Google has suspended US-based microblogging stage Parler, where the majority of the supporters of active President Donald Trump are moving their base from its application store, referring to posts inducing viciousness and requesting strong moderation for heinous content from the social networking service. All the while, Apple had given Parler, the social network supported by conservatives and extremists, an ultimatum to implement a full moderation plan of its platform inside the following 24 hours or face suspension from the App store. 

The move by the two Silicon Valley organizations came the day when Twitter forever suspended Trump's account because of the "danger of additional prompting of viciousness". 

In suspending the service, Google, whose software powers Android telephones, referred to its approach against applications that promote violence and gave recent examples from Parler, including a Friday post that started "How do we take back our country? Around 20 or so coordinated hits" and another promoting "Million Militia March" on Washington. 

"To ensure client security on Google Play, our longstanding strategies require that applications showing user-generated content have moderation policies and implementation that eliminates offensive substance like spots that prompt violence. All developers consent to these terms and we have reminded Parler of this clear policy in recent months," Google said in a statement. 

Meanwhile, Apple in a statement said it has gotten various complaints with respect to the offensive substance in Parler service, allegations that the application was utilized to plan, organize and encourage the criminal operations in Washington DC on January 6 that prompted death toll, various wounds and the devastation of property. 

Matze, who depicts himself as a libertarian, established Parler in 2018 as a "free-speech driven" alternative to mainstream platforms however started seeking right-leaning clients as prominent supporters of Trump moved there. On Parler, John Matze sent out an opposing vibe. "We won't give in to pressure from anti-competitive actors! We will and consistently have authorized our guidelines against brutality and criminal behavior. Yet, we won't cave to politically persuaded organizations and those authoritarians who scorn free speech!" he wrote in a message.

According to Google, the tech giant takes the following measures- 

Physical Security - Google claims that it provides 24/7 physical security to all data centers located across the world. The organization is also known for its advanced measures such as laser-based surveillance and biometric identification to protect its employees from cyber threats and identity theft. 

The company’s in-house disaster response team assures that even during natural disasters such as fire, flood, etc which hits the physical location of its data center Google still manages to use security monitoring to protect users from malware. The company also says, “We constantly monitor all applications, deploy patches through automated network analysis and proprietary technology, it helps us in detecting threats such as malware, viruses, and other forms of malicious code’’. 

Encryption-  Encryption means ‘the process of converting information or data into a code, especially to prevent unauthorized accesses’. The company states that ‘we use encryption into every data flow so customer’s data remain protected from any kind of snooping activities funded by official government actors. Furthermore, the tech giant added that it protects all the data access to security technologies such as HTTP and TLS or Transport Layer Security so that all email content remains inaccessible to malicious actors.

Malware protection-  According to Google, Google ensures protection to its users from any malware by deploying automated network analysis solution which keeps all kind of malicious codes away from customers credential information, with that company also use multi-purpose tools for software security and quality assurance.

Customized hardware- Google ensures that its hardware remains well protected with highly customized server components against any network infiltration by hackers. It also ensures that only its legitimate devices access the user’s data which are all under protection. 

Incident Response–A team of “Incident Management Program’’ (IMAG) at Google says, that our incident response team is 24/7 active at every data center to protect individuals' data by altering every individual if any malicious activity has been found on their account. 

Limited Access- Google gives limited access to important data which includes; business data, highly sensitive information to its employees, by doing this Google ensures security and privacy at every stage of its system.

 

Almost a week later, after getting his account suspended by Call of Duty's developer, Activision Blizzard, Google Project Zero's Williamson, who carried out the research in his personal capacity, published a blog post telling that the research he conducted required him to reverse engineer the networking code in COD'e executable ( For reviewing the code for memory corruption vulnerabilities). However, as the executable was heavily obfuscated, IDA failed to examine it, forcing him to as he said in the blog, "dump the unobfuscated code from the memory of a running game process." 

 

It was at that point when the developers of the game suspected him as a cheater and consequently, his activities were flagged for being suspicious in nature. To ensure he doesn't affect any players in the process, Williamson tried to read memory while he was in the main menu; he attached WinDbg debugging tool – in consequence to which the game exited, the incident was attributed to the flagging event as per Williamson who also attempted to pause the process prior to dumping memory from it. He dumped an image of the game from memory in the main menu and exited normally, as explained in his blog post. 

