How Samsung plans to keep the Galaxy S7 cool

As hardware makers cram more power into smartphones, the heat produced by the CPU and GPU becomes more of a problem. Samsung hopes to address this issue with the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge by using liquid cooling. 

"Whoa, liquid cooling?" I hear you scream at your screens. "Doesn't that mean pipes and radiators and water and so on?"
The sort of liquid cooling we're talking about here isn't like the liquid cooling systems that performance gamers use to cool their PCs. Instead, what we're talking about here is a closed-loop heat pipe technology.

There's still a liquid involved, but only a drop, and this is safely held inside metal tubes that are made of copper or aluminum. The liquid, which in this case is probably water or ethylene glycol, passes over an evaporator where it is exposed to the heat of the CPU of GPU. Here it is turned into a gas, and this vapor then makes its way along tiny tubes to a diffusion plate or radiator, where the heat is given off and the vapor turns back into a liquid and then makes its way back to the evaporator.

Note that the diffusion plate doesn't feature a fan or such, and there are no pumps inside the heat pipe moving the liquid and vapor about. It's a purely passive device, and its purpose is to take the heat from the CPU and GPU and dissipate it over a larger area, preventing the formation of hot-spots, and hopefully putting an end to overheating (which was a problem that Qualcomm had with the Snapdragon 810).

All of this sounds big and clumsy, but it isn't. Fujitsu has a heat pipe system designed specifically for smartphones where the pipes are only 0.1mm thick, and the evaporator and diffusion plates are only 0.6mm and 1.0mm thick, respectively

And the Samsung Galaxy S7 isn't the first smartphone to feature liquid cooling. Microsoft's Lumia 950 and Lumia 950xl both use liquid cooling. Sony's use of the technology goes further back, to the Xperia X2, which was released in March of 2014.

Why use liquid cooling? It's probably being used for a number of reasons. First, Qualcomm had problems with the Snapdragon 810 overheating, a problem that resulted in Samsung passing up on the chip for the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge. The liquid cooling would certainly help to prevent this issue from happening again.

Another reason is that smartphone makers are using more and more glass in their smartphones. Because glass is a poor conductor of heat, hot spots can form on the device, and even if the back is metal, these hot spots can make the device uncomfortable to hold when it's running demanding apps.

Also, let's not forget that "liquid cooled" looks good on the sales material. I have little doubt that by this time next year, every major smartphone manufacturer (with the exception of Apple) will be touting liquid cooling as a feature on high-end devices.

Warning ! Linux Mint Website Hacked & ISO replaced with Backdoored Operating System

Are you also the one who downloaded Linux Mint on February 20th? You may have been Infected!

Linux Mint is one of the best and popular Linux distros available today, but if you have downloaded and installed the operating system recently you might have done so using a malicious ISO image.

Here's why:

Last night, Some unknown hacker or group of hackers had managed to hack into the Linux Mint website and replaced the download links on the site that pointed to one of their servers offering a malicious ISO images for the Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon Edition.

"Hackers made a modified Linux Mint ISO, with a backdoor in it, and managed to hack our website to point to it," the head of Linux Mint project Clement Lefebvre said in a surprising announcementdated February 21, 2016.

Who are affected?

As far as the Linux Mint team knows, the issue only affects the one edition, and that is Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon edition.

The situation happened last night, so the issue only impacts people who downloaded the above-mentioned version of Linux Mint on February 20th.

However, if you have downloaded the Cinnamon edition or release before Saturday 20th, February, the issue does not affect you. Even if you downloaded a different edition including Mint 17.3 Cinnamon via Torrent or direct HTTP link, this does not affect you either.

What had Happened?

Hackers believed to have accessed the underlying server via the team's WordPress blog and then got shell access to www-data.

From there, the hackers manipulated the Linux Mint download page and pointed it to a malicious FTP (File Transfer Protocol) server hosted in Bulgaria (IP: 5.104.175.212), the investigative team discovered.

The infected Linux ISO images installed the complete OS with the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) backdoor Tsunami, giving the attackers access to the system via IRC servers.

Tsunami is a well-known Linux ELF trojan that is a simple IRC bot used for launching Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.

Hackers vs. Linux Mint SysAdmins

However, the Linux Mint team managed to discover the hack, cleaned up the links from their website quickly, announced the data breach on their official blog, and then it appears that the hackers compromised its download page again.

Knowing that it has failed to eliminate the exact point of entry of hackers, the Linux Mint team took the entire linuxmint.com domain offline to prevent the ISO images from spreading to its users.

