The AV-TEST Institute, an independent anti-virus research provider, inspected 41 different virus and malware scanners for Android specifically testing for detection performance.
According to the report, about half of the scanners are not yet suitable for use mainly due to reliability of detection, with some products scoring a detection rate of less than 65% out of the 680 types of malware tested.
Darpa director Regina Dugan will soon be stepping down from her position atop the Pentagon’s premiere research shop to take a job with Google. Dugan, whose controversial tenure at the agency lasted just under three years, was “offered and accepted at senior executive position” with the internet giant, according to Darpa spokesman Eric Mazzacone. She felt she couldn’t say no to such an “innovative company,” he adds.
A security researcher based in Russia pocketed a cool $60,000 from Google on Wednesday after he submitted a a "full exploit" for a vulnerability in the difficult-to-compromise Chrome browser.
The winning entry was part of the inaugural Pwnium contest, in which Google is offering up to $1 million in prizes for bug hunters who can find a way to defeat its browser's much-vaunted sandbox architecture. The competition occurs at the annual CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver, British Columbia and coincides with the well-known Pwn2Own contest, run by HP TippingPoint.
At last year’s CanSecWest Pwn2Own hacker contest, Google Chrome was the only browser left standing. This year, Chrome was the first to fall, thanks to an impressive exploit from a team of French hackers.
VUPEN, the controversial company that sells vulnerabilities and exploits to government customers, deliberately took aim at Chrome this year to send a simple message: no software is unbreakable if hackers have enough motivation to prepare and launch an attack.
Google today introduced its answer to iTunes and iCloud called Google Play, which will offer cloud-based access to music, movies, eBooks and apps on Android smartphones, tablets, and on the PC. Since everything is stored online, you don't have to worry about losing files or syncing to get the content on the device you want to use.
Reports are circulating that Google is developing a voice assistant technology that would rival Apple's Siri.
Google is reported to be working on a task-oriented voice technology, dubbed Google Assistant, according to TechCrunch, which cited unnamed sources. Google Assistant is reportedly slated to be released in the fourth quarter of this year.
Google pushed out another update to its Chrome Web browser Sunday, fixing 14 holes three days before Chrome's trial by fire in an annual hacking competition.
The latest version, 17.0.963.65, fixes errors with cursors, backgrounds and plug-ins not loading, as well as issues with copying and pasting text and using touch controls on websites, according to the official Chrome blog.
Last year, Google introduced SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encryption to searches made through Google.com. Now, the effort to strengthen user privacy through encrypted search queries is becoming global, and Google hopes this will “motivate other companies to adopt SSL more broadly.”
Note that countless users have their own concerns with Google and how it handles user data. SSL obviously can’t solve issues of trust, and that’s a separate issue. As far as keeping users safe from outside threats, this is a solid move. The announcement, from Google Software Engineer, Michael Safyan:
Archos has announced the forthcoming release of a new Android tablet computer for children.
The 'Child Pad' is a seven-inch screen-toting tablet that runs the latest version of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich, has a 1GHz processor and 1GB of RAM.
Since version 13, Google's Chrome browser has been able to pre-load and pre-render pages to minimise potential waiting times when a user clicks on a link. However, users may never actually look at these pages – for example, because they click on a different link. According to NetApplications, the number of pre-loaded, but unread pages accounted for 4.3% of all page visits with Chrome in February 2012.
