Up until yesterday, Google's new voice assistant was exclusively available to the Pixel and the Pixel XL. However, Google has now made it official that the company is currently rolling out Google Assistant to multiple devices that are running on Android Marshmallow 6.0 or higher and Android Nougat 7.0 or higher. We knew that some of the upcoming devices like the LG G6 and the Moto G5/G5 Plus were going to come with the AI powered voice assistant right out of the box, but this is a pleasantly surprising and new development. The original announcement was made at the MWC earlier and now it's happening as you read this.
The United States is of course the first to get the personal assistant, but Australia, Canada and the UK should also start to receive the same soon enough. By the way, in case you are wondering if a package will need to be downloaded via OTA, let us assure you that it won't be necessary. The eligible devices will simply see Google Assistant show up on their phones. Long pressing the Home button on an updated device will bring up the AI assistant, actively replacing Google Search. Is this good news to you or do you simply not care about it? Let us know in the comments.
Saikat Kar (tech-enthusiast)
The Galaxy S8 and the S8+ will most certainly feature curved Quad HD Super AMOLED displays which will have the highest screen-to-body ratio ever on a Samsung smartphone. However, what will the company be calling that screen? According to a report by SamMobile, it will be known as the "Infinity Display." Check out the screenshot below for more details about the patent.
This piece of information was leaked out after Samsung officially filed a USPTO trademark application just recently. Although the language used in the patent filing isn't particularly elaborate, we can make out that it serves to trademark the Infinity Display terminology for mobile phones. We had heard about the Infinity Display a long time ago and knew it was coming, but this confirms it. If you are wondering how we know that this is indeed the chosen name for the borderless display which will be accompanying the S8 series of smartphones when they are unveiled on the 29th, let's just call it an educated guess for now.
Saikat Kar (tech-enthusiast)
Here are the daily firmware updates for the day and if you see your Samsung device on the list, make sure you take a look at this tutorial before attempting to flash the ROM file. If your device is not on the list, head over to our firmware section and you are sure to find multiple custom ROM updates for your Samsung device.
No we are not talking about the iPhone 8 which we know is the most talked about iPhone at the moment. We are indeed talking about the iPhones which we will see in 2018. Based on a recent patent application by Apple, the iPhone which is still over one and a half year away from us, could sport a retractable design.
As you can see from the design sketches, the concept looks quite similar to what a scroll looks like. There are cylindrical housings on both sides and a thin sheet in between that can be retracted back until the two cylindrical units meet. The sheet in the middle is of course the flexible OLED panel of the device, with everything else being housed within the two cylindrical units. All of this is only hypothesis of course, but that's exactly what it looks like.
We have to admit, the concept looks downright revolutionary from every angle. Granted that chances of seeing something so radical and futuristic by next year are pretty slim, it is still a fact that Apple has indeed applied for a patent and these sketches seem to show us in which direction Apple is headed.
Saikat Kar (tech-enthusiast)
Source: Kai Oberhäuser on Pexels.
DDoS or Distributed Denial of Service attacks are the great bogeyman of the internet - vague and mysterious to many, and all the more threatening for it - but the idea is relatively straightforward when compared to lesser known concerns like cross-site scripting; DDoS attacks launch data at a web service or server until it breaks.
Attack Surface
As far as the tools of cybercrime go, DDoS attacks have been around for a long time but it's debatable when they first became a part of the public consciousness. Last year, a DDoS attack involving the Mirai "botnet" -- a horde of zombie devices twisted to the whims of a criminal -- took down half the internet by overwhelming the company responsible for turning domain names into IP addresses - Dyn. Early attacks go back to 1995 though, when an Italian activist group used the technique to protest nuclear policy in France.
So, with online criminals recruiting everything they can get their virtual paws on into botnets, including "smart" security cameras and baby monitors, why isn't the world living in terror of an Android or iOS-based DDoS attack? With around 2.32 billion devices on the market, the attack "surface" (i.e. the size of the space that attackers can exploit) presented by smartphones is enormous but the only major example of what could be deemed a DDoS attack on mobile was, ironically, done by users themselves way back in 2004.
Happy New Year
According to UK website The Register, a glut of "Happy New Year" texts and phone calls sent on the last day of 2004 added significant pressure to mobile phone networks throughout the country, slowing delivery to a crawl. It has to be the most mundane, accidental denial of service attack in history but it's nevertheless indicative of the kind of situation people were scared of just after the turn of the millennium. Experts at the University of Pennsylvania State suggested that "SMS-overload" could disable communications even in huge cities like Washington.
Security is a major concern for any businesses with an online presence and many install web application security solutions and DDoS mitigation to mitigate the threat. For instance, web application firewalls - cloud-based security barriers that stand between malicious traffic and delicate systems - protect against SQL injections, cross-site scripting, and other distinctly modern ills. Botnet protection keeps your router or webcam from launching a DDoS attack.
Source: JÉSHOOTS on Pexels.
Trojan
Recruiting a phone into a botnet usually requires the owner to download a fake app - a trojan, a type of malware that pretends to be something harmless to trick users into installing it - to give a criminal access. For example, a DDoS Trojan called Android.DDoS.1.origin imitates the Google Play Store but, behind the scenes, it works with a handler to send text message spam or join a larger botnet.
As both Google and Apple vet their apps before adding them to their respective stores, fake software, malware, ransomware, and a range of other concerns usually come from unofficial third-party providers. With that in mind, malware is almost the exclusive domain of the more experimental mobile phone users or people who download pirated apps. So, while it has been true that almost all mobile malware is on Android, only a fraction (0.1%) came from the Play Store; the rest is hidden out in the wilds of mobiledom.
Finally, most internet activity on mobile phones is undertaken in apps. As apps use dedicated connections (Pokémon Go only connects to Niantic while the BBC app only talks to the BBC's servers, for example) they can be more secure than a mobile browser, simply because Chrome and Internet Explorer encounter more potential threats from ad networks and dodgy links. Mobile is more of an exclusive club or "walled garden" than desktop, presenting far fewer opportunities for criminals to take advantage of.
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