Mail App Flaw In iPhone and iPad

Apple Bytes: 

Apple Inc is planning to fix a flaw that a security firm said may have left more than half a billion iPhones vulnerable to hackers.

The bug, which also exists on iPads, was discovered by ZecOps, a San Francisco-based mobile security forensics company, while it was investigating a sophisticated cyberattack against a client that took place in late 2019. Zuk Avraham, ZecOps’ chief executive, said he found evidence the vulnerability was exploited in at least six cybersecurity break-ins.

An Apple spokesman acknowledged that a vulnerability exists in Apple’s software for email on iPhones and iPads, known as the Mail app, and that the company had developed a fix, which will be rolled out in a forthcoming update on millions of devices it has sold globally.

Apple declined to comment on Avraham’s research, which was published on Wednesday (4-22-20), that suggests the flaw could be triggered from afar and that it had already been exploited by hackers against high-profile users.

To execute the hack, Avraham said victims would be sent an apparently blank email message through the Mail app forcing a crash and reset. The crash opened the door for hackers to steal other data on the device, such as photos and contact details.

ZecOps claims the vulnerability allowed hackers to remotely steal data off iPhones even if they were running recent versions of iOS. By itself, the flaw could have given access to whatever the Mail app had access to, including confidential messages.

ZecOps found the Mail app hacking technique was used against a client last year. Avraham described the targeted client as a “Fortune 500 North American technology company,” but declined to name it. They also found evidence of related attacks against employees of five other companies in Japan, Germany, Saudi Arabia, and Israel.

Avraham based most of his conclusions on data from “crash reports,” which are generated when programs fail in mid-task on a device. He was then able to recreate a technique that caused the controlled crashes.

While Apple is largely viewed within the cybersecurity industry as having a high standard for digital security, any successful hacking technique against the iPhone could affect millions due to the device’s global popularity. In 2019, Apple said there were about 900 million iPhones in active use.

Read the complete article > reuters.com

Free reading materials

Tech News and Views

I imagine that most of you are doing a lot of reading while quarantined at home. So, you will appreciate this site that shows free books you can download and keep for use on your Nook or Kindle or other e-reader.

Before I show you the site, I want you to download the free Calibre book finder, reader and converter. You will find it at calibre-ebook. Once it has downloaded, click on it to install the program. You can use Calibre to search for books, but I like using the sites shown below because you can keep the downloads (the free books are only from the Digital Public Library of America).

digital-libraries-from-your-couch

When you download books from the link shown above, they will be in epub format.  If you have a Kindle, you will have to use Calibre to convert the books to the Kindle Mobi format.

Your Smartwatch Could Spot Signs Of COVID-19

Just like your smartwatch’s heart-rate monitor can alert you to possible warning signs of atrial fibrillation or sleep apnea, it can also spot warning signs that might signal your body is fighting a flu-like infection — if you know where to look.

App maker Cardiogram pushed an update to its Apple Watch and WearOS apps last week that adds a new stat that shows average beats per minute during sleep. As it turns out, tracking fluctuations in your heart rate during sleep could signal that your body is fighting a viral infection like COVID-19.

Cardiogram co-founder Johnson Hsieh discovered the correlation after tracking his BPM during a bout with the seasonal flu in January. He noticed that his normal sleeping heart rate was about 10 beats per minute higher while his body was fighting the virus and returned to normal as his sickness subsided. The higher BPM was also evident during other parts of the day, but sleep is where it’s easier to spot.

It’s due to vasodilation, which is a fancy medical term for the expansion of the blood vessels during inflammation. As blood vessels expand, signals are sent to your brain to increase your heart rate and provide additional blood supply to inflamed regions.

“A pretty clear signal in your heart rate when you have symptoms that would otherwise be measured exclusively by a thermometer,” said Harish Kilaru, head of product at Cardiogram. “When your body is fighting an infection, both your sleeping BPM and your resting BPM are higher.”

As Kilaru explained, other factors (such as consuming alcohol) can also lead to an increase in resting BPM, so it’s not an exact science just yet. While Cardiogram still recommends taking your temperature and consulting your physician with any concerns, heart-rate monitoring is one more way to stay on top of possible coronavirus symptoms.

“I think there’s a lot of potential here because we have seen a connection between these symptoms and your heart rate,” Kilaru said.

