Have hackers turned my printer into an offensive weapon?

It was just last month that is in September one of the largest net attacks took place with pinpointed a renowned OVH a French hosting firm and a blogger. This single attack is believed to have comprised of over one trillion bits of data. Both of the hacking events marked a change in the methods used by hackers who survive by breaking into websites which hold widespread data add this form of attacks is known as Distributed Denial of Service attacks (DDoS). The data was sent to the targets through and other such "smart" devices which were hijacked by the hackers.

Can I tell if my webcam/DVR/printer is attacking someone? 

Well to be honest, not easily. If you are a medium of bombarding someone else, your internet speed may slow down however it may not be noticed at times of normal browsing while it may be evident when it comes to video or music streaming or games which will lag. For those who are tech savvy, they can make use of software’s which keep a tab on the flow of data packs on their home network, however this is not easy if you are unaware of what you are doing exactly.

Could I get in trouble for letting my webcam attack someone? 

In terms of legality, you can’t get into trouble with the police however it is believed through researches that a hacker can get into your internal network through a webcam hack and keep a tab on everything else. So in such a case you have an intruder which is best if gotten rid of by taking the necessary action.

Why are malicious hackers using these devices? 

That’s because it is way easier to hack in comparison to PCs or servers and these devices tend to make use of default passwords and fail to have any kind of security software in place. And to the benefit of the hackers, there are endless numbers that stay on all day long and it is a task to both update as well as secure. In modern days it is extremely easy for hackers, they are able to target vulnerable devices and put together an army of their own to create a botnet without having to rent hijacked machines like in the past.

What kind of devices are they scanning for? 

Web-associated cameras are especially prominent however outputs are likewise being completed for advanced TV recorders, home routers and printers. All these have a fundamental processor inside that can be subverted to pump out attack packets. Brian Krebs, the blogger who experienced an assault an IoT botnet, has ordered a rundown of gadgets known to have misused his webpage with information. Large portions of the login names and passwords for these gadgets are anything but difficult to-crack. On 1 October, source code for one IoT assault was freely shared, driving some to propose that numerous more malignant programmers will now begin checking for vulnerable gadgets. This guide made by security firm Symantec demonstrates where Europe's botnets are facilitated. Turkey is home to the vast majority of the commandeered devices and PCs.

How new are these types of attacks? 

The main DDoS assaults were seen on the web in 2000. The primary influx of information bombardments was gone for betting locales which were undermined with being thumped disconnected unless they paid an expense. The greater part of those coercion endeavors utilized commandeered PCs to send information. Presently the ascent of the Internet of Things that is populated with brilliant gadgets has commenced recharged enthusiasm for these sorts of assaults. Security scientists have cautioned about the perils of unreliable IoT gadgets for quite a while yet they are beginning to be utilized for critical assaults sooner than numerous individuals anticipated.

Google Reveals Pixel Phone

Google’s New Smartphone Under Pixel Brand

Alphabet’s Google is likely to reveal the new smartphones at an event held on Tuesday which is said to be the latest attempt by the company to sell consumers on Google patented device as well as to test Apple AAPL 0.43% at the high end of the market. Analysts have predicted that the San Francisco product launch would be showcasing the other hardware initiatives of Google GOOGL 0.30% comprising of voice-controlled speaker system known as Home with a view to contest Amazon.com’s AMZN – 0.32% Echo device together with a virtual reality headset.

The most enthusiastically awaited smartphone released under the Pixel brand will be replacing the Nexus line. Though most of the vendors besides Apple tend to use Google’s Android operating system, the company has been toying with several methods in building its own hardware without isolating the manufacturers. Since 2010, Google has sold Nexus phones though the devices have attained little power in the market controlled by Samsung Electronic SSNLF 24.00%. The analysts are of the opinion that the uninspiring sales is due to poor distribution since the phone are not naturally available through the network carrier which most of the U.S. network consumers tend to depend on.

Google – End-to-End Experience

Google had also owned the Motorola smartphone business temporarily before selling it to the Lenovo Group.Google had to struggle to make a distinction with its devices since its mobile software had been made available very extensively according to analyst Jan Dawson of Jackdaw Research.

He added that Google wanted to have this end-to-end experience though it was not clear that people really wanted that. The cost of the new Pixel phone is likely to be over $6000, which makes them at the high end of the market where Apple is said to be the prominent competitor.

