Apple Inc. wants a slice of bedroom action. The iPhone maker has acquired Beddit.com Oy, a startup that makes a sleep sensor and accompanying iPhone app. Founded in 2007 and based in Finland, Beddit’s Sleep Tracker allows users to measure how long they have slept through the use of a smart pad that is placed under ...

Amazon.com Inc. today launched a new version of its Echo smart home speaker that includes a screen for the first time. The Echo Show features a seven-inch screen that can visually summon answers to verbal questions, providing information such as e-commerce search results in a more digestible fashion, along with the ability to make Internet ...

Microsoft Corp. has patched a security vulnerability described as “worst Windows remote code exec in recent memory” that potentially allowed malicious actors to install malware via Microsoft’s anti-malware software. Those tools, of course, are meant to prevent malware being installed on the market-leading operating system. The vulnerability was discovered by Google Inc. Project Zero researcher Tavis Ormandy, who ...

Men in Florida may get up to all sorts of strange things – just check out “Florida Man” – but money laundering using bitcoin can no longer be included on the list with the passage of laws preventing its use in criminal activity. Florida’s legislature passed an amendment to the state law on money laundering ...

Famed investor Tim Draper has given a boost to a startup blockchain company called Tezos with a public announcement that he intends to invest in its “initial coin offering” as well as Dynamic Ledger Solutions Inc., the company behind the offering. “The best thing I can do is lead by example,” Draper (pictured, right), best ...

A new ransomware-as-a-service product called “Fatboy” discovered on Russian-language dark web forums is offering a new kind of demand that adjusts the ransom based on where a victim lives. Fatboy automatically adjusts ransom demands based on the victim’s location by using Big Mac Index, an index compiled by The Economist that measures the purchasing power parity between two currencies. ...

A security vulnerability in Intel Corp. chips first disclosed last week looks far worse than initially thought, as hackers can hijack Intel processors without even needing a password. The vulnerability, which affects all Intel chips manufactured since 2008, from those code-named Nahalem to today’s Kaby Lake, stems from a flaw in vPro firmware suite including Intel ...

New research has discovered the rapid spread among Android apps of a recent form of ad tracking that monitors what users are listening to using hidden audio signals. The ad tracking system, known as ultrasound cross-device tracking, or uXDT for short, involves advertisers embedding high-frequency ultrasound tones known as “beacons” into audio to allow them to detect the ...

A newly discovered, unpatched vulnerability in all versions of WordPress could allow hackers to reset targeted admin passwords, according to newly published research. The vulnerability (CVE-2017-8295), discovered by Polish researcher Dawid Golunski, is related to WordPress using a variable named “SERVER_NAME” to obtain the hostname of a server when setting the From/Return-Path header in password reset emails ...

A known vulnerability in a networking protocol used by mobile phone network providers has been exploited by hackers to intercept two-factor authentication SMS messages to steal funds from bank account. The vulnerability, first identified in 2014, involves a security hole in the Signaling System No. 7, a telephony signaling protocol used by telecommunications providers worldwide that ...