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AfterDawn: News

Target breach affected up to 70 million guests

Written by James Delahunty @ 12 Jan 2014 1:11

Target breach affected up to 70 million guests Target has revealed that guest visitors to its service were also affected by the previously disclosed security breaches.

This theft is not a new breach, but was uncovered as part of the ongoing investigation. At this time, the investigation has determined that the stolen information includes names, mailing addresses, phone numbers or email addresses for up to 70 million individuals.

These are separate from the payment card data previously disclosed by the retailer.

The data stolen is partial in nature, but in cases where Target has an e-mail address it will attempt to contact those affected.

"I know that it is frustrating for our guests to learn that this information was taken and we are truly sorry they are having to endure this," said Gregg Steinhafel, chairman, president and chief executive officer, Target.

"I also want our guests to know that understanding and sharing the facts related to this incident is important to me and the entire Target team."

Target is offering one year of free credit monitoring and identity theft protection to all guests who shopped its U.S. stores.

More Information: target.com/databreach




AfterDawn: News

Naughty America to begin shooting porn in 4K

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 12 Jan 2014 12:45

Naughty America to begin shooting porn in 4K Naughty America, a maker of pornographic films, has begun shooting their latest material in UltraHD 4K resolution.

UltraHD offers a resolution of 3840 x 2160, double the current 1080p standard.

4K was the big theme of this year's CES event, with all the big boys unveiling new 4K TVs or deals to stream 4K content in 2014.

Both Amazon and Netflix also noted that their upcoming original content would be filmed in 4K. Sony also launched its own 4K video download service with over 140 older titles.

CEO Andreas Hronopoulos says the company is investing hundreds of thousands, and the investment is the largest ever for the smaller company. If the standard does not take off as expected, the company could go under. There are certainly high barriers to entry in 4K, as a standard 4K video can be over 1TB and will need to be backed up on servers.

Even so, Hronopoulos believes the investment is worth it. "Yes, you need a lot of computing power," he adds (via WSJ). "But, the closer we can come to making it feel like you're there, the more successful we are."

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AfterDawn: News

Jelly Bean reaches nearly 60 percent of Android market share

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 12 Jan 2014 11:58

Jelly Bean reaches nearly 60 percent of Android market share As they do every month, Google has released the latest market share figures for every version of Android.

Android Jelly Bean, which encompasses versions 4.1.x through 4.3.x, now has 59.1 percent share, far and away the most of any version.

Gingerbread, versions 2.3.x, despite being released over two years ago, still has the second largest share, at 21.2 percent but the percentage continues to drop every month slowly.

KitKat, version 4.4, rose to 1.4 percent as it remains available on less than a handful of devices but that figure is also expected to grow significantly in the coming months.

Check the full stats here.

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AfterDawn: News

Sony: You will need a DualShock controller to play PS3 games via PlayStation Now

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 12 Jan 2014 11:16

Sony: You will need a DualShock controller to play PS3 games via PlayStation Now Last week, Sony used CES to unveil the highly-anticipated 'PlayStation Now' cloud gaming service for TVs and mobile devices. The service allows gamers to stream PlayStation games on the PS4, PS3, PlayStation Vita, tablets, smartphones and TVs.

Even though PlayStation 3 games will be available on touchscreen devices, you will be required to use a DualShock controller, says PlayStation marketing VP John Koller. Quite simply, "you need to have the DualShock to be able to play."

Of course, the PS Vita's buttons will work the same, and a DualShock 4 controller will work for PS4 games. If you are using the service through a Web-connected TV or a tablet or smartphone, you will need a DualShock 3 controller.

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AfterDawn: News

Interim CEO John Chen becomes permanent at BlackBerry

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 11 Jan 2014 8:56

Interim CEO John Chen becomes permanent at BlackBerry BlackBerry's interim CEO John Chen has become the permanent chief executive at the struggling smartphone maker.

"After earnings, and again in meetings with media and analysts at C.E.S., John said that he would be BlackBerry's C.E.O. until the company is back on solid financial footing," says the company. "The search for a CEO has been put on the back burner for now."

BlackBerry fired the previous CEO, Thorsten Heins, after years of mounting losses and after months of searching for a potential buyer.

Since his hiring, Chen has fired many former senior executives and signed a deal with manufacturer Foxconn, in which the company will outsource both design and most of the risk of its handset business. Additionally, the company will focus on government and enterprise users again, as its consumer ship has mostly sailed.




