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Avast has detailed how it prevented a suspected supply chain attack on the popular CCleaner software product.

CCleaner had been targeted in such an attack in 2017 and led to Piriform unknowingly distributing malware with the installer for the better part of a month. Attackers had successfully breached the development environment and made malicious modifications before distribution.

Avast has confirmed that it has prevented a similar incident from occurring. It has detailed "Abiss" in a blog post; a suspected supply chain attack on the CCleaner product. The most important detail is that the attempt was unsuccessful and no users of the product were exposed to malware as a result.

The clues that something was amiss started with a false positive in the form of a MS ATA alert of a malicious replication of directory services from an internal IP belonged to Avast's VPN address range. Further analysis found the attacker was attempting to gain access to the network through the VPN as early as May 14, 2019.

The user, whose credentials were apparently compromised and associated with the IP, did not have domain admin privileges. However, the attacker managed to gain domain admin privileges through a successful privilege investigation.

While we're waiting for Tesla to announce their pickup truck, Elon Musk has been busy tweeting. This time around, however, it's not just some generic meme posting.

Today, Elon Musk has send his first tweet using a satellite connection established by his other company, SpaceX. The satellite constellation responsible for delivering the digital messages is called Starlink.

Musk and SpaceX have been working on this literally out of this world technology for a while now. It is a promising step towards getting internet connectivity more cost-efficiently to even the most remote places on Earth.

While the tweet doesn't really say how far away we are from an actual product, it is a recognition that they are able to move data at this point.

In May, SpaceX launched their first 60 satellites. There's many, many more launches to come in the coming years, if things go as planned.

SpaceX is planning on launching 12 000 satellites into orbit and furthermore has requested permission for another 30 000. Starlink's mission is to launch a low-cost and high-perfomance internet connectivity that reaches everywhere.

Just a few days ago we told you about an odd behavior in Google Photos, which allowed iPhone users to use the service to their heart's content, for free, a feature that isn't available even to new Google Pixel owners.

Now Google has acknowledged that it is indeed a fact that iPhone users can use Google Photos unlimited backups at original quality for free. But it is not because Google has determined that it can't improve upon the compression of iPhone's HEIC/HEIF photos.

Instead, Google says, it is because there is a bug in the system, Android Police reports. Google has also made clear that it intends to fix the problem.

They haven't, however, states how the issue is to be resolved. One has to imagine, that there's a way for Google to compress the images to save space. Likely it's just a matter of finding the sweet spot of losing detail and managing storage space.

Unfortunately for iPhone users, it is unlikely that Google will let the original quality uploads continue for much longer.

Apple's AirPads blew the wireless headphone market completely open. Truly wireless earbuds are now everywhere, and every single electronics manufacturer seems to have caught on.

Partly this is of course because of the lack of headphone jacks in our smartphones – a trend also from Apple's playbook. Whether you have a headphone jack available or not, the Bluetooth powered earbuds are convenient and they offer pretty much everything a regular pair of headphones would.

However, AirPods haven't yet managed to include quite everything under their tiny footprint. The one big omission is noise cancellation. This feature is found in some higher end wireless earbuds, including Sony's new WH-1000XM3 model.

Rumors have it that Apple fans won't have to wait long for the feature either. According to China Economic Daily, Apple is working on new AirPods Pro, which, among other adjustments, will include noise cancellation. This isn't the first case we've heard of noise-cancelling AirPods, either.

It would also suggest that Apple is likely to redo the ergonomics, since noise cancellation requires a tighter fit than what traditional AirPods offer.

Disney has released a humongous trailer earlier this week on its official YouTube channel. The consists of en estimated couple hundred movies and shows landing on Disney+ as it launches.

The three hour montage is chronologically ordered, starting from 1937 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and ending with anticipated 2019 Star Wars show The Mandalorian.

As you might imagine there's content from Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, National Geographic, as well as of course Disney.

The 2019 titles alone include, in addition to already mentioned The Mandalorian, Disney's Sydney to the Max, Kim Possible, Fast Layne, Amphibia, One Day at Disney, Dumbo, Encore!, The World According to Jeff Goldblum, Lost Treasures of the Maya, The Lost Tomb of Alexander the Great, Apollo: Missions to the Moon, Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted, Kingdom of the White Wolf, Hostile Planet, Captain Marvel, Marvel's Hero Project, Noelle, High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, and Lady and the Tramp.

Without further ado, here's the entire video so you can determine whether it's worth your $6.99 a month when it launches on November 12.

Google Photos is one of the most useful pieces of software the company packages with Android. Offering free cloud storage, AI tricks, and convenient UI, Android users need not look further for their photo storage needs.

