Scientists have built the world’s thinnest electric generator – and it’s only one atom

Researchers have created a graphene-like material that generates electricity every time its stretched, and could power the wearable technology of the

Scientists from the Georgia Institute of Technology and Columbia Engineering in the US have shown they can generate electricity from a layer of material that’s just one atom thick. The generator is made from molybdenum disulphide (MoS2), which is a clear, flexible and extremely light material that opens up huge possibilities for the future of electricity generation.

The new electrical generator is an example of piezoelectricity, or electricity that’s generated from pressure. Piezoelectric materials have huge potential to be used to create materials that can charge devices, such as footwear that powers an iPod. But until now, scientists have struggled to make these materials thin and flexible enough to be practical.

However, it’s been predicted that a substance capable of forming single-atom-thick molecules, or two-dimensional layers, would be highly piezoelectric.

Now the scientists have proved that this is the case for the first time ever. Their results have been published in the nature

To test whether MoS2 would be piezoelectric on the atomic scale, the team flaked off extremely thin layers of MoS2 onto a flexible substrate with electrical contact.

Because of the way these flakes were created, each had a slightly different number of layers – for example, while some were just one-atom-thick, others were eight-atoms-thick.

The scientists tested the piezoelectric response of these flakes by stretching the material, and measuring the flow of electrons into an external circuit.

Interestingly, they discovered that when the material had an odd number of layers, it generated electricity when stretched. But when it had an even number of layers, there was no current generated.

A single one-atom-thick layer of the material was able to generate 15 millivolts of electricity when stretched.

They also found that as the number of layers increased, the amount of current generated decreased, until eventually the material got too thick and stopped producing any electricity at all.

Computational studies suggest that this is because the atomic layers all have random orientations, and they eventually cancel each other out.

The research team also arranged these one-atom-thick layers of MoS2 into arrays, and found that together they were capable of generating a large amount of electricity.

This suggests that they’re a promising candidate for powering nano electronics, and could be used to create wearable technologies.

“This material – just a single layer of atoms – could be made as a wearable device, perhaps integrated into clothing, to convert energy from your body movement to electricity and power wearable sensors or medical devices, or perhaps supply enough energy to charge your cell phone in your pocket,” said James Hone, professor of mechanical engineering at Columbia engineering and co-leader of the research, in a press release

 

Source: Science alert

http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20142010-26364.html

32 iOS 8 Tips Every Apple Fan Should Know

With the new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus and the release of Apple’s new iOS 8, I’m sure people are enjoying all the new features and bells and whistles this update has provided.  Well, perhaps there are more things you’d like to learn about your new iOS 8.  In this article, PC Magazine’s, Eric Griffith goes in depth on 32 features and tips for the new iOS 8 (with pictures! I love pictures).

-Jeff

http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow/story/327859/32-ios-8-tips-every-apple-fan-should-know

Apple iOS 8 has not been the smoothest of rollouts. Though it was on 46 percent of iOS devices within five days of its release, reports of slow Wi-Fi and battery drains soon cropped up. The iOS 8.0.1 update tried to fix some of those issues, but ended up borking cellular connections and Touch ID on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Oops. Here’s hoping the new 8.0.2 squashes all the bugs.

Once fixed, you’ll find that iOS 8 is pretty amazing. It has updates and fixes that make iPhones in particular about the best they can be. As PCMag’s 4.5 star Editors’ Choice reviewput it: “Apple’s latest update brings desirable functionality, improved navigation, and subtle design changes to an already solid mobile operating system.”

iOS has a ton of new features and tricks under the hood, things the average user may never notice or care about. But power users of the iPhone—those of us who exploit that pocket computer as a lifeline to the office and home—will benefit highly by mastering them. Apple opened up iOS more to the makers of wearables (via HealthKit) and even to third-party app makers who now have some unprecedented (for Apple) access to the hardware. It all adds up to the best iPhones yet.

Of course, iOS is not as customizable as Android. It probably never will be. That’s by design, as Apple is trying to make “the mobile operating systems for the masses,” as PCMag put it. Even Android’s customizability has a cost, in complexity and even stability. (Apple haters can chime in now with the 8.0.1 jokes.) But once Apple gets it right, which won’t take long, iOS 8 will be what those teeming masses want. When they do, they should consult these 32 tricks to master every new iOS 8 feature.

