Today, on January the 14th, Microsoft is officially ending support for Windows 7 operating system. After more than 10 years since its launch, Windows 7 has remained a primary operating system on many PCs, especially OEM PCs manufactured before 2015, when Windows 10 came out. The user transition from Windows 7 to Windows 10 has not been an easy task for Microsoft, however, by declaring that the product has reached End-Of-Life, Microsoft is trying to make millions of users pull the trigger and embrace the new operating system.

When January 14th arrives, Microsoft will stop giving Windows 7 users technical support, software updates with new features, and most importantly security updates. The official recommendation from Microsoft is to upgrade to the latest version of Windows, meaning Windows 10. As some of the older PCs may have compatibility issues with newer OS, it is also recommended to check your PC specifications. If you are a customer of the Extended Security Updates (ESU) program, you will continue to see further support in the future, however, for regular users, the support period is over.

Gryphon Online Safety, Inc. today announced the commercial launch of its new product the Gryphon Guardian, the lowest known entry cost in the market at $119 for an all-in-one mesh WiFi security router and parental control system, making online security and digital parenting accessible to all. Gryphon Guardian is mesh compatible with the original Gryphon. The company is offering an early bird 30% off special between November 28-December 31 2019 direct from Gryphon Online Safety.

Gryphon Online Safety wants to help families protect all of their homes' devices from hacker intrusions, malware threats, to prevent kids from being exposed to inappropriate content, and to equip parents with tools to promote healthy screen time for their children. The company's purpose is to help each person reach their full potential by creating an online environment that is safe, reliable, and enjoyable.

BZFuture is a new deep-discount software company that lets you save big on renewals of your PC's premium security software from big brands, such as Kasperky, McAfee, ESET, Avira, and BitDefender. With the BZFuture Autumn 2019 Sale, enjoy discounts of up to 60% over prices quoted by these vendors for 1-year per-PC licenses to premium security software suites that include not just antivirus and anti-spyware protection, but also must-haves such as anti-spam, firewall, and anti-ransomware. BZFuture wishes to particularly recommend McAfee Antivirus for USD $11.02, and Kaspersky Internet Security for $18.20.

But why stop at renewing your antivirus? Still on Windows 7 or know someone dear who still is? BZFuture is bundling a genuine, globally-valid Windows 10 Pro permanent OEM license with all of its security software products! BZFuture operates globally, and accepts payments via reputed gateways such as PayPal, so your payment instruments stay secure. The store is also emerging as a great place to buy well-priced gaming peripherals. BZFuture in particular would like to recommend the MotoSpeed CK80, a full 104-key mechanical gaming keyboard with RGB LED lighting and Outemu Gold switches (comparable to Cherry MX Blue), for just $69.46, shipped for free worldwide. Slash 10% off the price of this keyboard with the coupon-code "Techpowerup" at checkout!

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Here's a strange thing: a case for a free, bundled software solution being better (in the metrics concerned and evaluated) than paid, third-party counterparts. We're writing of none other than Microsoft's own Windows Defender suite, which is bundled with Windows and offers a security solution integrated into your OS. While the "paid is always better" philosophy has been proven wrong time and again and isn't that much of a powerhouse behind users' thought process anymore, the fact is that Windows Defender has somewhat been taken for granted as an "undesirability" in users' computers. However, a comparison made by AV-Test, which pits many of the available cybersecurity solutions available on the market, has found Microsoft's Windows Defender to be worthy of a triad of perfect scores.

The results for Windows Defender include perfect (6.0) scores in the "Protection", "Performance" and Usability" categories. The testing period refers to May through June of this year, and only F-Secure SAFE 17, Kaspersky Internet Security 19 and Norton Security 22.17 managed to get the same perfect scores as Windows Defender Version 4.18. Check out the link for the score of your cybersecurity solution of choice. But it's clear that least where this period is concerned, Windows Defender walked circles around some paid solutions.

