Russian hackers can reportedly take over unsecured hotel WiFi

Security-conscious travelers typically avoid public WiFi hotspots, instead using VPNs and other tools to make sure their data is safely encrypted as it transmits from computer to unsecured wireless router to the internet. According to networking security website, FireEye, that concern is justified. The security team discovered a malicious document in several emails sent to “multiple companies in the hospitality industry, including hotels in at least seven European countries and one Middle Eastern country in early July.” The document contained a macro that installs GAMEFISH malware, which is associated with a politically-motivated Russian hacking group known as APT28 (or Fancy Bear). This is allegedly the same group that hacked the Democratic National Committee ahead of last year’s US election. Even worse, the tool used after the initial malware installation, EternalBlue, reportedly leaked from the NSA itself.

According to FireEye, the EternalBlue exploit could let hackers access anyone’s computer connected to the hotel WiFi and silently gather usernames and passwords without victims even having to type them in. “It’s definitely a new technique” for this Russion hacker group, FireEye’s Ben Read told Wired. “It’s a much more passive way to collect on people. You can just sit there and intercept stuff from the WiFi traffic.”

The security group warns travelers to be aware of the threat when visiting hotels in other countries (though unsecured WiFi isn’t restricted to foreign hotels), and to take steps to secure their systems. “Publicly accessible WiFi networks present a significant threat and should be avoided whenever possible,” wrote Ben Read and Lindsay Smith in a blog post.

Via: Wired

Source: FireEye

FCC extends net neutrality public comment period until August 30th

It hasn’t been too long since individuals and companies protested the FCC’s plan to gut net neutrality with a national Day of Action. It’s such a hot button issue, that net neutrality supporters basically crippled the FCC website for public comment after HBO’s John Oliver sent fans to register their own complaints (even though the FCC claims it was a DDoS attack, but won’t share any details). With all this fooferah, it’s not super surprising that the FCC has extended the comment period by two weeks, to end on August 30th.

The newly-proposed FCC regs, perversely called “Restoring Internet Freedom,” would allow ISPs to “regulate themselves” in any way the companies see fit. While some telecoms pay lip-service to net-neutrality, it’s not hard to imagine businesses being extremely happy to manage their networks and offering differential high-speed access to content providers who pay an access fee. Net neutrality regulations were written to keep this from happening, making sure that ISPs treat all data equally.

The new public comment deadlines come on the heels of several requests for an extension. “On August 1, 2017, Public Knowledge, Access Now, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Computer & Communications Industry Association, Consumers Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Engine Advocacy, National Consumer Law Center on behalf of its low-income clients, the World Wide Web Foundation, and the Writers Guide of America West (Movants) filed a motion requesting an eight-week extension of the reply comment deadline in this proceeding,” says the FCC document. While the original request was for an eight-week delay, the FCC feels that two weeks is plenty.

Via: The Verge

Source: FCC

Investors demand key VC firm leave Uber’s board in light of lawsuit

Yesterday, it was revealed that Benchmark Capital, an Uber investor with a seat on the company’s board, is suing former CEO Travis Kalanick for fraud. Now, in an equally bizarre move, a group of investors is asking Benchmark to divest a significant portion of its Uber shares and remove itself from the company’s board.

Benchmark’s suit is based around Kalanick’s move to create three additional seats on the board, including one for himself, after he stepped down as CEO. Benchmark wants Kalanick out completely and now other board members want Benchmark out in turn. In an email obtained by Axios, three investors — Shervin Pishevar, Ron Burkle of Yucaipa and Adam Leber of Maverick — claim that Benchmark’s lawsuit is “ethically dubious and, critically, value-destructive rather than value enhancing.” They go on to call the move “fratricidal” and note concerns that it would “cost the company public goodwill, interfere with fundraising and impede the critical search for a new, world-class Chief Executive Officer.”

The email, which was circulated to other investors who were given the opportunity to add their names to it, requests the company remove its board member and sell at least 75 percent of its Uber holdings. It also asks Uber’s board of directors, which is meeting today, to cast a symbolic vote on the lawsuit.

This is a weird shakeup in an already strange situation, but maybe it shouldn’t be all that surprising anymore that Uber continues to find itself in newfound troubles.

