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 ...

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, ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

The new cryptocurrency-focused hedge fund Polychain Capital has raised $10 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz and Union Square Ventures. Run by former Coinbase employee Olaf Carlson-Wee, the fund has been set up to invest in digital assets such as bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple and other “altcoins,” as well as tradable tokens used for raising funds ...

Augmedix Inc., a startup using Google’s Glass head-mounted computers, has raised $23 million in a new round of funding from investors McKesson Ventures, OrbiMed, Redmile Group, Emergence Capital and DCM Ventures. Founded in 2012, Augmedix is seeking to “rehumanize” the physician-patient relationship by eliminating the time physicians spend on mandated electronic health record documentation. The company uses a ...