10 Tips to Freshen up Your Old iPhone Instead of Buying the iPhone X

With the release of the iPhone 8 and iPhone X, a lot of tech nerds, collectors and Apple cultists are upgrading ASAP. Whether they’re interested in the iPhone X’s edge-to-edge display, the iPhone 8’s snappy new a11 chip or simply to enjoy the tingling feeling they’ll get when someone sees they have the latest and greatest from Apple, they’re making sure they’re the first to get their hands on it. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with any of that.

But not everyone will be looking to upgrade. Some critics don’t see a large enough difference between the 7 and 8 to care, and others don’t see the justification of dropping a thousand buckaroos to cop the X. Trust me, I get it.

Just because you’re not looking to make the leap and upgrade yet doesn’t mean your current phone is trash. In fact, there’s a lot you could be doing to make sure you’re squeezing every ounce of sauce out of your old iPhone.

1. Disable Push Notifications

Power Clean

When you get push notifications delivered to your phone — from apps, game updates, the stock market, news, weather, emails, etc. — it makes your phone light up. It might not sound like that big a deal, but every email, every text message, every snap, every fucking Groupon deal (seriously Groupon, cut the shit), means energy is getting drained from your battery — even when you’re not using it.

If you go to Settings > Notifications, you can control exactly which apps have the ability to send you push notifications. Turn off the non-essentials, and keep as much of your battery life as possible.

2. Take a Look at Your Hard Drive Space

Your apps use a lot of space on your phone. And the “bulkier” and more bloated those apps become, they not only take up more physical storage on your hard drive, but they also take up more RAM and gum everything up. Some podcast apps save entire podcasts, even after you’re finished listening to them. Photo apps like Instagram will save duplicate photos to your Camera Roll, even if you don’t post the photo. Even Tinder takes increasingly more hard drive space with every match you get and conversation you start. Don’t even get me started on those bloated-ass games we all play for a week and then forget about. Of course, every single text message you send and receive is also stored on your iPhone’s hard drive.

All that crap takes up hard drive space and processing power that’s slowing your phone down and it’s all worth having a look at — and, potentially, deleting. Settings>General>iPhone Storage.

3. Disable Unnecessary Location Services

One of the coolest (and creepiest) features of your iPhone (and most smart phones, these days) is that it is always keeping tabs on where you are. Whether it’s to use the phone’s Find My Phone or Compass features, or whether it’s to grab a Lyft home from the bar, your phone always knows where you are. The problem is that certain apps request access to your location even when they’re not in direct use, and the more apps you have doing that at the same time, the more battery you’re going to use.

If you go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services, you can turn Location Services off completely, or you can go through each individual app on your phone and decide whether or not you want it to have access to your location. Some apps, like Uber, require users to have location services on at all times (regardless of whether they’re looking for a ride), while others, like Lyft, only require users’ locations when they’re actually using the app.

4. Give It a Makeover

Most of the stuff listed here are easy things you could do to make your older iPhone run and operate like new again, so I wanted to include at least one little bit about what you can do to make it appear different. The obvious answer is to buy a new case. Even though the 8 and X are out hogging the spotlight, developers are still putting out some pretty wild and creative cases for the older models. You can also fiddle with your background and lock images, give it a good cleaning, etc. Take pride in your stuff.

5. Turn off That Bullshit Background App Refresh

Your apps are always refreshing themselves in order to update the content in your respective feed. The idea is that when you launch them, you’re getting the most recent information. It sounds great in theory, but in practice, it means that some of these apps — Facebook, in particular — suck up a lot of battery in the background. If you notice your phone’s battery is getting weaker from prolonged use and charging periods (a side effect for every Lithium-ion battery, by the way), turning off Background App Refresh (Settings > General > Background App Refresh) will help ensure that apps are only consuming your precious battery life when you’re actually using them.

6. Close All Non-Essential Apps

This is an old one, but it’s still good as gold. If you were to look at how many apps are open on your phone right now, I bet you’d be shocked and perhaps even a little horrified at what you’d find. I did it just for the sake of proving my own point just now and found 42 apps open. Forty-fucking-two. Every single one of those apps is running in the background, sucking up tons of valuable battery life. Double tap Home to bring up the multi-tasking view, and then just swipe up on every app you want to exit. It’s that simple.