Source: Axios

A popular messaging app inspired Times Square’s latest tourist trap

In Japan and South Korea the messaging service Line is king. But it’s almost unknown in North America, let alone the rest of the West. That leaves people this side of the international date line unaware of a cultural phenomenon that’s arguably more beloved than Line itself: the service’s adorable animal mascots. Last week, Line Friends — a standalone company fully dedicated to promoting the characters — opened a storefront in New York’s Times Square, its 73rd brick-and-mortar location worldwide and the first in America. But the shop isn’t just a cursory expansion into the US market. By planting itself in one of the most tourist-trafficked areas in the world, Line Friends hopes curious travelers will peek inside — and take some of the cute characters back to their home country.

Line Friend’s CEO James Kim was on hand for the public launch of the first American store. Like those other outposts, the Times Square location’s walls are lined with apparel and stuffed versions of the characters. Brown the bear, chief among the brand’s mascots, appears most often, with a colossal 10-foot-tall incarnation greeting visitors at the front entrance. On the official opening day, two people clad in human-size Line Friends costumes met fans of the characters, which are otherwise pretty obscure here in the US.

The story of Line Friends begins with the March 2011 Tōhoku earthquake, which crippled cellular communications in Japan. To fill the gap, engineers from Naver Corp.’s subsidiary NHN Japan built their own internal chat tool. That June, they released it to the public as the Line smartphone app. Even then, Line found itself competing with WeChat, the messaging app from Chinese internet titan Tencent. To set itself apart, Line went after younger users with stickers — oversize emoji, really — including two free sets with a quartet of animal and human characters. Their cutesy appearance and comical antics endeared them to Line users. They have also sold really, really well: Stickers drew in $268 million for the company in 2016.

The stickers were the tipping point: After extensive focus group testing, Line chose characters that resonated with teenage girls, the tastemakers of Japan. The stickers were both evocative and universal, telling silly and heartfelt stories about the individual characters’ daily lives. Line hit 50 million signed-up users within a year of launch. A year after that, it had grown to a total of 300 million users across Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and other Asian nations. The company renamed its main cast of mascots “Line Friends.” Like Hello Kitty’s troupe of cutesy oddballs, Line Friends have fleshed out their cast’s backstory and personalities. The eleventh character and most recent addition, Choco, was introduced in March 2016.

Line Friends became an opportunity to spread the company brand. Japan is known for cuteness: Almost everything, including public transit systems, gets their own adorable mascot. These corporate ambassadors often find their way into themed cafes and shops. Line wanted to do something similar and give fans real-life “experiences” with the characters they’d only known on their smartphones. Line Friends experimented with its first pop-up store in Myeong-dong, South Korea, in October 2013, and then built a permanent location in the city’s Lotte Young Plaza the following April. The shops grew to sell more than just stuffed animals and shirts, expanding into homewares and stationery. In short, they have things for millennials and families who like “modern design with some cuteness,” according to Line Friends America CEO Sehoon Chang.

They’ve also started leveraging the Line Friends to sell tech. Line has bet big on the character designs to sell speakers powered by its AI assistant Clova. Specifically, Brown the bear and Sally the duck will decorate the Champ series, which should come this winter after the first, Wave, debuts in the fall. The Champs will hit the New York City store’s shelves eventually, but they’re likely aimed at the Asian market Google and Amazon haven’t optimized their Home and Alexa products for Asian markets, giving Line an opportunity to sell its AI-powered speakers there first.

The company kept to that strategy — an experimental pop-up, potentially followed by a brick-and-mortar store — as it launched additional stores in Taiwan, Tokyo’s Harajuku district, Hong Kong, Beijing and now, New York (which had pop-up test spaces of its own in 2014 and again last year).

Line has wanted to expand into the US since for five years now but competes with Facebook’s trio of Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram, which are more popular in this part of the world. But Line Friends doesn’t exist solely to promote the Line app anymore — it’s its own unique brand, and technically even its own organization, having broken off as a subsidiary in 2015.