The Linux Mint official website is currently offline until the team investigates the issue entirely. However, the hackers' motive behind the hack is not clear yet.

"What we don't know is the motivation behind this attack. If more efforts are made to attack our project and if the goal is to hurt us, we’ll get in touch with authorities and security firms to confront the people behind this," Lefebvre added.

Hackers Selling Linux Mint Website's Database

The hackers are selling the Linux Mint full website's database for a just $85, which shows a sign of their lack of knowledge.

The hack seems to be a work of some script kiddies or an inexperienced group as they opted to infect a top-shelf Linux distro with a silly IRC bot that is considered to be outdated in early 2010. Instead, they would have used more dangerous malware like Banking Trojans.

Also, even after the hack was initially discovered, the hackers re-compromised the site, which again shows the hackers' lack of experience.

Here's How to Protect your Linux Machine

Users with the ISO image can check its signature in an effort to make sure it is valid. 

To check for an infected download, you can compare the MD5 signature with the official versions, included in Lefebvre's blog post.

If found infected, users are advised to follow these steps:

• Take the computer offline.
• Backup all your personal data.
• Reinstall the operating system (with a clean ISO) or format the partition.
• Change passwords for sensitive websites and emails.

You can read full detail about the hack here. The official website is not accessible at the time of writing. We’ll update the story when we hear more.

Linux Foundation Introduces "Zephyr", a tiny OS for Internet Of Things

The 21st century is witnessing a great change over in the daily life of folks with the advent of IoT devices that are capable of talking to each other without any human intervention.

Yeah! Now you do not have to individually cascade an instruction to each of your home devices to accomplish a task. All have gone automated with the actuators and sensors which are infused into the home appliances.

The fact is that your IoT devices would only comply within the family of same manufacturers. For example, if you have a Samsung smart refrigerator, and your wearable device is from Apple or any other vendors, then it couldn't sync as both are from different genres.

No need to worry now!

Zephyr: Future of IoTs

The Linux Foundation has broken all the barriers of compatibility issues by releasing a Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) for Internet of Things devices, dubbed "Zephyr". This OS enables connected devices to communicate with the same protocol.

So, no more digital barricades between your thermostat and your wearable devices, as they could communicate with each other using the same protocols.

The Zephyr project is supported by multiple platforms like NXP Semiconductors, Synopsys, and UbiquiOS Technology and is licensed under Apache 2.0.

Why is Zephyr so important?

Zephyr stands out from the crowd as it provides a scalable, customizable, secure and open source operating system to be used across multiple architectures.

Doing so, Zephyr could help solve many of the current limitations that prevent, so far, Internet of Things from becoming really mainstream.

Zephyr is expected to take the best of both sides: low-consumption as well as speed. 

Here's some key points about Zephyr:

• Scalability: Universality of Interconnected devices
• Umbrella Platform: All smart devices could run under a single roof.
• Baby Footprint Kernel: Zephyr kernel can run on 8kb memory devices
• Modularity: Supports to integrate 3rd party modules for additional functions as intended by the developer.
• Licensing: As startups does not have to bother about any licensing clash, as a unique license file would be mailed to everyone.

Apart from the special features, Zephyr also supports technologies including Bluetooth, Bluetooth Low Energy, IEEE 802.15.4, 6Lowpan, CoAP, IPv4 and IPv6, NFC, Arduino 101, Arduino Due, Intel Galileo' Gen 2, and NXP FRDM-K64F Freedom board.

Security in Mind

Since connected devices are most hack prone items, these devices may malfunction when gets compromised.

However, Linux is more concerned about the Security of Individuals, and generally open source software is considered more secure, as anyone can inspect flaws and debug the code.

For this, the Linux Foundation is maintaining a dedicated security working group and a delegated security maintainer to be available through IRC Chats, so that anyone could help report the vulnerabilities in open discussions.

Although there are many other alternatives available for Internet of Things RTOS like Brillo from Google, Rocket from Intel, and Ubuntu Core from Canonicals, nothing would be as fascinating as Zephyr.

Just Opening a MS WORD file can HACK every file on your System

If you receive a mail masquerading as a company's invoice and containing a Microsoft Word file, think twice before clicking on it.

Doing so could cripple your system and could lead to a catastrophic destruction.

Hackers are believed to be carrying out social engineering hoaxes by adopting eye-catching subjects in the spam emails and compromised websites to lure the victims into installing a deadly ransomware, dubbed "Locky," into their systems.

So if you find .locky extension files on your network shares, Congratulations! You are infected and left with just two solutions: Rebuild your PC from scratch or Pay the ransom.

