryption technology present on the Apple made phone has prevented the authorities from accessing its contents.
Hardly two weeks back, the Federal Bureau of Investigation accepting defeat called Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California, asking the company to help them get into his iPhone. Apple politely refused.
Things quickly escalated on 16th February, when a federal judge in California on the request of the FBI ordered Apple to provide the investigative agency with the tools required to unlock Farooq’s phone which [...]
In December, 2015, Calif, San Francisco, became victim of a cold-blooded shooting incident orchestrated by Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik. Fourteen civilians were shot dead before the couple was taken down by the police. It was later confirmed that Rizwan Farook’s phone, an iPhone 5c, was in custody with the authorities.
After two months of failed attempts of unlocking it, the court ordered Apple to provide an encryption code that would take down the security measures of the device. Judge Sheri Pym asked Apple to provide specialized software that would bring down the security, while also getting rid of the feature which erases all data from the phone [...]
Privacy scare is high in the virtual space lately and rightly so. Incidents of personality theft and phishing on virtual media platforms are only rising with every passing day. As a result, it’s become imperative for various social media platforms to up their privacy. Having said that, Instagram’s announcement about two-step verification for its users comes less as a surprise and more as a welcome, much-awaited development.
Instead of requiring only the username and password to log in, this two step verification would also require a unique code to log into Instagram. There has to be a verified mobile number mentioned in your account details. When you try to log in, [...]
In wake of the privacy scare haunting all netizens, specifically so in recent times, Google has announced the roll-out of new features to strengthen online security of users.
The new features include easing the filtering of messages from trusted sources. This would be achieved by the company by simplifying security settings and making them more user-friendly. Google also plans to run various initiatives to make Indian users more aware of ways of ensuring their security online.
“We are adding five million new users a month taking the user base of a connected’ Indians to 500 millions online by 2018-2019. It’s more important now than ever before to ensure [...]
BlackBerry has seen a lot of ups and downs in the past couple of months. From being one of the most popular mobile brands at one time with its innovative BlackBerry Messenger to becoming a company struggling to keep itself on its feet -it has seen it all.
We recently heard rumours about how BlackBerry might be letting go of its operating system BB 10. However, these rumours have been proven false by a post on the official BlackBerry blog. John Chen, the company’s CEO revealed that the operating system is “far from” dead and that BlackBerry devices like Passport, Classic and other phones by the company running on BB 10 would receive updates for the operating [...]
Blackberry is withdrawing its services and operations in Pakistan, and has ascribed ‘security concerns’ as the main cause. Earlier in July, the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority sent out notifications to the country’s mobile phone operators stating that BlackBerry’s BES servers won’t be allowed to operate in the country starting December due to “security reasons”.
These “security reasons” have not been specified, but speculation suggests that it has to do with the fact that the Pakistani government requested for an unrestricted [...]
The mythbusters are back, and this time one of the all time popular myths regarding iOS has been busted. According to a new study, it turns out that iOS isn’t as malware-proof as people have come to believe. In fact, reports suggest that Android is safer and more secure than iOS.
The study carried out by Checkmarx and AppSec Labs claim that Apple’s ‘wall garden’, that is the App Store, is filled with apps that have greater percentage of critical or high severity security vulnerabilities when compared to Android apps.
According to the report, a critical vulnerability is defined as one “that exposes a major security risk with a direct exploit (not [...]
Apple drops a not-so-subtle reminder once again and says it cannot and will not reveal personal details of iPhone users to cops. It started with iOS 8 when Apple made it clear to law enforcement that it’s incapable of retrieving data from locked iPhones.
It was at the invitation of the U.S. Magistrate Judge James Orenstein and the Justice Department that Apple was asked to help extract information from a seized iPhone. The invitation led to the filing of the following brief by Apple:
In most cases now and in the future, the government’s requested order would be substantially burdensome, as it would be impossible to perform. For devices running iOS 8 or higher, [...]