 

The researcher who was saddened by the ban for multiple reasons, told, "after spending a few days reviewing the binary, I decided that the binary was so large and unwieldy to deal with that I would table the project for a later date. But unfortunately, I was banned about a month later, losing over a year of progress on my account." 

 

"The ban saddens me on a personal level as I’ve reconnected with family and friends from throughout my life playing this game during the pandemic. But more importantly, this sends a clear signal: this research is not welcome. I believe I had a reasonable expectation that it would be. I had done similar work during a CTF, where I reverse engineered and fuzzed CS:GO without ever risking a ban," he further added. 

 

Williamson, while scaling the magnitude of 'cheating' as a threat to online gaming, said that, "I understand that the developers shoulder an impressive burden in preventing cheat development and use. They need to leverage a variety of signals to detect cheat development and use. I’m guessing that because they may not have seen security researchers reviewing their platform before, they interpret any attempt to reverse engineer as a sign of malicious behavior. No typical player would attach a debugger to the game, and therefore they probably assume they don’t need much more evidence beyond this to issue a ban." 

 

While voicing his concerns regarding the ban for security researchers, he said, "Let me be clear: at no point did I intend to develop or use a cheat, and at no point did I manipulate any aspect of the game for another player or even myself. To this day, I don’t know what exactly caused the ban, and there’s no process to appeal it. What if using a reversing tool as part of my job gets me flagged? This fear is in the back of my mind for all games with anti-cheat, not just Warzone."

This month Apple released iOS 14.2 and iPad 14.2, which patched up a sum total of 24 vulnerabilities in different parts of the OSes, including sound, crash reporter, kernel, and foundation. 

The multinational technology has fixed up three identified zero-day vulnerabilities in its iPhone, iPod, and iPad devices possibly associated with a spate of related flaws very recently found by the Google Project Zero team that additionally had an impact over Google Chrome and Windows. 

Ben Hawkes from Google Project Zero who was able to identify the zero-day vulnerabilities as "CVE-2020-27930 (RCE), CVE-2020-27950 (memory leak), and CVE-2020-27932 (kernel advantage escalation)," he said in a tweet. 

Apple likewise offered credit to Project Zero for recognizing these particular defects in its security update and gave a little more detail on each.

CVE-2020-27930 is 'a memory corruption flaw' in the FontParser on iPhone 6s and later, iPod touch 7th generation, iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 4 and later, as indicated by Apple. 

The vulnerabilities take into account an attacker to process a “maliciously crafted font” that can prompt arbitrary code execution.

The defect would permit a pernicious application to reveal kernel memory, according to the company. The Apple update comes along with the time of updates by Google over the last two weeks to fix various zero days in Google Chrome for both the desktop and Android versions of the browser. 

Shane Huntley from Google's Threat Analysis Group claims that the recently fixed Apple zero-day flaws are identified with three Google Chrome zero-days and one Windows zero-day likewise uncovered over the last two weeks, possibly as a component of a similar exploit chain.

“Targeted exploitation in the wild similar to the other recently reported 0days,” he tweeted, adding that the attacks are “not related to any election targeting.” 

It is however critical to take into notice that both Apple and Google have had an infamous past with regards to vulnerability revelation. 

The two tech monsters famously butted heads a year ago over two zero-day bugs in the iPhone iOS after Google Project Zero analysts guaranteed that they had been exploited for quite a long time.

 

Google denied disclosing any details of the bug that had been exploited actively in the wild, as a lot of users have not updated yet; it's a part of Google's privacy policy. It prevents attackers from developing exploits alongside and gives users more time to get the updates installed. While Google's TAG hasn't confirmed if the threat actors behind the two bugs were the same, it assured that the acts were not motivated by the ongoing US presidential elections. 

 

Furthermore, a critical memory corruption flaw under active exploitation in the Google Chrome browser (CVE-2020-15999) was identified by the researchers at Google's TAG, who also told that this zero-day vulnerability was under attack in combination with CVE-2020-17087, windows zero-day. The zero-day vulnerability identified as CVE-2020-15999 affected the FreeType font rendering library, thereby demanding attention from all services making use of this library. 

 

Additionally, the latest security update will also allow users to experience a more stable and improved Chrome browser in terms of performance. 