Locky ransomware is spreading at the rate of 4000 new infections per hour, which means approximately 100,000 new infections per day.

Microsoft MACROS are Back

It is hard to digest the fact that, in this 2016, even a single MS Word document could compromise your system by enabling 'Macros.'

This is where the point to appreciate hacker's sheer brilliance of tactics.

Locky ransomware is being distributed via Microsoft 365 or Outlook in the form of an Invoice email attachment (Word File that embeds vicious macro functions).

The concept of macros dates back to 1990s. You must be familiar with this message: "Warning: This document contains macros."

Now macros are back, as cyber criminals discover a new way to get internet users to open Microsoft Office documents, especially Word files that allow macros to run automatically.

How Does Locky Work?

Once a user opens a malicious Word document, the doc file gets downloaded to its system. However, danger comes in when the user opens the file and found the content scrambled and a popup that states "enable macros".

Here comes the bad part:

• Once the victim enables the macro (malicious), he/she would download an executable from a remote server and run it.
• This executable is nothing but the Locky Ransomware that, when started, will begin to encrypt all the files on your computer as well as network.

Locky ransomware affects nearly all file formats and encrypts all the files and replace the filename with .locky extension.

Once encrypted, the ransomware malware displays a message that instructs infected victims to download TOR and visit the attacker's website for further instructions and payments.

Locky ransomware asks victims to pay between 0.5 and 2 Bitcoins ($208 to $800) in order to get the decryption key.

One of the interesting note on Locky is that it is being translated into many languages, which heighten its attack beyond English boundaries to maximize the digital casualties.

Locky Encrypts Even Your Network-Based Backup Files

The new ransomware also has the capability to encrypt your network-based backup files. So it's time for you to keep you sensitive and important files in a third party storage as a backup plan in order to evade future-ransomware infections.

A researcher named Kevin Beaumont along with Larry Abrahms of BleepingComputer initiallydiscovered the existence of Locky encrypted virus.

To check the impact of Locky, Kevin successfully intercepted the Locky traffic yesterday and realized that the cryptovirus is spreading out rapidly in the wild.

"I estimate by the end of the day well over 100,000 new endpoints will be infected with Locky, making this a genuine major cybersecurity incident — 3 days in, approximately a quarter of Million PCs will be infected," Kevin said in a blog post.

One hour of infection Statistics:

Among the highly impacted countries include Germany, Netherlands, United States, Croatia, Mali, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Poland, Argentina and Serbia.

Gmail Features Now on Non- Gmail Accounts with Gmailify

For the past year or so, Google has allowed users to check their other email accounts, like Yahoo, Hotmail or Outlook, from the Gmail app. Google is taking things a step further and has introduced a new feature today called Gmailify. This new feature will allow anyone to take advantage of every great feature available for Gmail users.

Gmailify Features

In other words, users will be able to check and manage their @yahoo.com, @hotmail.com, @msn.com or @Outlook.com mail accounts using the Gmail app. The added advantage here is the management of these email accounts using the Gmail interface and exclusive features. This makes a lot of sense for people who have multiple accounts on different email providers, but prefer to use and manage emails via the intuitive Gmail interface that they’ve grown to love.

This will allow anyone to take advantage of features such as Gmail’s spam protection, inbox organization, Google Now integration and more, just like those email accounts reside on Google servers. In addition to these, your non-Gmail emails will be organized like Gmail, i.e. in Social, Updates, Promotions and Primary categories. Double all of that with being able to search your other emails via advanced search operators, better notifications on smartphones and automatic Google Now integrations for all reservations and meetings. It’s almost a Gmail-like user experience.

How to Get Gmailify Working?

If you are already accessing your non-Gmail accounts using the Gmail app, you will still be required to opt for the Gmailify feature. Users will have to open the Gmail app, sign-in to external accounts and then enable Gmailify.

To link your non-Gmail accounts to Gmail, go to app’s Settings, tap on non-Gmail account and choose “Link Account”. This linkage enables the advanced Gmail features. After the accounts are linked, they will work on the Gmail apps and on the web (at mail.google.com). Users can unlink their accounts anytime they want as well.

Google is not alone in offering non-account holders to make use of their features. Other top email providers are also working on similar features for those who want to try different features without changing their current email address. A couple of months ago, Yahoo started allowing users to manage their Gmail and Hotmail accounts. Both Yahoo’s mobile apps and web merge with other accounts to offer features like Smart Contacts, Smart categories and password free sign-in. Microsoft even offers an import tool to transition from Gmail to its service easier.

At launch, Gmailify only works with Yahoo and Microsoft accounts, but Google promises that more providers will be added in the future.