7. Lower Your Brightness

Apple iOS

Of course, there’s always the old “lower your brightness” trick. If you’re trying to conserve as much battery as possible, there’s absolutely zero reason to keep your screen brightness maxed out. The simple answer is: be smart. If you’re editing photos or reading an article, obviously up the brightness. But, when you’re done and don’t really need to use your home screen as a flashlight, toggle it down a bit. I keep my brightness at around 25% and I’ve never had a single problem with it.

8. Clear Your Safari Cache

Your Safari browser stores every single pieces of information you access from your phone on your phone’s hard drive. On one obvious end of the spectrum it’s convenient because pages will sometimes load faster, logins to your favorite sites are saved and your overall experience is generally pretty smooth. But when your phone gets to a point where it’s simply storing too much web data, it can make it things run sluggishly — particularly while web browsing. Sometimes you have to clear your history and free up the pipes a little bit. You can do that by going to Settings > Safari > Clear History and Website Data. You’ll have to log back into all your favorite sites, but you’ll see an immediate difference.

9. Give It a Soft Reset

I’ll be the first person to tell you that technology can be a big pain in the ass a lot of the time. While we’re seeing new advancements every day, nothing is perfect — including the iPhone. Sometimes your phone will get caught up; certain apps won’t work right, things get buggy, apps stop responding completely, text functions don’t work, etc. Anything could go wrong at any time. If your iPhone is acting up and giving you grief, a soft reset will usually do the trick.

All you have to do is hold down the home and sleep buttonssimultaneously until the white Apple logo appears. It won’t delete any of your data and won’t revert back to factory settings, but it will completely reboot the phone, close out all apps and fire back up with a clean slate. A lot of the time, it’s exactly what the doctor ordered.

10. There’s an App for That

Power Clean

Of course, if all of that stuff sounds too good to be true (or too difficult for the not-so-technologically savvy out there), there are a ton of apps to help you get the most out of your phone. Apps like Power Clean-Remove, Battery Doctor and Battery Saver are just a few of the most popular apps out there.

via complex

fear of low battery⚠️

fear of low battery

How To Protect Android Banking Apps From Malware

The recent case of WannaCry ransomware reminded us to be cautious of the growing malware menace that ended up infecting thousands of systems around the globe. Regardless, the scale of the ransomware attack may give rise to other malware attacks such as Android malware invasions.

The latest smartphone statistics from Gartner are not surprising as they reveal the soaring popularity of Android smartphones around the globe. According to the survey, over 350 million smartphones sold in Q4 2016 were running an Android operating system. The ever-increasing popularity and most probably the open-source nature of the OS is perhaps what attracts cybercriminals to make relentless efforts to hack into the device and salvage the personal data of users.

Cybercriminals use specialized malware to carry out the hacks and achieve their ulterior motives. Australia, where cybercrimes like data and identity theft are common, and in fact, on the rise, is also not safe from the invasion of Android malware.

Cyberattackers Use Malware to Steal Banking Details

Last year, cybersecurity researchers at ESET came across a malware, aka Android/Spy.Agent.SI, which could put millions of Australian customers’ bank account details at serious risk. The malware could copy popular banking apps from different countries such as CommonWealth Bank, NAB and ANZ banks in Australia. As a result, the malware would show an overlay screen on the infected apps, showing fake username and password fields for snatching these sensitive details.

The malware was so potent that it could circumvent the two-factor authentication security of the app, thereby revealing the details to the hackers. Later the same year, security researchers at Kaspersky Lab also discovered a similar but modified Trojan malware that could bypass the Android 6’s security features. As a result, the hacker could be able to steal the bank account details of the online banking app users.

Fast forward to 2017, a small group of Russian hackers used a malware to dupe Russian bank users, stealing over $800,000. The hackers deceived the unsuspecting users by showing them fake banking apps that were plagued with the malware that would steal their money.