 

In a blog post published on 2nd November, Google said, "The stable channel has been updated to 86.0.4240.183 for Windows, Mac, and Linux which will roll out over the coming days/weeks. A list of all changes is available in the log. Interested in switching release channels? Find out how. If you find a new issue, please let us know by filing a bug. The community help forum is also a great place to reach out for help or learn about common issues." 

"Google is aware of reports that an exploit for CVE-2020-16009 exists in the wild. We would also like to thank all security researchers that worked with us during the development cycle to prevent security bugs from ever reaching the stable channel," the blog further stated.

Google has now eliminated 17 infected android apps from its google play store. These apps contained the "Joker" malware, according to the findings by experts Zscaler. Joker is among the most effective malware that attacks Android applications.

The malware is infamous in the cybersecurity industry, but it always finds a new way to access Google's play store applications. Joker uses new codes, execution techniques, and retrieving methods to trespass the play store. The malware is used for stealing personal chats, contact information, call logs, and device data. Joker also secretly subscribes to users for premium WAP (wireless application protocol) services.

It's difficult to imagine life without Google and every day the search engine gets more involved and intricate in our lives. One of its features - the Google Assistant is used quite extensively by masses to make their life easier and tasks swifter.

 "Meet your Google Assistant. Ask it questions. Tell them to do things. It's your own personal Google, always ready to help whenever you need it." 

The presidential elections in the US are near. Keeping this in mind, Google has announced a new policy that will ban ads that advertise hacked political content or propaganda. This new policy will come into effect from 1 September 2020, as per the news available on Google's support page. After the new rule is implemented, the third party players won't be able to purchase ad-space on Google ads, directly or indirectly linked to the hacked content of any political party.

However, ads related to news articles or other pages that contain hacked political material may be allowed. But the news article and the page shouldn't be linked to the political content in any way, says the policy. The violators of this new Google Ads policy (Ad Buyers) will first receive a warning to remove the ad from their account or face account suspension after seven days.


The policy is made observing the 2016 US Elections. 

The new Google Ads policy is made to avoid the 2016 US presidential elections scenario. As we all know, during the 2016 election campaigns in the US, the Russian hackers were able to break into the servers of various political factions associated with the Democratic Party. The breach resulted in data leaks of the Democratic party on WikiLeaks and DC leaks. The attack resulted in biased media coverage and online ads on various social media and platforms that discussed the hacked political content. Google will become the first company to make such a move when the policy is enacted on 1 September.

Twitter, in a similar incident, banned the distribution of hacked content on its platform in 2018 before the US midterm elections. It included not only political content but every other hacked material. It resulted in an unofficial ban of the ads on Twitter, as they need tweets to advertise. According to Google's policy, the following is not allowed: "Ads that directly facilitate or advertise access to hacked material related to political entities within the scope of Google's elections ads policies. This applies to all protected material obtained through the unauthorized intrusion or access of a computer, computer network, or personal electronic device, even if distributed by a third party."

A research discovered that almost all the malware are designed to target android users and in order to prevent users from installing adware filled apps built to stealthily access their banking and social media credentials; Google has made a continuous effort including the introduction of ‘Google Play Protect’. The main idea behind Play protect is to keep your device, apps, and data secure by automatically scanning the apps in real-time and identifying any potentially malicious apps. Despite the strength of Google’s machine learning algorithms and constantly improving real-time technology, the operations of Potentially Harmful Applications (PHAs) do not seem to halt any time soon as cybercriminals are devising new methods to evade detection by Play Protect also.

Recently, Google pulled off 29 apps from the Play Store as they were found to be infected with adware, most of these apps were present in the facade of photo editing apps having a feature of ‘blur’, which was also the codename of the investigation called as “CHARTREUSEBLUR”- that unveiled the malicious operations. The apps were discovered as a part of the White Ope’ Satori threat intelligence team. In total, these Android apps had more than 3.5 million downloads.

As per the observations, these malicious apps were promoting irrelevant advertisements which are said to be used to keep away from detection. After the victim installs any of these apps, the icon to launch the app would immediately disappear from the home screen and won’t be found anywhere, making it highly inconvenient for the users to remove the adware laden apps from their devices. Moreover, there was no open function to be found on the Play Store either.

In order to stay on a safer side, the investigation team advised Android users to stay wary of adware filled apps by examining reviews properly before downloading and not to fall for fake 5-star reviews. Apps that seem new and have received a whopping number of downloads in a short period of time should be strictly avoided.

