Researcher Put Their Focus on the Masque Attack on OS X/iOS

According to the reports released to public by the researchers working at FireEye on 17 November, Mac OS X and iOS operating systems have threat from Masque Attack, which has already come into existence. This report was published within a gap of a week post the discovery of WireLurker by the Palo Alto Networks.

What is Masque Attack? 

Masque attack can easily utilize a drawback in the operating system of Apple, which allows the user to replace one app by another app, as long as both these apps are using the same bundle identifier. One of the threatening issues is that through this attack, all the preinstalled apps on the operating systems (example Mobile Safari) can be easily replaced.

The duplicate apps will be able to track the local data of the original apps, which includes the login details like user id and password. Through this attack, an attacker can easily login into anyone’s account and make transactions from their bank accounts.

These attacks become more easy, has the iOS usually does not put in force certificate matching for apps that come with the same bundle identifier. FireEye researchers were able to verify and identify the vulnerability on both regular iOS and jailbroken. The regular iOS includes iOS 7.1.1, iOS 7.1.2, iOS 8.0, iOS 8.1, and iOS 8.1.1 beta. Attackers can influence the vulnerability through USB ports and even wireless networks.

According to the blog post of FireEye researchers Tao Wei, Hui Xue and Yulong Zhang, Apple is unable to prevent such attacks due to the existing standard interfaces and protections. They are requesting the Company to develop interfaces that are more powerful and give it to professional security vendors.

This way these vendors will be able to protect their enterprise users from all these advanced attacks. This attack will prompt the users to download malicious apps with new names like for example, the new angry bird.

The users of these operating systems are more susceptible to these attacks when they download any app from third party source or by ignoring the un-trusted app message popping on their phones. Users, who have set the Gatekeeping feature on “Anywhere”, actually nullify their protection.

As per FireEye's researchers, WireLurker utilizes very limited form of the attack when hitting the iOS through USB ports.

According to director of software engineering at Arxan, Joe Abbey, WireLurker will be able to deliver the workload only if the user has installed any un-trusted app on MAC, on the other hand for the Masque attack to occur, the user must have downloaded enterprise-provisioning profile.

Companies who have the BYOD policies are more susceptible to Masque attack. According to Abbey, it is recommended that the owners of BYOD policies disable the provisioning profiles, till Apple comes out with a solution.

Masque attacks and WireLurker are additional examples of highly sophisticated and automated attacks, which are growly rapidly. These attacks highlights that we are in serious need of automotive proactive protection and prevention methods.

Hydrogen Powered Audi A7 Sportback H-Tron Quattro Four Door Luxury Saloon

Audi – Progress Through Technology

Audi AG, a German automobile manufacturer is known for its designs, produces, markets, engineers and distribution of luxury automobiles as well as its overseas worldwide activities from its headquarters in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, Germany.

The Audi brand vehicles are manufactured in nine production facilities all over the world. Audi has been a major owned – 99.55% subsidiary of Volkswagen Group right from 1966, which was followed by a phased purchase of Audi AG predecessor, Auto Union from Daimler-Benz. It was re-launched by Volkswagen with the Audi brand with the 1965 introduction of the Audi F103 series. Each of the four rings of the Audi logo represents one of the four car companies which banded together to form Audi’s predecessor company, Auto Union.

The company ethos and core belief – `Progress through Technology’ is what drives the development of every Audi vehicle. Right from driving clinics to picking up latest vehicle there are several ways an Audi lover could strengthen their connection to the brands which portrays the pinnacle of luxury performance.Audi is recognized for its awesome standards, uncompromising quality and relentless performances and though one may be associated with those qualities with this particular brand, the characteristics tend to describe the employees as well who have been instrumental in their contribution to the final design of the brand.

Sportiest Car in Luxury Segment

Audi inspires the revolutionary engineering and progressive design which has become synonymous with the Audi brand together with innovative solutions. The Audi is available for those who tend to enjoy the finer taste in life.