How to Protect Android From Malware

Be it a ransomware attack or a malware attack, these cyber threats aren’t going to go away anytime soon. Fortunately, there are ways we can prevent these attacks and the ensuing calamities.

1. Install Latest Security Patch: More often than not, attackers carry out successful hacks by exploiting security vulnerabilities in the system software, and Android is no exception. By exploiting a security hole in your Android, a hacker or snooper can inject a malware or any other malicious tool that could result in GPS hijacking, data theft, and identity theft, to name a few. Therefore, it is imperative to install security patches as soon as they are released by the vendor.

2. Avoid Pirated Apps: There are many Android users who readily root their devices so they can have more control on the OS. In fact, in most cases, users end up rooting their devices so they could install a new version of the OS that is not officially available for the specific device. Keep in mind that APK files are easily hacked. Any individual with the wrong intention of stealing your personal data can install a malware into the APK and leak your data without your knowledge. The best way to prevent such malware is by avoiding pirated apps altogether.

3. Checkout Permissions: Before you download an app from Google Play Store, you may have noticed that the Play Store asks for certain permissions. It is important that you read the permissions thoroughly to ensure that the app isn’t asking for any unnecessary permissions. For instance, a recipe app would not require permission for your GPS. If it does, it is most likely an unreliable app. In such situations, avoid downloading the app and report it as well.

4. Use Security Tools: Be it a computer or an Android device, installing the right security tool can help users avert the calamity caused by cyberattacks. Especially, if you are a savvy online banking app user, it is important that you use some kind of security tool, or best yet encryption tool. With encryption in place, you can have a safe environment to make online transactions.

Digital privacy and security are getting weaker with every passing year. As more and more cyberattacks continuously invade different sectors, it won’t be too long before cybercriminals freely roam the digital space. However, by implementing the security tips mentioned above, not only can you protect your device but also take a firm stand against the rising plague of cyberthreats.

via LTP

Millions of Android phones could be tracked with ultrasonic spying tool

Researchers discovered 234 Android apps that could be spying on users CREDIT: GOOGLE

Hundreds of Android apps could be covertly tracking users via inaudible sounds emitted by nearby devices, researchers have found. 

Researchers discovered technology that lets devices talk to one another for tracking purposes using ultrasonic tones on 234 Android apps. 

Televisions, billboards, websites and shops can emit the high frequency sounds, which can't be heard by humans but are picked up by the apps. This signals whether a person has engaged with an advert by watching it, or visited a shop, and how long for. 

Apps featuring the technology include those from McDonald's and Krispy Kreme. Major companies could be using it to track customers' location and habits, both on and off their mobile devices, without them knowing, the researchers warned.

"An adversary can monitor a user's local TV viewing habits, track their visited locations and deduce their other devices," said the researchers. "They can gain a detailed, comprehensive user profile with a regular mobile application and the device's microphone." 

The tracking method has spiked in popularity recently, according to the researchers. Two years ago just five apps in the Google Play store used the technology. Now, it is allegedly present in 234. 

As well as tracking customers' habits, the beacon technology can also be used to send them targeted adverts. Given that the tool can connect location and habits with the device, it could also be used to identify anonymous users, such as those of Bitcoin and Tor. 

The researchers from the Braunschweig University of Technology warned that millions of users could be under surveillance without knowing after they found that a sample of five of the 234 apps had been downloaded up to 11 million times. 

The majority of the apps don't alert users that they are tracking them. All they require to be able to follow users is permission to access the device's microphone. 

"The user just needs to install a regular mobile application that is listening to ultrasonic signals through the microphone in the background," said the researchers. "Once the user has installed these applications on their phone, they neither know when the microphone is activated nor are they able to see what information is sent to company servers."

Silverpush, the company that created the listening tool, denied that its technology was still being used. It stopped supporting the software in 2015 following a privacy outcry. 

"We respect customer privacy and would not want to build our business foundation where privacy was questionable," Hitesh Chawla, founder of Silverpush, told Ars Technica. "Even when we were live, our software was not present in more than 10 to 12 apps. So there is no chance that our presence in 234 apps is possible.