Click To View Slideshow 

Dropbox Glitch Perfect Reason Why Backups Should Be Local

Dropbox acknowledged on Monday that an issue with its Selective Sync feature has deleted the files of some users. The company is currently sending out an email explaining what happened. As compensation, Dropbox is providing these customers with one year of Dropbox Pro for free.

“We’ve fixed the Selective Sync issue that affected a small number of users and reached out to them to help restore their files,” a spokesperson told Tom’s Hardware. “Issues like this aren’t acceptable at Dropbox, and we’ve implemented additional testing to prevent this from happening again.”

Selective Sync is a Dropbox feature that allows users to select a specific file or folder to be mirrored on the user’s local hard drive. For instance, perhaps users take photos on their smartphones, and those images are automatically uploaded to Dropbox. The user may choose not to mirror those images on a local hard drive with limited storage capacity.

According to Dropbox, the file deletion occurred when the desktop application was shut down or restarted while the user was applying Active Sync settings. The company’s email said that the team worked hard to restore those files, indicating that many may not have been rescued from the dark clutches of the trash can.

The question here is this: should consumers depend on cloud services like Dropbox and Google Drive? As this example indicates, one small glitch can cause users to lose valuable files such as photos, documents and so on. Sure, cloud storage is convenient when users want to access files from different devices in different locations, but there may be other ways of doing so without having to depend on third-party cloud solutions.

For instance, Pogoplug has a networking device that will allow users to access their files from anywhere. Just hook up several hard drives, and you can access them from a mobile device’s app or a web interface on a laptop. There are also a number of routers that allow users to plug in a hard drive via a USB port and access its files from anywhere.

Of course, this view isn’t meant to discourage customers from using cloud services. However, it may be wise to backup the cloud backup using a portable HDD or SSD, toss it into a fire-proof safe, and then refresh the backup when needed.

 

Source: TomsHardware.com

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/dropbox-selective-sync-glitch-cloud-storage-deletion,27872.html

 

Australian researchers have created the most accurate quantum computing technology to date

Researchers from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia have achieved a huge breakthrough in quantum computing – they’ve created two kinds of silicon quantum bit, or qubits, the building blocks that make up any quantum computer, that are more than 99 percent accurate.

These quantum bits are made from silicon, the same material that makes up the transistors in today’s computers and phones, but the information in these bits is processed and stored in atoms, which means they’re capable of storing exponentially more information. In fact, if scientists can reliably create a functioning quantum computer out of these quantum bits, it has the potential to be millions of times more powerful than today’s most powerful supercomputers.

“For quantum computing to become a reality we need to operate the bits with very low error rates,” said Andrew Dzurak, the director of the Australian National Fabrication Facility at UNSW, where the devices were made, in a press release.

Now the teams from UNSW have managed to create not just one, but two quantum bits with more 99 percent accuracy, and their results have been published simultaneously in Nature Nanotechnology.

“We have demonstrated that with silicon qubit we can have the accuracy needed to build a real quantum computer,” Dzurak told ABC Science. “That’s the first time this has been done in silicon.”

The interesting thing is that the two groups, who both work in the same laboratories, used different approaches to come to the same result – one team embedded a phosphorous atom into the silicon, and the other, led by Dzurak, embedded an artificial atom.

“We’ve now come up with two parallel pathways for building a quantum computer in silicon, each of which shows this super accuracy,” said Andrea Morello from the UNSW School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications, who led the phosphorous atom team, in the press release.

Morello’s team based their advances on previous research on phosphorous atom quantum bits. Prior to this, the team had only managed to achieve around 50 percent accuracy with these chips, but by purifying the silicon that the atoms were embedded in, they have now achieved an incredible 99.99 percent accuracy.

The postdoctoral researcher who was lead author on Morello’s paper explained in the press release: “The phosphorus atom contains in fact two qubits: the electron, and the nucleus. With the nucleus in particular, we have achieved accuracy close to 99.99 percent. That means only one error for every 10,000 quantum operations.”

Dzurak’s team was able to create an “artificial atom” quantum bit that’s remarkably similar to the transistors used in commercial electronics. Today’s transistors work by turning on or off a flow of electrons, resulting in binary zeros and ones. In Dzurak’s quantum bit, this transistor has just one electron trapped inside, which can be on, off or in a superposition.

“This lets us use exactly the same sort of transistor that we use in computer chips and operate it as a qubit, opening the potential to mass-produce this technology using the same sort of equipment used for chip manufacturing,” Dzurak told ABC Science.