It stands for sportiness, lightweight design together with the quattro permanent all-wheel drive, according to the new chief designer, Marc Lichte. He further states that, `In the Audi prologue, we are expressing this know-how in a new form; we have put the sportiest car in the luxury segment on wheels.

Our team took new approaches in both exterior and interior design’.Audi’2014, Auto Show festivities in Los Angeles would be presenting the design concept on which the future models would be based and called the Audi `Prologue’,would be signalling a marked change in the brand’s design direction under Marc Lichte.

Some of Audi’s models are in the twilight of their production life cycles such as Audi’s A4, A5, A6, A7 and A8 resulting in Lichte having a difficult though a rewarding task ahead of shaping the Audi’s line-up of cars.

Technology Combination of Comfort/Efficiency/Power

Audi design would now be showing progressive technology in a more powerful manner where the two door coupe will be having a flowing elegant shape in a sporty as well as taut design. The architecture melds with display together with the operating concept creating a new kind of unit in the clear and unobstructed interior while the complete front area of the instrument panel has a large touch display with a portion of the user interface operating with a new kind of OLED display which is made of organic LEDs.

The show’s car technology is a combination of comfort, efficiency and power and the 4.0 TFSI provides up to 445 KW of power and 750 Nm of torque, accelerating the Audi prologue from 0 to 100 km/h in 3.7 sec. It has a dynamic all wheel steering wherein the rear wheels have the capabilities of turning up to five degrees, making it responsive as well as stable while driving.

Assassin’s Creed Unity- Stuffed with Bugs and Poor on Computers and Consoles

Assassin’s Creed Unity, which was released with such hype, got a complete blow when 12 hours post the game’s release, it was declared a completely messed up game. The consumers are stating that the games from its looks, looks like was not yet ready and the Company Ubisoft wanted to just get it released as soon as possible.

Some of the drawbacks f the game includes its limitation to 900p on the consoles, the poor draw distance, dramatic decrease in the frame rates, and due to some unexpl

ainable reasons the characters and the faces keeps on disappearing.

Drawbacks: 

There are a completely new thread which has been dedicates to the performance of the Assassin’s Creed Unity on the PC, which is even more than NeoGAF. The creator of this thread had tried to run on the game on Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 but still unable to get the desired results. This thread consists of many posters having the same issue of cut scenes dipping below the 30 fps.

There are some of the screenshots, which display the bug, which have drawn lot of criticism. Ubisoft send the Xbox version of the game to many outlets for overview and the response was dire and indicated that the problems with the Assassin’s Creed Unity is no longer limited to computers only.

As per the Joystiq, both Xbox A single and PS4 versions are having problems with the game-breaking bugs and the dipping in the frame rate. Unbelievably it is true that the frame rate of the Xbox A is more noticeable and the consoles are locked at the maximum of 900p.

According to the reports from PC World, the game Assassin's Creed Unity although available can be rough. They have stated that the game itself is having riddles of self-performance. On similar lines, users have been posting nasty feedback about the game on the NeoGAF.

The company had placed a devious review restriction during the first half of the day of the launch, which actually caused many people to take the plunge and buy the game even without seeing the full review.

Why the game has so many flaws? 

The Ubisoft company is known to have the best of the software engineers, they have the required talent pool and enough finance to make unbelievable games, but going by the looks of Assassin’s Creed Unity, the short turnaround time given to the development team has affected the final product. The game would have had all the advantages if the company would have held back on the release data and given more time for the internal resources to show its effect on the product.

Ubisoft already knew that the game will not be making the people around the world happy and it has certainly brought lot of embarrassment to the company. Although there are times when a game is launched, people give time to the company to run initial updates and patches but the feedbacks and reviews of the game have been extremely ferocious.

Did You Know How to Delete Your Search Records Facebook Records?

Today, every person can be expected to have an account in Facebook. They record and update every single minute of their life on Facebook. However, do you know that every time you perform any search on Facebook, it gets stored in their database?