Dawson seems to be more optimistic regarding the Home device which was unveiled at the developer conference of the company this year that tends to work with home entertainment systems, responding to voice commands. The device is said to signify a significant move in an escalating battle with Google and the other tech giants in launching the dominant `digital assistant’.

Alexa/Siri – Competing for Control

Alexa, Google Assistant of Amazon and Siri of Apply have been competing for control since most of the individuals tend to search the web making online purchases through voice commands that could ultimately replace keyboards as well as touch screens as the main means of monitoring digital devices. Though Amazon had been the first to market, Google could take over most of the sales in the nascent category, as per Dawson.

However with smartphones, the distribution could be a challenge.He also added that Amazon had the benefit of being capable of putting this on the home page of the biggest e-commerce site in the world. Ben Bajarin analyst of Creative Strategies stated that he too anticipates Google to discuss its virtual reality headset, Daydream at the event.

He also commented that the company would also disclose plans of combining its Chrome operating system for laptops as well as its Android mobile software thereby assist developers in building more devices.

You Can All Finally Encrypt Facebook Messenger

Facebook – Secret Conversation

Whatsapp had put up a code with the addition of new layers of security to the apps of billion users with the creation of the largest end-to-end encrypted messaging network in history. WhatsApp’s parent company Facebook has now eventually provided it users using its other hugely famous chat app with the opportunity to catch up. As informed to WIRED, a spokesperson of Facebook had informed that the company had completed rolling out `Secret Conversations’ to 900 million Facebook Messenger users in the last few weeks.

The chosen feature enabled users to encrypt their messages in order that no one could read them with the exception of the two individuals at each end of a chat and not even Facebook or law enforcement of the intelligence organizations. A description stated in the app that when users had initiated their first encrypted conversation `your messages are already secure, though Secret Conversation are encrypted from one device to another’.

While the updates of the software of the company for iOS as well as Android have not been clearly mentioned the feature of encryption, those who tend to update their Messenger app would now find the choice of `secret option towards the top right area of the `new message’ screen.

Opt for Snapchat-Style Termination

Moreover the feature also permits the transmitters to opt for Snapchat-style termination time for messages which may vary from five seconds to a day. Users who have updated the app have the facility of sending or receiving encrypted time-sensitive messages and hence users are recommended to update as early as possible.

Secret Conversation tends to use the Signal encryption system which seems to have a healthy status in the security community. It had been established by the non-profit Open Whisper System that had implemented the encryption layer first in its own Signal app before teaming with the other companies to include the procedure.

The new security mechanism had been first announced by Facebook and had been tested with beta users in July. Google had also recently launched the Allo messenger which included the encryption choice.

New Feature – Strong/Simple Encryption

The new layer of encryption of Facebook Messenger needs to be enabled manually for each conversation instead of being changed on by default since it is in the Signal app or WhatsApp. The conclusion could be a measure of a negotiation with the purpose of assisting Facebook to prevent legal as well as political difficulties.

The default encryption of WhatsApp for instance seems to have already placed its parent company in an uncomfortable spot at least once when the authorities of Brazil had arrested an executive of Facebook in the country for his negligence in helping police decrypt WhatsApp messages that had been send in a drug trafficking case, by criminal suspects.

However, the opt-in move has brought about the scorn of privacy advocates when Facebook had announced Secret Conversation, such as the tweet from ACLU technologist Chris Soghoian. Considering it or not, the new feature of Facebook tends to bring in strong, simple encryption to hundreds of millions of users.

The spread to the other ultra-popular messaging services, with the combination of end-to-end encryptions, stopping investigations has never been easy.

Hello Allo! Tips to Use Google New Chat App in a Best Way

Google Chat App `Allo’

Google has progressed tremendously from the basic looking GTalk to Hangouts and has modified its messaging services with altering needs as well as time. Presently with its latest chat app `Allo’ the company has once again made efforts to rewrite the way people tend to utilise chat apps. It would not be discriminating to call Allo only a chat app since it tends to do much more than only chats. Together with an AI that seems to learn quickly regarding the users, it also has many other features which could be helpful for users in planning, locating information as well as be more communicative in chats. Announced at the I/O 2016 of Google, the app is said to be available in the Play Store. The following tips would be helpful to the users:

Share videos rapidly: It could be tiresome in sharing videos in chats. One could first long press the link, copy and then open the chat window where you desire to share it. With Allo, Google seems to solve this issue. Just type @google in any chat and the inbuilt AI assistant of the company will appear in the text box. Select the same and then ask the videos you desire to view. For instance, type @google show me the video of making Matar Paneer and the AI tends to respond with an expanded video link of the recipe

Organize your text size: Text size tends to assist in conveying the message. Allo provides the user with the option to alter the size of the text in a chat on the fly. You could just slide the send up or down in order to increase or reduce the size of the text in a message.

