New wireless charging tech juices your phone from across the room using lasers

University of Washington

Today’s wireless charging tech may be called “wireless” charging, but it’s not exactly what people think of when they imagine charging their phones without the indignity of having to plug them in. Wireless charging tech of the kind employed by Apple, Samsung, and other device makers still involves plugging in a charging pad and putting your phone on it; it just means you don’t have to directly attach your phone.

Engineers at the University of Washington may now have developed the kind of long-range smartphone wireless charging folks have been longing for, and like the a lot of attention-grabbing tech innovations, it involves a laser. The result looks like the world’s most useful James Bond deathtrap.

As detailed in a recent paper published in the Proceedings of the Association for Computing Machinery on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable & Ubiquitous Technologies, the tech involves firing a narrow, invisible beam from a laser emitter, which can deliver a charge to a smartphone sitting on the other side of the room. This is achieved by mounting a thin power cell to the back of a smartphone, which enables it to absorb power from the laser. According to the team, the laser tech is as efficient for charging as plugging your smartphone charger into a USB port.

“The advantage to our technique is that it can work at much longer ranges than the near field wireless charging solutions built into phones,” Vikram Iyer, a graduate student in Electrical Engineering at the University of Washington, told Digital Trends. “These chargers only work at ranges of a few centimeters. In contrast, our system works at ranges of a few meters or more. We chose lasers for our approach because they provide a focused beam of energy. Doing this with radio waves is much more inefficient because radio waves spread out significantly in space, requiring a very high transmit power to receive enough to charge a phone.”

The team’s laser charging technology also features all-important safety precautions. These include the addition of a metal, flat-plate heatsink on the smartphone which dissipates excess heat from the laser, as well as a method of shutting off the laser if a person moves into its path. This involves using “guard beams” which don’t deliver charge, but monitor movement, and can shut off the charging laser immediately if a human body is detected.

“What we’ve demonstrated here is a first proof of concept,” Iyer continued. “We’re looking at methods of improving things like the range and form factor of our current prototype. As far as commercialization, we’re currently exploring options.”

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New wireless charging tech juices your phone from across the room using lasers

University of Washington

Today’s wireless charging tech may be called “wireless” charging, but it’s not exactly what people think of when they imagine charging their phones without the indignity of having to plug them in. Wireless charging tech of the kind employed by Apple, Samsung, and other device makers still involves plugging in a charging pad and putting your phone on it; it just means you don’t have to directly attach your phone.

Engineers at the University of Washington may now have developed the kind of long-range smartphone wireless charging folks have been longing for, and like the a lot of attention-grabbing tech innovations, it involves a laser. The result looks like the world’s most useful James Bond deathtrap.

As detailed in a recent paper published in the Proceedings of the Association for Computing Machinery on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable & Ubiquitous Technologies, the tech involves firing a narrow, invisible beam from a laser emitter, which can deliver a charge to a smartphone sitting on the other side of the room. This is achieved by mounting a thin power cell to the back of a smartphone, which enables it to absorb power from the laser. According to the team, the laser tech is as efficient for charging as plugging your smartphone charger into a USB port.

“The advantage to our technique is that it can work at much longer ranges than the near field wireless charging solutions built into phones,” Vikram Iyer, a graduate student in Electrical Engineering at the University of Washington, told Digital Trends. “These chargers only work at ranges of a few centimeters. In contrast, our system works at ranges of a few meters or more. We chose lasers for our approach because they provide a focused beam of energy. Doing this with radio waves is much more inefficient because radio waves spread out significantly in space, requiring a very high transmit power to receive enough to charge a phone.”

The team’s laser charging technology also features all-important safety precautions. These include the addition of a metal, flat-plate heatsink on the smartphone which dissipates excess heat from the laser, as well as a method of shutting off the laser if a person moves into its path. This involves using “guard beams” which don’t deliver charge, but monitor movement, and can shut off the charging laser immediately if a human body is detected.