So do not think that no one knows you have searched for someone special or any specific kind of group on the Facebook. All the searches performed by you on the Facebook get stored in their activity log as well as yours.

If you are thinking that this is seriously an invasion of privacy, then keep calm, most of these searches, which can stored in the activity log are visible to you only as they are stored as private searches. There are people who are quite comfortable with the idea of having their search data stored, but there quite a number of people who are very uncomfortable with the fact that their data is being stored and that too, on a long term basis.

If we visit any pages online, we make sure that we are deleting the search history, as we do not want anyone to know what we were searching and what the reason for the search was. During our regular work hours, we are extra cautious about our privacy but when it comes to Facebook, there are no issues at all.

According to the Facebook, the only reason for them to store you search data is to enable you and provide you with more relevant search results. If you are among the people who are not interested in keeping their search records then you just need to follow the below steps:

•  The user will have to start the Facebook page and login in. One will be able to find their search activity page by going into their profile. There you have been given with a tab called View Activity log. Once you click on this tab, you will be given additional options comprising of your search based on photos, likes, comments and another tab indicating “more”. User can also login into their Activity log by going through the URL: 
• https://www.facebook.com/login.php?next=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fme%2Fallactivity%3Fprivacy_source%3Dactivity_log%26log_filter%3Dsearch
•  If you are looking for removing entries pertaining to any particular individual then you just need to click on the Hidden from Timeline tab, which has been given on the right side of each of your search entries and click to delete them permanently from your records.
•  In case you want to delete your entire search history then you just need to click on the button called Clear searches, which has been given on the top right hand side of the screen. This button can be seen beside the magnifying glass icon on the right side of the screen.

By following these steps, you will be able to clear any individual search or overall searches in just some clicks. If you are among the people who have no issues in keeping their searches and want to make their future searches tailor made.

WhatsApp’s New Update: Blue Ticks- Are you Happy?

The new update rolled out by WhatsApp has been welcomed by many people, but there are people who are actually dreading this update. The update was about receiving confirmation from the receiver that the message has been read by them.

You will find people freaking out due to the latest update rolled by the messenger. In the latest update, WhatsApp will be sending a read message from the receiver to the sender of the message by issuing them a double blue tick on the sent message. This tick will be marked on the message. The double blue tick indicates that the message has been seen and read by the user on the other end.

Meaning of the Ticks: 

Initially a single tick beside the messages was meant for indicating the sender that their message has been sent. Then they used to receive a double click in gray color indicating that the message has been received on the receiver’s phone.

However, there was no confirmation sent to the sender if the message has actually been read by the receiver or even seen by the receiver. However, with this new update the receiver of the message is not hidden anymore. Not only the sender of the message will be able to see if their message has been read but it will also indicate when it was read.

Looking at all the sides, while it is good for some to get information about the message being read it can go to the extent of spoiling many relationships. WhatsApp might lose some of their customers due to this update and they might even opt to other messenger services that are available in abundance now.

How can you get rid of these ticks? 

If you want to make your life easier by getting rid of these ticks, there are few ways to do that and there are tricks available on the internet. There has been no guarantee given for any of this tricks to work on your phone, it might work for some and might not for others. According to one of the tricks, once you are notified about the message, do not go directly to the WhatsApp, but you can view the same in the notification window and read the same.

You will have to remember that once you click on the notification, it will lead to WhatsApp page to open and sending notification to sender about the message being read. According to some people, you can put your phone on Airplane mode and then check on the messages.

Once you have read the message, put your phone back on normal mode and still WhatsApp will not be able to send any notification to the sender. This trick has worked for many people but few of them have encountered problems as WhatsApp on their phone was able to sync with their 3G or Wi-Fi and immediately sent notifications to the senders.

Although these are not sure shot methods, Android users have something to be happy. They can now add an additional desktop on their launcher and add WhatsApp widget to it. Once you receive any message, you simply have to check them on widget ensuring not to click on any message. To avoid opening the app in error, one can install app locks.