Android Flaw Allows Hacks Via Text Message

                                             Cyber security firm Zimperium has warned of a flaw in the world's most popular smartphone Android operating system that lets hackers take control with a text message.                            
                                           "Attackers only need your mobile number, which they can use remotely to execute code via a specially crafted media file delivered via MMS (text message)," Zimperium Mobile Security said in a blog post.

                                          Zimperium said that it reported the problem to Google and provided the California Internet firm with patches to prevent breaches.

"Google acted promptly and applied the patches to internal code branches within 48 hours, but unfortunately that's only the beginning of what will be a very lengthy process of update deployment," Zimperium said.

It did not appear as though hackers had taken advantage of the Stagefright vulnerability, according to Zimperium.

Updating Android software powering mobile devices is controlled by hardware makers and sometimes telecommunication service carriers, not Google.

While Apple controls the hardware and software in iPhones, iPads, and iPods powered by its mobile operating system, Google makes Android available free to device makers who customize the code and update it as they see fit.

More about Drake's research was to be disclosed at a Black Hat computer security conference taking place in Las Vegas early in August.

Chinese firm mass-producing fake iPhones busted

 

  Police in China have cracked down on a Beijing-based company which allegedly made more than 40,000 fake Apple iPhones worth about $19.6 million, a media report said. 

Police said they arrested nine suspects and found six assembly lines and more than one million cell phone parts in the company's factory, Xinhua reported. 
 Officials said the company bought old phone mainboards 
  from other countries and fake    parts with logos from the
 city of Shenzhen.

Police started investigating the company in May after fake China-made cell phones were seized in the US. 

Officials said the company bought old phone mainboards from other countries and fake parts with logos from the city of Shenzhen. 

The company hired hundreds of workers who assembled the parts and then sold the fake phones to other countries, police said.

A new timeline feature in Google Maps keeps tabs of all your past traversals

Surely we’ve all spent a few agonizing moments wracking our brains trying to remember the name of a restaurant or bar we enjoyed, not to mention those moments when serendipity or happenstance led you to a place you’d like to visit again, but that you have never been able to rediscover. Google Maps can now help you retrace your steps with your timeline, a tool that helps you remember everywhere you’ve been.

Both extremely marvelous and insanely creepy, Your Timeline maps out the places you’ve been, the route you took to them, and the photos you snapped along the way (for those also using Google Photos).

Available on the desktop and Android versions of Google Maps, Your Timeline can give you info about any store or establishment you may have visited, just as it would if it came up on a Google Maps search. Your Timeline can be edited at will, too, so users can remove records of the places they don’t need to remember, or wish to forget (or wish to destroy evidence of having visited). Frequent spots and routes can be given a name like “jogging route” or “favorite taco joint.”

t only works if you’ve opted-in to store your location history with the all-seeing-all-knowing Internet giant. Literally having your every movement and location automatically mapped out and stored might be a little too much tracking for most to feel comfortable with, but for those who don’t mind, this could be a handy reference tool for urban explorers who like to wander around cities.