“What we’ve demonstrated here is a first proof of concept,” Iyer continued. “We’re looking at methods of improving things like the range and form factor of our current prototype. As far as commercialization, we’re currently exploring options.”

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Another patent describes a haptic feedback feature for the Surface Pen

We already know Microsoft’s plans to install a touch-sensitive clip on the Surface Pen to emulate a mouse wheel. Now another patent rears its head, this time pointing to a cool haptic feedback feature for Microsoft’s Surface-branded peripheral. That simply means you will feel sensations in your hand generated from the pen for a more life-like drawing experience. 

Microsoft’s patent describes the layout of the Surface Pen tip area. For starters, the pen tip itself moves in and out of the housing based on your hand’s applied pressure. This tip relies on a “resilient element” that prevents it from falling out of the peripheral. Behind this element is a coil that serves as an electromagnet, which signals a controller to activate haptic feedback when the resilient element applies pressure to the coil. 

“A surface of the substrate faces the resilient element,” the patent states. “The resilient element presses against the surface in response to the tip receding toward the housing. The resilient element includes magnetic material. The signal applied on the coil induces a magnetic driving force on the resilient element.” 

In gaming, haptic feedback provides vibrations that mimic the firing of a machine gun, earth-shaking blasts from massive explosions, damage taken to the player, and so on. This physical input pulls you into those games, but with a Surface Pen, you won’t be shooting aliens or taking serious damage. Instead, haptic feedback could emulate the feel of drawing with a pen and paper, such as the amount of pressure applied to the screen, the velocity of your strokes, the angle of the pen while you’re doodling or simply feedback acknowledging your press of a button. 

Microsoft’s patent spotted last week describes a modification to the Surface Pen that adds a touch-sensitive retention clip. The idea is to imitate the mouse wheel: Roll your finger down to scroll down or zoom in, and roll your finger up to scroll up and zoom out. The clip would consist of a conductive material encased with an isolating material, and connect to a capacitive sensor located within the pen. 

In addition to the touch-sensitive retention clip, the patent also describes two buttons located on the barrel instead of one that will serve as the left- and right-click buttons on a mouse. That said, the patent clearly defines a stylus-like peripheral to replace the modern mouse, but Microsoft’s latest patent takes that initiative one step further by providing physical feedback. 

The current Surface Pen costs $99 and is available in platinum, black, burgundy, cobalt blue, and aqua blue colors. It connects to Windows 10 devices via Bluetooth 4.0 and relies on an AAAA battery. But unlike the version described in Microsoft’s patent last week, the most-recent version consists of a single barrel button and the tail eraser button.  

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The crazy-expensive Ketra lightbulb now boasts smart home features, too

LED efficiency and a few key smart controls might have been the biggest innovations in consumer lighting in recent years, but innovations in the commercial space can take things a whole lot further. Offering high-efficiency RGB customization and constant self-checks to maintain a cohesive lighting scheme, Ketra’s bulbs have begun to reshape modern offices. Now, the LED lights have launched smart home capabilities and are compatible with Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Crestron, and Lutron.

All this functionality doesn’t come cheap though, with each individual bulb costing as much as $100. But as homes and businesses alike begin to pay more heed to the importance of light, it seems as though Ketra is finding a larger customer base.

The Ketra lights claim to simulate sunlight, shifting in color throughout the day. Plus, thanks to the custom driver chip found in all Ketra lamps and luminaires, these products should stay true to its intended color and vibrancy throughout its lifetime.

While the customizable nature of Ketra’s LED bulbs is impressive and their ability to go from daylight to disco in a second is a fun feature, it’s the bulbs’ error-checking capability that really sets them apart from the competition. Ketra’s bulbs check their own light emissions six times a second to confirm that they are sending out the desired lighting tone and intensity.