AfterDawn: News

DDoS attack brings a brief outage to AfterDawn

Written by Jari Ketola @ 11 Jan 2014 2:36

DDoS attack brings a brief outage to AfterDawn A part of the AfterDawn network was unreachable for 1-2 hours this morning (around 10:00 AM Eastern Time, 15:00 GMT). The outage was caused by a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack towards our servers that saturated the downlink of our rack cabinet.

Most of the English language sites were available again within an hour, but much of the international sites were unreachable for nearly two hours.

DDoS attack a considerable amount if traffic is directed at a server or servers in an attempt to bring down the server or the network infrasturcture. In our case the 1GBps network link of the rack cabinet couldn't handle all the incoming traffic. In response the traffic to the affected services was blackholed.


Graph of network traffic caused by a DDoS attack

The attack did not cause security issues with our services.

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AfterDawn: News

HP to release cheap Android phone this month

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 11 Jan 2014 10:56

HP to release cheap Android phone this month According to 9to5G, HP is preparing to release a cheap Android smartphone aimed at the emerging markets, possibly as soon as next week.

Expected to be priced at $199 off-contract, HP is said to have been working on the device for the last 18 months. Former Nokia Meego engineer and now SVP of Mobility at HP Alberto Torres is said to be leading the group in charge of the devices.

If accurate, the rumored device will have a 5.5-inch display with 720p resolution and other cost-cutting measures to ensure the cheap price.

CEO Meg Whitman had suggested a smartphone was coming from HP, after a failed experiment with webOS. At the time, Whitman said: "[HP has] to ultimately offer a smartphone, because in many countries in the world that is your first computing device. You know, there will be countries around the world where people may never own a tablet or a PC or desktop. They will do everything on the smartphone. We're a computing company, we have to take advantage of that form factor."

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AfterDawn: News

Don't expect Tizen phones to reach U.S. shores in the near future

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 11 Jan 2014 10:47

Don't expect Tizen phones to reach U.S. shores in the near future According to a Samsung executive, the company's first smartphones running on the Tizen operating system will not reach the U.S. market.

Ryan Bidan, Samsung's director of product marketing for its U.S. mobile operations, says competition is too great in the U.S. for the intial line of Tizen devices.

"We don't feel the U.S. is a great test market for those kinds of products," he said, noting that Samsung will likely roll out Linux-based Tizen phones in other regions of the world. The U.S. market is pretty mature. Bringing a new entrant here that doesn't meet a certain performance bar would be a challenge. Recognizing that, we don't want to set ourselves up for failure," says Bidan.

The Tizen devices will begin selling at the end of March, in Japan, Europe and also in emerging markets.

Tizen, the open source operating system born from the death and merger of MeeGo and LiMo, has Samsung as its main backer and also has backing from Sprint, Intel, Huawei, Orange and Vodafone among others.

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AfterDawn: News

Nintendo: We had record 3DS game sales in 2013

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 11 Jan 2014 10:43

Nintendo: We had record 3DS game sales in 2013 Nintendo has proudly boasted that 3DS games sold in record numbers in 2013, with the company expecting the momentum to continue in 2014.

Overall, 16 million combined packaged and digital 3DS games were sold for the year, a massive 45 percent increase over 2012.

"We're not slowing down in 2014. With more games featuring fan-favorite franchises on the way, the best days of Nintendo 3DS are still to come," says Nintendo.

Including 3DS XL and 2DS handhelds, total lifetime sales of the 3DS family are now 11.5 million in the U.S.

For the new year, the company has promised new blockbusters including Yoshi's New Island, Disney Magical World and Square Enix's Bravely Default. Additionally, the latest sequel of the popular "Professor Layton" series will launch at the end of February.




AfterDawn: News

[UPDATED] Dropbox was taken down by hackers last night, back up now

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 11 Jan 2014 10:00

[UPDATED] Dropbox was taken down by hackers last night, back up now Late last night, the website for Dropbox was taken down, potentially by hackers, although it is back up now.

Dropbox released a statement saying the downtime was due to "routine internal maintenance," but the hacker group 'The 1775 Sec' had already taken claim on Twitter minutes before the site went down. They claim it was done to honor the late developer and activist Aaron Swartz who killed himself a year ago following an extended trial against him by the U.S. government that many called a "witch hunt."

