October 2017 | IT Assist

Apple Engineer Dismissed After Daughters iPhone X Video Goes Viral

An Apple engineer has reportedly lost his job due to a video posted by his daughter while visiting the Apple Campus of the unreleased iPhone X went viral on YouTube, people soon realised that her vlog included her playing around with the phone, this then caused it to attract thousands of people and even led to the video being picked up by popular apple related sites such as 9to5Mac which allowed the video to spread to more people at a much faster rate.

The video has been followed up by a video in which she states that her father has been released by Apple because of her posting the video online, the dismissal is down to an Apple policy which prohibits the filming of products before an official release, he wasn’t the one who filmed it, but because he allowed her access to the phone and allowed her to film it leaves him to blame for the issue. Apple reportedly requested that the video be taken down but it was too late as it had already been re-uploaded by many YouTube channels and news outlets.

You may feel like Apple are being harsh by letting the employee go, but not only did she show the phones exterior but also went through the phone and exposed employee only QR codes which are used to access certain things within the phone, along with the notes app which showed code names for future apple products which could lead to the compromise of some future projects.

With filming in general being strictly prohibited on the Apple Campus, the filming of an unreleased iPhone will probably be a huge violation of the rules, so very understandable that he was let go, Do you feel like this was a justified dismissal?

iPhone 8 Battery Bloating

In the past week, there has been numerous reports of the new iPhone’s (8 & 8s) batteries inflating and splitting the phone open and rendering it useless. Apple have not yet made a official statement on the issue, however sources have said that they are beginning very serious investigations in to these reports.

CNET and TechCrunch have conducted tests to identify what is causing the problem and how many devices are affected, the numbers came back very low – less than 10 occurrences throughout the 5 countries which the research was carried out.

Even though the phones are splitting open, it’s still not as dangerous as the Samsung explosion issues from a few years ago, with zero cases of the iPhone exploding. Will you still be purchasing one of the new iPhones?

New Ransomware ‘Bad Rabbit’ Cripples Businesses

In the past 24 hours, a new strain of ransomware has been spreading across Russia, Ukraine and various other countries around the world, with attacks on major organisations.

The “Bad Rabbit” ransomware bears similarities with the “WannaCry” and “Petya” which we observed earlier this year, however it is not yet know how far this new malware has spread.

Two public transport companies in Russia are said to be the worst affected with servers, computers and files being completely encrypted bringing all services to a standstill.

The US computer emergency readiness team said it “discourages individuals and businesses from paying the ransom as this does not guarantee that access will be restored”.

Earlier this year we suffered from 2 (WannaCry & Petya) other cyber attacks which also went on to spread across the globe, infecting more and more for a few days which resulted in hundreds of thousands of pounds in ransom being paid out to the hackers. They held data at ransom, this affected many huge organisations, such as the NHS.

Ransomware typically encrypts all files and provides you with the link to a “onion” (dark web) site which allows you to purchase a key to decrypt everything.

A recent press release urges people not to pay the ransom of 0.05 bitcoin which is the equivalent to £213 as there is no guarantee that your files will be not be encrypted still once you have paid.

If this was to be even more high scale it could cause even more businesses to be rendered useless until the fix is issue, your computer could be off limits until they discover a way around paying the fee.

Want to protect your business from Bad Rabbit? Give us a call today 01709 464 323.

Wi-Fi Flaw Puts Millions of People at Risk

A recent discovery unveiled that a significant amount of Wi-Fi networks may have just been compromised. With exception of the few Wi-Fi networks using WEP or unsecured networks, most households and workplaces are currently WPA 2 Standard and the findings released claim that all networks using it can be infiltrated.

US Cert put out the warning that if you are using WPA 2 standards, you are most likely compromised as the issue is affecting almost everyone who has a router. That old router sitting in the living room could cause you more problems than you’ll ever know.

At this moment in time a research team being led by Mathy Vanhoef is trying to gather more data on the issue and are yet to release information about how someone would commit such an attack and how it would be launched as this would simply cause more hacking. At this moment in time, it is not clear whether or not this exploit is being used maliciously, but what we do need to know is what will the networks do to ensure our online safety. What we know so far:

Update your devices as soon as possible, this will break the chain.
It does not store passwords
It can only be done locally
The hacker doesn’t need to be logged into your network.

Nintendo Planning Game Boy Re-Release

Good news for all you Game Boy lovers, in recent days there has been speculation of the original Game Boy making its return to our hands to celebrate the handheld devices 30^th birthday.

This surprise news caught attention for the first time when a twitter account which follows companies trademarking activity tweeted it out for the entire world to see, not only was the word “Game Boy” trademarked, but an image of the console was submitted alongside it.

With the consoles 30^th birthday coming on July 21^st, 2019, Nintendo still have a substantial amount of time to go ahead with production and development and even though people are still sceptical of the whole situation because they believe they aren’t going to be initiating a Game Boy comeback it wouldn’t come as a shock with the re release of 2 of Nintendo’s most popular consoles, this being the NES Classic and the SNES Classic.

If the Game Boy is released it may follow suite with the previous console re releases, will the console be marginally smaller than the original? Which may make them more appealing to the modern market but the Game Boy being reduced in size could dramatically take away some of the novelty provided when playing.

Do you feel that the Game Boy could have the same success it previously had but 30 years down the line? Will it prove as popular in today’s market? What do you think?