Recently banned 29 Android applications included Color Call Flash, Photo Blur, Photo Blur Master, Super Call Screen, Square Blur Master, Blur Photo Editor, Super Call Flash, Auto Picture Cut, Square Blur Photo, Magic Call Flash amid a few others.

Google-owned 'blogspot.in', a blogging website also known as "Blogger" has become inaccessible to Indian users as Google appears to have lost its ownership over the domain.

Blogger.com is a free platform used by millions of users for blogging. As it used to fall under Google's ownership, one could link it to various other Google products such as Picasa, Google AdSense, and social network, Google+. The simplicity in accessibility made blogger widely popular; users just need a Google account to activate blogger.

People who were using Blogger for posting blogs faced issues while accessing their blogs, meanwhile, a number of web pages within the Indian domain became unreachable. According to a report by the Next Web, the issue occurred because of Google losing its ownership over the URLs Blogspot.in, however, the time when Google lost its control over the domain is not clearly known.

Referencing from the Next Web's report on the matter, "Whatever the reason might be, if I host a site or blog with Google, I would expect a company of this size to keep up and know when their domain name ownership expires,"

"If you use a blog regularly, an alternative is to host it on your own domain. But everyone might not want to do that just to keep things easy. And you’d expect Google Webmaster to do better," read the report.

One of the major issues faced by a million users was that the links that they have on put on several websites with the "Blogspot.in" domain became inaccessible. However, the blogs are still there, they were visible when users changed the URLs to blogspot.com. Chances are, this is just a temporary issue and would be taken care of by Google shortly, however, users who were using "Blogspot.in" domain will have to go through the trouble for now as the tech giant has not addressed the issue yet.

In a recent cybersecurity incident, Google cleared 25 applications from its google play store as they were alleged to steal the users' FB credentials. According to Google, these applications were downloaded for around 2..35 million before the play store decided to shut them down. All these 25 applications were created by the same developer, even though they seemed to work differently and offer different features, they were all peas in a pod.


These apps showed themselves as a video editor, photo editor, wallpaper apps, file managing apps, mobile gaming apps, and flashlight apps., says Evina, a France based cybersecurity organization. When the firm came to know about the incident, it reported to Google, and precautionary measures were taken immediately to protect the end-users. The malware was also reverse-engineered so that no damage could take place. The 25 apps had malware embedded in them, which stole FB login credentials whenever the user launched the FB application.

Although the apps worked legally, they, however, had hidden malicious codes. The code could tell about the recently launched app in the user's device. If it were FB, these apps would create a fake login page that looked the same as the original to steal the user's login credentials. If the user entered his login credentials, the app would capture the data and transfer it to a remote server domain. When Google came to know about the issue after Evina's claims in May, it verified it before taking down these apps. Playstore removed these 25 apps earlier this month, some of which had been in use for more than a year.

"When an application is launched on your phone, the malware queries the application name. If it is a Facebook application, the malware will launch a browser that loads Facebook at the same time. The browser is displayed in the foreground, which makes you think that the application launched it. When you enter your credentials into this browser, the malware executes javascript to retrieve them. The malware then sends your account information to a server," said Evina in a blog post.

Phone prompt 2FA

Due to a recent increase in device hacks, Google has decided to strengthen up its Nest security protections. The Nest smart home devices will provide account protection to the users that are always a high potential target. These can be journalists and politicians. The Advanced Protection Program was launched in 2017. When signing up for Google services, the program offered additional account protection features. The features were- restricting third-party access, providing malware protection, and offering security keys to prevent cyberattacks.


According to Google, the Nest has been launched because of top requests from the users. Smart home devices have become an easy target for hackers; it is because they are connected through the internet but lack basic safety protections. It has compelled the Government and the states to aid developers of these devices in increasing the security. If the hackers attack a smart home device and have access to it, they can control the camera, or infect the device using Botnet, which can turn off websites through junk traffick. However, Nest devices are considered to be the safest of all, but even they are vulnerable to hacking attacks.

After a series of cyberattacks against the nest devices were reported earlier this year, Google mandated Nest users to use the two-factor authentication. According to Google, the user accounts were not breached but said that the hackers could be using stolen passwords to target other Nest users in different breaches. We know that two-factor authentication provides an extra layer of security to the users, but according to Google, the new security improvements will be even better and more reliable.