That is an important backdrop feature for the ability to tweak lighting on the fly. The idea is that spaces can change their theme with a color change, rather than having multiple rooms for different purposes. A showroom Ketra uses to show off that function is a typical kitchen, that switches from morning breakfast to an evening party atmosphere with a change from white to blue and purple light.

While Ketra’s health claims about simulating the sun are a little less tangible (and not supported by government-backed health regulators) they are there as part of the marketing and are helping Ketra make big strides in the commercial sector. And now that Ketra offers smart home integrations, which means they can be controlled remotely or via voice, they made find their way into more living rooms and bedrooms, too.

Updated on February 21: Ketra is now compatible with smart home platforms including Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant.

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Head in the clouds: The complete noob’s guide to ecigs and vaping

Vaping is a great way to kick the cigarette habit, and is generally thought of as a healthier alternative to smoking. It may save you a good deal of money in the end, too, given today’s high cost of cigarettes. It’s not as easy as just picking up the latest and greatest mod and some e-juice, though. The initial investment can cost you a good deal of money, and you have to figure out what your body needs in terms of nicotine. Making the right choices from the beginning will prevent you from wasting money or going back to cigarettes. With that in mind, here’s our step-by-step guide on vaping.

Making the commitment

If you want to vape, then it’s probably a good idea to also decide whether you’re also ready to quit cigarettes. While there are plenty of people who do both, you’ll have a higher chance of success with vaping if you quit the “analogs” entirely, and prevent nicotine overdose. Why? Let us explain.

Cigarettes, by design, will deliver a fairly regular dose of nicotine per cigarette. The brain typically associates the end of a cigarette with enough nicotine in most people, so you likely won’t pick up another. Vaping doesn’t have that. Instead, you’ll be able to vape anytime you want, and if you have a tank, there’s a lot more nicotine in that than you’ll need in any one sitting. So your body loses that mental cue, and initially it might be hard to judge when enough is enough.

If you decide to do both, you might be asking for trouble. You might vape too much early on, and when combined with the nicotine in the cigarettes, you might be putting too much in your body. Symptoms of nicotine overdose aren’t pleasant, either, and include everything from nausea and vomiting to headaches and bouts of dizziness. These negative experiences could lead you to stick with cigarettes.

Make the commitment to quit cigarettes altogether when you start to vape. For most people, it’s simply the smarter move.

Choosing the right nicotine level

The right amount of nicotine varies based on a variety of factors. A good guide is how heavy of a smoker you were. Typically, e-juice comes in five different levels (3, 6, 12, 18, and 24mg). There is e-juice out there with zero nicotine, however, as well as juice with substantially more. We’d recommend sticking with the standard levels first, and keep in mind that you may need to do some trial and error to find the right level for you.

If you smoked more than a pack a day, chances are that you’ll need a nicotine strength of at least 18mg to start off. Many need to start out at 24mg to get the right amount of nicotine, sure, but we suggest starting low to see how your body reacts. Pack-a-day smokers will likely need either 12 or 18mg in the beginning.

One neat thing that seems to happen as you vape longer is that your body typically starts to crave nicotine less — just watch your body for some of the aforementioned overdose symptoms. If you feel start to feel the effects, try lowering your nicotine level. There are some vapers out there who have completely weaned themselves off of nicotine altogether using this stepping-stone method — who knows, you might eventually not need to vape either!

Another thing to remember: your vaping device also plays a part in the nicotine level. A disposable e-cigarette has meager vapor production, so the amount of nicotine delivered is less per puff. Those cloud-blowing mods have much better vapor production, however, meaning you’re likely getting more nicotine in a single shot.

If you’re going right to cloud chasing, consider 3 or 6mg instead. Some heavy smokers might need 12mg, but most won’t.

Selecting your first “mod”

When choosing the type of e-cigarette that’s best for you, ask yourself a few questions first. Is discreteness a concern? Are you comfortable with some basic construction and consider yourself more mechanically inclined? Are you looking for large cloud production? Most importantly, how much are you willing to spend? After all, prices range from as little as $30 to an upward of $200.