Part of fleshing Line Friends out into its own entity meant expanding into other media. Line Offline: Salaryman is an animated office comedy that aired in 2013, while the cartoon Line Town followed shortly thereafter. Both share the same identifiable DNA of the stickers, walking fans through antics a little bit sillier than those in their everyday lives. But more recent animations have focused on either teaming up with big brands like Samsung or 7-11, or city-wide promotions like New Year’s celebrations in Hong Kong. That’s digital visibility.

The New York City store is intended to make Line Friends more visible in a different way. On the location’s launch day, Line Friends CEO James Kim noted that Times Square itself gets over 300,000 tourists every day and millions of pictures are hashtagged to the location on Instagram daily. The point isn’t just to have Americans wander into the store: It’s to have visitors from countries where Line isn’t popular discover these products and bring their adoration back with them. Or, at least, note it on social media for their followers at home. Chang estimated that the store’s visitors were likely around 50 percent international tourists, 30 percent Americans visiting from out of state and 20 percent local New Yorkers.

The goal is to spin these characters as their own standalone brand, which is how Line Friends have successfully advertised their cast in East Asia. The real-life locations aren’t just merchandise warehouses: They often have elaborately-designed areas patterned after the characters’ backstories, replicating online lore inside stores. Line Friends’ flagship three-story Itaewon, South Korea location has areas decorated to look like characters’ rooms, while the cafe on the top level has several large versions of the cast seated at tables for visitors to hang out and take photos with.

It’s the kind of endearing experience that even first-time visitors appreciate, of falling into a carefully-built world of broad-strokes delight filled with colorful, lively characters. The same is true of the New York City store: Plushies and apparel line the walls while large, posed statues of the Line Friends cast are carefully positioned in the store’s nooks like set pieces. In one, Brown is dressed in a hoodie and sneakers to match a new theme for the character; In the secluded back area, one wall is modeled after Choco’s room, with the bear sitting in front of a mirror getting ready for the day. The brand, and the craft to maintain it, feel a lot like a Disney park. That’s no accident.

“Disney is a reference for us, and always a textbook for the character business. They give us a lot of inspiration,” Chang told Engadget on the New York City store’s opening day. Then Chang pointed across the street at the Disney store. “There are reasons Disney picked a location in Times Square.”

Brand visibility, he means: a physical location to lure in passersby. But their store has more variety of products than Disney’s, Chang said, citing its range of homeware. Most of these products (aside from pro-NY merchandise) can be found at other locations, but many North Americans are seeing them for the first time. Some things will have to go, Chang said: A massage stick (pictured below) probably won’t appeal to shoppers in New York, while some of the notebooks aren’t sized according to US market norms.

Line’s flagship communication app still faces stiff competition at home. WeChat reached 938 million monthly active users in the first quarter of 2017, while Line seemingly plateaued in the same period at 171 million. Ad revenue grew, but 73 percent of the company’s revenue came from the Japanese market. On the other side of the Pacific, Facebook Messenger reported passing 1.2 billion MAUs in April, while WhatsApp noted in June it had 1 billion.

The stores, then, are one way of distinguishing Line’s service from its bigger competitors, especially as the company seeks new markets to reverse a slight decline in monthly active users. At the end of 2014, while one pop-up experimented in New York City, another opened in Bogota, Colombia. It wasn’t clear if the South American market responded well to the Line Friends merchandise — but if the company is planning to follow up its NYC location with one farther south, it hasn’t announced anything yet. Time will tell whether physical storefronts push Line Friends into the Western cultural consciousness.

Images: Evan Rodgers & David Lumb / Engadget

Asus leaks four ZenFone 4 models on its own website

Last year’s Asus’ ZenFone 3 line of mobile devices included a ton of spinoffs, including the ZenFone 3 Deluxe, ZenFone 3 Laser and the dual-camera ZenFone 3 Zoom this past January. Apparently the potentially confusing naming conventions are going to continue, as Asus just accidentally leaked four new ZenFone 4 models onto its own website, including updated basic, Selfie and Max models. What’s new here is the Selfie Pro, an upgraded handset with two cameras on the front and upgraded specs inside. Does the world really need a professional selfie phone, though?

