News written by Petteri Pyyny (May, 2018)

Serious and potentially very annoying bug has been found in latest WhatsApp version. The bug allows previously blocked contacts to send messages and to see user's online status ("last seen").

Quite many people are familiar with the concept of permanently blocking annoying contacts who harass them via various online services. And just like most other such services, WhatsApp has easy ways to block unwanted contacts from contacting you.

However, now the previously set blocks have been, for unknown reason, failed and messages from previously blocked users have managed to come through.

WhatsApp itself hasn't announced the problem yet, but there seems to be an easy fix for this annoyance: unblock the previously blocked people and block them again. This seems to solve the problem.

The bug seems to be affecting both, iOS and Android users.

Head of IBM Research, Arvind Krishna, attended a panel discussion in San Francisco last week and shared his thoughts about quantum computing and current ancryption methods.

Quantum computing, a concept developed since 1980s, has taken massive leaps forward during the past couple of years, as technologies have advanced. Quantum computing isn't a "holy grail" for all kinds of computer solutions, but it is a technology that is extremely powerful in handling massive, large numbers. The problem? All modern encryption techniques are based on large numbers, namely, large prime numbers.

According to Mr. Krishna, in just five years' time, the quantum computers will be able to break even the strongest, "military-grade" encryptions instantly. This includes the "most secure" versions of AES and more.

Now, luckily, there seems to be a solution. So-called Lattice-based cryptography already exists and is considered to be "quantum-computing-safe". Thus, Mr. Krishna suggests that "if you want to keep your data secret ten years from now, you should change your encryption technology".

Google's annual developer conference Google I/O is about to start soon. Google usually reveals most of the new features coming to its next Android version at this event.

However, this time around it seems that at least some of those secrets have been revealed already - by a Philippines-based Google+ user who has shared tons of screenshots of the upcoming Android P Developer Preview 2 operating system version.

Bye-bye app switcher button

Most obvious change that will come with Android P is the disappearance of the third navigation button. The app switcher button ("the square") will disappear and will be replaced by home button ("the circle") gestures.

Read more...

AfterDawn's official Android app has been updated. The new version, v1.50, now has the most-requested new feature: night mode (aka dark theme) for those of us who like to read news when it is way past the bedtime.

New version also fixes bunch of various little bugs and should stabilize the app quite a lot.

Through our app, you can access our news archives to all the way back to the 1999 when our site was founded. And of course, the app is completely free - and it doesn't require any suspicious permissions or anything like that.

So, go ahead and give it a try:

AfterDawn's official Android app

Currently our app's rating is pretty decent 4.6/5.0 stars, so you guys seem to genuinely like it. If you have any ideas on how to improve, let us know.

There's a nasty, malicious WhatsApp message spreading across the World that can freeze WhatsApp - or even your entire phone.

One of these messages is masked as a challenge and reads "If you touch the black point then your whatsapp will hang" - and if you do touch the black spot, your WhatsApp does exactly what the message "promises" it will.

The other message says "This is very interesting" and has a cry/laugh emoji. Tapping that message will have similar consequences.

Why such messages crash WhatsApp?

The message itself might seem short, but in reality, it consists thousands and thousands of encoded character in it that are just hidden, as they're mostly text directionality symbols, instructing which way to output the text. Thus, opening up such message will simply cause a memory leak in WhatsApp - and in some cases, with your phone.

So, never trust weird WhatsApp messages from people you don't know about.

Center for Internet Security has found a serious vulnerability in popular open-source (de-)compression tool, 7-Zip.

The vulnerability allows execution of malicious code, access to computer's files and user profiles. Further details of the vulnerability are listed on Center for Internet Security's website.

The good news is that there's already an update available for 7-Zip that will patch the vulnerability. Versions v18.05 and above are safe and patched.

You can download the latest, patched version of 7-Zip from our download servers:

7-Zip (64-bit Windows)
7-Zip (32-bit Windows)

...or through /-Zip's homepage.

Twitter has found a bug in its systems that logged users' passwords in plain text format to its log files. As web services should never store passwords in human-readable format, but instead, use "hashed with salt" approach to store them, the finding is significant.

Now Twitter asks all its users to change their passwords as soon as possible. According to Twitter, there are no signs whatsoever that the passwords have actually leaked, but as such a possibility cannot be totally ruled out, it is recommended to change the passwords.

Obviously the problem is even worse if user uses the same email address / password combination on other services. Nowadays users are strongly urged to use unique passwords for all different services, but as people are lazy, it is still very common to use same login details across many services.

In such a case, one should change passwords on all such web sites and services.

We encourage users to use password managers - they'll recommend good passwords for you and will also remember all your passwords and keep them in strongly encrypted password lockers. One good (and free) such tool is KeePass.