Mike Wheatley
Latest from Mike Wheatley
The NSA uses good, old-fashioned radio waves to hack offline computers
If there’s one way to protect your privacy from the prying eyes of the NSA, surely it’s by keeping your computer permanently offline, right? Well, you might have thought so – but you’d be dead wrong! According to a new report from the New York Times, that simply isn’t the case – the NSA now ...
When’s the best time to launch a cyber-attack?
When the perpetrators of the Stuxnet worm decided to launch their attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, timing was everything. Designed to disrupt Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program, Stuxnet wreaked havoc on the Natanz uranium-enrichment plant, shutting down a fifth of its centrifuges and setting its progress back by several months. But how did the hackers ...
Google’s Nest acquisition will speed up the ‘smart grid’, but it’ll come at a cost
Google has just bought Nest, maker of the smart thermostat, for a whopping $3.2 billion. It’s not immediately clear what’s motivated this acquisition, but with it Google is getting its hands on a relatively rare and untapped source of data – detailed information about your home’s power consumption. This could herald both good and bad ...
Facebook kills ‘sponsored stories’ but your face will still be used in its ads
Facebook has made good on an earlier promise to kill off its so-called “sponsored stories”, those annoying ads that use your friend’s identities and likes to promote various brands and pages. Last year, the social media giant updated its privacy policy, making clear that it would nix the sponsored stories language. But while its ads ...
It’s about time Microsoft got into bed with Android
Last week’s CES was notable for the conspicuous absence of one of the world’s largest consumer electronics firms – Microsoft. Having pulled out of CES 2013, devices running Windows software were almost totally absent at this year’s edition. Instead, CES 2014 saw Android-based desktops and laptops begin to gain momentum, and they’re now shaping up ...
Overstock.com jumps on the Bitcoin bandwagon, starts accepting payments
Overstock.com surprised a few people late on Thursday when it moved forward with its plans to accept Bitcoin as a form of payment. The online retailer previously said in December it would adopt the cryptocurrency “within the next six months”, but has now begun accepting it already, completing 150 orders within the first hour. In ...
NSA spying prompts shift away from US cloud companies
As predicted earlier here on SiliconANGLE and also by our sister site Wikibon, last year’s revelations of the NSA’s spying shenanigans are having a harmful impact on the US cloud computing industry, according to new research by Canadian cloud hosting company Peer1. The company recently carried out a survey of some 300 UK and Canadian ...
Yahoo’s ad malware almost certainly DID NOT create a Bitcoin mining botnet
A misleading story has emerged about last week’s Yahoo malware infestation, which saw the company’s home page become a cyber Typhoid Mary, exposing thousands of European PCs to digital disease. The malware-infected ads were served up by Yahoo after it fell victim to a major security breach, and now one security firm claims that these ...
Wolfram bids to make the Internet of Things actually work
If the Internet of Things is ever going to realize its true potential, then all of our connected gizmos, gadgets and sensors are going to need to speak the same language at some point. Wolfram, which runs the Wolfram Alpha computational search engine and is already familiar with Big Data sets, is a logical choice ...
Sony’s PlayStation Now signals hardcore gaming intent
Sony took to the stage at CES yesterday to announce its brand new cloud-based gaming service, called PlayStation Now, which aims to bring a range of classic PlayStation titles to all kinds of different gadgets, including smartphones and tablets. PlayStation Now will be available to US gamers in limited beta later this month, before rolling ...