The leaked handsets could include the aforementioned ZenFone 4 Selfie model, which was shown to have a Snapdragon 430 chipset, a 720p 5.5-inch IPS display and two cameras (20MP and 8MP) on the front. The Selfie Pro, then, might have an upgraded Snapdragon 625 chipset, a 5.5-inch AMOLED screen at 1080p, and the front two cameras come in at 25MP and 5MP. According to the listing, the Pro model will cost an extra 100 Euro over the €399 of the basic ZenFone 4 Selfie.

The removed listings also show a ZenFone 4 basic model with the same display as the Selfie Pro above, a Snapdragon 630 processor, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of expandable storage. There’s also a 3,300mAh battery to keep the thing charged for longer periods. Finally, Asus’ listing showed off the ZenFone 4 Max, which seems to have a smaller battery, a Snapdragon 450 processor, 3GB of RAM and 32GB of expandable storage memory, and a smaller screen. There’s no word yet on if, when or where these devices will be available.

Via: The Verge

Source: Android Police

MacRumors Giveaway: Win a USB-C Pro Hub Adapter From Satechi

For this week’s giveaway, we’ve teamed up with Satechi to offer MacRumors readers a chance to win one of Satechi’s Aluminum Type-C Pro Hub Adapters, designed for Apple’s 2016 and 2017 13 and 15-inch MacBook Pro models. With these machines, a hub is a must because of the limited number of ports and the lack of USB-A.

Satechi’s Pro Hub measures in at 4.5 inches long and 1.1 inches wide, and it plugs right into the side of a MacBook Pro, using two USB-C ports on either the left or right side (or just the one side on 13-inch non Touch Bar models).

Made of aluminum and available in either Silver or Space Gray, the hub matches well with the MacBook Pro, and at just 1.4 ounces, it’s super portable and can even travel plugged right into your machine.

The Pro Hub features an HDMI port that supports 1080p video at 60Hz (4K at 30Hz), two USB-C ports, 2 USB-A ports, an SD card slot, and microSD card slot. The USB-C power delivery port supports 5K video (or 2x4K), 40Gb/s data transfer speeds, and passthrough charging up to 87W, so it works with all USB-C MacBook Pro models. The second USB-C port does not support passthrough charging, but offers data transfer speeds up to 5Gb/s.

Satechi sells the Pro Hub for $99, but we have three to give away to MacRumors readers for free. To enter to win, use the Rafflecopter widget below and enter an email address. Email addresses will be used solely for contact purposes to reach the winner and send the prize. You can earn additional entries by subscribing to our weekly newsletter, subscribing to our YouTube channel, following us on Twitter, or visiting the MacRumors Facebook page.

Due to the complexities of international laws regarding giveaways, only U.S. residents who are 18 years of age or older are eligible to enter. To offer feedback or get more information on the giveaway restrictions, please refer to our Site Feedback section, as that is where discussion of the rules will be redirected.

a Rafflecopter giveawayThe contest will run from today (August 11) at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time through 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time on August 18. The winners will be chosen randomly on August 18 and will be contacted by email. The winners will have 48 hours to respond and provide a shipping address before new winners are chosen.

Tags: giveaway, Satechi
Discuss this article in our forums

TouchArcade iOS Gaming Roundup: Minecon, Darkest Dungeon, Valve’s New Game, and More

Kicking off this week in iOS gaming was an appearance I made on the Australian games podcast, GameHugs. It’s an industry-centric podcast that explores the backstory of web sites and studios in the world of video games (and often mobile games). On the most recent episode, I get into what goes on behind the scenes running a site like TouchArcade, as well as the odd chain of events that led me to TouchArcade — including, but not limited to, getting banned from the MacRumors forums. It’s a fun story, but if that’s not your cup of tea, as usual there are always tons of other things going on in the world of iOS games.

I’ve mentioned it in previous roundups, but things are starting to get real when it comes to the impending release of iOS 11 and with it, what we’ve been calling the 32-bit app-pocalypse. We started casually compiling a list of our favorite games that have yet to be updated, which grew into this gargantuan article filled with some amazing titles that likely aren’t going to work in the future. It’s worth skimming through, as if you’ve been buying iOS games for a few years now I’d be really surprised if you didn’t own at least one of the games on the list. It might be worth one last play through before iOS 11 steamrolls everything next month.

Hi Shaun, this week’s release will feature an updated emulator core with new features. This will be rolled out to other releases soon.

