Top 10 Most Dangerous Malware That Can Cripple Your Device

Short Bytes: Check Point has released the list of the most dangerous malware that are most prevalent in the world. This list was topped by Conficker, a worm that spreads from system to system and downloads malware. For the first time, ransomware found a place in the top 3. In the mobile arena, for the sixth consecutive month, HummingBad remained the most wanted malware.

The Check Point Research Team has released its latest list of the top 10 most wanted malware. The team has indicated that ransomware attacks have continued to rise in the recent months. Also, for the first time since they launched the Threat Index, ransomware has found a place in the top three.According to September’s data, Locky ransomware, which originated in February 2016, was the 3rd most dangerous malware, accounting for 6 percent of all recognized malware attacks all around the world. Talking about the total share of ransomware attacks, it grew by 13 percent.

There was also a rise in the number of active malware families, with 3 new names entering the top 10. These families were Chanitor , Blackhole exploit kit, and Nivdort bot.

In the mobile malware category, Check Point found that for the sixth consecutive month HummingBad, followed by Triada and Ztorg, remained the most common malware used to attack mobile devices.

Top 10 Most Dangerous Malware

1. Conficker: Worm that enabled remote operations and malware download
2. Sality: Virus that allows remote operations and downloads additional malware
3. Locky: Spreads mainly via spam emails with disguised downloader
4. Cutwail: Botnet used to send spams and take part in DDoS attacks
5. Zeus: Trojan used to steal banking information
6. Chanitor: Installs malicious payloads on infected machines
7. Tinba: Banking trojan
8. Cryptowall: Ransomware that uses AES encryption and conducts C&C communication over TOR
9. Blackhole: Exploit kit that uses browser and plugin security flaws
10. Nivdort: Bot that’s used to steal passwords and modify settings

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This blog was first published on: http://thinkdebug.com/blog/top-10-most-dangerous-malware-that-can-cripple-your-device/

A Tropical Getaway: 7 Apps for Easier Travel Planning

In several recent commercial spots, JetBlue has been bragging about its efficiency: how it helps travelers arrive at their destination before they come up with their business idea or before learning about the local animals.

It’s an odd premise because, though speed is a wonderful thing, do you really want to arrive on vacation, only to realize you know nothing about where you are? Vacation is more likely to be fun and fulfilling when you have at least a few plans, even if they’re just to lie on the beach.

What you need are some easy tools to help guide you. Before you hop on that plane to enjoy a little rest and relaxation, you’ll want to download the following great travel apps.

From scuba diving to road trips, there’s an app waiting for your next adventure.

An Approved Itinerary

One of the great challenges of going on a road trip is trying to find the best stops and figuring out how to space them as you go. Now there’s a solution: Tripsee. A crowdsourced itinerary tool, Tripsee aggregates all of the information, from location to costs and hours, while also plugging in your hotel and any flights or other transit data. With insights about which spots are usually overcrowded and other knowledge you can only get from being there, Tripsee is the all-seeing app that goes anywhere you want to be.

When You’re Out of Range

Part of what makes vacationing so great is that you get to disconnect from your normal workday world. Without service, you might not be able to access your home security stream, but you also won’t have to check your work email.

The only problem with this situation is that many travel apps depend on an internet connection. For those who plan to spend their vacation on an isolated stretch of beach, however, this can pose a problem.

If you plan to be off the grid for a good portion of your trip, check out apps like Aruba’s official travel guide, which can function without an internet connection. St. Thomas has a similar app, plus advanced functionality for when you are connected, such as augmented reality tools and itinerary planning.

It’s rare to find a location-based app that doesn’t demand at least a phone signal, but they are out there.

Go Deeper

You might not be able to take your phone snorkeling and scuba diving with you, but its usefulness doesn’t have to end at water’s edge. Your phone has a lot to offer in terms of helping you plan dives, identifying the many colorful fish you will see while snorkeling, and keeping records of what you encounter down below.

DiveMate USB for Android is a perfect fit for divers of any level, and it makes it easy to transfer information between devices. Advanced divers will find a lifeline in V Planner, an app that can predict gas consumption, weather conditions, and more.

Weather the Storm

Finally, you can stop worrying about whether you’ll have sunny skies for the duration of your getaway by downloading tools that stretch a little further than your iPhone’s weather app. Leading tools include Dark Sky, a rain predictor for the notoriously rainy UK and Ireland (as well as the US), and On The Snow, a great app for avid skiers and snowboarders who want to make sure the slopes are in prime condition.

There are many other travel apps, no matter what your destination may be, so if you don’t find the solution to your vacation planning woes here, don’t worry. A quick skim of the app store is sure to turn up precisely the guide to Greenland’s tundra or outer Mongolia that you’ve been looking for.

