Twitter silences some verified accounts after wave of hacks

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A series of high-profile Twitter <TWTR.N> accounts were hijacked on Wednesday, with some of the platform's top voices - including U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden, reality television show star Kim Kardashian, former U.S. President Barack Obama, billionaire Elon Musk, and rapper Kanye West, among many others - used to solicit digital currency.

The cause of the breach was not immediately clear and - more than an hour after the first wave of hacks - Twitter took the extraordinary step of preventing at least some verified accounts from publishing messages altogether.

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"We are lucky that given the power of sending out tweets from the accounts of many famous people, the only thing that the hackers have done is scammed about $110,000 in bitcoins from about 300 people," he said.

The web browser is by far the most important piece of software on your PC. Unless you’re at a workstation crunching numbers or editing Hollywood blockbusters, you probably spend the majority of your computer time staring at a webpage.

There are tons of browser options out there but real choice is limited. With Edge now using Chromium, three of our four browsers in this showdown are based on Google’s open-source project. Even the two most talked about “alternative” browsers, Brave and Vivaldi, are based on Chromium.

We won’t get into the argument here, but suffice to say, from our point of view this is bad. The web thrives when multiple engines adhere to independent web standards, not when developers target a single browser engine. We’re not quite returning to something like the age of Internet Explorer 6. Apple’s Safari browser (based on Webkit) is really the only choice on iOS, for example. Still, it’s concerning.

Picture for a moment a version of Google Search that barely evolved from its early years. Instead of a results page cluttered by informational widgets, this one would primarily link out to other sites. And instead of tracking your search history for ad targeting purposes, this search engine would be decidedly impersonal.

It turns out that such a thing exists today in Startpage, a Netherlands-based Google search alternative that emphasizes privacy. While it’s not the only privacy-first search engine—DuckDuckGo is a better-known example—Startpage is the only one whose search results come from Google, due to a unique and longstanding agreement in which Startpage pays the search giant to get a feed of links for any search. The result is a search engine that feels a lot like Google did before it leaned into personalized search and advertising—and all of its requisite data collection—about 15 years ago.

“We don’t collect, share, or save any personal information,” says Robert Beens, Startpage’s CEO. “That means not setting cookies. It means not storing IP addresses. We don’t store your searches, and we don’t profile you.”

Although StartPage has been around as a privacy-focused search engine since 2006, it’s made several major improvements lately as people become more wary of data collection by tech giants. Last year, the search engine launched a new design and an “Anonymous View” feature that hides your device’s identity from the sites you click on. StartPage doesn’t disclose user numbers but said in early 2018 that it was handling two billion searches annually, and says that it’s seen 10% growth in search volume this year.

Earlier this month, Startpage added another big feature: it’s an answer to Google News in the form of a “News” tab, which provides a feed of stories based on your search results. Beens says the News tab is a response, of sorts, to the way personalized newsfeeds can predominantly surface ideas people agree with, thereby reinforcing their existing biases. Because Startpage isn’t collecting any data on users, its story selection—which comes from Microsoft’s Bing search engine instead of Google—is inherently more neutral.

“We feel it’s a great extension for our privacy search engine, and if people want to look at news that’s unbiased, and where they don’t get profiled, they can come to our website,” he says.


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Goodbye, Chrome: Google’s Web browser has become spy software

Our latest privacy experiment found Chrome ushered more than 11,000 tracker cookies into our browser — in a single week. Here’s why Firefox is better.

7 Reasons to Switch From Google Chrome to Mozilla Firefox

Bye, Chrome: Why I’m switching to Firefox and you should too

Quit Chrome. Safari and Edge Are Just Better Browsers for You and Your Computer.

It’s over, Chrome. O-V-E-R.

I’d say I’ll remember the good times—your speed, your superb handling of Gmail—but your RAM hoovering, battery draining and privacy disregarding make it easy to not look back.

This is the year, people. It’s the year I challenge you to pack up your bookmarks and wave bye-bye to Google’s browser, and pick one that cares more about performance and personal data.

Microsoft’s new Edge browser, rolling out to Windows 10 machines this summer and available now for download on a Mac, is based on Chromium, the same underlying technology as Chrome—yet it uses less of your Windows computer’s RAM and battery. An independent, Mozilla’s Firefox, the Bernie Sanders of browsers, now puts privacy front and center.

Meanwhile, Apple’s built-in Safari browser has the best blend of privacy, performance and battery to offer on Macs, and it’s only getting better this fall with MacOS Big Sur.