— SEGA Forever (@SEGAForever) August 7, 2017

We’ve been giving Sega a pretty hard time surrounding the launch of the “Sega Forever” lineup of free with one-time unlock classic emulated games, as most of the re-released titles perform worse than the first time they hit the App Store, back in 2009. This week, they released Ristar, which as mentioned in the tweet above includes a new emulation engine. This new engine is loads better than the one used in the rest of the Sega Forever lineup, making Ristar a game worth checking out just to experience the difference. Hopefully Sega quickly updates the rest of its library with the updated emulator.

If you’ve got kids who are into Minecraft either on the Mac, or Minecraft: Pocket Edition, chances are you’ve heard about Minecon. If not, it’s an event Mojang puts on that is the place to be if you even remotely care about the game. It features meetups, developer Q&A, and other things along those lines. The problem is, Minecraft is a very inclusive game and an expensive conference with a limited number of tickets is fairly exclusive. In the future, they’re shifting the event to be focused around livestreaming and interactive community events that everyone, not just people at Minecon, can participate in. This seems like a really cool move. Watch the video above for way more details.

In regards to games to look forward to, one title we’re super stoked for is Darkest Dungeon coming to iPad. We’ve known it’s been in the works for a while, but now we have a release date: August 29. Darkest Dungeon is an award-winning RPG that currently is only available on Steam. The iPad port is going to have a really cool feature: totally cross-platform Dropbox save syncing. I’m always a huge fan of this sort of thing, and really wish more developers took the time to implement it — particularly when porting games like this.

The International is taking place this week, which is basically the DOTA 2 equivalent of the NFL playoffs and Super Bowl being sandwiched together into one massive week long event. Between games, they announced that they were going to reveal a game Valve has been working on. Valve fans have been dying for Half Life 3 (or Portal 3, or any other sequel) for years now, and many thought this would be it. What they ended up revealing is a likely free to play fantasy collectable card game called Artifact. The crowd reaction was incredible:

LOL THE DISAPPOINTMENT #TI7 pic.twitter.com/WVXP30jxyT

— nick@TI7 (@nickisnixed) August 9, 2017

While I’m sure Artifact will do very well, particularly if they tie in the Steam Marketplace, yet another digital collectable card game is close to the most boring thing Valve could have announced. Regardless, with these kinds of games the key is to get as many people as possible playing them. Platforms have yet to be announced, but it really wouldn’t surprise me at all if Artifact came to both Mac and mobile. Whatever it’s going to be on, it won’t be released until next year.

When it comes to to digital collectable card games you can actually play right now on both Mac and iOS, Hearthstone’s new expansion launched this week. Aside from loads of new cards, Knights of the Frozen Throne also features some really cool single player content. Blizzard is releasing new missions each week until players finally face off against the Lich King himself. Oh, and per the above video, the Lich King is really into reading mean tweets.

(Photo by Afterpad)
Last, but not least, is a puzzling lawsuit by Gamevice. If you haven’t heard of them, they make some pretty cool MFi controller accessories that you stick your iPhone or iPad in to play them in a form factor that’s pretty close to the Nintendo Switch. In the eyes of Gamevice, a little too close to the Nintendo Switch, which is why they’re taking them to court for patent infringement. If Gamevice is successful in their lawsuit, they could put a stop to Nintendo Switch sales all together. It seems unlikely, but as a spectator sport, watching these patent cases evolve is always interesting.

That’s it for this week in iOS gaming, but as always if you enjoy these sorts of things be sure to check out TouchArcade. We review tons of games, post way more news like this, and have a weekly podcast that’s also a great way to keep up in the world of iOS games.

Tag: TouchArcade gaming roundup
Discuss this article in our forums

Apple Accepting Red Cross Donations to Aid British Columbia Wildfire Relief Efforts

Apple is accepting donations to the Canadian Red Cross through iTunes to help people affected by ongoing wildfires in British Columbia. The province declared a state of emergency in July.

iTunes users in Canada can donate $5, $10, $25, $50, $100, or $200 with a credit card tied to their account. Apple will transfer 100 percent of the proceeds to the Canadian Red Cross, which is providing relief efforts for the wildfires.