A recent Fitbit study reached a similar conclusion. Researchers discovered a distinct correlation between elevated resting heart rate and influenza-like illness rates and found the data significantly improved flu predictions. Additionally, weekly changes in resting heart rate closely mirrored changes in influenza-like illness rates.

While the Cardiogram app isn’t available for Fitbit OS, the Fitbit watch will natively track your sleeping heart rate each night. And if you have a Charge 3 or Versa 2, you’ll get an even better handle on your COVID-19 exposure due to their relative SpO2 sensors that can track oxygen levels in your blood.

Like Cardiogram’s method, Fitbit’s SpO2 sensor will record your blood-oxygen levels as part of its Sleep Score. While you won’t get a number, each morning you’ll find an Estimated Oxygen Variations chart that will show your levels throughout the night, which can be invaluable for tracking COVID-19 symptoms. A typical blood-oxygen saturation level is above 90 percent, but COVID-19 sufferers can develop severe hypoxia, which lowers the oxygen levels in your blood due to damage to the walls of the air sacs in their lungs.

Monitoring resting heart rate and SpO2 tracking can be excellent indicators of the flu, but they’re still not as good as an actual body temperature reading. While there are very few wearables that are able to accurately show body temperature right now, that’s probably going to change in a post-COVID-19 world.

But even without the ability to track body temperature, your smartwatch can still be useful in monitoring your own coronavirus symptoms. “Just because your wearable devices aren’t taking your temperature regularly,” Kilaru said, “it still provides you a clear and continuous data point that you can use on a day-to-day basis.”

Read the complete story > macworld.com

Facebook Is Dying Because It Seriously Sucks

What was once a truly dynamic platform that allowed people to build useful social networks and promote their companies has now turned into a saccharine community messaging board manipulated by algorithms designed to sell you things Facebook believes you are interested in. From a user's perspective, the social media outlet is getting worse and worse.

Ever wondered why you see an ad on Facebook that seems to be calling your name?

Perhaps you need a new pair of running shoes and have just been talking to a friend about it. Then an hour later you see an ad for a pair of running shoes on your Facebook feed. Yes, this could be a weird coincidence, but in the world of Facebook, there’s no such thing as coincidences - just deliberate and intentional actions, all in the name of profit.

Facebook used to be all about connecting with your nearest and dearest. These days, though, it’s more about Facebook wanting to connect with you as a commodity for data mining. The level of privacy that they violate in exchange for you to access the app is, in a word, disturbing.

The algorithm that they configure to target you as a consumer and the way these ads follow you no matter where you are on the internet is a serious cause for concern.

Every time you log onto Facebook now though, you're shown a conversation from a day or two ago by a friend you may have briefly interacted with over the past week that you have absolutely nothing to do with. You're shown random posts that are not in any sort of chronological order that you're not interested in whatsoever.

All the sites and pages you follow in no longer show up on your feed (unless you've interacted with it in the past week or so), and you're stuck scrolling through your feed to dig for something, anything, that you're vaguely interested in. This isn't a knock on any of your friends, but you rarely see anything they post because they are all experiencing the same thing you are and have left the social network in favor of, well, anything other than Facebook.

Facebook continues to condone paid ads with political leanings that will pop up in your feed, regardless of whether the information you read is true or not. Fake political news is nothing new, but the fact that Facebook now encourages it for profit is a sign of the times, and a disturbing premonition that democracy may be on its way out.

We now live in a world where money = power, but it’s nothing new. Based on history, it was only a matter of time before Facebook got too big for its own good and decided to exploit its powerful position as one of the biggest social media websites in the world.

Clearly, Facebook has put money over morals and decided to throw ethics out as a result. They care much more about making a profit than keeping your information private and only seem to be interested in spearheading the data revolution, where you’re much more of a commodity than a human being with a profile page and real connections with other people.

So, if you want to keep your personal information safe from being mined by greedy companies, and you want to stop supporting the dark side of the free market, maybe you should quit Facebook for good.

It may feel like you’re powerless to such a giant and that you don’t have a choice, but the reality is that you do. Facebook is only as good as its users, and the fewer users it has, the less power and control it has as well. The fact is, people are leaving facebook in droves already.

Boycotting Facebook is the only way to send a clear message that, as a society, we still value morals over money and expect companies, no matter how powerful, to conduct themselves accordingly.

