Category: Computer PC Tips – bits and bytes

Apple Offers Apology, Replacement Deal for Tired iPhone Batteries Apple has finally told everyone that they slowed down your smart devices due to batteries that no longer could no longer perform up to speed.  iPhone users also got a $29 battery replacement deal. Message sent The message sent to all users had the following: “We know that some of you feel Apple has let you down, we apologize.” “First and foremost, we have never—and would never—do anything to intentionally shorten the life of any Apple product, or degrade the user experience to drive customer upgrades, Our goal has always been to create products that our customers love, and making iPhones last as long as possible is an important part of that.” Purchase a replacement battery The apology does not help anyone who…

Microsoft releases PowerShell script for purpose of testing of Meltdown and Spectre With the latest news concerning the possible attacks within your computer hardware Microsoft has jumped on providing a PowerShell Script to give a user basic knowledge whether they are vulnerable.  Baron Software followed the guidelines and can attest that it does work providing the end user with information but it doesn't really tell the end user what to do.  This is almost like being in a bomb shelter waiting for the explosion to happen. Commendable for Microsoft Microsoft, at least gave something to work on while hardware manufacturers have to come up with a plan on protecting the end user.  That should be happening in the next few weeks to months but also be aware that countless folks…

How to Protect Your Home Router from Attacks Protecting everything at your home is essential to your daily life at this point.  You are now using a router in your home for everything from smart devices (ipads, iphones, android devices), printers and workstations. Now is the time to follow these simple instructions. Choosing a router You get what you paid for.  Simple term for simple things, you go cheap and you can expect anybody on the outside to attack your internal structure.  Keep in mind you want a solid piece of equipment that provides you with the utmost security and closing down users from the outside. Change the default admin password Everybody makes the mistake of not changing a default password when installing a new router.  Big mistake.  Keeping the…

Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities Recently, two critical vulnerabilities were discovered in modern processors. Dubbed "Meltdown and Spectre", these processor chip vulnerabilities are found on personal computers, mobile devices, and in the cloud. What is Meltdown Meltdown exploits a flaw in out-of-order execution, a performance feature found in many modern processor chips. The researchers who discovered it have confirmed that it affects every Intel processor since 1995 (with the exception of pre-2013 Intel Itanium and Intel Atom processors). However, they added that it remains unclear whether ARM and AMD processors are also affected by the vulnerability. If successfully exploited, an attacker can obtain a copy of the entire kernel address space, including any mapped physical memory, in other words, any data stored in memory at the time of the attack. What is…