If discreteness is a concern, you might want to consider what is called a “cigalike.” These look like cigarettes and typically come with a disposable, unscrewable end that holds the e-liquid (Blu is an example of these). You’ll also find disposable cigalikes wherever cigarettes are sold. Once you’re done, you simply throw the whole thing out, not just the tip.

A big drawback to these is the cost. While they may be cheap up front (some disposables are less than $10), you’ll spend far more than other options in the long run. For the irregular smoker though, this might be the best alternative.

If you don’t mind spending a bit more and losing some discreteness, go with a vape pen. While you still can use pre-filled, disposable cartridges with a pen, you can also use a tank. This means you can change juice as you see fit, and while there are ways to replace the coils — the element that heats your e-juice into vapor — these tanks are built to be disposable and low-cost, so can simply get a new one when you’re done. Plus, if you have a few of these tanks with different types of e-juices, you can switch flavors whenever you want.

Vape pens cannot deliver a lot of power, however, so vapor production is not going to be substantial. As a general guideline, they will produce about as much vapor as a cigarette does smoke in most cases. If you want more in the way of vapor production — and typically better battery life — consider a “box mod.”

Box mods offer a great deal of flexibility in what you can do. These units push way more power, which, in turn, gives you more flexibility in how you vape. While you can run tanks on these devices, many box mod users opt for a special type of tank called an RDA or RBA. RDAs, short for rebuildable dripping atomizers, are quite popular. Essentially, you “drip” the e-liquid directly onto the cotton wick. Others still prefer the tank-like qualities of the RBA, or rebuildable atomizer, so they go that route.

With greater customization comes a higher price, though. The mod itself is the most expensive part, and you’ll need to buy a battery in many cases. A lot of mods also come with a tank, but you might also need to buy that as well, and possibly a battery charger. As you can see, it can quickly become expensive. As a box mod user myself, I’ve spent several hundred dollars on batteries, various tanks, and all the accessories and tools needed.

Finally, there is an even more involved type of vaping device called the mechanical mod. Mechanical mods are free of any electronic control to regulate the vape, and allow for the ultimate in customization. This said, you need to have a background in vaping and some basic electronics skills to properly utilize them. We don’t recommend going this route if you’re new to vaping, but once you get the feel for the practice as a whole, mechanical mods may be something to try out later.

The FDA and you

If you’ve been interested in vaping, you’ve probably heard about the FDA’s regulations on ecigs and how they’re sold. Here’s a quick overview of how this changes things, and how it affects you.

Vape shop employees are not permitted to really do anything for you other than sell you the equipment. This means if you go the more customizable route, you’re on your own, which is one of the reasons why we strongly suggest you start with the basics first. They also really can’t say anything positive about vaping, so most shops will be leery of discussing anything more than the product.

You might also expect to sample juices. While this still can happen, they must charge you to do so, so bring some cash. Also, make sure you have your ID handy — you’re likely to get carded if you appear under the age of 27. There is a silver lining in these regulations, though. While some smaller manufacturers may not be able to afford the new pre-approval process, e-cigarettes should, in general, should become more safe with time.

There’s also confusion with how the law will actually work in real life, so things may change over time. This is especially true for e-juices, given some current lawsuits are already arguing that the pre-approval process for vaping devices shouldn’t apply to e-juices.

What the FDA process doesn’t prohibit, however, is other vapers helping vapers. If you have a question that wasn’t answered here, fire away in the comments. We’ll try to help you out, as well as other Digital Trends readers.

Happy vaping!

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VR takes you to the top of a skyscraper to help you face your fear of heights

Are you scared of heights? How do you feel about trying to cure those fears by taking a trip to the top of New York’s One World Trade Center, the tallest skyscraper in the Western Hemisphere? Perhaps counterintuitively, such a terrifying scenario may actually be one of the best ways to overcome acrophobia, according to a treatment known as exposure therapy.