This blog was first published on: http://smarterware.org/2016/10/tropical-getaway-7-apps-easier-travel-planning/

Android is as secure as iPhone says Google

Google now contents that Android is as secure as Apple’s iOS which powers iPhones and iPads. Android’s head of security Adrian Ludwig touted Android’s secure nature at the O’Reilly security conference in New York City on where he spoke at great length about the security that the new Google Pixel smartphone provided.

“For almost all threat models…they are nearly identical in terms of their platform-level capabilities,” he said. “In the long term, the open ecosystem of Android is going to put it in a much better place,” claimed Ludwig.

Ludwig also touted Google’s Safety Net which scans through 400 million devices every day and 6 billion apps per day. According to Ludwig this means that less than 1 percent Android devices have malware on them.

“At this point we still don’t have any confirmed instances of exploitation in the wild,” he said talking about the StageFright malware issue, which he believed was blown out of proportion.

Ludwig believed there was room for improvement especially when it comes down to Android updates. He believes Google and its carrier and smartphone OEM partners can better collaborate to provide timely updates especially when they are related to security patches.

As in the US, updates are also vetted by the carriers and deployed by them, often phones don’t get updated for months after.

Ludwig also believed that Android is so secure as a platform that it doesn’t suffer any of the afflictions that have plagued dominant operating systems like Windows.

“Mass exploitation is something that I’m not expecting that we’re going to see at any point in the ecosystem.

The Face of Change: 3 Apps Disrupting Enterprise Social Media

As individuals in the 21st century, we all have a sense of what people mean when they use the phrase “social media.” Immediately, our minds populate a list that includes sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. We may even have knowledge of enterprise-specific programs like Slack that have changed the face of professional messaging.

What many digitally savvy people are unaware of, however, is that there are many other platforms that are disrupting enterprise social media as we know it – and if you want to stay ahead of the curve, you need to get on board. For companies committed to digital leadership, these are the three new, must-have apps.

The Next Generation of Visuals

Multimedia social network use has become the gold standard these days, as you can see by dropping in on just about any professional or personal account across the complete range of platforms. Sam Ovens’ peppers his Twitter feed with screenshots of client interactions, companies share video from their product development team, and when all else fails, even major brands aren’t above posting a few baby animal images. Soon, though, this approach to visual won’t be enough, thanks to apps like Storehouse.

What Storehouse brings to the table that sets it apart from other image dominated programs, like Instagram or Snapchat, is the ability to coordinate different sources of images. That means it can pull from your Instagram, Flickr, camera roll, and more to help you create elaborate social media narratives. Although TechCrunch recognized Storehouse as a top appin 2015, most companies haven’t started using it as part of their overall marketing strategy.

The Competitive Edge

There are two main components to brand development and management – the narrative you put out about your brand and what others say about it. While you control that first component, it can be hard to keep up with the broader commentary pointed in your direction, and that’s where Brand24 comes in.

Brand24 is a social media monitor, tuning into your different accounts to catch whatever feedback comes your way, and alerting you to positive and negative comments that may require further attention. This is a great way to keep your finger on the pulse of things and prevents you from missing key customer service opportunities.

The Organizer You Always Needed

In business, sometimes the greatest innovation comes from finding new ways to do old things – progress isn’t always product-focused. That’s what makes Buffer such an innovative tool; it offers a better management system for handling the overwhelming weight of social media.

Plenty of platforms are focused on helping you plan and schedule for a single site, but Buffer ties together Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, and more for a simplified experience. You won’t believe how much time you were wasting coordinating your social media until you see how much easier Buffer makes it.

The role of social media in business will only continue to grow in coming years, so it’s important to stay on the cutting edge, adopting new apps to make your job easier and your strategies more innovative. These three apps are just the beginning of a total social media transformation.

This Blog was first published on: http://smarterware.org/2016/10/face-change-3-apps-disrupting-enterprise-social-media/

Blackberry launches its last, most powerful Android phone

BlackBerry Ltd launched its third Android-based phone on Tuesday, the last device whose success will be the company's financial responsibility, opting to price its top-end device well below Apple Inc's iPhone 7.

The Canadian smartphone pioneer, which has lost most of the market to Apple and others, last month said it planned to completely outsource the development of its smartphones to focus on its more profitable business of making software and managing mobile devices.

That means the Android-based DTEK60 will be the last phone for which BlackBerry buys components itself, which carries a heavier risk if it does not sell well.

"This one is our phone," BlackBerry Chief Operating Officer Marty Beard said in an interview. "This is fully our responsibility."

BlackBerry's Toronto-listed shares were down 1.2 percent in afternoon trade at C$9.70. They had touched C$11.18 - their highest since January - on Sept. 28 when the company announced its outsourcing plan.

"BlackBerry had to kill its hardware in order to save it," website TechCrunch wrote in a broadly positive review of the DTEK60 that nevertheless questioned how much interest it would elicit.