Both the breakthroughs were achieved by embedding the atoms in a thin layer of specially purified silicon, which contains only the silicon-28 isotope. Naturally occurring silicon is magnetic and therefore disturbs the quantum bit, messing with the accuracy of its data processing, but silicon-28 is perfectly non-magnetic.

The teams were also able to set a new record for how long a silicon quantum system retains information, known as coherence time.

“Coherence time is a measure of how long you can preserve quantum information before it’s lost,” said Morello in the press release. And the longer coherence time, the easier it is for computers to perform complex calculations.

The researchers were able to store quantum information in the phosphorous nucleus for 35 seconds – something unheard of in quantum computing.

“Half a minute is an eternity in the quantum world. Preserving a ‘quantum superposition’ for such a long time, and inside what is basically a modified version of a normal transistor, is something that almost nobody believed possible until today,” said Morello.

The research teams are now working together to take the best elements from each system to make a superior quantum bit. They’re hoping it will be the model that will be used to finally create the real quantum computers the world’s been waiting for.

 

Source: Science Alert

http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20141310-26322.html

Windows 10. Did Microsoft forget how to count?

Did Microsoft forget how to count? I thought 9 came after 8.

Here is an article that might shed some light as to why Microsoft skipped 9.

Go here to read the original article:

http://www.informationweek.com/it-life/10-real-reasons-microsoft-skipped-windows-9/a/d-id/1316490

 

10 Real Reasons Microsoft Skipped Windows 9

Many people are speculating why Microsoft skipped from Windows 8 to 10. Consider these colorful possibilities.

As you undoubtedly heard by now, Microsoft can’t count. Its next Windows iteration will not be Windows 9 or Windows 8.2. Instead it’s skipping straight to 10.A lot of people are making fun of this. People like order, and skipping numbers bothers the kindergartner in all of us.

Microsoft hasn’t been very forthcoming with the exact reason for the switch, though there are rumors it has to do with a Y2K-style problem with older versions of Windows 95 and 98 being referred to as Windows 9 in some scripts.

Personally, I don’t buy that. It seems relatively easy to get around. But I did some research and I came up with some other possible reasons:

Top 10 (possibly true) reasons Microsoft is skipping Windows 9 and is going straight to 10.

1. They’re hoping it will subliminally encourage critics to write that it is a “10 out of 10!”

2. The Japanese consider 9 to be an unlucky number because it sounds similar to the Japanese word for pain.

3. Microsoft is hoping to make up for tightening profits by selling super rare copies of Windows 9 on the collector’s market.

4. Because 7 ate 9.

5. They were going to use Roman numerals and thought “Windows X” would draw a younger crowd. They also considered iNDOWS.

6. Ten matches the prediction of the number of people who will actually use it instead of XP.

7. Vista was taken.

8. When they named this one, they used Common Core math.

9. “Oh, let’s just skip number 9.” They did.

10. Because this version of Windows doesn’t go to 11.

Let’s face it, Microsoft has a long history of this. It went from counting to naming them after years like 95 and 98. Then it jumped to names like Vista only to settle back into numbers with Windows 7. You don’t have any old copies of Windows 6 lying around, so why should you be bothered by the lack of Windows 9?

The truth is, this shows just how little a name matters to an operating system these days. Windows is Windows, and really Microsoft shouldn’t care too much whether you’re using 7, 8, or 10. They only care because of the expense of backwards compatibility and because of the security features in newer versions.

But consider how mobile phones have changed how software is marketed. The average consumers don’t know what version of Android is running on their phones, nor do they shell out big bucks to go from one version to the next. The device updates the version for free. The same is true for other software on the phone. When you update Facebook or Twitter on your phone, does it even bother to tell you what version you are running? Mobile apps seemingly update daily. There’s no fanfare.

Other than enterprises that have to prepare for certain major changes to operating systems, the idea of versions of software is dead. You just run Windows. The only reason to come out with a new “version” of software is to charge for it, and we’ve seen Microsoft lowering prices on operating systems recently, so that impulse is dying as a business reason.

With no reason for consumers to care and decreasing reason for Microsoft to care what version someone is running, numbers and names become increasingly meaningless. The real issue is getting you to buy the device with a Windows logo on it.

Of course, this begs the question of why 10 and not something snazzier like Windows Applekiller, or Windows Coolest Version Ever, or even just plain Windows. Probably the answer is that 10 is a round number and Microsoft couldn’t come up with anything that tested better.