NVIDIA has found a total of five security vulnerabilities with its Windows drivers for GeForce, Quadro and Tesla lineup of graphics cards. These new security risks are labeled as very dangerous and have the potential to cause local code execution, denial of service, or escalation of privileges, unless the system is updated. Users are advised to update their Windows drivers as soon as possible in order to stay secure and avoid all of these vulnerabilities, so be sure to check your drivers for latest version. Exploits are only accessible on Windows based OSes, starting from Windows 7 to Windows 10.

However, one fact that's reassuring is that in order to exploit a system, attacker must have local access to the machine that is running NVIDIA GPU, as remote exploit can not happen. Bellow are the tables provided by NVIDIA that show type of exploit along with rating it carries and which driver versions are affected. There are no mitigations for this exploit, as driver update is the only available solution to secure the system.

NETGEAR Armor on your Orbi Mesh WiFi Systems is a cybersecurity solution that protects all internet-connected devices in your home from viruses, malware, stolen passwords, identity theft and hacking, whether you're at home or on the go. Many people already have some type of anti-virus software loaded onto their home computers. However, this is often not effective enough for the cyber threats in today's environment. In fact, according to research, 146 billion records of personal information, such as credit card information or national identification / social security numbers, are expected to be stolen by cybercriminals between 2018 to 2023.

Having the world's most pervasive operating system (or office suite) is sure to leave a big mark on any company when it comes to exploitation attempts from hackers. It's a simple equation: aim your efforts at a software that runs in millions (if not billions) of machines and even a light chink in the armor could be enough to cause a cascading effect through that many users.

This principle applies to almost everything: a small effect across a billion users usually provides greater returns than a large effect on one or two players. Kaspersky labs on its security report, presented at the Security Analyst Summit, reported that the favorite target for cyber attacks was Microsoft's Office suite - a 70% figure suggests an incredible attention given to Office, really. These Office-related cyber attacks don't directly relate to the suite itself; there are other, OS-integrated components that can be targeted, or simply that Office file extensions are used as clever, headache-inducing ways of disguising malware as the second greatest evil in the world - spreadsheets.

A new security vulnerability has been found that only affects Intel CPUs - AMD users need not concern regarding this issue. Dubbed Spoiler, the newfound security vulnerability was discovered by the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in partnership with the University of Lübeck, and affects all Intel CPUs since the introduction of their Core architecture. This vulnerability too affects Intel's speculative execution design, and according to the researchers, works independent of OS, virtual machine, or sandboxed environments.

As the researchers explain, Intel's speculative execution of certain memory workloads requires the full physical address bits for the information in memory to be known, which could allow for the full address to be available in user space - allowing for privilege escalation and other microarchitectural attacks. According to the researchers, a software solution to this problem is impossible, which means this is yet another silicon-level bug that needs to be addressed in future processor designs.

Gryphon Online Safety, Inc. is a 2-year old company that, by its very name, hints strongly towards the product lineup and design philosophy. We met the CEO and CTO of the company at their booth at CES 2019, and were greeted by the Gryphon router that was built with content filtering and online secutiry in mind. They have nearly five decades of combined experience behind the Gryphon, leveraging manufacturing in China, software teams in India, and customer support in the USA to deliver a user-friendly router and mobile app which also supports mesh networking.

The Gryphon was designed with the intention of fitting in a living room, with the sharp looks akin more to a trophy or showpiece. It definitely caught our eye, especially given how hard it is to carve out a unique look with routers these days without looking like an alien artifact. The router is rated for AC3000 operation with one 2.4 GHz band for Wireless N and two 5 GHz bands for Wireless AC networking, with the second 5 GHz band being a dedicated backhaul akin to the NETGEAR Orbi to make full use of the mesh networking feature without losing performance when connected to the satellite unit. The mobile app especially makes it very handy for the average end user to allow, and control, content to their desire. We will have a full review of the Gryphon networking solution on TechPowerUp sooner than later, but for those interested, there is more information to be found on their website. The Gryphon retails for ~$215 for a single unit, and $400 for a twin-pack.

The United States government, via the Department of Commerce, has banned all exports from national companies to China-based Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuits Ltd. The ban, citing "significant risk of becoming involved in activities that are contrary to the national security interests of the United States", demands that a license is required for "all exports, re-exports, and transfers of commodities, software and technology (...) to Jinhua." It then adds that these license applications will be reviewed - always - with a presumption of denial.