According to the Washington Post, "tech companies have been aware of the threat of credential stuffing for years, but the way they think about it has evolved as it has become a bigger problem. There was once a sense that users should take responsibility for their security by refraining from using the same password on multiple websites. But as gigantic dumps of passwords have gotten more frequent, technology companies have found that it is not just a few inattentive customers who reuse the same passwords for different accounts — it's the majority of people online."

Apple is planning to invest more in streamlines and increasing its cloud-based and software services like iCloud, Newsplus, and Apple Music. The expansion will go along with devices like iPads, MacBooks, and iPhones. To be entirely sure about the reliability of the cloud-based service on all the Apple devices, the company has decided to rely on AWS (Amazon Web Services) and the cloud division. AWS, as you might know, is a subunit of Amazon that offers cloud-space solutions. According to CNBC's findings, Apple is said to pay Amazon $30 Million monthly for its cloud-based services. It also means that Apple is one of the biggest customers of AWS.


Nevertheless, Apple hasn't confirmed whether it uses Amazon's cloud services besides its iCloud. According to experts, Apple also has some of its cloud services on Google. Amazon transformed the management of the data center and hosting of the applications when it brought the AWS. Being the first one to offer services like these, AWS is currently ranked top in the world of cloud hosting. Since recent times, Google Cloud and MS Azure are also trying to increase their presence in cloud-space services.

"As a matter of fact, AWS crossed the $10 billion quarterly revenue mark in Q1 2020, bringing in revenue of $10.2 billion with a growth rate of 33%. AWS accounted for about 13.5% of Amazon's total revenue for the quarter, which is on the higher end. Google Cloud, which includes Google Cloud Project (GCP) and G-Suite, generated $2.78 billion in revenue in the first quarter this year, which marked as a 52% increase over the same quarter a year ago. Microsoft does not reveal Azure revenue, but it announced that its Azure revenue grew by 59% in Q1 2020 over the same quarter a year ago," says Taarini Kaur Dang from Forbes.

As it seems, Apple knows the importance of the high-end cloud support needed for offering the best services to its customers. Similar to other tech biggies, Apple has its cloud space team called ACI (Apple Cloud Infrastructure). Noticing Apple's recent advancements, it is fair to believe that Apple might revolutionize the cloud-space world.

Android is vulnerable anew owing it to a new vulnerability which goes by the name of “StrandHogg 2.0”

That is right. StrandHogg is back and now has affected numerous Android devices putting over a Billion Android devices in jeopardy.

The vulnerability is a pretty typical way aids hackers disguise illegitimate applications as legitimate ones with the ultimate aim of making them grant permissions which could end up releasing really important information.

The posing applications then find a way to the users’ sensitive data that too in real-time. Surprisingly, the worst part about the vulnerability is that the users would have no idea at all that they have been attacked and they’d be completely unaware of the malicious applications on their device.

This vulnerability is referenced as “CVE-2020-0096” and is known by the name “StrandHogg 2.0”. This version aids the hackers to make more sophisticated attacks.

As of last year StrandHogg was already listening in on conversations and recording them, accessing login credentials, read/sending unwanted texts and with complete control of the photo album, call logs, and contacts.

Allegedly, StrandHogg 2.0 excepting the latest version of the Android 10 OS, exists on most Android devices.

As per sources, the Google website has it that from a minimum of 2 Billion Android users, just 16% of them have updated to Android 10 hence the rest are allegedly vulnerable.

To fight or prevent any mishap that could be caused by StrandHogg 2.0, steer clear off pop up notifications asking permission for sending notifications, messages, or other related things and applications asking to log in again despite being already logged in.

Due to the Coronavirus Pandemic, not as per usual, Google will be releasing its Android 11 Beta version via an online conference at the Google I/O. Reportedly this conference is scheduled for June 3, 2020.

Sources mention that this conference will be a fresh source for many new updates and news about official events. The schedule for the launching of Android 11 has been released and according to it Android 11 will undergo 3 Beta releases in the upcoming months that are June, July, and August. Word has it that the official version would finally hash out in or near October.

Reportedly, Google was in the news about having removed 49 Chrome extensions from its browser’s store for robbing crypto-wallet credentials. What’s more, after that, there surfaced an additional set of password-swiping “extensions” aka “add-ons”, which are up for download even now.