This therapy is something that Lithuanian software development company TeleSoftas wants to help with, courtesy of its “VR Inner Child” software, an immersive virtual reality tool created to help psychotherapists treat phobias. The VR experience involves a hyper-realistic simulation in which patients face a child version of their virtual selves, who then guides them through the dizzying rooftop scene under a therapist’s supervision.

“The so-called ‘inner child’ interacts with the patient, gradually helping him or her overcome a specific fear — in this case the fear of heights — by tapping into the patient’s free inner child ego state,” Vytautas Kemesis, TeleSoftas’ chief technology officer, told Digital Trends. “While interacting with our inner child, we challenge our deeply held beliefs that form in early childhood, before our critical receptors are mature.”

-The therapist tracks the patient’s stress parameters live at all times, and can adjust the actions of the avatar accordingly. Stress=level monitoring is carried out via sensors in a wrist-worn tracker, as well as the VR headset itself. Metrics that are measured include eye movement, heartbeat, perspiration, and skin temperature. These stress parameters allow a patient to be safely pushed to their limits and overcome their anxiety over a period of time — courtesy of a gamified system that lets them try and improve on their previous numbers.

“There haven’t been any clinical trials yet to prove its effectiveness,” Kemesis said. “However, transactional analysis theory, which is what our technology is based on, has been applied for many years to treat various mental disorders and phobias. VR Inner Child is [currently] only a prototype created to show the possibilities that open when IT and medical experts combine their know-how and collaborate to challenge the mental health care industry.”

A demo of the experience will be shown off next week at Mobile World Congress 2018 in Barcelona, Spain. Oh, and if you’re not afraid of heights, subsequent phobia-challenging VR experiences promise to include open and closed spaces, public speaking, and spiders!

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Essential Phone users can now join the Oreo beta with a simple OTA update

Sideloading is still an option, but why would you want to bother with that?

Although we’re still waiting for the Essential Phone to get a public Oreo update, the company’s been running an Oreo beta since November. The process for getting the beta isn’t the simplest around, but Essential is now making it much easier to sign up and join.

Up until now, if you’ve wanted to sign up for the beta to get Oreo on the Essential Phone, you’ve had to manually sideload the software onto your device. This isn’t an overly complicated process, but if you aren’t careful with what you’re doing, there’s always the chance you could accidentally brick your phone. Thankfully, Essential is eliminating this barrier and allowing you to join the Oreo beta with a simple over-the-air update.

To do this, the process couldn’t be any simpler. Just head to Essential’s beta page, choose the “Over-the-Air” option under “How Would You Like to Install the Beta?”, and then enter your name, email address, and device serial number. Once you do this, your Essential Phone will receive an update to download Oreo.

The last Oreo beta was released on Valentine’s Day, and with it came an update to 8.1, a fix for jittery scrolling, and the latest February security patch.

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Mobile gaming has an advertising problem that needs to be addressed

There are so many great games in the Google Play Store library — don’t fall for sleazy advertising tricks.

It’s safe to say that aside from the Super Bowl, people generally go out of their way to avoid watching ads. We use ad blockers wherever possible and smash that “Skip Ad” button on YouTube pre-roll ads as soon as humanly possible.

Needless to say, I am also aware that ads are still a necessary evil in the world of smartphone apps — users typically don’t like to pay for apps if there’s a free alternative, but developers still need reliable avenues for generating revenue. Including ads in your game or app offer a workable compromise wherein users are conditioned to expect the occasional ad interruptions in exchange for not having to deal with upfront costs.

If you’re playing a free game downloaded from the Google Play Store, you’ll be forced to sit through ads for other games eager to steal a share of your screen time.

This means if you’re playing a free game downloaded from the Google Play Store, you’ll be forced to sit through the occasional ad for a different game eager to steal a share of your screen time. Services like AdMob by Google have helped generate over $3 billion according to its own figures, and I’m all for app developers getting paid for their work, even if they ultimately decide to release their app for free.