Seagate Technology, a world leader in data storage solutions, today launched the industry's widest range of advanced 14 TB hard drives, enhancing the company's enterprise and specialty drive portfolio. Consisting of IronWolf and IronWolf Pro for network attached storage (NAS) applications, the BarraCuda Pro desktop drive, surveillance-optimized SkyHawk, and Exos X14 for hyperscale data centers, this purpose-built portfolio empowers customers to consume, manage and utilize digital data more effectively and efficiently while establishing new benchmarks in speed and capacity.

With this offering, Seagate continues to lead the industry in driving data storage technology toward a lower cost per terabyte through hard drive optimization, versatility of application, and unmatched capacity. Whether for personal use, creative and design computing, online gaming, or large-scale surveillance systems and hyperscale environments, Seagate drives are opening up new data management opportunities across a wide range of markets.

In today's world, data breaches, phishing attacks, malware, and exploits are a daily occurrence. We are all familiar with the typical phishing emails that grace our inbox day in day out. You might even get a phone call from a fake Microsoft tech support employee, who attempts to gain access to your system. However, in our always-online world, it is a bit surprising to hear about hackers that would decide to use snail mail. In what will likely elicit a few giggles, U.S. state and local government agencies, along with the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) have issued an alert, in what I can only describe as an attack from the stone age; malware infested CDs.

The "Spectre" family of vulnerability, an exploitation of the speculative execution features of modern processors (mostly Intel), was scary enough. Up until now, running malware that implements Spectre needed one to run the program on a local machine. Running it remotely was limited to well-crafted JavaScript executed on the victim's machine, or cloud hosts made to process infected files. This is about to change. Security researchers from Graz University of Technology, including one of the discoverers of the "Meltdown" vulnerability, Daniel Gruss; have discovered NetSpectre, a fully network-based exploit that can let attackers read the memory of a remote machine without executing any program on that machine.

NetSpectre works by deriving bits and bytes from the memory based on measurements of the time the processor to succeed or recover from failure in speculative execution. As a processor is executing code, it speculates what the next instruction or data is, and stores their outcomes beforehand. A successful "guess" is rewarded with tangible performance benefits, while an unsuccessful guess is penalized with having to repeat the step. By measuring the precise time it takes for the processor to perform either (respond to success or failure in speculative execution), the contents of the memory can be inferred.

Wi-Fi Alliance introduces Wi-Fi CERTIFIED WPA3 , the next generation of Wi-Fi security, bringing new capabilities to enhance Wi-Fi protections in personal and enterprise networks. Building on the widespread adoption of WPA2 over more than a decade, WPA3 adds new features to simplify Wi-Fi security, enable more robust authentication, and deliver increased cryptographic strength for highly sensitive data markets. As the Wi-Fi industry transitions to WPA3 security, WPA2 devices will continue to interoperate and provide recognized security.

WPA3 security continues to support the market through two distinct modes of operation: WPA3-Personal and WPA3-Enterprise. All WPA3 networks use the latest security methods, disallow outdated legacy protocols, and require use of Protected Management Frames (PMF) to maintain resiliency of mission critical networks. Key capabilities of WPA3 include:

• WPA3-Personal: more resilient, password-based authentication even when users choose passwords that fall short of typical complexity recommendations. WPA3 leverages Simultaneous Authentication of Equals (SAE), a secure key establishment protocol between devices, to provide stronger protections for users against password guessing attempts by third parties.
• WPA3-Enterprise: offers the equivalent of 192-bit cryptographic strength, providing additional protections for networks transmitting sensitive data, such as government or finance. The 192-bit security suite ensures a consistent combination of cryptographic tools are deployed across WPA3 networks.

Security researchers have discovered a vulnerability affecting all modern Intel Core and Xeon processors, which is an exploit of a performance optimization feature called "lazy FP state restore," which can be exploited to sniff out sensitive information, including cryptographic keys used to protect sensitive data. The flaw affects all x86 micro-architectures by Intel, "Sandy Bridge" and later.