Per sources, the allegedly corrupt add-ons exist on the browser store disguised as authentic crypto-wallet extensions. These absolutely uncertified add-ons invite people to fill in their credentials so as to make siphoning off them easy and the digital money accessible.

Reports mention that the security researchers have affirmative information as to 8 of the 11 fake add-ons impersonating legitimate crypto-wallet software being removed including "Jaxx Ledger, KeyKeep, and MetaMask." A list of “extension identifiers” which was reported to Google was also provided.

Per researchers, there was a lack of vigilance by the Google Web Store because it apparently sanctions phisher-made extensions without giving the issue the attention it demands. Another thing that is disturbing for the researchers is that these extensions had premium ad space and are the first thing a user sees while searching.

According to sources, much like the Google Play Store with malicious apps, the Google Web Store had been facing difficulty in guarding itself against mal-actors. There also hadn’t been much of a response from their team about the issue.

One solution that was most talked about was that Google should at the least put into effect mechanisms in the Chrome Web Store that automatically impose trademark restrictions for the store and the ad platforms in it.

Per sources, Google’s Chrome Web Store “developer agreement” bars developers from violating intellectual property rights and also clearly mentions “Google is not obligated to monitor the products or their content”. Reports mention that as per the ad policy of Google, it could review trademarks complaints from trademarks holders only when it has received a complaint.

Google heeding all the hue and cry about the extensions did herald more restrictions with the motive of wiping away traces of any fake extensions and spammers creating bad quality extensions that were causing people trouble.

The alterations in the policy will block the spammers and developers from swarming the store with similar extensions and elements with questionable behavior. Word has it that because of hateful comments the Chrome Web Store was “locked down” in January.

But, as promising as it may be, allegedly Google has been making such promises about the Chrome Web Store security strengthening for more than half a decade. So no one can blame researchers for their skepticism.

Security researchers have found a Chrome extension that turns Chrome browsers in proxy bots that enables the hacker to browse chrome using an infected identity.
This tool was created by Matthew Bryan, a security researcher, he named it "Cursed Chrome" and released it on GitHub as an open-source project.

 The software works on two fronts and has two parts -

• a client-side component (this is the chrome extension) 
• a server-side counterpart ( this is where all CursedChrome server report) 

Once this extension is installed, it can be used to log into the CursedChrome control panel, and through it, the hacker can use any infected browser. Thus, the hacker can navigate and browse the net using that identity and can even access logged in sessions and credentials.

This extension is the icing on the cake for hackers and has been received with skepticism. Many at the cybersecurity community have raised their eyebrows at the public release of such software saying it's nothing short of handing a gun to a killer to do the killing. 

Created for Pen-testing

The creator, Matthew Bryant says that his intentions were quite innocent. "I open-sourced the code because I want other professional red teamers and pen-testers to be able to accurately simulate the 'malicious browser-extension' scenario," says Bryant in a statement.

He opens sourced the code so that it would help security companies to test their walls and keep the miscreants out. "Open-sourcing tooling is important for red teams (security companies) for the same reasons as any other job: it saves time for the teams at different companies from having to rewrite everything whenever they do a red team or pentest. It's actually doubly important for us because pen-testers and red teamers work on extremely tight timelines," Bryant said.

Bryant says that it's very easy to built an extension like CursedChrome for a hacker and his only intention was to bring awareness that extensions like these that we very easily install in our system can be equal to paving way for hackers.

 "It's [...] important to raise awareness of just what level of access you're granting when you install a random extension for your browser," Bryant said in a mail to ZDnet.

He hopes that security companies can show the dangers of Chrome extensions through CursedChrome and build a stronger security system.

Bryant also gives a solution that blocks all extensions that could harm the user's security. He released a second project, named Chrome Galvanizer on GitHub (this too, open-source).

Reportedly, the United Kingdom declared that their coronavirus tracing application is being run via centralized British servers and that’s how they are planning to take things forward and not via the usual “Apple-Google approach” which is a preferred one for most.

Per sources, the CEO of the Tech unit of the National Health Service mentioned that their new smartphone app will have its launching in the upcoming weeks, with the hopes of helping the country return to normalcy by beating coronavirus.

According to reports, the UK government believes that the contact-tracing protocol created by Apple and Google protects user privacy “under advertisement only”. Hence the British health service supports a system that would send the data of who may have the virus to a centralized server giving all the controls in the hand of the NHS.