Personally, I’d like Microsoft to drop the Windows brand entirely and call its operating system “Cortana,” but I don’t see that happening anytime soon.

Windows 10 Hands on Preview!

As expected, this week Microsoft released the much-anticipated technical preview of Windows 10. This build is not for consumers but for the adventurous type that doesn’t mind glitches and troubleshooting. Microsoft is looking for tons of feedback with the technical preview and will eventually release a customer preview sometime early next year before the final version hits store shelves.

Naturally, the first thing I gravitated to in the Technical Preview was the Start Menu. The removal of this feature in Windows 8 caused quite a fuss, enough so that Microsoft caved in and brought the feature back to the desktop. As leaked images indicated over the last several months, it’s comprised of two different styles: the traditional app lineup on the left and live tiles on the right.

The start menu is, surprisingly, not big and bulky. The traditional list includes links to Documents, Pictures, PC Settings, File Explorer and the on-screen keyboard. There’s also the snipping tool, Sticky Notes, Windows PowerShell and Remote Desktop connection. Users can access all of their apps and programs by hitting the All Apps link, which brings up a list combining traditional programs and Modern UI apps.

As for the live tile portion, users can click on one of the apps and drag it to the desktop, creating a shortcut. On my build, the list of “Metro” apps includes Skype, Music, Windows Feedback, People, Calendar, Windows Store, Mail, Weather, Video and News. These apps open on the desktop, casting a nice shadow that gives depth to the desktop.

That brings us to one of the biggest changes in Windows 10: using Modern UI apps on the desktop. Why not just use them on the Start Screen? Because it’s gone, or at least, it’s not easily accessible in the Technical Preview as it is in Windows 8 and 8.1. Microsoft has essentially merged both worlds into one, and it works rather nicely. The Metro apps open at full screen, but they can be reduced down and resized to the user’s liking.

Still, for customers who loved the Start Screen, there is a way to bring it back. Simply right-click on the Taskbar, choose Properties, then hit the Start Menu tab. There’s an option to “Use the Start menu instead of the Start Screen.” Uncheck this option, and the computer will assign the Start Screen to the Start button instead of the beloved menu.

In addition to the Start Menu, Microsoft has moved the Search app to the taskbar. Users can search for content locally, such as hunting down the Netflix app installed on the PC, to the latest trending news for the day (powered by Bing, of course). All of this conveniently resides next to the Start button and should make searches easier and quicker than when this feature resided on the Charms Bar.

That’s another Windows 8 feature that’s missing in action: the Charms Bar on the desktop. That feature was odd to begin with, and given that Microsoft yanked Search and PC Settings from the bar, there probably was no real point of having it. However, the Charms Bar will supposedly appear on tablets and phablets along with the missing Start Screen.

In addition to moving Search to the taskbar, Microsoft is also introducing multiple virtual desktops. This icon sits next to the Search icon and lets customers create new desktops with a simple click. For those with two or more monitors connected, this feature seems a little useless. However, for single-monitor setups and those with low resolutions, customers can spread out their work and access these windows using the Task View shortcut.

In addition to the Start Menu, Microsoft has moved the Search app to the taskbar. Users can search for content locally, such as hunting down the Netflix app installed on the PC, to the latest trending news for the day (powered by Bing, of course). All of this conveniently resides next to the Start button and should make searches easier and quicker than when this feature resided on the Charms Bar.

That’s another Windows 8 feature that’s missing in action: the Charms Bar on the desktop. That feature was odd to begin with, and given that Microsoft yanked Search and PC Settings from the bar, there probably was no real point of having it. However, the Charms Bar will supposedly appear on tablets and phablets along with the missing Start Screen.

In addition to moving Search to the taskbar, Microsoft is also introducing multiple virtual desktops. This icon sits next to the Search icon and lets customers create new desktops with a simple click. For those with two or more monitors connected, this feature seems a little useless. However, for single-monitor setups and those with low resolutions, customers can spread out their work and access these windows using the Task View shortcut.

 

Source: TomsHardware

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/windows-10-preview-hands-on,27807.html

 

Reddit Helps Botnet Recruit 17,000 Macs

Using a Mac and browsing Reddit are pretty safe activities, as far as online security goes, but “pretty safe” does not equal “riskless.” A new bit of Mac-centric malware has infected more than 17,000 computers, and its creators are employing Reddit to add even more systems to the ranks.