As of August 6, the BC Wildfire Service said 132 wildfires were currently burning in the province, with a total of 900 wildfires since April 1. As of August 9, over 3,600 personnel were working to fight the fires, which have forced some residents to evacuate due to dangerous conditions, including poor air quality.

Apple says iTunes credit cannot be used to make a donation. The fine print also says donations may not qualify for a tax deduction.

Apple routinely accepts Red Cross donations through iTunes for natural crises, including wildfires in Fort McMurray, Alberta last year.

Via: iPhone in Canada

Tags: Canada, Red Cross
Discuss this article in our forums

Mockups Imagine What Apps Might Look Like on iPhone 8

As the launch of Apple’s “iPhone 8” approaches, we’ve seen multiple images and dummy models outlining what the device will look like, but non-functional dummy devices don’t include software and don’t offer a complete picture of what we can expect.

Designer Maksim Petriv has mocked up several iPhone 8 images that take into account current rumors to demonstrate what iOS 11 might look like on the new device.

Rumors and leaked firmware information suggest the iPhone 8 includes both a top notch that houses the front-facing camera and sensors for a facial recognition system and a function area with a virtual Home button, both of which are imagined in Petriv’s images.

Petriv’s photos include status bar information located at the top of the device on either side of the notch, and a small Home button area at the bottom. We’re not yet sure what Apple plans to do with that area of the iPhone 8, but we do know that it’s resizable, can be hidden, and does not appear to include app UI elements, meaning it’s simple.

The renderings made by Petriv demonstrated the Lock screen and App Store, along with popular apps Netflix and Spotify.

Apple’s HomePod firmware has suggested the status bar information like signal strength, carrier info, and battery life will be split and displayed in the area near the sensors/camera, with Petriv also imagining three ways Apple could display status bar information. Apple’s own firmware image leak points towards the third option and suggests the company will fully embrace the notch rather than hiding it through software.

It’s not quite clear what design solution Apple will use, but these images do give us some idea of what apps will look like on an edge-to-edge display with almost no bezels and with a cutout for the front-facing camera and sensors.

Apple typically unveils new iPhones in early September, so we are just weeks away from getting our first glimpse at the iPhone 8 and its companion devices, the iPhone 7s and the iPhone 7s Plus. For a deeper look at what to expect from the upcoming iPhones, make sure to check out our iPhone 8 roundup.

Related Roundup: iPhone 8
Discuss this article in our forums

Expand your car’s power ports with Bestek’s 7-port car charger!

In addition to making a damned fine Power Tower, Bestek also has a line of products dedicated to expanding the number of power ports in your car. Most cars have one or two outlets, at most, and if you have more than one person in the car that needs to charge their phone, you might be out of luck.

Fortunately, Bestek has a solution to that problem. This little guy not only provides three DC ports for the price of one, it also gives you four USB (2×2.4A, 1x1A, and 1 variable 0-2.4A) ports – for a total of seven usable power plugs for various devices. The case is made of glossy, black and red plastic that feels solid in-hand but picks up fingerprints like crazy. A LED mounted on the front lets you know when the unit is on, and little rubber feet on the bottom help keep it in place in a moving car – unless, of course, you set it in your center console, like I did. As you can see, it fits perfectly.

A nice design touch in this power strip is the LED readout that displays the current charge of your car battery, which is very useful. It gives you an idea of how much power you’re consuming, which can be helpful for people with cars that have smaller batteries. There’s also a power switch, so you can turn off the unit without unplugging it. Finally, the third of the three DC ports also acts as a cigarette lighter, for those of you that still smoke in your cars (the box actually includes a cigarette lighter to plug into that port, funnily enough).

The only beef I have with this particular unit is the covers for each DC port; they’re soft rubber, making them hard to pry open – they simply flex instead of opening, much to my chagrin, especially while driving. No matter, though – once they’re open, I doubt you’ll find cause to close them again.

Buy this Bestek 7 port car on Amazon for $23.99 – not a bad bargain for expanding the number of power ports on your car to a more comfortable level.

An unassuming box, but a fine product inside.

As you can see, the glossy finish really picks up fingerprints.

3 DC ports, 4 USB ports. 7 Total.