The way of the NHS and that of Apple and Google, work via Bluetooth by putting a cell-phone on the wireless network, having it emit an electronic ID that could be intercepted by other phones in the vicinity. If a person tests positive for COVID-19 their ID would be used to warn the others near them.

Meaning, if you were near an affected person, your phone would show flags about their being infected, you’d be notified about it and if you may have caught the novel coronavirus you’d be alerted about that too, mention sources.

Per reports, Google and Apple especially had created an opt-in pro-privacy API for Android and iOS. The feature allows the user’s phone to change its ID on other phones near them and store it across different intervals of time.

Per sources, if a person is discovered to have COVID-19 they can allow the release of their phone’s ID to a decentralized set of databases looked over by healthcare providers and the nearby users would be notified about it.

The above-mentioned approach works best to help ensure that the users aren’t tracked by exploiting the above information. Google and Apple say that their protocol would make it next to impossible for them, the governments, and mal-actors to track people. The data wouldn’t leave the user’s phone unless they want it to, that too anonymously if and when.


A person, to declare themselves infected must enter a specific code from a healthcare provider after being tested positive which is a great way to curb fraudulent announcements about being infected.

The NHS, on the other hand, thought of proposing a centralized approach that makes the government, the party that has the coronavirus related details of all the users on their database for further analysis.

Per sources, for this application to be successful 60% of a population would have to download it and opt for it. Trust plays a major role here, if the users don’t trust the app it would be of no use to others either.

Reports mention that most countries prefer the Google and Apple method better, including Switzerland, Austria, and Estonia. Germany too is in strong support of a decentralized line whereas France had to face criticism for its inclination towards the centralized approach.

Nevertheless, the NHS is hell-bent on going forward with the centralized approach and is adamant that it will safeguard the privacy of people no matter what. In the centralized way of things, the NHS would capture all the IDs of phones with the app active on them and store the details on their database. Later on, if a user is found to be infected the NHS would make the call about all the hows, whens, and ifs of the warning procedure on the other phones.

If things were to work out the way NHS wants it to, the application would advise users to take steps to help them save themselves against the virus, like self-isolating if need be. The advice notified would be customized per the situation. They would also build a better database and help people with first-hand updates. People could also voluntarily provide detailed information about themselves to make the app’s experience more comprehensive.

Moreover, the centralized system would be way easier for conducting audits and analysis of the data that has been stored in the databases for further research about users that are at most risk.

But regardless of all the superficial advantages, the NHS would still be creating a database bursting with people’s personal information like their health statuses, their movements, and that too with the government having complete control of it.

The success of the entire operation dwells on the people’s trust in the NHS, the UK government, and the governments of all the countries for that matter who have opted for the centralized system.

The new Chrome 81 version released on April 7th by Google for Windows, Mac, and Linux primarily focused on security owing to the vulnerability users are subjected to due to the coronavirus pandemic. The launch of the update was delayed for similar reasons. It brought along new features, bug fixes, and over 30 security flaw patches from Google's security researchers and some experts from outside.

The new Chrome 81 version is being promoted to the Stable channel, meanwhile, Chrome 83 and Chrome 84 will be promoted to the Beta version and the Canary version respectively. As per sources, Chrome 82 will be disregarded because of the COVID-19 charged atmosphere, and all progress from the version will be channelized into the subsequent version, Chrome 83.

While warning users of more security flaws in Chrome 81, Google confirms two new high-severity vulnerabilities infecting the web browser. As these new security exploits could allow hackers to run commands over an affected system by gaining unauthorized control, users worldwide are being advised by the U.S Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to apply the latest update launched by the company in defense against these security vulnerabilities.

Both of the aforementioned security vulnerabilities were reported by Zhe Jin from Qihoo 360, a Chinese internet security services provider; for one of these, Jin received a bounty of $10,000 for CVE-2020-6462 which is a use-after-free error in the Chrome task scheduling component. The second one, CVE-2020-6461 was also of a similar use-after-free form but this one affected storage, according to the update notice from Prudhvikumar Bommana, Google Chome Technical Program Manager. 

Google has confirmed that the update will be pushed for all the users in the upcoming days and weeks, however, users are advised to remain proactive and keep looking up for updates to be applied manually by going to Help | About Google Chrome, where you can find the version you are currently running and an option to check for further updates. After installing the latest version, simply restart the web browser, and there you go being safeguarded against both the flaws.