Tech Wrap-Up 9-10-2018

Tech Wrap-Up 9-10-2018

Last updated: September 15, 2018 

Tech Wrap-Up 9-10-2018. Wrapping up the day with a summary of today’s most engaging stories from the Tech Help Knowledgebase social media feeds. We order the story summaries below by user engagement (posts with the most likes, shares, clicks, hashtag clicks and detail expands) and by the number of impressions they received. Stories are in descending order with the most engaging story at the top. Our human-curated social media feeds include links to technology news, how-to and help articles, and video tutorials for common issues.

Stories curated for our feeds are written by our staff writers or culled from third-party sources that produce content peripherally related to the categories covered by our site. See the summaries and links below for today’s top stories by user engagement. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and YouTube to interact with our feeds.

Today’s Tech Wrap-Up

1. The internet is crashing for millions (Kim Komando) 

A DNS encryption key upgrade by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) may impact up to 1% of Internet users next month. You’ll know you’re one of them if you begin seeing “server failure” messages in your web browser instead of your favorite website. Close your browser and relaunch it, and/or clear your browser cache of cookies and history if it happens to you.

2. Firefox calls it quits on antiquated Windows XP, Vista (Computerworld) 

Windows XP launched in August 2001. Vista launched five years after that. If you’re still running one of those operating systems, it’s well over a decade old now. Mozilla supported both operating systems until last week. Even Microsoft stopped supporting Windows Vista in 2017. Mozilla said the change impacts only 2% of Firefox users. Time to put down your Walkman and upgrade operating systems.

3. Exploit vendor drops Tor Browser zero-day on Twitter (ZDNet) 

Information security company, Zerodium, published a Tor Browser zero-day advisory on Twitter today. When deployed, the vulnerability bypasses Tor Browser’s NoScript extension. The good news is Tor Browser 8.0, released last week, is not affected. Zerodium notified its government customers of the flaw a few months ago. Tor Browser 8.0 caused the flaw to reach the end of its life cycle, hence today’s advisory release.

4. Ransomware campaign targets businesses with fake invoice message (ZDNet) 

Making the rounds in Europe (mostly France) is a phishing campaign that uses fake Locky ransomware. Tricked users click an invoice-related link in an email which downloads a malicious ZIP file. The malware lies in wait for more than 11 days after download before encrypting an infected machine.

5. Microsoft’s Your Phone app can now view, send, and receive SMS messages from Android, on your PC (BetaNews) 

The Your Phone app is now for more than viewing photos on Android from your Windows 10 machine. Link your Android phone to your Windows 10 computer using the Your Phone app to text with your contacts. Caveat: your phone must run Android 7.0 or greater.

6. Microsoft ‘Confirms’ Windows 7 New Monthly Charge (Forbes) 

If you’re still running Windows 7 in January 2020, you’re going to pay. If you want to keep your computer safe, that is. That’s because Microsoft ends Extended Support for Windows 7 on January 14, 2020. No word on the cost yet, but at least an option exists for Windows 7 users to continue to run their systems safely.

7. MIT machine vision system figures out what it’s looking at by itself (Engadget) 

The foreboding artificial intelligence conversation last week between Joe Rogan and Elon Musk has everyone skittish. MIT’s DON (Dense Object Nets) system identifies objects on its own, effectively teaching itself to see. When you tell people to move along because there’s nothing to see here, you may not be the thing doing the seeing.

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