"Quantum" program gives the NSA access to 100,000 offline computers

Three days before President Barack Obama will allegedly announce major changes to the NSA's surveillance programs, The New York Times has a story addressing one particularly controversial practice: intercepting laptops purchased online to insert bugs that can phone home — or even give remote access — to the US government. According to the Times, not only does that practice take place, but the bugs are now installed in nearly 100,000 computers around the world as part of a program code-named Quantum. However, the publication's government sources say they aren't being used inside the United States, but rather to spy on allleged Chinese and Russian military hacker groups, Mexican drug cartels, European "trade institutions," and alleged terrorists. Since the devices have their own radios, they can allegedly tap into computers that aren't connected to the internet.

While officials reportedly told the Times that the devices are mainly intended for defense, their first big test was as part of an attack. According to the publication, the bugs were first used to map out the inner workings of the Natanz uranium enrichment plant in Iran, setting up for the Stuxnet computer worm that eventually sabotaged the facility's centrifuges and crippled Iran's nuclear program. The Times writes that it knew about the technology when it reported on Stuxnet in the summer of 2012, but withheld details at the request of US intelligence officials.TheVerge

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HTC One to sell as TD 101 at China Mobile

HTC decided to invest in such a brand by launching the One series of smartphones last year, although the company was not able to impose its own product names to certain carriers. Then, just a few days ago, the company launched the HTC One, which is going to be the company’s only One-branded handset this year, a make-or-break kind of project for the Taiwanese Android maker that’s still having a tough time fighting against the competition, especially Samsung. We were under the impression that HTC will further invest in its One brand and not budge to carrier demands anymore when it comes to changing the name of the product – in the U.S., AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile are going to sell it as the HTC One. But it looks like things aren’t necessarily so, and no, it’s not Verizon that’s going to get its way selling the One as the Droid DNA Plus, as it was recently rumored. We’re looking at China Mobile this time around, which has announced the HTC One as the HTC TD 101. That’s certa...

iPad (2022) and iPad Pro with M2 announced

Apple has announced their latest iteration of the iPad (entry level model) and the iPad Pro lineup with the new M2 processor. The event, held on the 18th of October as a recorded session displayed the key features of the iPads with the most significant being the base model iPad which has now received an upgrade. iPad 2022 This model of the base model iPad ditches the almost 12 year old home button and display layout and goes for a cleaner display only design found on the iPad Air . The chassis, which now comes with flatter sides and a TouchID fingerprint sensor on the top has also abandoned the lightning port in favor of USB C and it also comes with a set of pogo style connectors for accessories including a keyboard with trackpad. Internally, the iPad comes either as a Wifi only (Wifi6) and a 5G cellular model and is offered with 64 or 256GB of storage. The processor has also been upgraded to the Apple A14 which is the same found on the iPhone 12 series and last year's iPad Air. L...

Nikon D850 is official

Nikon D850 has probably been the company's worst kept secret . The camera , which was announced a month back during Nikon's 100 year anniversary just explained in brief ,but thanks to leakers some of that information managed to hit the internet and inadvertently lead the camera to be the most talked about topic in the camera world . But now , after a month of waiting anxiously for the official pricing (rumors made headlines after many quoted $1000-2000 more than the official one ) , the Nikon D850 is finally official . Nikon D850 The Nikon D850 is Nikon's jack of all trades semi - flagship camera which sits below the D5 but above the D750 . The model which succeeds the D810 from almost 3 years back is armed with a new backlit 35mm sensor and the largest optical viewfinder and pentaprism for any camera . Video features on the camera include 4K with full sensor readout and features 8K timelapse . The camera features 7 fps at full resolution and 9fps when connec...

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