Duncan Riley
Latest from Duncan Riley
Verizon’s Yahoo acquisition in doubt following latest hack disclosure
Verizon Communications Inc.’s takeover of Yahoo Inc. has been thrown into doubt again following news Wednesday that Yahoo had suffered another major hack that had compromised the accounts of a staggering 1 billion users. According to Bloomberg, Verizon is exploring a price cut or possible exit from its $4.83 billion pending acquisition of Yahoo. Verizon ...
Open-source peer-to-peer marketplace OpenBazaar raises $3M seed round
OB1, the development company behind open-source peer-to-peer marketplace OpenBazaar, has raised $3 million in a seed funding round backed by BlueYard Capital, Union Square Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. Launched in April this year, OpenBazaar provides a decentralized P2P e-commerce marketplace powered by bitcoin payments that use P2P networking, Ricardian contracts, decentralized reputation and multi-signature escrow. ...
28 Android phones including Lenovo models found to ship with malware
New research has found that 28 Android phones ship from the factory with preinstalled malware that can hijack a phone, install adware and other forms of malware. The phones were discovered with the malicious apps by security researchers with Russian antivirus firm Dr. Web, which found that the phones had downloader malware installed in firmware. While ...
Wynn Las Vegas to equip every room with an Amazon Echo
Ordering room service could soon be as easy as saying, “Alexa, order me a room service hamburger.” Wynn Las Vegas today announced a deal with Amazon.com Inc. to equip its hotel rooms with Amazon’s smart home assistant Echo. The deal, claimed to be an industry first, will eventually see 4,748 hotel rooms equipped with an Echo, ...
Uber hits obstacles on first day of self-driving car trial in San Francisco
Ride hailing giant Uber Technologies Inc. has expanded its trial of self-driving cars to San Francisco, but it ran into technological and political traffic on its very first day. The San Francisco test started Wednesday morning with a fleet of 11 Volvo XC90 self-driving vehicles complete with two operators on board for each trip. The ...
34 arrested in global crackdown on distributed denial-of-service attacks
Law enforcement officials in the United States, Europe and Australia have arrested 34 people as part of a global crackdown on distributed denial of service attacks. The arrests targeted buyers of DDoS-for-hire services, often using names such as “server stressers” and “booters,” who were paid on demand to maliciously deploy software to launch a DDoS ...
Finger-lickin’ bad: KFC loyalty program hacked in the UK
KFC customers have had their chicken preferences exposed after the fast food giant’s U.K. loyalty club was hacked. According to ITV Monday, 1.2 million Colonel’s Club loyalty scheme members were advised by KFC that their personal information may have been breached and that they should change their passwords. “Our monitoring systems have found a small number ...
Netgear router models vulnerable to remote attackers
New research has found that a wide variety of routers made by Netgear Inc. are highly susceptible to hacking. The security issue, discovered by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, allows remote attackers to inject highly privileged commands when anyone connected to a Netgear router clicks on a malicious link. Once exploited, the flaw allows hackers to ...
IBM’s Watson delivers AI-powered shopper support to the Mall of America
The holidays are nearly here and IBM Corp. is getting into the holiday spirit by calling on its Watson cognitive computing system to power one of the busiest shopping periods of the year. Watson is being used to pilot mobile concierges at both the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn., and Fashion Island in Newport ...
Newly discovered ransomware lets victims off the hook – if they infect their friends
In a new twist on a growing scam, a newly discovered form of ransomware offers users a chance to unencrypt the data on their computer if they infect two other friends who subsequently pay the ransom. Called Popcorn Time (not related to the video streaming service of the same name), the malware was first found ...









