The Category5.TV Newsroom

Here are the stories we're following for the week of Wednesday December 28, 2016

Police want Amazon to give up the data captured by Echo.

US police investigating a murder have tussled with Amazon over access to data gathered by one of its Echo speakers.

The voice-controlled device was found near to a hot tub where the victim was found dead amid signs of a struggle.

According to court filings, Amazon was issued with two search warrants but refused to share information sent by the smart device to its servers.

However, the police said a detective found a way to extract data from the device itself.

The accused killer has yet to be put on trial and it is not clear whether the information ultimately proved useful to the investigation.

Source: www.bbc.com

Sent to us by: Roy W. Nash

Another line of consumer routers from Netgear are dangerously vulnerable to hacker takeover.

Netgear has downplayed the significance of newly discovered flaws in its WNR2000 line of consumer routers.

The vulnerabilities could hypothetically allow a remote attacker to execute code and take over the device without authentication, claims Pedro Ribeiro, the security researcher who discovered the bugs.

“It is a LAN based attack, but it can also be used over the Internet if remote administration is enabled in the router,“ Ribeiro told El Reg.

Ribeiro went public on the flaws earlier this week with an advisory after claiming he'd not received an adequate response from Netgear.

Ribeiro maintains that the flaw is more serious than Netgear’s response implies. Vulnerable devices are easy to find using an IoT search engine, he claimed.

Also the exploit by its very nature can be used to grant a hacker access to a user's internal network, placing personal files and even devices like webcams at risk.

Netgear plans to release firmware updates that fix the remote access and command execution vulnerability for all affected products. In the meantime, it is advised to completely disable remote management on your device.

Source: www.theregister.co.uk

Sent to us by: Roy W. Nash

Microsoft has contracted nearly a billion dollars from the Department of Defense.

Microsoft just scored a big win with a $927 million contract to provide technical support and consulting for the United States Department of Defense, reports Reuters.

Back in February 2016, Microsoft secured a huge deal with the Department of Defense to bring the Windows 10 operating system to all four million of its employees within 12 months. At the time, Microsoft said it was its largest enterprise deal for Windows 10 ever.

As that 12-month window nears its close, it seems that the Department of Defense has gone back to Microsoft for the services and tech support necessary to keep everything running smoothly amid the transition.

Source: www.businessinsider.com

Sent to us by: Jeff Weston