Shhh… Microsoft's Wi-Fi Sense Can Make You the 'Hotspot'

Check out The Daily Dot article below:


Windows 10 can share your Wi-Fi password with your Facebook friends

By Mike Wehner
Jul 3, 2015, 12:28pm CT

If you’ve been using the internet for any considerable amount of time you already know that your password is really never absolutely secure. From hacking incidents to other security breaches, it’s impossible to know that your secret code is indeed always secret, and now Microsoft’s soon to be released Windows 10 is making one of your passwords even less secure by gifting it to your Facebook friends.

Microsoft’s Wi-Fi Sense feature—already in operation on Windows Phones and coming to Windows 10 upon its debut later this year—is aimed at making it easier to share your connection with your friends. To that end, it allows users to effortlessly use each other’s Wi-Fi connections by allowing them to use your password.

The password itself is encrypted and shared automatically once you opt-in, and the list of people who can use it includes your Outlook mail contacts, Skype contacts, and even your Facebook friends.

The idea here is that if you’re at a friends house and you both have Wi-Fi Sense, you can join their network without having to ask for their password. Ideally, such a system will save you from using your wireless data plan as much as possible, thereby saving you a few bucks.

However, there are likely plenty of people on your Facebook or email contact lists that you wouldn’t want browsing from your own internet connection, and that’s where the potential for trouble comes in. Not surprisingly, Microsoft’s own FAQ about Wi-Fi Sense is filled with warnings about connecting to unfamiliar hotspots, as well as sharing your connection with those you don’t trust.

The documentation also notes that you cannot pick and choose individual contacts with which to share your connection. Instead, you’ll only be able to toggle huge groups on or off, like everyone from your Skype list or your entire Facebook friends roster. So, if you don’t trust absolutely everyone you know on Facebook, Skype, or Outlook, it’s probably a good idea to leave this would-be handy little feature unused.

Shhh… Pre-installed Superfish Malware Leaves Lenovo Computers Vulnerable to Man-in-the-Middle Attacks

I’m a self-confessed hardcore fan of the good old IBM Thinkpad laptops but I’ve shied away from the black box ever since the Lenovo acquisition in 2005. And this (see video clips below) is one of those reasons. My tilt these days is towards those laptops with no parts made in China

Shhh… Sandworm Team Turned Microsoft Windows Flaw into Russian Cyber-espionage Campaign

http://www.npr.org/v2/?i=356167086&m=356177255&t=audio

A group of hackers known as the “Sandworm Team”, allegedly from Russia, has found a fundamental flaw in Microsoft Windows (a zero-day vulnerability impacting all supported versions of Microsoft Windows and Windows Server 2008 and 2012) and turned it into a Russian cyber-espionage campaign targeting NATO, European Union, telecommunications and energy sectors – by pulling emails and documents off computers from NATO, Ukrainian government groups, Western European government officials, and also the energy sector and telecommunications firms, according to new research from iSight Partners, a Dallas-based cybersecurity firm.

iSIGHT_Partners_sandworm_timeline_13oct2014

Photo credit: iSight Partners.

Post-Snowden, the US Reaps a Security Whirlwind

From China with Love

It’s the one year anniversary of what is now known as the Snowden revelations, which appeared on June 5 and June 9 when The Guardian broke news of classified National Security Agency documents and Edward Snowden revealed himself in Hong Kong as the source of those leaks.

There is still much to decipher from the chronology of events in the aftermath and the sudden global awakening to the end of privacy. Among the impacts on the personal, business and political fronts, one interesting salient feature is the hypocritical rhetorical spats between the US and China in recent weeks, which could set the undertone for US-Sino relations for years to come.

Snowden said his biggest fear is that nothing would change following his bold decision a year ago.

You can find the entire column here.