Hola Allo, find me flights: Allo seems to be much more than only a chat app and has four kinds of chats such as one to one, group chat, Chat with Google Assistant and Incognito chat. If one seems to be chatting with Google Assistant, you could ask the AI to display the plane tickets, hotel availability and much more. It portrays the Google search result.

Allo Sets reminders: The AI in the app also tends to set reminders and alarms for the user. You could go to Google Assistant in the app and ask for setting the alarm which it tends to do.

Play games: In Allo one could also play games. For instance, the chat game is said to be one of the interesting ones wherein in this game you could opt for the game type and the AI would play that game with you.

Search for restaurants: The AI chat assistant tends to utilise one’s location and suggests accordingly the restaurants which are in the vicinity. The users can view the restaurants by clicking on Google map.

Incognito chats: Similar to WhatsApp, Google Allo also tends to assure safe and encrypted chats though it is only likely in Incognito mode.The Incognito Mode tends to ensure that chats are encrypted once toggled.

Group chats: Like WhatsApp, one also has the possibility of creating groups in the app with options of deleting, adding people or mute group. Read message seem to have double ticks similar to the way how they are there in WhatsApp. Moreover you could also long press on a message and view details like the precise time it had been delivered and read.

Why SEO is important when considering web hosts

When you’re selecting a new web hosting provider, SEO is probably not so high on your list of considerations. However, the web host you choose can have a bearing on how successful your SEO is.

However, this is not a case of a web host offering certain services that give your site an SEO boost, instead a web host that is considered ‘goof for SEO’ is actually one that does not do anything that can harm your SEO.

Furthermore, there are some important ranking factors in SEO that can be influenced by your web hosting. If you choose a bad web hosting provider, then these will soon become apparent.

Here are four ways in which your web hosting can affect SEO:

1. Website speed Although it’s not as high up the list of importance as good quality content, website speed is a factor that can play a part in how search engines score, or rank, your website. If your website has great, unique content that is relevant, even if it loads a little slower than a website with bad content, it will still rank higher. However, when you’re competing with other websites that offer strong content, having a website that loads quickly can be important for SEO. Largely it comes down to usability, which is something Google take seriously in their rankings. Websites that offer a poor user experience are often penalised, and a website that loads incredibly slowly will almost certainly incur such penalties.
   
    
2. Access for robots Although this is a lot rarer these days, in the past there have been countless web hosting companies that just did not understand SEO, and as a result the website which they hosted would suffer. An example of this was some hosts were putting in place scripts that would block access to the site for certain robots, including those from search engines. As a result, the websites were poorly indexed or not indexed at all. This is less of a concern now, but there are still web hosting companies with scripts that could cause conflict with search engines.
   
    
3. Uptime For anyone who has worked with websites and web hosting professionally, one of the key concerns of clients is “uptime”. Put simply, what percentage of the time the website is available. Most hosts now offer uptime guarantees that are well above 99%, however this is not always the case. A website that is often down or unavailable will not be favoured by Google. The reason for this? Well if the website has been indexed and then Google comes back to re-index it and it’s no longer there, Google will see a 404 error which essentially means it believes the page no longer exists. 404s are bad for SEO and usability, and your site will be penalised.
   
   
    
4. Security The internet has around 650 million websites active and available at any one time, a staggering statistic.For all the big name and trusted websites that you can name, there are millions of others competing for this space. A considerable number of these websites are targeted maliciously by hackers, or are set-up with one sole purpose – to infect a user’s machine with malware. A web host that does not take security seriously leaves themselves open to potentially becoming victim of a hacker who will put malware on your website.
   
    

The first you find out about this will be when Google webmaster tools (if you use Google Analytics) sends you a note basically saying Google is now blocking traffic to your website because of the harmful nature of the malware found. It goes without saying that this can harm SEO ranking massively, so ensuring your website and web host is secure is imperative. Check that any web hosting company you are considering using regularly updates server software and takes other steps necessary.