The information comes from Russian antivirus firm Doctor Web, which wrote about the threat in a news post. The malware in question is known as Mac.Backdoor.iWorm, and it has two functions: Steal personal information from Macs, then draft other computers into the botnet so that they can do the same.

Of the 17,000 infected machines, the largest percentage is in the United States, with about 4,600 compromised machines. The United Kingdom and Canada rank far behind, with about 1,200 apiece. The rest of the botnet machines are scattered more or less evenly throughout the developed world.

Despite the patently ridiculous “Macs don’t get viruses” rhetoric that gets thrown around on the Internet, a Mac botnet is not a terribly uncommon thing, and 17,000 machines is far from as bad as these things get. What makes this case interesting is the use of Reddit to work its dark magic.

When it first infects a system, Mac.Backdoor.iWorm employs the Reddit search engine and a hexadecimal query in order to acquire a list of command-and-control botnet servers. Then the computer connects to one, and the Mac in question essentially belongs to the malefactors.

To be clear, the system is not taking advantage of anything that Reddit has done wrong, nor does contributing to Reddit put users at risk for contracting the malware. If anything, Reddit has made its search engine too well, as it provides sensible query responses, even for hexadecimal algorithms. Macs may be less susceptible to infection than PCs, but that doesn’t mean you’ll be any less compromised if you get hit.

 

Source Toms Hardware

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/reddit-botnet-recruit-macs,news-19673.html

Global police operation disrupts aggressive Cryptolocker virus

US authorities named Russian national Evgeniy Bogachev as the face of a malicious software scheme responsible for stealing millions from people around the world, after a successful campaign to disrupt two major computer networks.

Digital police from across the globe announced they had seized control over the weekend of two computer networks that had been used to steal banking information and ransom information locked in files on infected computers. But they warned people with infected computers to take action now to prevent further attacks.

US and European officials announced they had managed to crack the malicious software (malware) known as Gameover Zeus that had been used to divert millions of dollars to bank accounts of criminals. The authorities have also cracked Cryptolocker – a viral scam that shutout hundreds of thousands of users from their own computers and ransomed the data.

The UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) told British victims that they have a two-week window to protect themselves, after working with the FBI, Europol and other law enforcement bodies to temporarily seize control of the global network of infected computers.

The US authorities identified Bogachev, of Anapa in the Russian Federation, as Gameover Zeus’s main administrator. At a press conference, deputy attorney general James Cole called him “a true 21st-century criminal who commits cybercrimes across the globe with the stroke of a key and the click of a mouse …These crimes have earned Bogachev a place on its list of the world’s most-wanted cyber criminals.”

According to the FBI’s “cyber most wanted” list Bogachev has been using variants of the Zeus malware since 2009 and communicates using the online monikers “lucky12345” and “slavik”. Gameover Zeus (GOZ) started appearing in 2011 and is believed to be “responsible for more than one million computer infections, resulting in financial losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars”.

“He is known to enjoy boating and may travel to locations along the Black Sea in his boat,” according to the FBI.

The Cryptolocker software locked PC users out of their machines, encrypting all their files and demanding payment of one Bitcoin (currently worth around £300, or $650) for decryption.

It’s believed Cryptolocker, which the FBI estimated acquired $27m in ransom payments in just the first two months of its life, has infected more than 234,000 machines.

A chief suspect from Russia has been identified, but is still at large, Troels Oerting, head of Europol’s European Cyber Crime Centre (EC3) told the Guardian. He said other arrests related to the operation were “in progress”.

The global effort to stop the spread of the Cryptolocker ransomware has focused on its delivery method, GOZ. The malware connected infected machines by peer-to-peer connections – in theory making it harder for the authorities to track and stop.

GOZ was designed to steal people’s online banking login details, who were usually infected by clicking on attachments or links in emails that looked innocuous. However, it also dropped Cryptolocker on their computers.

“Nobody wants their personal financial details, business information or photographs of loved ones to be stolen or held to ransom by criminals,” said Andy Archibald, deputy director of the NCA’s National Cyber Crime Unit.

“By making use of this two-week window, huge numbers of people in the UK can stop that from happening to them. Whether you find online security complicated or confusing, or simply haven’t thought about keeping your personal or office computers safe for a while, now is the time to take action.”

