August 2019

20 August 2019
TECH
www.theasianindependent.co.uk
Hackers access files of USbased
cyber security firm
San Francisco : Using an email address
and password mistakenly exposed on the
Internet, a hacker gained access to the
internal files of US-based cyber security
company Comodo, bringing the credibility
of the company under question.
The credentials were found in a public
GitHub repository owned by a Comodo
software developer, TechCrunch reported
on Saturday.
The account was not protected with
two-factor authentication and with the
email address and password in hand, the
hacker could enter the company’s
Microsoft-hosted Cloud services.
The leaked credentials were discovered
by a Netherlands-based security researcher
Jelle Ursem who reached out to Comodo
Vice-President Rajaswi Das.
According to Ursem, the account
allowed him to access internal Comodo
files, including sales documents and
spreadsheets in the company’s OneDrive
and the company’s organisation graph on
SharePoint, allowing him to see the team’s
biographies, contact information, like
phone numbers and email addresses, photos,
customer documents and calendar.
Screenshots of folders containing agreements
and contracts with several customers
-- with names of customers in each filename,
such as hospitals and US state governments.
"Seeing as they’re a security
company and give out Secure Sockets
Hotter weather
linked to higher
suicide rates
NEW YORK : Hotter weather increases
both suicide rates and the use of depressive
language on social media, says a new study
that analysed half a billion tweets.
The research published in the journal
Nature Climate Change suggests that the
effects of climate change could be as devastating
as the influence of economic recessions
when it
comes to
increasing
suicide rates.
Projected
temperature
rise through
2050 could
lead to an
additional
21,000 suicides
in the
US and
Mexico, the
findings
showed.
"Surprisingly, these effects differ very little
based on how rich populations are or if
they are used to warm weather," said lead
researcher Marshall Burke, Assistant
Professor at Stanford University.
Researchers have recognised for centuries
that suicides tend to peak during warmer
months. But, many factors beyond temperature
also vary seasonally such as unemployment
rates or the amount of daylight
and up to this point it has been difficult to
disentangle the role of temperature from
other risk factors.
To tease out the role of temperature from
other factors, the researchers compared historical
temperature and suicide data across
thousands of US counties and Mexican
municipalities over several decades.
The team also analysed the language in
over half a billion Twitter updates or tweets
to further determine whether hotter temperatures
affect mental well-being.
They analysed, for example, whether
tweets contain
language such
as "lonely",
"trapped" or
"suicidal"
more often
during hot
spells.
T h e
researchers
found strong
evidence linking
warmer
temperature
with higher
suicide rates.
To understand how future climate change
might affect suicide rates, the team used projections
from global climate models.
Temperature rise by 2050 could increase
suicide rates by 1.4 per cent in the US and
2.3 per cent in Mexico. "Hotter temperatures
are clearly not the only, nor the most important,
risk factor for suicide," Burke emphasised.
"But our findings suggest that warming
can have a surprisingly large impact on suicide
risk, and this matters for both our
understanding of mental health as well as for
what we should expect as temperatures continue
to warm," Burke added.
Layer (SSL) certificates, you’d think the
security of their own environment would
come above all else," the report quoted the
Userm as saying. Earlier this year Ursem
found a similarly exposed set of internal
Asus passwords on an employee’s GitHub
public account.
Now get old
Twitter interface
with few clicks
SAN FRANCISCO : A Twitter user
and software developer, Zusor, has
shared a useful ’do-it-yourself’ guide to
bring back the old Twitter interface with
just a few clicks, and has named it
’GoodTwitter’.
To get the old interface, just open
Twitter and follow this sequence of
commands: Click on "(...) More" in the
left-hand menu.
Go to "Settings and privacy" >
"About Twitter" > "Directory". A new
Twitter tab will open, click on "Home"
and you will find the old user interface,
The Next Web has reported.
So far, GoodTwitter has been downloaded
by nearly 35,000 Chrome and
Firefox users, attracting rave reviews on
Reddit. Twitter recently redesigned the
interface for its website version, saying
the new look is faster and easier to navigate,
but a lot of people are not liking
it. The new version comes with an
expanded Direct Messages section and
the ability to let users switch between
accounts faster and directly from the
side navigation. It comes with new dark
themes Dim and Lights Out.
As part of the redesign, while the
Home, Explore, Notification and
Messages options have been shifted to
the left of the desktop, the trending section
has been moved to the right of the
screen.
FACEBOOK users take to
Twitter to vent frustration
NEW DELHI : Many Facebook users have taken to Twitter
to describe the concerns they have with the Mark Zuckerberg led
social media platform with #AndThatsWhyIHateFacebook.
While many users revealed that people often paint a false picture
of their lives on Facebook and hide their real life stories,
some complained about privacy issues.
Explaining why they hate Facebook, some raised concerns
about the social network’s community standards.
"My ex-husband is always on my "people you may know"
list. Trust me, if I knew you better, we wouldn’t have married
#AndThatsWhyIHateFacebook" yelled a Twitter user.
"It’s basically a massive government data gathering operation
where people unknowingly but freely and willingly reveal information
about themselves. #AndThatsWhyIHateFacebook,"
alleged another user. Tweets on the hashtag are continuously
increasing and going viral over the Internet globally.
"Facebook took a great profile design and replaced it with
Timeline, just so they could attract customers they could sell our
info to", said user of @TheGiftOfMayhem Twitter handle.
"People posting 97 pics a day of some random event, all blurry
and in need of some serious cropping and no one needs 97
pics of any event #AndThatsWhyIHateFacebook", said
@tonidevelin. "Cause my grandma sees everything I post
#AndThatsWhyIHateFacebook", tweeted another user.
Another user alleged that Facebook allowed the Russians to
meddle in the American elections, lets neo-fascists organise,
makes human trafficking easier and doesn’t care about it.
The hashtag started trending amid reports that Facebook Co-
Founder Chris Hughes, who called for the breakup of the social
network, is reportedly in talks with influential US government
officials who are evaluating the market power of the company.
WhatsApp building desktop
version that works without phone
SAN FRANCISCO : Facebook-owned WhatsApp is reportedly
working on a desktop version of the app that would allow
users to use the messaging app on a PC without having to connect
their phone to the Internet. In 2015, WhatsApp released a
web version that mirrored the conversation from the mobile app,
but to use it, one needed to have their phone connected to the
Internet. Reliable WhatsApp leaker account WABetaInfo tweeted
on Friday that the company might be developing a Universal
Windows Platform (UWP) app along with a new multi-platform
system that would work even when your phone is off.
In addition, WhatsApp is also reportedly working on a multiplatform
system that would allow users to access their chats and
profiles on more than one device with the same account. The
multi-platform system would also work in synchronisation with
WhatsApp’s UWP, which is also in the works, to offer the standard
chat interface on different devices with the same account.