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A Google computer's stunning 3-0 victory in a Man-vs-Machine face-off over the ultimate board game highlights the need to keep Artificial Intelligence under human control, experts said Saturday. The partly self-taught AlphaGo programme's defeat of Go grandmaster Lee Se-Dol showed AI was progressing faster than widely thought, they said -- a highly symbolic moment in humanity's quest to create smart machines. And while AI plays a key role in building a better, safer world, some fear the fast pace of development could finally leave humans outwitted by our own inventions. AlphaGo's triumph "shows that the methods we do have are...

Another day, another Adobe Flash security vulnerability.Adobe issued an emergency patch for Flash overnight to fix a security hole that’s already being actively used in the wild. CVE-2016-1010, which an attacker could use to execute code on your machine, is being used in “targeted attacks,” according to Adobe. The good news is there’s an update that you can get already – or you might already have it, if you turned on automatic updates.The bad news? Well, it actually affects more than just Flash, extending to Adobe AIR, AIR for Android, Flash Player for Linux and a number of other clients.Given the attack...

If Microsoft's documentation is correct, installing Patch Tuesday's KB 3139929 security update for Internet Explorer also installs a new Windows 10 ad-generating routine called KB 3146449. Many people -- present company included -- feel that putting an ad generator inside a security patch crosses way over the line. In fact, you have to ask yourself if there are any lines any more. Microsoft lays it all out in black and white in its inimitable, most obfuscatory way. This month's MS16-023 security patch for Internet Explorer, KB 3139929, says: This security update resolves several reported vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer. The most...

Cisco released software updates this week to patch several high severity vulnerabilities in the company’s cable modems, residential gateways and security appliances. A couple of serious flaws in Cisco’s residential gateways were reported by Kyle Lovett, and Chris Watts of Tech Analysis. Lovett discovered an information disclosure vulnerability (CVE-2016-1325) that allows a remote, unauthenticated attacker to access sensitive data on affected devices. The issue, caused by improper access restrictions, affects the Cisco DPC3941 Wireless Residential Gateway with Digital Voice and the DPC3939B Wireless Residential Voice Gateway. Watts identified a denial-of-service (DoS) flaw affecting the Cisco DPQ3925 8x4 DOCSIS 3.0 Wireless...

The first known ransomware targeted at Apple's Mac computers was only downloaded about 6500 times, according to a representative for the Transmission project, whose software was used to launch the attack. Transmission representative John Clay said the ransomware was added to disk-image of its software after the project's server was compromised in an attack. "We're not commenting on the avenue of attack, other than to say that it was our main server that was compromised," he said. "The normal disk image [was] replaced by the compromised one." He said security on the server had since been increased and the group...

Adobe has issued patches for 21 serious flaws in its Flash Player software to address critical vulnerabilities that could potentially allow attackers to take control of victims' systems. The vulnerabilities affect versions of Flash for Microsoft Windows, Apple OS X and iOS, Linux and Google's ChromeOS operating systems, Adobe said. Of the vulnerabilities, three allow arbitrary code execution through integer overflows, and 11 involve use-after-free flaws. Researchers from Google's Project Zero, HP Enterprise Zero Day Initiative, NSFOCUS, Microsoft, Kaspersky, Tencent and Venustech also discovered a heap underflow vulnerability in Adobe Flash and eight memory corruption bugs - all of which...

Android users could be vulnerable to a sophisticated new banking malware. NEW malware that targets mobile banking apps of Australia’s big banks has been detected. The sophisticated virus infects Android users and can steal password details and even thwart two-factor authentication. In a concerning discovery for mobile bankers, the malware was discovered by ESET security systems and works by presenting victims with a fake version of the login screen when they access their legitimate banking application. When customers login they are unwittingly met with the fake page to input their passwords. Creators of the malware are then able to...

In just 6 months, Windows 10 has reached 13 percent market share, gaining a percentage point every month, recorded bt Net Applications. Windows 10 is up and running on 12.82 percent of computers, reports Net Applications. That the feat has been achieved in just six months of its existence makes it all the more impressive.Windows 10 adoption rate has also been steady so far, having grown from 11.85 percent in January and 9.96 percent in December. This makes for a gain of a percentage point for every month.With that many PCs running Windows 10, the latest version of Windows is...

The latest smartphone sales data from Kantar for the three months ending January 2016 shows that Apple's iOS continued to grow share in urban China, though the rate of that growth was the slowest since late 2014. Apple also remained the most popular brand, capturing 25% of smartphone sales. Tamsin Timpson, strategic insight director at Kantar Asia noted in the report that "In urban China, iOS share continued to grow year-over-year, albeit at a slower pace, as iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus and iPhone 6 were the best-selling smartphones in the region." Noteworthy is that the report further noted...