Even better, if you are lucky enough to own one of the previousu Pixel phones, you might be able to store unlimited original quality photos in the cloud for zero dollars a month. Even the new Pixel 4 no longer enjoys this privilege.

While Pixel 4 doesn't get free cloud storage, iPhone users seem to be able to upload to their heart's content for free.

According to 9to5Mac this is due to the super efficient HEIC/HEIF format iPhone uses for the photos.

See, if Google tried to compress the photos, as it does with the free tier cloud service, it would increase the size of the photos from iPhones. Due to this it is cheaper for Google to let iPhone users upload their photos in the original format.

This is at least what the Reddit user discovering this suggests. Android 10 is technically able to use HEIC/HEIF as well, but so far Pixels haven't used it.

Netflix has been utterly dominating the streaming video space for years now. Even with Hulu, HBO and Amazon around, they didn't manage to cut into profits of Netflix much at all.

Things are different, though, now that Disney is in town, and perhaps even Apple TV+ made a slight difference. That's what people are saying, at least. For a moment it seemed like Netflix might have hit a true roadblock in the owner of beastly franchises including Marvel and Star Wars.


However, it seems like Netflix might have weathered the storm. While Netflix spent the summer losing customers in the United States, now they are heading back up.

The most recent quarter, July to September, proved very successful to Netflix.

In the US, subscriber numbers were on the rise slightly, but the global audience grew in an unexpected way. Netflix also reports that the trend should continue, and expects growth in the last quarter of the years as well.

The combined growth was far better than it was in third quarter last year. In fact, it seems like this is the second largest subscriber growth in Q3 ever, only 0.1 million behind the record-setting 2016.

Netflix projects that it will be slightly below the record-setting year of 2018 in terms of added subscribers but well above the previous three years, even with what seemed like a catastrophic Q2.

Google introduces its newest Pixelbook couple days ago alongside the new Pixel 4 lineup. Here's what the ultralight Chromebook has to offer in terms of specs.

There's four models ranging from Intel Core m3 to Core i7, 8 or 16 GB RAM, 64 to 256 GB SSD, Full HD and 4K displays, and of course a pricing from $649 all the way up to $1,399.


While the aforementioned details change the pricing, here's what you'll get no matter which one you choose. 13.3 inch touchscreen, stereo front-facing speakers, 2.3 to 2.4 lbs weight, 12 hour battery life, magnesium body, backlit keyboard, FHD@60fps camera, two USB-C ports and a headphone jack.

But since even that doesn't cover it all. Here's a comprehensive list of features for each version of Pixelbook Go in a more digestible way.

Google has finally announced the new Pixel phones. The devices had already largely been leaked over the months, and even the design was teased by Google themselves on the way.

However, now both Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL are official, so lets take a look at what was as expected, and what wasn't.

No huge surprises in the chip department. Pixel 4 is powered by Snapdragon 855, the same chip found in most top Android smartphones this year. However, it would've been nice to see the slightly higher clocked Snapdragon 855+ inside.

Both models have now 6 GB RAM instead of last years Pixel 3 which had only four.

Display is definitely a bigger improvement, though. There's 90hz refresh rate as expected, which people are going to love, and the resolution is up to 3200x1800, which is an improvement especially to the smaller Pixel 4.

According to DisplayMate, the Pixel 4 XL display is the best smartphone display on the market, and got an A+ rating.

Camera is of course what people want to know about when we talk about Pixels. Surprisingly there is no ultrawide camera, unlike many expected.

There are dual cameras in the back, though. A 12 megapixel wide angle camera and a 16 megapixel telephoto camera. According to Google, "while ultrawide can be fun, telephoto is more important."

Blizzard has spoken publicly on this week's controversial decision to suspend a pro gamer and withhold his prize after a Hearthstone tournament.

Pro gamer Ng Wai Chung, better known as Blitzchung was banned for a year earlier this week. He had voices support for the Hong Kong protesters in an interview after the tournament, while wearing a gas mask. "Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our age," he said.

Following this decision, a boycott of Blizzard trended on social media and fans tried to delete their accounts in solidarity. J. Allen Brack, Prsident of Blizzard Entertainment, published an open letter to fans about the incident.

"Over the weekend, blitzchung used his segment to make a statement about the situation in Hong Kong--in violation of rules he acknowledged and understood, and this is why we took action," Brack writes.

"The official broadcast needs to be about the tournament and to be a place where all are welcome. In support of that, we want to keep the official channels focused on the game."

