Tag Archives: Branding

Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Apple iCloud App Now Available On Windows 10

Great news for inter-operability.  Apple has brought their new iCloud app to the Microsoft Store for Windows 10 devices. Even better, the app is designed such that it’s deeply integrated with Windows 10, even allowing you to access iCloud files from inside other Windows apps.

The version available on the Microsoft Store is identical to the desktop version available online, but it offers a new iCloud experience on Windows 10. It allows Apple users to store and access their files across both Microsoft and Apple devices seamlessly.

When you install the app, you’ll be asked what types of content you’d like to integrate with the Windows OS.  Configuration is a snap, and once you’ve got the app up and running, you can access its various features simply by clicking on the Taskbar icon which will bring up a menu of your available options.

Key features of the new iCloud app for Windows 10 include:

  • The ability to share any file from File Explorer and collaborate with others with any and all edits being synced across all of your devices.
  • Store all your files in the iCloud Drive and access from your Apple device or other iCloud apps
  • Choose the files and folders you want to keep on your PC

Microsoft announced that the new iCloud Drive experience utilizes the same technology as OneDrive’s Files On-Demand feature, which means that iCloud users can temporarily download and use files from Apple’s online storage system.

If you work from a homogenous set of devices, this change won’t impact you in the least. If you have a constellation of devices that utilize both Apple and Windows technology, this is absolutely huge.  It represents a big leap forward and makes it orders of magnitude easier to manage your data across both platforms and devices.  Kudos to both Apple and Microsoft!

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Some Cisco Devices May Be Vulnerable To Hacker Attacks

Intel has been in the news several times over the last 18 months due to serious security flaws that have been found in their chipsets, beginning with the dreaded Spectre and Meltdown flaws.  Now with MDS attacks, they’re not the only ones. Recently, researchers have discovered serious flaws in Cisco products that would allow a determined hacker the ability to attack a wide range of devices.

These would be devices used by businesses and government agencies, including routers, switches and firewalls. The new vulnerability is being tracked as CVE-2019-1649, and has been dubbed ‘Thrangrycat’ by researchers from Red Balloon Security, who first discovered it.

The research team had this to say about the vulnerability:

“An attacker with root privileges on the device can modify the contents of the FPGA anchor bitstream, which is stored unprotected in flash memory.  Elements of this bitstream can be modified to disable critical functionality in the Trust Anchor module (Tam).

Successful modification of the bitstream is persistent, and the Trust Anchor will be disabled in subsequent boot sequences.  It is also possible to lock out any software updates to the Tam’s bitstream.”

Ominously, the research team added the following note:

“By chaining the Thrangrycat and remote command injection vulnerabilities, and attacker can remotely and persistently bypass Cisco’s secure boot mechanism and lock out all future software updates to the Tam.  Since the flaws reside within the hardware design, it is unlikely that any software security patch will fully resolve the fundamental security vulnerability.”

Even so, we can expect Cisco to do something along those lines to at least blunt the risk, and they’re no doubt already looking at the hardware architecture to find a solution going forward.  To this point, the company notes that they’ve not detected any attacks exploiting these vulnerabilities, but now that the research has been made public, that may change.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Samsung Will Soon Offer Smartphones With 64MP Image Sensor

Samsung is upping the ante in the smartphone world.

The company recently announced that they will be introducing 48-mp and 64-mp image sensors for smartphones launching in the fall of 2019.

Both sensors employ the company’s Isocell Plus and Tetracell technology.

The former was designed to reduce light leakage, and the latter utilizes four pixels as one to allow for superior digital photography in low-light conditions.

Barely six months ago, the South Korean tech giant launched 32-MP and 48-MP Isocell sensors used in their Galaxy S10 smartphones. The image sensor market has been quite profitable for Samsung, and these latest product offerings will enable them to compete head-to-head with Japanese rival Sony.

In tandem with the announcement, Samsung revealed that they’d be investing more than $120 billion  between now and 2030 to become the dominant player in the logic chip market. Their latest research has seen them investigating new applications for sensors to be used in autonomous vehicles in the years ahead.

This is good news and is sure to trigger several other product announcements later in the year as companies take advantage of the soon to be available technology.  Given Samsung’s success so far in this segment of the market, there’s little reason to think that their latest releases will be anything other than a resounding success.

In an industry fraught with uncertainty, Samsung seems to be making all the right moves this year. The future certainly looks bright for them, and the markets they serve.  If you’re a fan of photography, you’re sure to appreciate the new capabilities that these sensors enable.  Best of all, if the past is any guide, you won’t have to wait long to start taking advantage of them.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Some Dell Systems Are At Risk Of New Hacks

Do you use Dell equipment at home or in your office?

If so, then the recent discovery made by independent security researcher Bill Demirkapi should give you pause.

Recently, Mr. Demrikapi discovered a flaw in the company’s SupportAssist utility that comes pre-installed on most Dell systems.

If you have an older Dell, know that SupportAssist was recently re-branded and was formerly known as Dell System Detect, which may be a name you’re more familiar with.  At the root though, it’s the same code and both versions of the code have the same flaw.

The program is designed to interact with Dell’s support website. This is where it will scan for service codes and tags that match your system and then automatically download and install driver updates as needed to keep your system up to snuff. It’s a good piece of software that performs a valuable function, so it probably comes as no surprise that hackers took note and promptly found a way to take advantage of the code’s functionality.

Dell, who has been working with Mr. Demirkapi since he reported the issue to them, explains it thusly:

“An unauthenticated attacker, sharing the network access layer with the vulnerable system, can compromise the vulnerable system by tricking a victim user into downloading and executing arbitrary executables via SupportAssist client from attacker hosted sites.”

In essence, the hackers use a variety of tricks to fool your system into thinking it’s getting updates from Dell, when in fact, it’s being fed poisoned files from a site controlled by hackers.

The bug impacts all Dell SupportAssist Client versions prior to version 3.2.0.90.  The company has already fixed the issue. The main takeaway here is to check your SupportAssist version number to see if you’re in the safe zone, and if not, download the latest version right away.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Popular Fitness Site Endures A Customer Information Breach 

Do you frequent the website bodybuilding.com?

If so, be advised that the site has been breached.

According to a recent statement by the company behind the site, the breach occurred in February, 2019 and had its origins in a phishing email the company received back in July of 2018.

A detailed account of the incident was published on the company’s help center and contained most of the elements we’ve come to expect when things like this happen:

  • The company is very sorry that it happened
  • “Certain” customer/member information may have been compromised
  • The company has been working with law enforcement and has brought in a third party to assist with the forensic investigation, which is ongoing

The company also stressed that while partial payment account numbers were compromised, no full debit or credit card information was at risk. That is because the site only stores the last four digits of payment cards if and when a given user opted to have the data stored by the website.

Again in keeping with the common response to incidents like these, Bodybuilding.com reported that in exercising an abundance of caution, they are force-resetting all user passwords.  If it’s been a while since you’ve logged on, just be aware that the next time you do, you’ll be prompted to change your password.

As to the specific data that was compromised, according to the latest information posted by the company, the following information was accessed by unknown third parties:

  • User name
  • The email address you used to sign up for the service
  • Your billing and/or shipping address
  • Your phone number
  • Your order history
  • Your birthday
  • Any correspondence that may have occurred between you and the site administrators
  • Any other information you included in your profile

As ever, if you’re using the same password on this site that you use on some other, be sure to change both immediately. Try hard to break the habit of using the same password across multiple web properties.

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