The "lazy FP state restore" feature is a set of commands used to temporarily store or restore the FPU states of applications running "lazily" (as opposed to "eagerly"). Red Hat put out an advisory stating that numbers held in FPU registers could be used to access sensitive information about the activities of other applications, including encryption keys. Intel began working with popular OS vendors to quickly roll out software patches against the vulnerability.

Today, Intel is taking another step forward, with two new technology announcements: Intel Threat Detection Technology (Intel TDT), a set of silicon-level capabilities that will help the ecosystem detect new classes of threats, and Intel Security Essentials, a framework that standardizes the built-in security features across Intel processors. We are also announcing a strengthened academic partnership with Purdue University, to help accelerate the development and availability of cybersecurity talent.

Intel Threat Detection Technology leverages silicon-level telemetry and functionality to help our industry partners improve the detection of advanced cyberthreats and exploits. Today we are announcing the first two Intel Threat Detection Technology capabilities, including implementation plans by Microsoft and Cisco.

The first new capability is Accelerated Memory Scanning. Current scanning technologies can detect system memory-based cyberattacks, but at the cost of CPU performance. With Accelerated Memory Scanning, the scanning is handled by Intel's integrated graphics processor, enabling more scanning, while reducing the impact on performance and power consumption. Early benchmarking on Intel test systems show CPU utilization dropped from 20 percent to as little as 2 percent.

Via updated documents on its Microcode Revision guide, Intel has revealed that they have finally developed and started deploying microcode security updates for their Broadwell and Haswell-based microprocessors. The microcode update comes after a flurry of nearly platform-specific updates that aimed to mitigate known vulnerabilities in Intel's CPUs to the exploits known as Spectre and Meltdown.

While that's good news, Intel's patching odyssey still isn't over, by any means. According to Intel's documentation, the Spectre fixes for Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge are still in beta and are being tested by hardware partners, so that's two other architectures that still remain vulnerable. Of course, this discussion of who's vulnerable and isn't really can't be reduced to which architectures Intel has released its updates to. Users have to remember that the trickle-down process from Intel's patch validation and distribution through manufacturers to end users' systems is a morose one, and is also partially in the hands of sometimes not too tech-savy users. Time will tell if these flaws will have any major impact in some users or businesses.

Intel has finally come around towards reporting on the state of the reboot issues that have been plaguing Intel systems ever since the company started rolling out patches to customers. These patches, which aimed to mitigate security vulnerabilities present in Intel's chips, ended up causing a whole slew of other problems for Intel CPU deployment managers. As a result of Intel's investigation, the company has ascertained that there were, in fact, problems with the patch implementation, and is now changing its guidelines: where before users were encouraged to apply any issued updates as soon as possible, the company now states that "OEMs, cloud service providers, system manufacturers, software vendors and end users stop deployment of current versions, as they may introduce higher than expected reboots and other unpredictable system behavior." A full transcription of the Intel press release follows.

Despite the grunt of the media's attention and overall customer rage having been thrown largely at Intel, AMD hasn't moved past the Spectre/Meltdown well, meltdown, unscathed. News has surfaced that at least two law firms have announced their intention of filing a class action lawsuit against AMD, accusing the company of not having disclosed their products' Spectre vulnerability, despite knowledge of said vulnerabilities.

AMD stated loud and clear that their processors weren't affected by the Meltdown flaw. However, regarding Spectre, AMD's terms weren't as clear cut. The company stated that its CPUs were vulnerable to the Spectre 1 flaw (patchable at a OS level), but said that vulnerability to Spectre 2's variant had "near-zero risk of exploitation". At the same time, the company also said that "GPZ Variant 2 (Branch Target Injection or Spectre) is applicable to AMD processors", adding that "While we believe that AMD's processor architectures make it difficult to exploit Variant 2, we continue to work closely with the industry on this threat.

The public disclosure on January 3rd that multiple research teams had discovered security issues related to how modern microprocessors handle speculative execution has brought to the forefront the constant vigilance needed to protect and secure data. These threats seek to circumvent the microprocessor architecture controls that preserve secure data.