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Microsoft’s Edge browser was crashing if you had Google set as default search

Jul 30, 2020

Microsoft’s new Edge browser started randomly crashing when users typed into the address bar tonight. The issues appear to have affected Edge users who had selected Google as the default search engine. Microsoft investigated the problem and now says it’s believed to have been resolved.

The Microsoft Edge crashes started at around 7PM ET, and were affecting macOS and Windows users. Microsoft resolved the problems after around four hours of crashes, but it’s not clear why they were only limited to Google search users in Edge. If users switched to Microsoft’s Bing search engine within Edge, the crashes never occured.

Microsoft recommended turning off Search Suggestions in edge://settings/search as a temporary workaround. The Verge tested this workaround and it solved the problem if you had Google set as your default search engine.

Microsoft is now recommending that Edge users revert any settings they changed as the address bar crashes are now resolved.

Windows 10: HOSTS file blocking telemetry is now flagged as a risk

August 3, 2020

Starting at the end of July, Microsoft has begun detecting HOSTS files that block Windows 10 telemetry servers as a 'Severe' security risk.

The HOSTS file is a text file located at C:\Windows\system32\driver\etc\HOSTS and can only be edited by a program with Administrator privileges.

This file is used to resolve hostnames to IP addresses without using the Domain Name System (DNS).

This file is commonly used to block a computer from accessing a remote site by assigning host to the 127.0.0.1 or 0.0.0.0 IP address.

For example, if you add the following line to the Windows HOSTS file, it will block users from accessing Google as your browsers will think you are trying to connect to 127.0.0.1, which is the local computer.

Microsoft now detects HOSTS files that block Windows telemetry

Since the end of July, Windows 10 users began reporting that Windows Defender had started detecting modified HOSTS files as a 'SettingsModifier:Win32/HostsFileHijack' threat.

When detected, if a user clicks on the 'See details' option, they will simply be shown that they are affected by a 'Settings Modifier' threat and has 'potentially unwanted behavior,' as shown below.



BleepingComputer first learned about this issue from BornCity, and while Microsoft Defender detecting HOSTS hijacks is not new, it was strange to see so many people suddenly reporting the detection [ [url=https://www.tenforums.com/antivirus-firewalls-system-security/161347-cant-get-rid-settingsmodifier-win32-hostsfilehijack.html]1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ].

While a widespread infection hitting many consumers simultaneously in the past is not unheard of, it is quite unusual with the security built into Windows 10 today.

This led me to believe it was a false positive or some other non-malicious issue.

After playing with generic HOSTS file modifications such as blocking BleepingComputer and other sites, I tried adding a blocklist for Microsoft's telemetry to my HOSTS file.

This list adds many Microsoft servers used by the Windows operating system and Microsoft software to send telemetry and user data back to Microsoft.

As soon as I saved the HOSTS file, I received the following alert stating that I could not save the file as it "contains a virus or potentially unwanted software." I also received alerts that my computer was infected with 'SettingsModifier:Win32/HostsFileHijack.''



So it seems that Microsoft had recently updated their Microsoft Defender definitions to detect when their servers were added to the HOSTS file.

Users who utilize HOSTS files to block Windows 10 telemetry suddenly caused them to see the HOSTS file hijack detection.

In our tests, some of the Microsoft hosts detected in the Windows 10 HOSTS file include the following:


If you decide to clean this threat, Microsoft will restore the HOSTS file back to its default contents.

Users who intentionally modify their HOSTS file can allow this 'threat,' but it may enable all HOSTS modifications, even malicious ones, going forward.

So only allow the threat if you 100% understand the risks involved in doing so.

BleepingComputer has reached out to Microsoft with questions regarding this new detection.

For Apple, it’s unclear what exactly Nvidia’s acquisition of Arm could mean. Nvidia and Apple have had a rocky relationship for quite a while. However, Nvidia says that Arm will “continue to operate its open-licensing model while maintaining the global customer neutrality that has been foundational to its success.”

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang emphasized that the company has no intentions of doing anything that would cause clients like Apple to walk away:

Nvidia Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang said he loves Arm’s business model and wants to expand its broad client list. As for concerns the deal will upset Arm’s relationships with customers including Apple Inc., Huang said Nvidia is spending a lot of money for the acquisition and has no incentive to do anything that would cause clients to walk away.

Apple started licensing technology from Arm in 2006 for the iPhone. The A-series processors are now used in the iPhone and iPad, as well as products like HomePod and Apple TV. Apple also just confirmed at WWDC that the Mac will transition to Apple Silicon processors, which will also be based on Arm technologies.

As we noted in July, Arm Holdings was founded in November 1990 as Advanced RISC Machines Ltd and structured as a joint venture between Acorn Computers, Apple, and VLSI Technology.