Facebook may see you as a consumer commodity, but at the end of the day, you’re a human being that shouldn’t be forced into sacrificing privacy for someone else’s profit.

Credit: thedailybanter.com and quantummarketer.com

iPhone SE: A Powerful New Smartphone In A Popular Design

Apple Bytes: 

The Most Affordable iPhone Features A13 Bionic, the Fastest Chip in a Smartphone, and the Best Single-Camera System in an iPhone

Apple today (4-15-20) announced the second-generation iPhone SE, a powerful new iPhone featuring a 4.7-inch Retina HD display, paired with Touch ID for industry-leading security. iPhone SE comes in a compact design, reinvented from the inside out, and is the most affordable iPhone.

The new iPhone SE is powered by the Apple-designed A13 Bionic, the fastest chip in a smartphone, to handle the most demanding tasks. iPhone SE also features the best single-camera system ever in an iPhone, which unlocks the benefits of computational photography including Portrait mode, and is designed to withstand the elements with dust and water resistance.

iPhone SE comes in 3 beautiful colors - black, white and (PRODUCT)RED - and will be available for pre-order beginning Friday, April 17, starting at just $399 (US).

Read the entire news release > HERE.

Salvaging An Ancient Computer

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Executive Board Minutes

Computer Technology Club, Inc. – Executive Board Minutes
April 10, 2020

The April meeting was cancelled due to COVID-19 restrictions & venue closures.

Coronavirus

Tech News and Views

Many of you know that I have long promoted the use of the World Community Grid which uses idle time on individual computers to solve world wide problems such as Ebola, Malaria, obtaining clean water, eliminating cancers, etc. The grid is almost ready to establish an effort to use the mass computing power to help eliminate the coronavirus. In the meantime, there is another grid effort called Folding-at-home which I encourage you to join, which will accomplish the same type of goals as the World Community grid, but will work on the coronavirus immediately.

The following link is from the Kim Komando website. I have followed Kim for many years. She is a nationally syndicated columnist whose columns appears in USA Today and in hundred of other papers and on her own radio program. Here's a link to her site which tells you how you can join the folding-at-home project.

folding-at-home-coronavirus

Care About Security And Privacy? Stop Using Zoom!

Credit: techcrunch.com

Zoom’s troubled year just got worse.

Now that a large portion of the world is working from home to ride out the coronavirus pandemic, Zoom’s popularity has rocketed, but also has led to an increased focus on the company’s security practices and privacy promises. Hot on the heels of two security researchers finding a Zoom bug that can be abused to steal Windows passwords, another security researcher found two new bugs that can be used to take over a Zoom user’s Mac, including tapping into the webcam and microphone.

Patrick Wardle, a former NSA hacker and now principal security researcher at Jamf, dropped the two previously undisclosed flaws on his blog Wednesday, which he shared with TechCrunch.

The two bugs, Wardle said, can be launched by a local attacker — that’s where someone has physical control of a vulnerable computer. Once exploited, the attacker can gain and maintain persistent access to the innards of a victim’s computer, allowing them to install malware or spyware.

Wardle’s first bug piggybacks off a previous finding. Zoom uses a “shady” technique — one that’s also used by Mac malware — to install the Mac app without user interaction. Wardle found that a local attacker with low-level user privileges can inject the Zoom installer with malicious code to obtain the highest level of user privileges, known as “root.”

Those root-level user privileges mean the attacker can access the underlying macOS operating system, which are typically off-limits to most users, making it easier to run malware or spyware without the user noticing.

The second bug exploits a flaw in how Zoom handles the webcam and microphone on Macs. Zoom, like any app that needs the webcam and microphone, first requires consent from the user. But Wardle said an attacker can inject malicious code into Zoom to trick it into giving the attacker the same access to the webcam and microphone that Zoom already has. Once Wardle tricked Zoom into loading his malicious code, the code will “automatically inherit” any or all of Zoom’s access rights, he said — and that includes Zoom’s access to the webcam and microphone.

“No additional prompts will be displayed, and the injected code was able to arbitrarily record audio and video,” wrote Wardle.

Because Wardle dropped detail of the vulnerabilities on his blog, Zoom has not yet provided a fix. Zoom also did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.

In the meanwhile, Wardle said, “if you care about your security and privacy, perhaps stop using Zoom.”