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US authorities on Wednesday (15 March) brought forward charges against two Kremlin intelligence (FSB) officials and two criminal hackers for launching a massive cyberattack on Yahoo in 2014, which compromised around 500 million user accounts. The US government's indictments reveal how Russian spies allegedly recruited criminal hackers in a conspiracy to hack the tech giant. The FBI said that the two criminal hackers , Alexsey Belan, a Russian who is currently on the agency's most-wanted list and Karim Baratov, a Kazakh residing in Canada, who was arrested on Tuesday (14 March) were hired by two FSB agents Dmitry Dokuchaev, 33, and Igor Sushchin, 43 to carry out the cyberattack. How was Yahoo hacked? According to the FBI, Belan, who went by "Magg" had breached Yahoo's system by early 2014 and made his way to the firm's internal control center for email accounts, which allowed him to make administration level changes, including accessing and...

Flying drones are complicated business. Land-based drones will do for now. And pedestrians on America’s footpaths will have to contend with these self-driving, wheeled robots delivering hot pizza, groceries or mail very soon. Thanks to London-based Starship Technologies, these quiet delivery robots are moving out of lab tests and onto actual streets in three US states -- in District of Columbia, parts of California, and Virginia, according to an ArsTechnica   report. Other US states and countries around the world are currently finalizing rules and regulation to get more of these delivery robot fleets commercialized and available for businesses to deploy on footpaths. Starship Technologies' delivery robots aren’t meant for the road; they’re designed for 'walking' on the footpath at a normal pedestrian’s pace. These autonomous delivery robots have navigation assistance cameras and GPS-guided delivery routes to help them deliver items up t...

An IT worker from India found out a genius way to get free Uber rides for life. Anand Prakash, a product security engineer, detected a bug in the Uber app. He also runs a blog on web application security and said it was “easy” to exploit the bug to overwrite the app and get free Uber rides around the world.   “I was testing Uber application for security loopholes,” he explained. “This is how I was able to figure it out. It was easy to do." “Attackers could have misused this by taking unlimited free rides from their Uber account.” In order to check the bug, he alerted Uber and with their permission took several taxi rides to check if he was right. He was! He took numerous trips in India and US without paying a single penny. The loophole was related to the method of payment where he used an invalid method to get free Uber rides for himself. Bad news for those planning to exploit the bug though, Uber has already patched it. Prakash will be rewarde...

Meet the current apple of ProTruly’s eye, Darling . A smartphone so unlike anything you’ve seen, it combines a strip of real diamonds and a full-fledged 360-degree camera within its shell. Hailing from China, Darling may very well be the first smartphone in the world to have a built-in 360-degree camera, and that makes it quite unique.                 The Darling packs in two identical 13MP cameras on its front and back to allow users to take 360-degree photos and videos from the smartphone and share them through YouTube and Facebook -- sites that support 360-degree viewable media. The Darling Extreme comes in an ostentatious gold coloured shell, leather accents with a strip of four diamonds running across on the front. Yes, real diamonds!     The Darling Android smartphones sport a 5.5-inch 1080p Full HD display, runs on a MediaTek SoC (no Qualcomm?!), 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of internal storage. It comes with 3,5...

 The best books you’ll read are typically recommended by people you like or admire. Which is why we’re partnering up with bookshelf.tips to do a monthly roundup of short book recommendations from the apex of the tech world. Bookshelf.tips asked entrepreneurs, CEOs, and other visionaries share stories about books that changed their life or the way they do business – in less than 50 words, because we know you’re busy people (but hopefully not too busy to read these books). HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE. Yunha Kim , founder and CEO of Simple Habit , a 5 minute meditation app: “Even though this is my favorite book, on daily basis, I fail to follow Dale Carnegie’s advice and I feel bad about it. But every time I pick up this book, it opens my eyes on understanding human nature better.”.   ➤   Buy on Amazon   TECHNOPOLY      Tristan Harris , ex-product philosopher at Google, now working on Time Well Spent :...

H ackers are exploiting a well-publicized flaw in telecom services to spoof WhatsApp and Telegram identities and hack other people’s accounts. The hackers only need a number and with that, they can hack into any phone and WhatsApp or Telegram account with a minimum of effort. The flaw rests in a signaling protocol called SS7 and hackers can exploit that to target and identify a phone number. They can then track that user, and gather all the data that is being sent to and from the device being targeted, reports Forbes. While that’s bad enough, services like WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal were immune owing to their in-built encryption protocols. The actual bits of data being accessed by those apps was easy to access, but the information was encrypted and impossible to decode. Until now. Hackers have now finds a way to exploit SS7 loopholes to spoof the other person’s number. WhatsApp and Telegram will attempt to verify a spoofed account, but because they’ll dete...

T he invention of a secondary school student has gotten Namibia’s social media abuzz for the right reasons. Simon Petrus has created a mobile phone that works with radio frequencies, no sim card nor airtime credit required. Calls can be made to anyone, anywhere, without interruptions, as long as they are done in an area with radio frequency. The invention, which took two years for him to complete, was put together using scraps of old television and mobile phones, and required over $2,000 funding from his unemployed parents who sacrificed a lot to ensure their son’s project was successful. Other than the sim-less phone, Petrus’ invention is a whole unit comprising of a working radio, television, a light bulb, a fan, and a socket. According to reports, the phone is not Petrus’ first invention, just his latest. Last year, the young man won first place at a competition for young innovators in Namibia for creating a machine that doubles as a seed drier and a ...