Waterloo, Ontario-based BlackBerry does not have any deals with telecom companies to distribute the device.

Instead, it is pitching the phone directly to companies and governments, as well as selling it on its own websites in the United States, Canada, and several major European countries.

"It's not necessarily an anti-carrier strategy," Beard said. "It's more that we see this as the most efficient and most cost-effective way to get to that customer base."

The device, which has a 5.5 inch touchscreen, will be priced at $499. Apple's iPhone 7 with the same screen size starts at $769, while the equivalent version of Android-maker Alphabet Inc's Pixel starts at $649.

"Certainly it's not going to be the next superstar in the marketplace," said William Stofega, a mobile phone analyst at IDC Corp. "But it's a solid device that brings some really high-end security features and capabilities to it."

The DTEK60 is being manufactured by TCL Corp, a Chinese electronics company that makes phones as well as televisions, air conditioners and other household appliances.

BlackBerry launched its first Android device, the high-end Priv, in November last year and followed it with the much cheaper DTEK50 in July. The company last month wrote down $137 million of phone inventory and supply commitments.

Beware Skype, WhatsApp is getting video calling feature

You already send text messages and make voice calls with WhatsApp, now you can also make video calls through the app — provided you’ve an Android phone, for now.

 Though the company hasn’t begun advertising this yet, but new beta versions of its Android app come with the ability to make video calls. If you and your friend are both on the latest beta version of WhatsApp for Android, you will now see "Video Call" and "Voice Call" options when you hit the dialer button on top. Do note that the feature is still in early stage, so the video feed could stutter at times.

To get this feature, you will need to grab the latest beta version of WhatsApp. The company maintains an official beta testing program on Google Play, and one can sign up for it by tapping the "Become a Tester" button. Alternatively, you can also download the latest beta build of WhatsApp from third-party site APKMirror. The website offers Google-signed apps. Ensure that you snag version 2.16.318 or higher of WhatsApp.

Earlier this month, some Windows Phone users reported that they had received the video calling feature on WhatsApp. Now that WhatsApp has started to exude video calling ability on Android’s beta apps, it seems likely that its iOS and stable Android versions will follow the suit soon.

Video calling is one of the most sought after features on WhatsApp. The Facebook-owned company has in many ways revolutionized how people text, and in recent times, how they make voice calls. Though there are a plethora of apps and services that offer video calling ability — many of them for free — WhatsApp getting this feature would be noteworthy because of its one-billion plus users.

5 Best Open Source Mobile Test Automation Tools

Short Bytes: There is a wide range of devices and platforms one needs to account for when developing a mobile app. An automation app for Mobile Testing can save development and testing time. Here are 5 top open source automated mobile testing frameworks to use, including the likes of Appium, Robotium, and Selendroid.

Testing a software application can be quite cumbersome. Software companies have separate teams allotted just for testing and analyzing their applications. To ease this process, they often design and develop their own effective testing strategies.

The process gets further complicated when the application is cross-platform rather than a single platform (native). For example, a cross-platform mobile app accounts for usage across multiple devices and operating systems. Additionally, mobile hardware and their operating systems are constantly upgraded. Therefore, it is natural to have a generic automated tool for testing software applications. Focussing on mobile applications, the first step in automating your testing is to choose the right framework.

Here are 5 top open source mobile testing frameworks to use:

1. Appium (Android, iOS)

• Supports Android versions from 2.3 and above
• Utilizes UI Automator and WebDriver libraries
• Supports Java, C#, Ruby and those available in the WebDriver library
• Cross Browser support (Safari and Chrome)
• Compatible with JSON wire protocol
• Cross-platform capabilities to run tests across multiple devices

2. Robotium (Android)

• Supports Android 1.6 version and above
• Easy to write powerful test scenarios
• Supports Java
• Handles multiple Android routines automatically
• No Record and Play function and no screenshots

3. Selendroid (Android)

• Uses Selenium 2 client API
• Fully compatible with JSON wire protocol
• No alteration of app under test is needed to automate it
• Can interact with multiple Android devices at the same time

4. Keep It Functional (iOS)

• Supports Objective-C and Swift languages
• Strong and active open source community
• Tests are easy to write, in the same language as the code
• Little or no external dependencies

5. Monkey Talk (Android, iOS)

• Supports a broad range of basic to advanced tests
• A Powerful cross-platform tool enabling high productivity
• Records and plays test scripts for cross-platform apps
• Widely used for native Android, iOS, HTML5, and Adobe Flex apps

These are the top open source tools for mobile test automation. They have a large open source community that is involved in guiding users and contributing to the project. Try any of the above frameworks for a faster mobile app development.

So, which mobile testing app do you use? Do you have something to add? Comment and share with us.
This blog was first published on: https://fossbytes.com/5-open-source-mobile-test-automation-tools/