News written by Petteri Pyyny (October, 2017)

Researchers from Belgian university KU Leuven have managed to find a way to break WPA2 encryption used as the "strongest" encryption available in WiFi networks. They published their findings yesterday and now the security organizations across the globe are trying to find ways to curb the problem.

Researchers managed to break the WPA2 encryption by using so-called KRACK (Key Reinstallation Attack) attack against the encrypted network. Breaking the network encryptyin isn't exactly a trivial one, as it requires installing a WiFi router with fake MAC address and to place that router within the WLAN network's reach.

Those most in danger now are the corporations that handle sensitive data within their networks and transfer messages within their own WiFi network without further encryption, relying on WPA2-encrypted network.

Thus, security organizations now recommend that eveyrbody who handles sensitive data and transmits that within a WiFi network should start using SSL/TLS (basically, all web connections that are used for, say, intranet, should use https), SSH and VPN connections.

Basically all WiFi networks should now be treated as non-secure and shouldn't be used to transmit sensitive data within or from them without further encryption.

Read more...

Ever wanted to see all the tech news in one widget? Wanted to follow not tens, but thousands of news sites with one app? Our own app, HIGH.FI News reader for Android does exactly that. It follows thousands of news sites across the globe, categorizes the headlines to seven different languages and hundreds of categories - and you can simply get a full view of what is happening in the world, right now.

Now, we've just updated the app to a new version. v1.136 finally brings source filtering to homescreen widget, too. So, if you hate a specific news site and never want to see that site's headlines in your feed again, you can do exactly that by adjusting the settings - and now those settings take effect on our flexible homescreen widget, too.

We follow pretty much all the tech sites in U.S., UK, Italy, Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, etc and show you the headlines in correct categories. Headlines are updated constantly and we tens of thousands of headlines each and every day´.

Download HIGH.FI News Reader for Android

P.S. All the headlines can be viewed through HIGH.FI website, too.

OECD released a report recently that lists various digital trends across the globe. One of the interesting points was the usage of mobile data and number in various countries.

While some Asian countries have high profile in terms of their mobile internet usage, one Western country tops them all - by wide margin: Finland.

In Finland, average mobile data consumption is a whopping 11 gigabytes per month, while the next country in the list, Latvia, uses 9GB per month. For comparison, U.S. users consume 2.7GB data each month and UK users only 1.8GB.

The massive data consumption in Nordic country is simply due the country's extremely cheap and literally uncapped mobile data plans - an uncapped, unmetered 4G package, with no restrictions, costs about 20 euros (appx $24). As the data caps don't apply at all, usage of WiFi is deemed unnecessary by most people and all the Netflix viewing, Facebook browsing and app updating is done via mobile data - even at own home, where most people have fixed-line net connection with WiFi available.

Mobile data consumption per capita

Read more...

It doesn't require much googling to find all sorts of conspiracy theories about Apple intentionally slowing down previous iPhone models shortly after the company has released new models.

According to Google Trends, the search term "iPhone slow" increases dramatically shortly after each new iPhone model is released.

However, developers of 3DMark testing suite have looked at their database of test results and found out that the conspiracy theories don't have truth behind them.

The "slowing down" effect is mostly psychological - users know that there's a new model available that runs faster, has better cameras, etc so the current phone they're using, suddenly feels like an outdated one. Obviously, each new iOS version also adds new features that are best suited for new models, making the old phones *feel* slow when the users start using the newly introduced features, with old hardware.

But Futuremark's findings are clear: neither CPU nor GPU processing power hasn't decreased from iOS9 to iOS11 on any of the models that support those operating system versions.

Read more...

While we reported yesterday that Netflix is raising its prices in United States, the company didn't say anything about prices in Europe.

However, now it seems that prices have been raised in several European markets, too.

Reports from Finland and Ireland show that the pricing has gone up for both Standard and Premium plans.

The cheapest option, Basic plan, remains at €7.99 in both countries, but the Standard plan has increased from €9.99 to €10.99. The Premium plan that allows four streams to be watched simultaneously and supports UltraHD, has increased from €11.99 to €13.99.

Netflix prices in Ireland for new customers - 6th of October, 2017

Netflix hasn't contacted its existing customers yet about the price hike and it is unclear when the prices will change for those customers. Previously Netflix has kept the old prices for existing customers for quite a long time, but yesterday's announcement made no such concessions to the U.S. customers.

Read more...