Microsoft, YouTube, Facebook & Twitter - Working On Anti-Terrorism Database

Four of the biggest social networks, Twitter, Microsoft, YouTube and Facebook are going to be working together to build a database of photos and videos used to recruit people into terrorist organizations.

This shared database will identify images via a unique digital footprint, making it easier for them to identify and remove any imagery related to terrorism. Shared hashes will be used to help identify potential terrorist content on the mentioned social networks.

They said that hopefully this collaboration will lead to greater efficiency of helping to curb the global issue of terrorist content online.

A joint blog post by the 4 companies states:

“There is no place for content that promotes terrorism on our hosted consumer services. When alerted, we take swift action against this kind of content in accordance with our respective policies”.

Not the First Collaboration of Its Kind:

Exactly an year earlier, these big names had collaborated before as well to identify and remove child pornography from the internet using a similar technique. This technique was developed by the UK’s Internet Watch Foundation.

The companies said that the content flagged by the database will not be automatically removed from the platform, but instead it will be reviewed by each company, and by reviewing its policies it will be decided whether if it violates the company’s terms of service.

The companies also said that throughout this collaboration they will do their best to protect the users’ privacy and their ability to express themselves freely and safely on each of the mentioned platforms.

“We also seek to engage with the wider community of interested stakeholders in a transparent, thoughtful and responsible way as we further our shared objective to prevent the spread of terrorist content online while respecting human rights”

via The Verge 

Oracle Acquires Dyn - A Supereme DNS Provider in $600+ Million

Business software vendor Oracle announced on Monday that it is buying cloud-based Internet performance and Domain Name System (DNS) provider Dyn.

Dyn is the same company that was hit by a massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack by the Mirai botnet last month which knocked the entire Internet offline for a few hours, crippling some of the world's biggest and most popular websites.

Since the company provides cloud-based DNS service to customers such as Spotify, Netflix, Twitter and Pfizer, the acquisition will help Oracle's cloud customers to optimize their infrastructure costs and performance.

According to the press release, the Dyn acquisition "extends the Oracle cloud computing platform and provides enterprise customers with a one-stop shop for Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)."

"Oracle Cloud customers will have unique access to Internet performance information that will help them optimize infrastructure costs, maximize application and website-driven revenue, and manage risk," said Kyle York, chief strategy officer of Dyn.

The company said Dyn's immensely scalable and global DNS is not just a critical core component but also provides a natural extension to Oracle's cloud computing platform.

So, the deal would help its cloud customers improve access and page-load speeds for their websites using internet performance information.

Oracle did not disclose the acquisition amount it paid for Dyn, but a source close to the deal told Fortune that Oracle paid somewhere between $600 Million and $700 Million to acquire Dyn.

Dan Primack reported that Oracle paid around $600 million for Dyn, though Dyn has yet to respond to a request for comment.

Oracle is far behind Amazon Web Services (AWS), which is the market leader in the infrastructure cloud computing market. The deal would potentially make the company compete with Amazon's AWS and on Microsoft's Azure – Route 53 and Azure DNS.

Qualcomm Reveals Snapdragon 835 - collaboration with Samsung

With the year nearing its end, the famous smartphone chip maker Qualcomm just announced their next year’s flagship processor, the Snapdragon 835.

Qualcomm has joined hands with Samsung to bring its next biggest processor that will eventually end up powering the next wave of mobile devices.

Improvements Over Snapdragon 820/821

The company is collaborating with Samsung and utilizing its 10 nm FinFet technology to manufacture the Snapdragon 835. The new chip will perform better than its predecessors and use less power as well.

The new design promises an increase of 27 percent in overall performance and will consume 40 percent less power compared with Snapdragon 821.

Quick Charge 4.0:

You may be wondering that this collaboration with Samsung is not a coincidence. Qualcomm is going to introduce the next version of its Quick Charge technology named Quick Charge 4.0.

The next Quick Charge version will be complying with all the safety measures required for it to be approved by Google and with its partner in chip making, Samsung.

Quick Charge 4.0 will be about 20% faster than Quick Charge 3.o, found in smartphones with Snapdragon 820 and 821 processors. According to Qualcomm, Quick Charge 4.0 will get your device 5 hours of usage time with just 5 minutes of charging.

Better Availability and Better Safety Measures:

Quick Charge compliant cables and power adapters were also less common with smartphone companies often bundling a regular power adapter with their phones instead of Quick Charge compatible adapters. Customers had to buy the charger separately to be able to use the fast charging technology.

Qualcomm is going to remedy this problem by increasing the availability of Quick Charge-compliant adapters and cables next year with the release of Snapdragon 835 in future devices.

These are the safety measures that Qualcomm is looking to employ with Quick Charge 4.0:

"Quick Charge 4 comes with advanced safety features for both the adapter and mobile device. Protection is implemented at multiple levels and throughout the entire charging process to more accurately measure voltage, current, and temperature while protecting the battery, system, cables and connectors. An additional layer of protection is also being added to help prevent battery over-charging and regulate current throughout every charge cycle."