But over the past couple years, it’s become abundantly clear to me that there are little to no standards or guidelines for acceptable content or honesty in mobile gaming ads. There are many examples I could point to, but I’ll focus my arguments on three particular ad types that are gratuitous, misleading, or just plain gross.

Sex sells

First up, consider this CG trailer for Sword of Chaos. Between the excessive boob jiggling and gratuitous low-angle shots of the all-female cast fighting, you’re left with no clue who the characters are, what they’re fighting for, but most importantly what type of game is being advertised.

It’s an MMORPG, by the way, and it looks and plays nothing like this ad would have you believe. The actual game features a fixed, high-angle camera that keeps your character in the center of the frame, so I guarantee more than a few teenaged users were left feeling deflated if they downloaded this game immediately after seeing this ad pop up on their screen. The developers say it’s “one of the most cutting-edge mobile action MMORPG ever produced”, but if that’s true, you’re left to question why they chose to focus on the overt sexual objectification of women (sex sells) instead of simply showcasing the game itself.

You know, just like Lords Mobile does in its ads.

So much cringe

If you search “Lords Mobile ads” on YouTube, you’ll get results for videos titled “Terrible Lords Mobile Advertisements are TERRIBLE”, “Lords Mobile Ad Cringe”, and “Lords Mobile ads are cancer”. On one hand, these ads do attempt to show actual gameplay, but they do so by overlaying a cheesy scripted video of a “streamer” “playing” the game. Almost every ad uses the same in-game footage with a different actor reacting incredulously about how fun this game is to play.

It would be easy to brush off these laughable Lords Mobile ads as just lazy, but when they continue to pop up over and over again on your screen it really makes you think — oh, never about downloading the game, but instead how bad the game must be if it wasn’t possible to reach out to the community and get a real player to record genuine reactions to them playing one of their favorite game.

Beyond the pale

But the worst of the bunch that ultimately led me to write this article was a series of ads that bombarded my phone last week for a game called Mafia City. Each ad was slightly different, but they all shared a similar tone and shocking imagery: a whimpering person gagged and bound to a chair while a cool-looking mafia dude stood nearby with a big gun. It was a video ad with accompanying audio of a man pathetically sobbing.

They were all pretty dumb ads to be sure, but nothing worth writing about until one popped up with options to either “Kill” or “Seduce” the bound man. What.

Why does Google allows so many dishonest or disrespectful ads to propagate across its network of services?

I’m not sensitive to video game violence. I played through GTA 5 and had no issues with the controversial torture scene in that game. But that scene is designed to be a tough moral choice for the player to make, and GTA 5 was also never marketed solely based on that single game mechanic. It’s one thing for video games to glorify violence, but Mafia City to me crossed boundaries of decency and good taste simply for the shock value. I tried to imagine what sort of personality you’d have to have to see that ad and think “Heck yea, this is the game for me!”

I question why Google allows ads of this ilk to propagate across its network of services. They pop up within other games and apps downloaded from the Google Play Store and also as pre-roll ads on YouTube. Are there no guidelines for what is considered acceptable for advertising mobile games? Should we not expect honesty in advertisements from mobile game developers?

I’m aware that by spending so much time talking about these bad ads, I’m probably proving some marketing expert’s point about how effective these ads are at making impressions and generating discussion. If I could write about this topic without buzz marketing any of the associated games I would. Just know if you’re an app developer or advertiser using these sleazy tricks I will never download your app, and I hope anyone reading this avoids them, too.

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Motorola study sheds light on how addicted we really are to our phones

Over half of Gen-Z respondents in the study referred to their phone as “a best friend.”

Smartphones are great. They connect us with friends and family members, allow us to capture memories through pictures and video, and can even be home to some truly excellent gaming experiences. It’s almost necessary for most people to own a phone these days, but as we all know, there’s a point where phones can become a problem.