1775 Sec followed up their original tweets by saying they were giving Dropbox time to resolve known vulnerabilities in the site before they dump the database.

They later laughed off the tweet about the database dump, claiming they had just performed a DDoS attack and nothing else.


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AfterDawn: News

Yikes: Retailer Neiman Marcus also hit by cyber attack, customer data stolen

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 11 Jan 2014 8:25

Yikes: Retailer Neiman Marcus also hit by cyber attack, customer data stolen On the heels of Target's major data leak, in which 70 million customers had their credit and debit card information stolen along with email addresses and mailing addresses, it appears a second smaller attack occurred at luxury retailer Neiman Marcus.

The company does not yet know the amount of customers affected, or what information was stolen besides the card information.

Neiman Marcus says they received alerts from their credit card processor in December "about potential unauthorized payment card activities" and that the U.S. Secret Service is investigating the matter.

Third-party security firms confirmed the attack on January 1st.




AfterDawn: News

[UPDATED]Microsoft confirms Sony will release a Windows Phone

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 11 Jan 2014 8:14

[UPDATED]Microsoft confirms Sony will release a Windows Phone Update 3:35 PM EST: Microsoft has emailed us with word that Greg Sullivan did not confirm the news, and the original news sources have pulled the quotes.

After a couple of weeks of rumors that Sony may be ready to start developing a Windows Phone, Microsoft has confirmed the move.

Sony officials had only confirmed "discussions" and "negotiations," but now Microsoft's Windows Phone Director Greg Sullivan has confirmed during an interview, simply saying, "a Sony official today confirmed they will launch a Windows Phone smartphone."

Often inaccurate Asian publication Digitimes also noted that the Sony Windows Phone handset was already in production.

Of course, there are zero other details about the upcoming device, but we will keep you updated on any news.




AfterDawn: News

It's live: Overstock.com now accepting Bitcoin

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 09 Jan 2014 11:41

It's live: Overstock.com now accepting Bitcoin Last month, large e-tailer Overstock.com announced that it would begin accepting Bitcoin as a payment option in 2014. As of today, the company is now accepting the digital currency, much earlier than anticipated.

CEO Patrick Byrne says the company got in touch with Coinbase.com (large Bitcoin payment processor) last week, who informed them that with a dedicated team they could launch in a week.

"They actually came back with a plan on the evening of New Year's Day on how get live in a week, we've had 40 people from diff parts of company, [on the project], including customer service agents," added the exec.

Within two hours of launch, Byrne says over $10,000 worth of Bitcoins were used by over 100 purchasers.





AfterDawn: News

Gartner: PC shipments have worst yearly decline, ever

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 09 Jan 2014 10:10

Gartner: PC shipments have worst yearly decline, ever According to research firm Gartner, the PC industry had its worst ever yearly decline in 2013.

For the fourth quarter, shipments were down 6.9 percent year-over-year to 82.6 million units. For the year, shipments totaled 315.9 million units, a full 10 percent decline from 2012. The overall units shipped were equal to 2009's level.

Lenovo and Dell saw growth but the rest of the market saw declines, including major players HP, Acer and Asus.

The Chinese giant now has an 18.1 percent share of the market, followed by HP at 16.4 percent and Dell at 11.8 percent. Lenovo overtook HP for the crown early last year.

In the U.S. market, Apple saw the largest growth, moving to 13.7 percent share (up 28 percent YoY), but globally they are little more than a blip.

Read more...


AfterDawn: News

Snapchat finally apologizes for massive phone number leak

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 09 Jan 2014 9:32

Snapchat finally apologizes for massive phone number leak Following the major security breach last month that allowed hackers to collect the usernames and phone numbers of 4.6 million users, Snapchat said earlier this week that it would update the application with a more secure version.

The new version will allow users to opt out of the "Find Friends" feature that was the cause of the breach. The company also says it will block all future attempts to abuse the service or its features.

Over a week after the hack, the company has finally apologized, as well.

Reads the company's blog post:

This morning we released a Snapchat update for Android and iOS that improves Find Friends functionality and allows Snapchatters to opt-out of linking their phone number with their username. This option is available in Settings > Mobile #.

This update also requires new Snapchatters to verify their phone number before using the Find Friends service.

Our team continues to make improvements to the Snapchat service to prevent future attempts to abuse our API. We are sorry for any problems this issue may have caused you and we really appreciate your patience and support.





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