Articles by Richard Adhikari

Samsung has purchased mobile payments firm LoopPay to create its own digital wallet. Samsung already was an investor in the startup, along with Visa and Synchrony Financial LoopPay's contactless magnetic secure transmission technology works with magnetic stripe readers....

Microsoft on Wednesday announced new data services running on its Azure cloud in what it has positioned as a bid to bring big data to the mainstream Those services include the HDInsight Apache Hadoop-based service; Storm on HDInsight, which lets users use Hadoop and Storm to create distributed, real-time data processing solutions in Azure; and Azur...

Yandex has asked Russia's antitrust authorities to look into whether Google is breaking the country's laws by not allowing preinstallation of third-party services on Android devices. Three smartphone vendors told Yandex last year that they couldn't install its search engine as the default on Android devices, the company claimed....

Criminals using Carbanak malware have stolen up to US$1 billion from 100 financial institutions in Russia, China, Germany and the United States, Kaspersky Lab has revealed The gang is expanding operations to other countries....

Kaspersky Lab on Tuesday announced the discovery of what may be the most sophisticated malware ever The malware's creators, whom Kaspersky has dubbed "The Equation Group," use a never-seen-before tactic to infect hard drives' firmware....

Remember the View-Master? You slotted a disc of slides called a 'reel' into the top, clicked the lever on the right, and were thrilled by the scenes before your eyes Introduced in 1939, the stereoscopic view has been inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame. Although it's had a low profile for many years, and production was shifted to Mexico in...

Facebook this week announced ThreatExchange, an API-based platform for technology companies to share information on security threats It had been working on the platform for about a year, with Pinterest, Tumblr, Yahoo and Twitter. Bitly and Dropbox recently joined in....

The Obama Administration on Tuesday announced plans to set up a national Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center to integrate all data from government agencies and the private sector, and disseminate it appropriately Lisa Monaco, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, made the announcement following months of re...

Samsung Smart TV owners, already shaken by news earlier this week that their TVs can transmit voice commands and other private data to third parties, have been hit by another revelation -- that the devices sneak ads into movies they're watching, without the owner's knowledge or consent A user with the handle "mikeohmike" complained on the Plex for...

JetBlue on Tuesday announced that it will accept payments through Apple Pay in-flight Passengers with an iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, or an Apple Watch, will be able to use Apple Pay to purchase snack boxes, food, beverages, onboard amenities and better seating.

Owners of Samsung smart TVs need to watch what they say if they've activated the voice recognition feature on these devices The feature may transmit some voice commands, together with information about the device, to a third-party service that converts speech to text, Samsung's global privacy policy warns....

The ad on Apple's job site is innocuous enough, seeking an engineering project manager for Apple Search However, that raises questions about whether Apple has plans to further improve its Maps app, possibly by strengthening local listings, which are increasingly important to businesses....

Students at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University have built the island republic's first 3D-printed concept car The NTU Venture 8 (NV8) is built on a carbon fiber single-shell chassis....

Hackers broke into the databases of Anthem Inc., the second-largest health insurer in the U.S., and stole up to 80 million customers' personal information The data includes current and former customers' names, birthdays, medical IDs, social security numbers, street addresses, email addresses and employment information, Anthem president and CEO Jose...

There were 9 billion Internet of Things (IoT) units installed at the end of 2013 by IDC's count, and its analysts expect the figure to hit 28 billion by 2020 That's going to make life difficult for IT security administrators.

Millions of Android users have been hit by malware posing as games on Google Play, according to Avast security researcher Flip Chytry The malware harbors fake ads that pop up when users unlock their devices, to warn them about nonexistent infections, or that their devices are out of date or have porn....

On Monday, Adobe Flash Player users were hit by a zero-day flaw for the third time in two weeks The company issued a security advisory for the vulnerability, which it dubbed CVE-2015-0313....

Google is working on its own ride-hailing service to compete with Uber, according to a Bloomberg report Meanwhile, Uber has announced a strategic partnership with Carnegie Mellon University that will see the creation of the Uber Advanced Technologies Center in Pittsburgh, Pa., that will focus on developing long-term transportation technologies to f...

Despite several highly publicized cloud hacks last year -- including the iCloud and Sony breaches -- the demand for cloud services is skyrocketing Amazon Web Services grabbed 30 percent of the global cloud infrastructure service market in Q4, Synergy Research reports. It grew 51 percent year over year (YoY)....

A group of organizations representing American businesses last week requested urgent discussion and dialog with China's government. They expressed concern about the possible adoption of a policy to ensure that any Internet and information communications technology products Chinese banks purchase from companies outside of China are secure and controllable...