Motorola recently partnered with Dr. Nancy Etcoff from Harvard University and the Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Psychiatry to ask a series of questions to 4,418 smartphone users in the U.S., Brazil, France, and India between the ages of 16 to 65. The goal of the study was to get a better idea as to how the average person uses and interacts with their phone, and some of the results are, honestly, pretty depressing.

• 33% of respondents said they’d rather spend time on their phone than spend face-to-face time with friends
• 53% of Generation Z respondents consider their phone to be “a best friend”
• 44% said they feel compelled to constantly check their phone
• 29% are “thinking about using it or planning the next time I can use it” when they’re without their phone

Thankfully, most people appear to be aware of their addictions and want to change things. 60% of those surveyed agreed it’s important to have a life away from phones and 61% said that they want to get the most out of their phone while on it and the most out of life when they’re not.

60% of people want to better their phone-life balance.

Following these findings, Motorola created a simple 10-question quiz you can take to see whether or not you need to improve your phone-life balance. Motorola is also working with the team behind the SPACE Phone-Life Balance App, so there’s a chance future Moto phones could come with exclusive trials, discounts, or features for the service.

Phone addition isn’t a cheery topic to talk about, but it’s also incredibly important. My eyes are on a screen for 8+ hours each day between my phone and computer for work, and while I can’t really give these things up because of the nature of my job, I do my best to make conscious efforts to use them as little as possible when I don’t have to. I don’t always succeed at this, but it’s something worth working on each and every day.

If you’re comfortable opening up in the comments below, how’s your phone-life balance? Is it something you think you’ve mastered, or do you often find yourself struggling with it?

Phone addiction is making me sad and anxious, but so is the idea of quitting

BitTorrent client exploits could let rogue websites control your PC

BitTorrent’s peer-to-peer app and its lightweight uTorrent counterpart are susceptible to particularly nasty hijacking flaws. Google researcher Tavis Ormandy recently detailed a host of DNS rebinding exploits in Windows versions of the software that lets attackers resolve web domains to the user’s computer, essentially giving the intruders the keys to the kingdom. They could execute remote code, download malware to Windows’ startup folder (making it launch on the next reboot), grab downloaded files and look at your download history. The flaws touch on all unpatched versions, including uTorrent Web.

Thankfully, fixes are either here or around the bend. Although Ormandy was concerned by the lack of communication after reporting the fix in December, BitTorrent engineering VP Dave Rees told Engadget that the flaws in the conventional client have been fixed in beta versions released last week. Those on the stable releases should see it this week. Ormandy was initially concerned that BitTorrent hadn’t properly fixed uTorrent Web’s problems, but Rees said a patch is now in place that should address that exploit. You can read the full statement below.

It’s not certain if anyone has made use of the exploits in the wild. Having said that, you’ll definitely want to update as quickly as you can. It would only take a visit to the wrong website to trigger an attack, and the consequences could be particularly severe.

“On December 4, 2017, we were made aware of several vulnerabilities in the uTorrent and BitTorrent Windows desktop clients. We began work immediately to address the issue. Our fix is complete and is available in the most recent beta release (build 3.5.3.44352 released on 16 Feb 2018). This week, we will begin to deliver it to our installed base of users. All users will be updated with the fix automatically over the following days. The nature of the exploit is such that an attacker could craft a URL that would cause actions to trigger in the client without the user’s consent (e.g. adding a torrent).

“BitTorrent was also made aware yesterday that it’s new beta product, uTorrent Web, is vulnerable to a similar bug. This is a different product and wasn’t covered by the original vulnerabilities. The team behind uTorrent Web released a patch for that issue yesterday and we highly encourage all uTorrent Web customers to update to the latest available build 0.12.0.502 available on our website https://web.utorrent.com and also via the in-application update notification.

“As always, we encourage all customers to always stay up to date.”

Via: TorrentFreak, Ars Technica

Source: Tavis Ormandy (Twitter), Chromium.org