At AMD, security is our top priority and we are continually working to ensure the safety of our users as new risks arise. As a part of that vigilance, I wanted to update the community on our actions to address the situation.

F-Secure reports a security issue affecting most corporate laptops that allows an attacker with physical access to backdoor a device in less than 30 seconds. The issue allows the attacker to bypass the need to enter credentials, including BIOS and Bitlocker passwords and TPM pins, and to gain remote access for later exploitation. It exists within Intel's Active Management Technology (AMT) and potentially affects millions of laptops globally.

The security issue "is almost deceptively simple to exploit, but it has incredible destructive potential," said Harry Sintonen, who investigated the issue in his role as Senior Security Consultant at F-Secure. "In practice, it can give an attacker complete control over an individual's work laptop, despite even the most extensive security measures."

After Intel and AMD's differing statements on the same issue, now is the time for Google, ARM, and Microsoft to release statements regarding the recently discovered (and still in the spotlight) security flaws that impact almost all Intel CPUs from the last decade. Google is the company that originally alerted Intel to the existence of the security vulnerabilities, and mentioned some reservations regarding AMD and ARM's immunity as well. Microsoft, as the maker of the world's most recognized and widely-used OS, has also issued a statement. The ARM statement follows, with both Google and Microsoft's statements transcribed after the break.

ARM
This method requires malware running locally and could result in data being accessed from privileged memory. Our Cortex-M processors, which are pervasive in low-power, connected IoT devices, are not impacted.

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY, a leading manufacturer of motherboards and graphics cards, has implemented safety measures aligned with Intel's response to the Intel Management Engine (ME) and Intel Trusted Execution Engine (TXE) security vulnerabilities, so customers can be reassured their motherboards are fully protected. For all customers who have purchased GIGABYTE motherboards for Intel platforms, please visit the official website to download the latest BIOS versions as well as ME and TXE drivers.

The updates for the motherboards will be released starting with the Z370, 200 series and then previous generation motherboards. For more information on the Intel ME and TXE security vulnerabilities, please visit this page. GIGABYTE is committed to ensuring the quality and service of our motherboards. Any issues that affect the user's experience with our products will be addressed with the utmost concern.

In order to avoid severe security vulnerabilities for the platforms, MSI motherboards now support the latest Intel Trusted Execution Engine (TXE) 3.0 for safer system protection. According to recent Intel comprehensive security review, security vulnerabilities are identified and could potentially allow attackers to gain unauthorized access to platforms features, secrets and 3rd party secrets protected by Intel TXE. Therefore, Intel has validated and released Intel TXE 3.0 updates to address the encountered security situations.

Currently all MSI 100,200 and 300 series motherboards are supporting the newest Intel TXE 3.0 by updating to the latest BIOS and installing the latest software updates. MSI always places strong emphasis on security and anti-hack issues to makes sure all MSI motherboard users are operating under the most secure circumstances. MSI will continue to provide additional updates if necessary to ensure maximum platform security protection for users.

Researchers have recently discovered a critical flaw that affects all WPA2 protected Wi-Fi devices. This can't be remedied solely by user intervention, or password changes, or even by the usage of HTTPS website; this is a flaw with the core of WPA's protection scheme, and means that an attacker could intercept every single traffic data point that your device sends over Wi-Fi, including passwords, credit card details, images - the whole treasure trove. Adding insult to injury, it's even possible for attackers using this method to inject malware into your devices. The new attack method - dubbed KRACK for Key Reinstallation Attack - basically forces your device's encryption code to default to a known, plain-text all-zero decryption key, which is trivial for hackers to reuse.

Adding to the paranoia, this is basically a device and software-agnostic attack - it's effective against devices running Android, Linux, and OpenBSD, and to a lesser extent macOS and Windows, as well as MediaTek Linksys, and other types of devices. HTTPS isn't the best solution either, simply because some website's implementation of it isn't the best, and there are scripts (such as SSLScript) that can force a website to downgrade its connection to a simple HTTP link - which can then be infiltrated by the attacker.