Via TechCrunch 

Microsoft Introduces SQL Server for Linux & Joined Linux Foundation 'Platinum Member'

The next version of SQL Server is now in public preview and available on Windows and Linux both. Linux has received SQL support for the first time ever.

According to Microsoft’s announcement on their official blog post,

SQL Server enables developers and organizations to build intelligent applications with industry-leading performance and security technologies using their preferred language and environment. With the next release of SQL Server, you can develop applications with SQL Server on Linux, Windows, Docker, or macOS (via Docker) and then deploy to Linux, Windows, or Docker, on-premises or in the cloud.

All of the native features of SQL Server available on Windows, in-memory online-transaction processing (OLTP), in-memory columnstores, Transparent Data Encryption, Always Encrypted, and Row-Level Security to name some.

Microsoft Joins Linux Foundation

Microsoft just joined the Linux Foundation as a high-paying Platinum member.Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation said,

"Microsoft is better able to collaborate with the open source community to deliver transformative mobile and cloud experiences to more people."

Google Joins .Net Foundation

The Redmond based company is becoming an advocate of open sourcing and will be committed to accepting community feedback and community contributions. Visual Studio for example went open source a year ago with .Net.

Google is also keen to have a portion of that pie and is officially becoming a member of the .Net foundation. There seems to be a pattern here with Microsoft going all in with Linux and sharing (almost) everything with it. Google had not been interested in .Net from the start and was in fact invested in Java, its competitor, with Android. With Oracle sueing Google over the use of Java in Android is is not strange to see the company is looking elsewhere. .Net is a major part of corporate development so Google joining hands with Microsoft on this front does not seem a crazy move.

The SQL server support for Linux is mostly to sway the audience from Oracle (Java again). SQL server is cheaper as well, and better support means that majority of corporate Linux users would go for SQL server instead.

Whatsapp introduces Video Calling, 2 Factor Authentication and other new features

WhatsApp has finaly introduced the most awaited features Video Calling & 2 Factor Authentication (2FA) out of Beta version, we have reported earlier. The world’s most used instant messaging service has been getting new features recently. The updated GIF support, document sharing and different emoji for example. These quality of life changes were not in a particularly high demand, unlike video calling. 

The Most Demanded Feature:  

WhatsApp users have demanded video calling ever since the option to call other WhatsApp users has become available. It had some issues at the beginning but they were eventually resolved or diminished to some extent. The small changes mentioned earlier have been coming to the instant messaging app over the past few weeks. However these changes didn’t warrant as much attention as video calling is getting now.

WhatsApp has introduced a new security feature which is most popular with the security named "2 Factor Authentication" that fixes a loophole in the popular messaging platform.

WhatsApp allows users to sign up to the app using their phone number, so if an attacker wants to hijack your WhatsApp account, they would require an OTP (One time password) send to your phone number.

The attacker can grab this OTP by diverting the SMS containing the passcode to their own computer or phone, using either a malicious app or SS7 vulnerability, and then log into the victim's WhatsApp account. The attack even works in case the phone is locked.

So in order to fix this issue, WhatsApp has now introduced Two-Step Verification (2SV) password feature for its Beta version for Android, which will help you lock down the WhatsApp set-up mechanism.

In other words, to reconfigure the WhatsApp account with two-step verification enabled, one must require not just OTP but also a 6-digit 2SV passcode set by the user.

How to Enable Two-Step Verification:

To enable two-step verification (2SV), you need to sign for the WhatsApp's Beta version, and follow these simple steps:

1. Go to WhatsApp Settings → Account → Two-step verification.
2. Click enable, set a 6-digit passcode and re-confirm it.
3. On next screen, enter your email ID (optional) to enable passcode recovery via email. (It's recommended to use email as backup so that you're not locked out of your account if you forget your passcode.)
4. Hit "Done, " and you are all set to go.

So, next time when you reconfigure your WhatsApp account on your new phone or want to add a new phone number to your account, the messaging app will require you to enter and confirm this six-digit secret code.

Providing your email address is optional, which if enabled, will help you reset your passcode when you forget it. Here's what WhatsApp explained about email option:

"We do not verify this email address to confirm its accuracy. We highly recommend you provide an accurate email address so that you are not locked out of your account if you forget your passcode. If you receive an email to disable two-step verification but did not request this, do not click on the link. Someone could be attempting to verify your phone number on WhatsApp."

Forget your passcode after setting it months ago?

For helping you remember your 2SV passcode, WhatsApp will periodically ask you to enter your passcode, and there is no option to opt out of this without disabling the 2SV feature.

For now, the feature is available only on WhatsApp beta version, and the company will start rolling out two-step verification with the release of a stable version for both the iOS and Android for over 1 Billion users in the coming weeks.

To enjoy two-step verification, you can sign up to become a beta tester and update to WhatsApp (Beta) version 2.16.346 straight from the Google Play Store.

Once signed up, your smartphone will be automatically updated to the WhatsApp Beta version in the next app update cycle.