Affected users are being advised to update their operating system software and security software, and also to “think twice before clicking on links or attachments in unsolicited emails”.

Not-for-profit body Get Safe Online has worked with the NCA to launch a dedicated section of its website to provide guidance and tools, although at the time of publication the website appeared to be offline.

Behind the scenes, the law enforcement groups have been taking over points of control in GOZ’s peer-to-peer network: an action known as “sinkholing” in the security world. By doing this, they have been able to cut off criminal control over the infected computers.

Dismantling peer-to-peer operated malware is difficult, but it has been done before: for example one case of a data-stealing virus called ZeroAccess, which infected as many as 1.9m PCs in 2013.

In that case, security researchers from Symantec managed to send lists of fake peers to infected machines, which meant they could no longer receive commands from the controllers of the malicious network, known as a botnet.

Symantec researchers said today that key nodes in GOZ’s network had been disabled, along with a number of the domains used by the attackers.

Oerting told The Guardian the entire GOZ’s operations infrastructure had been sinkholed, meaning the malware should “not reappear for … considerable time”.

Although arrests have not yet been made, Oerting believes the eventual impact will be “great”. “[It will not last] forever, but the infrastructure is gone and the criminals will have to build and distribute from scratch,” he added.

Source The Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/02/cryptolocker-virus-nca-malware-protection

Watch out for fake virus alerts

Watch out for fake virus alerts

Rogue security software, also known as “scareware,” is software that appears to be beneficial from a security perspective but provides limited or no security, generates erroneous or misleading alerts, or attempts to lure users into participating in fraudulent transactions.

How does rogue security software get on my computer?

Rogue security software designers create legitimate looking pop-up windows that advertise security update software. These windows might appear on your screen while you surf the web.

The “updates” or “alerts” in the pop-up windows call for you to take some sort of action, such as clicking to install the software, accept recommended updates, or remove unwanted viruses or spyware. When you click, the rogue security software downloads to your computer.

Rogue security software might also appear in the list of search results when you are searching for trustworthy antispyware software, so it is important to protect your computer.

What does rogue security software do?

Rogue security software might report a virus, even though your computer is actually clean. The software might also fail to report viruses when your computer is infected. Inversely, sometimes, when you download rogue security software, it will install a virus or other malicious software on your computer so that the software has something to detect.

Some rogue security software might also:

Lure you into a fraudulent transaction (for example, upgrading to a non-existent paid version of a program).

Use social engineering to steal your personal information.

Install malware that can go undetected as it steals your data.

Launch pop-up windows with false or misleading alerts.

Slow your computer or corrupt files.

Disable Windows updates or disable updates to legitimate antivirus software.

Prevent you from visiting antivirus vendor websites.

Rogue security software might also attempt to spoof the Microsoft security update process. Here’s an example of rogue security software that’s disguised as a Microsoft alert but that doesn’t come from Microsoft.

Example of a warning from a rogue security program known as AntivirusXP

Example of a warning from a rogue security program known as AntivirusXP.

For more information about this threat, including analysis, prevention and recovery, see the Trojan:Win32/Antivirusxp entry in the Microsoft Malware Protection Center encyclopedia.

To help protect yourself from rogue security software:

Install a firewall and keep it turned on.

Use automatic updating to keep your operating system and software up to date.

Install antivirus and antispyware software and keep it updated. Windows 8 includes antivirus protection that’s turned on by default. If your computer isn’t running Windows 8, download Microsoft Security Essentials for free.

Use caution when you click links in email or on social networking websites.

Use a standard user account instead of an administrator account.

Familiarize yourself with common phishing scams.

If you think you might have rogue security software on your computer:

Scan your computer. Use your antivirus software or do a free scan with the Microsoft Safety Scanner. The safety scanner checks for and removes viruses, eliminates junk on your hard drive, and improves your PC’s performance.

Get help from a Microsoft partner. If you have trouble removing the software yourself, you can enter your zip code to find experts in your area.

Check your accounts. If you think you might have entered sensitive information, such as credit card numbers or passwords into a pop-up window or at a rogue security software site, you should monitor your associated accounts. For additional information, see Email and web scams: How to help protect yourself.

If you suspect that your computer is infected with rogue security software that is currently not detected with Microsoft security solutions, you can submit samples using the Microsoft Malware Protection Center submission form.

