Disney has been sued in America for allegedly collecting children's personal information without getting parents' approvals. A class-action lawsuit [PDF] filed Thursday in northern California accuses the unstoppable children's entertainment brand and three of its developer partners of violating privacy laws by tracking the …

Black Hat A study into government-grade Android spyware led researchers to a new strain of surveillance malware lurking in the Google Play app store – a strain that has now been unceremoniously booted out of the software marketplace. Last month it was revealed that the Mexican government was infecting smartphones with malware to spy on …

Police in Germany will forego seeking decryption keys for secure messaging apps, like WhatsApp, and instead simply hack devices to snoop on suspects. Given the grumblings coming from Australia, the UK, and other Five Eyes states about encrypted messaging, we suspect these nations will follow suit – if they're not there already …

The comforting notion that iOS devices are immune to malicious code attacks has taken a knock following the release of a new study by mobile security firm Skycure. Malicious mobile apps in Apple's App Store are mercifully rare (XcodeGhost aside) compared to the comparative "Wild West" of the Google Play store, which has come …

Apple has today released patches addressing roughly four dozen exploitable security vulnerabilities in iOS, macOS, and WatchOS. The iOS 10.3.3 update resolves 47 flaws for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, including multiple remote code execution holes in the WebKit browser engine. Fixes were also posted for the Apple Watch's …

Microsoft has formally ended support for its Windows Phone platform. Tuesday's monthly software update release marked the official end of support for Windows Phone 8.1, Microsoft's last release under the Windows Phone moniker. This means an end to patches and technical support. "There will be no new security updates, non- …

Samsung is again delayed the Bixby voice assistant in the US because its English not so good with skills. More data is needed on the way Americans talk to there phones to tell it to do stuff which is apparently hard for not-American English speaking people to understand. We literally don't no why its like so hard. Bixby is …

A software company that makes tracking tools for military and 911 crews says some of the biggest mobile phone makers on the planet are stealing its technology for their own security tools. AGIS Software Development LLC this week filed suit in the East Texas District Court against Apple, LG, Huawei, ZTE and HTC for violating …

It's a recurring pain experienced by all iPhone owners: the huge and very slow software updates that require you to plug your phone in and forget about it for 30 minutes. Many have also wondered why the phone feels the need to shut down, start up again, shut down again and start up again before finally letting you get at it. …

Analysis In conjunction with the commencement of its Worldwide Developer Conference and the release of developer builds of planned operating system updates, Apple has revised its Developer Program license agreement, for better or worse. It could be either, given that Apple itself decides when its rules get applied and how they get …

Apple has released security updates for both of its main operating systems, along with iTunes, Apple Watch, and Apple TV. All should be installed as soon as possible before they are exploited by miscreants. The updates, numbering seven in total, include fixes for security vulnerabilities in the Safari browser and WebKit engine …

Microsoft has introduced a new authentication method for logging into its online accounts: rather than remember and type in a complex password, use an app on your smartphone to confirm it's really you logging in and not some miscreant. That's great news because it should thwart the vast majority of attempts by hackers to …

Apple hasn’t provided much detail, but you don’t want to ignore the latest iOS release – 10.3.1 – because it plugs a very nasty Wi-Fi vulnerability. Cupertino has rushed out the emergency patch because: “An attacker within range may be able to execute arbitrary code on the Wi-Fi chip” – meaning, presumably, that malicious …

Google's Android has overtaken Windows to become the world's first-choice platform for accessing the internet, according to number cruncher StatCounter. Android pipped Windows by 0.02 of a percentage point to snatch the title of most popular operating system by internet user, StatCounter said. Android claimed 37.93 per cent …

Apple's iOS 10.3 this week brought with it minor storage space gains, thanks to the debut of the iGiant's revised storage scheme, the Apple File System. But among app developers, such efficiency gains, a gigabyte or two of extra capacity, were undone by binary bloat brought on by Apple's development suite Xcode, specifically …

Mobile malware is at the highest level yet recorded, infecting 1.35 per cent of all mobile devices in October, according to a study by Nokia out today. The high water mark in October compares to figures of 1.06 per cent in April 2016. While Android smartphones and tablets remained the top mobile target (81 per cent), iOS-based …

It looks like Cisco won't be chasing up a partnership with WikiLeaks: it's combing the "Vault7" documents itself, and has turned up an IOS / IOS XE bug in more than 300 of its switch models. The vulnerability is in the Cisco Cluster Management Protocol (CMP) in IOS and IOS XE. The protocol passes around information about …

Seventy-six iOS applications with an accumulated 18 million downloads between them are vulnerable to having their encrypted HTTPS traffic compromised. That's the assertion made by Sudo Security's Will Strafach, who turned up the bugs while developing a scanner to analyse app binaries. Strafach told The Register the problems …