Wednesday Newsbytes: Comcast Xfinity Accounts Hacked, Tabs for NotePad, How Big is a Petabyte, Birds Aren’t Real…and more!
Every day we scan the tech world for interesting news in the world of technology and sometimes from outside the world of technology. Every Wednesday, we feature some news articles that grabbed our attention over the past week. We hope you find this week’s ‘Wednesday Newsbytes’ informative and interesting!
Comcast Xfinity accounts hacked in widespread 2FA bypass attacks
Comcast Xfinity customers report their accounts being hacked in widespread attacks that bypass two-factor authentication. These compromised accounts are then used to reset passwords for other services, such as the Coinbase and Gemini crypto exchanges.
Starting on December 19th, many Xfinity email users began receiving notifications that their account information had been changed. However, when attempting to access the accounts, they could not log in as the passwords had been changed.
After regaining access to the accounts, they discovered they had been hacked and a secondary email at the disposable @yopmail.com domain was added to their profile.
Similar to Gmail, Xfinity allows customers to configure a secondary email address to be used for account notifications and password resets in the event they lose access to their Xfinity account…
Read more at Bleeping Computer.
Microsoft is Testing Tabs for Notepad Internally
Microsoft appears to be testing a new version of its Notepad app with tabs internally. As spotted by Windows Central over the weekend, a Microsoft employee mistakenly tweeted an image of a NotePad internal build showing a second tab.
In the tweet that was quickly deleted, the Senior Product Manager wrote that “Notepad in Windows 11 now has tabs.” As you can see below, the image had a clear “Confidential” internal warning.
The tabs interface in Notepad will be similar to the one Microsoft recently added to its File Explorer app on Windows 11. Windows Insiders got to test tabs in File Explorer first this year, and Microsoft will likely do the same with Notepad.
If Notepad has been part of Windows for decades, the app only started to receive more attention earlier this year when Microsoft released a redesigned version of it with dark theme support. Notepad also became a Microsoft Store app, which means that it can receive updates much more frequently.
Even though NotePad remains a pretty barebones text editor, it remains a favorite among Windows users who don’t need all the bells and whistles of an app like OneNote…
How big is a petabyte, exabyte or yottabyte? Let’s look at the largest units of data storage
The scale at which data storage is growing can be dizzying. Here’s a brief bottom-up overview starting from the tiny byte to the mammoth yottabyte.
Thirty years ago, the biggest hard drives stored about 10MB of data. That’s barely enough to store two or three .mp3 tracks. Now, a typical notebook has one terabyte of storage or nearly 100,000 times more but even this figure is laughable when you consider how much data we’re generating today on a daily basis. According to IBM, every day we’re creating 2.5 quintillion bytes of data, enough to fill 125,00 DVDs, and 90% of today’s digital data was created in the last two years.
Even those who are computer savvy still look at data at the gigabyte or terabyte-scale but it’s clear we’re moving well past this point. Navigating the different units of data storage can be confusing and dizzying so let’s take a brief overview of how we quantify data and put some context on some of the more obscure units of digital information like the petabyte or yottabyte…
New Android alert issued as terrifying virus could be stealing your bank details
Android users are under attack from a new trojan with millions at risk of having their bank details stolen.
There has been a new warning from tech experts about an Android virus which is stealing users’ bank details with hundreds of banks and cryptocurrency apps affected. The warning was issued after the resurgence of the ‘Godfather’ trojan virus, which is capable of obtaining usernames and passwords from infected phones.
The announcement came from a security team at Group-IB, who stated that there had been a huge rise in targeted attacks on users in 14 countries, including the UK and US, as per The Daily Express.
The Godfather
The Godfather is an Android banking trojan virus that can operate undetected on your device and has targeted users of more than 400 applications so far. It works by generating convincing web fakes and overlaying them on the screens of devices. When users enter their details, they give access to their accounts to the hackers, who can even bypass two-factor authentication with the information in some cases. Hackers then use the information to empty users’ bank or crypto accounts.
Since October 2022, 215 banks, 94 crypto wallet providers, and 110 crypto exchange platforms have been targeted by Godfather…
Birds Aren’t Real: The Hot Conspiracy Theory Taking America By Storm
The satirical movement makes some bold claims about avians.
The group “birds aren’t real”, who claim that birds are no longer real, have conducted a rally in the US, in the hope of converting others to their views.
For those uninitiated, the birds aren’t real movement claims that birds were once real but have now been replaced with drones by – you guessed it – none other than Barack Obama, back in 2001. The new robot birds are used to monitor Americans, according to the conspiracy theory.
“Where it all began. October 26th, 2001,” account Birdsarentreal wrote on Instagram, underneath the compelling evidence above. “The day the deceitful and wicked Patriot Act was passed by congress. I can’t watch these horrific videos in public, I tremble uncontrollably with rage. I sob. I can’t keep quiet.
“After the government killed off the last real bird in 2001, they released the beta versions of the first prototype bird drones, as shown in these tapes. WHAT A COINCIDENCE that on October 27th, 2001, PEARL HARBOR happened. Yet no one seems to draw the correlation. Sheep..
Thanks for reading this week’s Wednesday Newbytes. We hope you found these articles informative, interesting, fun, and/or helpful. Happy New Year! Darcy & TC
RE Comcast//Xfinity hack article. My passwords and log in IDs are saved ONLY on a C8 recommended password manager ,, even my email passwords. It’s been that way for years. My ISP is not Comcast/xfinity but my friends is. If her Xfinity account were hacked, would her passwords have been secure from this bot if she uses a 3rd party password manager? on her computer AND her android smartphone? Just want clariication, if you can, for the future and other ISP’s which may fall victim.
Well, it seems that I was in the mess of Comcast/Xfinity and am too old to get into all the electronic changes…
I am happy to say that I do not have a smart phone and could not change my password… I only had to change the email… and Cloudeight was first to help … I will not get a smart phone – ever…