"Every time a new handset gets activated with our software, we get a ping on our server. We have not received any activation for six months now." 

Google said its privacy policy requires apps to disclose how they collect, use and share customer data. 

McDonald's said it did not use the technology in the UK for marketing purposes. Krispy Kreme has been contacted for comment. 

via telegraph.co.uk

Update your iPhone to avoid being hacked over Wi-Fi

It’s only been five days since Apple’s last security update for iOS, when dozens of serious security vulnerabilities were patched.

As we mentioned last week, the recent iOS 10.3 and macOS 10.12.4 updates included numerous fixes dealing with “arbitrary code execution with kernel privileges”.

Any exploit that lets an external attacker tell the operating system kernel itself what to is a serious concern that ought to be patched as soon as possible – hesitation is not an option.

After all, it’s the kernel that’s responsible for managing security in the rest of the system.

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Take this analogy with pinch of salt, but an exploit that gives a remote attacker regular user access is like planting a spy in the Naval corps with a Lieutenant’s rank.

If you can grab local administrator access, that’s like boosting yourself straight to Captain or Commodore; but if you can own the kernel (this is not a pun), you’ve landed among the senior Admiral staff, right at the top of the command structure.

So make sure you don’t miss the latest we-didn’t-quite-get-this-one-out-last-time update to iOS 10.3.1:

iOS 10.3.1

Released April 3, 2017

Wi-Fi

Available for: iPhone 5 and later, 
               iPad 4th generation and later, 
               iPod touch 6th generation and later

Impact:        An attacker within range may be able to 
               execute arbitrary code on the Wi-Fi chip

Description:   A stack buffer overflow was addressed 
               through improved input validation.

CVE-2017-6975: Gal Beniamini of Google Project Zero

This is rather different from the usual sort of attack – the main CPU, operating system and installed apps are left well alone.

Most network attacks rely on security holes at a much higher level, in software components such as databases, web servers, email clients, browsers and browser plugins.

So, attacking the Wi-Fi network card itself might seem like small beer.

After all, the attacks that won hundreds of thousands of dollars at the recent Pwn2Own competition went after the heart of the operating system itself, to give the intruders what you might call an “access all areas” pass.

Nevertheless, the CPU of an externally-facing device like a Wi-Fi card is a cunning place to mount an attack.

It’s a bit like being just outside the castle walls, on what most security-minded insiders would consider the wrong side of the moat and drawbridge.

But with a bit of cunning you may be able to position yourself where you can eavesdrop on every message coming in and out of the castle…

…all the while being ignored along with the many unimportant-looking peasants and hangers-on who’ll never have the privilege of entering the castle itself.

Better yet, once you’ve eavesdropped on what you wanted to hear, you’re already on the outside, so you don’t have to run the gauntlet of the guards to get back out to a place where you can pass your message on.

What to do?

As far as we know, this isn’t a zero-day because it was responsibly disclosed and patched before anyone else found out about it.

Cybercrooks have a vague idea of where to start looking now the bug that has been described, but there’s a huge gap between knowing that an exploitable bug exists and rediscovering it independently.

We applied the update as soon as Apple’s notification email arrived (the download was under 30MB), and we’re happy to assume that we’ve therefore beaten even the most enthusiatic crooks to the punch this time.

You can accelerate your own patch by manually visiting Settings | General | Software Update to force an upgrade, rather than waiting for your turn in Apple’s autoupdate queue.

via nakedsecurity

Malware Drone Steals Data Off Computer Hard Drive

Researchers at Ben-Gurion University’s cybersecurity lab have come up with a way to use malware installed on a drone to steal data off of computers by watching the optical stream of the LED on the computers’ hard drives and sending it to a camera outside the window.

The drone that steals data was created to showcase how the researchers developed a method to get around a security protection dubbed an “air gap” in which sensitive computer systems are separated from the internet to keep the information protected from hackers. If a hacker can put malware on one of the systems, it can quickly steal the secrets off a machine that is supposed to be isolated and thus protected. According to a report highlighting the demonstration, every blink of a hard drive’s LED indicator can provide sensitive information to a hacker with a line of sight to the computer, whether it’s by using a drone or a telescopic lens.