Brack also stressed that the specific views expressed by Blitzchung were not a factor in the decisions made, adding that Blizzard's relations in China has no influence on them. However, over the past few days Blizzard has received criticism and complaints from players, casters, esports fans, and employees and Brack acknowledges that the company reacted too quickly and that its process wasn't adequate.

Facebook's digital currency Libra has suffered another blow ahead of its launch as all of the payment processors backing it have pulled their support.

The decision of several companies comes after PayPal decided to drop out of the Libra Association, the group that will develop and maintain Libra. It has now been followed by MasterCard, Visa, Stripe, Ebay and Mercado Pago. "Visa has decided not to join the Libra Association at this time," the company said in a statement.

"We will continue to evaluate and our ultimate decision will be determined by a number of factors, including the Association's ability to fully satisfy all requisite regulatory expectations."

Co-creator of Libra, David Marcus took to Twitter to respond to the news.

I would caution against reading the fate of Libra into this update. Of course, it's not great news in the short term, but in a way it's liberating. Stay tuned for more very soon. Change of this magnitude is hard. You know you're on to something when so much pressure builds up.

-- David Marcus (@davidmarcus) October 11, 2019

Questions about latency arose as soon as Google announced its cloud gaming service Stadia, but Google is apparently aiming for 'negative latency' with the service.

Latency concerns are entirely understandable. It is one thing when the input from controllers travels over a wire to a PC or console, or short range wireless connection. It is an entirely different thing when the input from the controller or other devices has to travel across the Internet, and the result has to be streamed back to you. Latency seems almost inevitable.

Significant latency and lag could seriously hurt Google's platform when it launches in November. However, the company has been working on it and Majd Bakar, VP of Engineering at Stadia, has even invoked 'negative latency'.

This is a peculiar term since it conjures up thoughts of an input command being received and the result being streamed back to you before you even sent the input. However, it is likely a term that hints at how things work at the back-end. There are suggestions that what Bakar means is that the Google system will predict input controls and constantly render frames ahead of time, and then quickly determine which predictions were correct and send the appropriate frames.

An iTunes update has fixed a vulnerability in an iTunes service that a particular strain of ransomware was using to hide itself from anti-virus software.

The ransomware - identified as BitPaymer - was found to be exploiting a zero-day bug in the Bonjour update component that runs in the background in Windows. This service is installed when iTunes is installed in Windows and actually remains on the system even when iTunes is uninstalled later on.

Specifically, the ransomware exploited an "unquoted service path" vulnerability in Bonjour which let the ransomware hijack its execution path. This would launch the ransomware and would also fly under the radar of many antivirus utilities.

Apple has since updated the flawed Bonjour component which you can update by installing the latest version of iTunes. You can get iTunes for Windows 32-bit from here, or you can get iTunes for Windows 64-bit from here.

Remember, even if you uninstalled iTunes before, the Bonjour component remains and will be unpatched unless you install the latest iTunes. If you want to get rid of Bonjour it should be listed with all other programs in "Programs & Features" in the Control Panel in Windows.

Subscribers of YouTube TV services can gift special two week free trials to their friends and families for a limited time period.

YouTube has sent out emails to customers of its YouTube TV service. In the e-mails are codes that subscribers can send to their friends and families to redeem a special two week free trial of the service. Usually, new users to YouTube TV only get a five day free trial of the service, so if you know any YouTube TV subscribers now would be a good time to nag them to send on the code.

"So, we're giving you a special two week extended free trial code to share with friends and family who might like to try YouTube TV for the first time," the e-mail reads.

"After all, whether they're entertainment lovers or sports fans, with 70+ channels and unlimited DVR space, there's something for pretty much everyone, right?"

YouTube sets no specific limit on the number of times a code can be redeemed but reserves the right to impose its own cap. Presumably this would happen if a subscriber decides to post the code somewhere publicly for anyone to redeem. There is also a time limit on this offer.

Codes must be redeemed by October 16, 2019.

(via 9to5google.com)

Google's cloud gaming platform Stadia is rapidly approaching its launch and it has been confirmed that all titles available can stream in 4k at 60fps.

This even includes the older titles that will be included in the initial Stadia line-up, as Google hopes to enter the gaming world with a bang in November. Furthermore, the 4K streams coming from Stadia will be locked at 60fps, even if the original game was designed for 30fps. This has been confirmed by VP and general manager at Google, leading the Stadia product.

Yes, all games at launch support 4K. We designed Stadia to enable 4K/60 (with appropriate TV and bandwidth). We want all games to play 4K/60 but sometimes for artistic reasons a game is 4K/30 so Stadia always streams at 4K/60 via 2x encode.

-- Phil Harrison (@MrPhilHarrison) October 9, 2019