Source Microsoft.com
http://www.microsoft.com/security/pc-security/antivirus-rogue.aspx

Hackers Crave Patches for Windows XP

Hackers now crave patches, and Microsoft’s giving them just what they want
At least one of next Tuesday’s updates looks like an excellent candidate to hackers as they sniff for bugs in the now-retired Windows XP
By Gregg Keizer
May 11, 2014 08:31 AM ET
5 Comments
inShare17
Computerworld – Hackers will have at least one, perhaps as many as four, patches next week to investigate as they search for unfixed flaws in Windows XP, the 13-year-old operating system that Microsoft retired from support April 8.
“Come Tuesday, Microsoft will be patching some vulnerabilities in Windows, and it is realistic to assume that at least one of these will also affect Windows XP,” said Kasper Lindgaard, director of research and security at Secunia, in an email Friday. “Generally speaking, newly discovered vulnerabilities in XP will be unpatchable for private users, and therefore we will see a rise in attacks.”
On May 13, Microsoft’s regularly-scheduled monthly Patch Tuesday, the Redmond, Wash. company will issue eight security updates for its software. But because it has stopped providing updates to owners of Windows XP PCs, those customers will not see any of the eight.
Hackers looking for vulnerabilities in Windows XP will be using the patches to find vulnerabilities in XP, Microsoft and security experts have said. By conducting before- and after-patch code comparisons, attackers may be able to figure out where a vulnerability lies in Windows 7 — which will be patched — then sniff around the same part of XP’s code until they discover the bug there. From that point, it will be relatively straight forward for them to craft an exploit and use it against unprotected XP PCs.

“Patches to the other Windows operating systems will be reverse engineered by hackers, seeking to discover which vulnerabilities were fixed by Microsoft, and if applicable, modified to work against Windows XP,” Lindgaard said.
He’s not the only one who believes hackers will leverage updates to find unpatched bugs in XP. So does Microsoft.
“After April [2014], when we release monthly security updates for supported versions of Windows, attackers will try and reverse engineer them to identify any vulnerabilities that also exist in Windows XP,” said Dustin Childs, director of Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing group, last October. “If they succeed, attackers will have the capability to develop exploit code to take advantage of them.”
Four of the eight scheduled security updates that Microsoft plans to ship next week look like candidates for hackers because they will affect all client versions of Windows, including Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1. Before Microsoft stopped pushing patches to XP, it was rare for an update to fix one or more newer editions of Windows, but not patch XP at the same time.
One of the four will impact all instances of IE, so there’s a very high chance that that update would have patched the pertinent editions of the browser — IE6, IE7 and IE8 — on Windows XP if Microsoft had continued updating the old OS. The upcoming fix for IE was rated “critical,” Microsoft’s highest threat warning, and was also tagged with the phrase “remote code execution” in last week’s advance notification, meaning that if successfully exploited, attackers could hijack the PC and plant malware on its drive.
Two of the remaining three updates also strongly hint at XP vulnerabilities, albeit less threatening ones, since they will apply not only to the newer client editions, like Windows 7 and 8, but also to the still-supported Windows Server 2003, which has a considerable amount of code in common with XP.
The only good news, said Secunia last week, was that Windows XP’s retirement triggered a sharp decline in its share of U.S. PC operating systems. In the three weeks after April 8, XP’s share dropped nearly 17%, said the Danish security company.
The decline of one percentage point each week took Windows XP from an 18% share before retirement to 15% for the week April 23-29. The three-point drop represented one-sixth, or 16.7%, of the original 18% share.
Secunia measured operating system share by tallying the machines that accessed its patch management tools, including the free Personal Software Inspector (PSI), a utility that identifies out-of-date Windows applications and add-ons, then delivers security updates.
Other measurements of Windows XP, including a global estimate by Net Applications earlier this month, pegged Windows XP’s presence considerably higher, mostly because huge numbers of Chinese computers still run the OS. Net Applications reported that XP powered about 26% of all desktop and notebook personal computers in April.
StatCounter, an Irish analytics company, said that XP’s share in the U.S. averaged 13% last month, a drop from 15% the month prior.
Secunia’s numbers imply that the demise of patch support for Windows XP has prompted a significant portion of American die-hards to finally discard the operating system, presumably replacing it with Windows 7, 8 or 8.1, or in some instances, with a Mac or another type of computing device, such as a tablet.
Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer, on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg’s RSS feed . His email address is gkeizer@computerworld.com.
See more by Gregg Keizer on Computerworld.com.

Source Computer world
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