“If an attacker has a foothold in your air-gapped system, the malware still can send the data out to the attacker,” said Ben-Gurion researcher Mordechai Guri said in the report. “We found that the small hard drive indicator LED can be controlled at up to 6,000 blinks per second. We can transmit data in a very fast way at a very long distance.”

According to the report, exploiting the LED on a computer’s hard drive has the potential to be a much sneakier and longer-distance hack than seen in the past. The researchers in their demonstration were able to move data at around 4,000 bits a second, which the report noted is close to a megabyte per half hour. The person receiving the data can then record it and use optical messages at a later time to decode all the information. What’s more, Guri said the malware can even replay the LED blinks in a loop so that every part of a transmission can be seen.

via pymnts

⚠️ 25 Scariest Things You Didn't Know About Using Public Wi-Fi⚠️

Protect your PCs and laptops (and Android devices) for free: Best free antivirus software

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GM Bot (Android Malware) Source Code Leaked Online

The source code of a recently discovered Android banking Trojan that has the capability to gain administrator access on your smartphone and completely erase your phone's storage has been LEAKED online.

The banking Trojan family is known by several names; Security researchers from FireEye dubbed it SlemBunk, Symantec dubbed it Bankosy, and last week when Heimdal Security uncovered it, they dubbed it MazarBot.

All the above wave of Android banking Trojans originated from a common threat family, dubbed GM Bot, which IBM has been tracking since 2014.

GM Bot emerged on the Russian cybercrime underground forums, sold for $500 / €450, but it appears someone who bought the code leaked it on a forum in December 2015, the IBM X-Force team reported.

What is GM Bot and Why Should You Worry about it?

The recent version of GM Bot (dubbed MazarBOT) has the capability to display phishing pages on the top of mobile banking applications in an effort to trick Android users into handing over their financial credentials to the fraudsters.

Besides this, the banking trojan is also capable of forwarding phone calls and intercepting SMS messages to help fraudsters bypass an additional layer of bank security mechanisms, and locking a device’s screen.

Cyber criminals could also use the malware to:

• Spy on victims
• Delete data from the infected device
• Gain boot persistence to help survive device restart
• Send and Read your SMS message
• Make Calls to your contacts
• Read the phone's state
• Plague phone's control keys
• Infect your Chrome browser
• Change phone settings
• Force the phone into sleep mode
• Query the network status
• Access the Internet
• Wipe your device's storage (the most critical capabilities of the malware)

However, someone leaked the malware source code only to boost his/her reputation on an underground forum, according to the researchers.

GM Bot Android Malware Source Code for FREE

Yes, the source code for GM Bot and its control panel is now accessible to cybercriminals and fraudsters for FREE.

Here’s the Cherry on the Top:

Besides the source code, the leader also posted a tutorial and instructions for server-side installation, which means cybercriminals can create their own versions of the malware strain to conduct online banking frauds.

Though the archive file containing the source code and its control panel is password protected, the leader is offering the password only to active forum members who is approaching him.

"Those who received the password, in turn, passed it on to other, unintended users, so the actual distribution of the code went well beyond that discussion board’s member list," IBM cyber security evangelist Limor Kessem wrote in a blog post.

Online users had started sharing the password to the archive among their friends, and in no time, the GM Bot source code was all over the hacking underground forums.

GM Bot is one of the most dangerous banking trojan in the Android ecosystem and after its source code gets leaked, users are recommended to beware while banking online.

How to Protect Yourself?

As I previously mentioned, online users are advised to follow these steps in order to protect themselves against this kind of threat:

• Never open attachments from unknown sources.
• Never click on links in SMS or MMS messages sent to your phone.
• Even if the email looks legit, go directly to the source website and verify any possible updates.
• Go to Settings → Security → Turn OFF "Allow installation of apps from sources other than the Play Store" option.
• Always keep an up-to-date Anti-virus app on your Android devices.
• Avoid unknown and unsecured Wi-Fi hotspots and Keep your Wi-Fi turned OFF when not in use.

via hackernews