Jailed for three yearsA Chinese man reportedly sold his 18-day old baby girl so he could buy himself an iPhone. He found a buyer on a social media site, who paid £2,500 (approx. Dh13,000) for his baby, according to media reports. The man allegedly intended to buy an iPhone and a motorbike, ‘Times of India’ reported quoting ‘People’s Daily Online’. He has been jailed for three years. The couple were 19 when they learnt of the pregnancy.

South Korean Economy Boosted As Won Jumps To New High Hackers helped themselves to $81 million after breaching Bangladesh Bank’s systems between Feb. 4 and Feb. 5—but the massive theft could have been far worse if not for a typo. After successfully transferring $81 million from the bank’s account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to entities in the Philippines, the hackers tried to transfer another $20 million to a Sri Lankan nonprofit, only they wrote “fandation” rather than “foundation” as part of its name, an official tells Reuters. While the Fed grew suspicious, routing bank Deutsche Bank...

This is a video clip of new technology coming our way in the near future. Seven unusual, different steps forward in the mind of man. From bicycles to jewelry, alarm clocks, to the body itself being a screen for the Word Wide Web

I downloaded and installed some Windows updates yesterday after checking to hide Win 10 related updates and known phone-home privacy concerns. Though I have been running Windows 7 and the media player since receiving my machine late last summer, a WMP install note popped up requesting approval for what is either an update or new version. It came with "recommended" or "custom" setting selections. Microsoft was nice enough to tell me that "recommended" included a lot of phone-home settings to "enhance" my use. I immediately checked "custom" and unchecked about a half-dozen settings that would record or report my listening/media...

Last week, 117 "members of the Republican national security community" signed an open letter condemning Donald Trump. It made me think the bellicose billionaire, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, is not quite as bad as I thought. "His vision of American influence and power in the world is wildly inconsistent and unmoored in principle," the letter complains. "He swings from isolationism to military adventurism within the space of one sentence." Although there is some truth to that critique, an inconsistent skepticism of foreign intervention is better than none at all. That is why I have trouble agreeing with...

Lee Sedol started with a bow, a traditional Korean gesture of respect for an opponent who could neither see him nor sense his presence. The world champion at Go – an ancient Chinese board game – looked nervous. His eyes darted from side to side. He took a sip of water, and made his first move. Lee could be forgiven some nerves: his opponent was AlphaGo, an artificial-intelligence program designed by Google DeepMind, their five-game series billed as a landmark face-off between human and computer. “History is really being made here,” said commentator Chris Garlock, as the first game in...

It’s as easy as that! Photo: Michigan State University Your fingerprint is supposed to be the most secure method of locking your smartphone, but that’s not the case if your device can be easily fooled.Researchers have been able to hack those from Samsung and Huawei using only an inkjet printer and conductive ink.“Your fingerprint is one of the best passwords in the world,” said Apple’s Dan Riccio when the company introduced Touch ID, the fingerprint scanner that kickstarted a generation of smartphones with fingerprint scanners, in September 2013.That may be the case if you use an iPhone, but it seems other devices aren’t...

Browse the web with privacy and security with these best secure browsers. Protect your privacy online with the eight best secure browsers you can use in 2016.What does the idea of a secure browser mean in 2016? The world is now more complex than it was in 2010 when we last looked at the contenders. People are more oriented to mobile devices running under very different conditions while a range of security features such as URL filtering, download protection and do not track have transformed mainstream desktop browsers such as Chrome, IE and Firefox. In a sense all browsers could...

Heat doesn't kill hard drives. Here's what does"Free-cooled" datacenters use ambient outside air instead of air conditioning. That lets us see how environment affects system components. Biggest surprise: temperature is not the disk drive killing monster we thought. Here's what is. At last months Usenix FAST 16 conference, in the Best Paper award winner Environmental Conditions and Disk Reliability in Free-cooled Datacenters, researchers Ioannis Manousakis and Thu D. Nguyen, of Rutgers, Sriram Sankar of GoDaddy, and Gregg McKnight and Ricardo Bianchini of Microsoft, studied how the higher and more variable temperatures and humidity of free-cooling affect hardware components. They reached...

Apple has shut down what appears to have been the first, fully-functional ransomware targeting Mac computers. This particular form of cyber threat involves malware that encrypts the data on your personal computer so you can no longer access it. Afterwards, the hackers request that you pay them in a hard-to-trace digital currency – in this case, bitcoin – in order for you to retrieve your files. This ransomware, called KeRanger,” was first reported by researchers at Palo Alto Networks. They also noted that Apple has now revoked the abused certificate that was used in the attack and updated its built-in...

Syrian Hayla Al Ghazal, one of YouTube’s rising Arab female stars, says she is all ready to bring about positive change to her community and inspire more females to express themselves on social media in a bid to shatter cultural taboos. Having produced more than 150 videos for her YouTube channel HaylaTV, the Dubai-based vlogger is famous for her comedy sketches and lifestyle clips that attract thousands of young people in the region. Speaking shortly after being appointed a “change ambassador” to the United Nations, Ghazal told Al Arabiya English she is now on a mission to empower females in...