Roundup This week, the infosec world descended on Las Vegas for BlackHat and DEF CON to share stories of bug hunting, malware neural nets, hefty payout offers, and more. Meanwhile, outside of the desert… Snapchat source sourced Photo-slinging biz Snapchat had a pretty rough week, as a mystery code dump on GitHub turned out to be a …

Analysis Imagine if Intel had decided in the 1980s that all of its CPUs henceforth would have a vast parallel processing unit worthy of a Cray supercomputer, integrated into every chip. This would quadruple the price of an Intel microprocessor, but "future-proof" its PCs. Samsung Gear S3 Smartwatch And lo, Qualcomm hath declared that …

Some optimists are betting on Google own-brand devices to save the smartwatch. Others are betting that new generations of Google-free Android-based hardware will do the same thing. And one of the latter is IDC. IDC has predicted the smartwatch category will return to growth in the next few years. How so? IDC points out that …

Analysis Features introduced in the latest version of Apple's wearable OS suggest Apple wants to produce more sophisticated small computing devices and avoid getting embroiled a straight fight with fitness trackers. That's a reasonable strategy, for the killer features of the Apple Watch so far have turned out to be not apps, not …

Analysis Whoever predicted that fitness bling-flingers would struggle to survive should take note of the latest numbers on the wearable market from Canalys. Garmin eased itself into the No.2 spot as a smartwatch vendor in Q1 worldwide, successfully making the move upmarket into higher margin products. This wasn't supposed to happen, …

Asteroid, a Linux-based open-source wearable OS, formally reached a big milestone this week, and it might give Tizen a run for Samsung's money. Developed as a hobby by French Linux developer Florent Revest, Asteroid runs on a number of smartwatches that launched with Wear OS, formerly Android Wear. Considerable progress has …

Nimble-footed Garmin has nipped ahead of industry's lumbering giants and expanded its own mobile payments offering in the UK to include "challenger bank" Starling. Garmin's bonk-to-pay system works with any NFC-capable terminal. Starling allows customers to set up accounts trivially on an iPhone, but Garmin hopes to have …

Qualcomm is shipping samples of its third-generation wearable chip – the first to be built from the "ground up," it claims. Today's Android smartwatches mostly use the aging Snapdragon Wear 2100 announced over two years ago, built out of good ol' 28nm transistor gates. The power-hungry Qualcomm system-on-chip typically …

Black Hat Asia Wearable devices – and anything that relies on an app to help with configuration – has at least three attack surfaces and your existing secure development lifecycle probably isn’t going to cope with the complexity that creates. So said Kavya Racharla, a security research manager for Intel’s Sports Group, and Deep Armor founder …

LogoWatch LogoWatch Google’s re-branded Android Wear, the cut of Android for wearable devices, as “Wear OS by Google” and added the tag line "make every minute matter". The company’s brief announcement doesn’t really explain why Google’s made the change, other than to say it’s “a new name that better reflects our technology, vision, and …

Fitbit has taken the wraps off its second (or fifth, depending on how you're counting) smartwatch, Versa, claiming the new model has inherited Pebble DNA. It's less weird and clunky than the much-vaunted Ionic, which was inspired by sci-fi movies. And cheaper than comparable devices - the Apple Watch or most Android Wear …

A US stock trader has been sentenced to two years in prison for running a pump and dump operation involving wearables vendor Fitbit, albeit one that earned him only a few thousand dollars. Robert Walter Murray was given the federal prison term after pleading guilty to one count of securities fraud. He had faced a maximum of 20 …

Analysis Did you notice anything else missing from Mobile World Congress this year? Apart from any interesting phones? Previous MWCs have been flooded by hopeful tech companies touting new wearables. The flood became a trickle, and last year Huawei and LG were the only two tech vendors left flying the flag for Android Wear smartwatches …

The American military has ordered a review of its grunts' personal electronics – after the Strava fitness app used by soldiers revealed base locations and other operational security gaffes. In November, the exercise-tracking software maker released a "heatmap" to show where in the world people were using the application to …

Fitbit says it will formally end support for Pebble hardware this summer. The dying exercise wearables specialist said today that on June 30, 2018, it will cut off online services and support for any remaining Pebble wrist-puters. Don't fret. At least you'll have enough time to use one of the doomed smartwatches to shed …

Fitbit's year-on-year losses grew fivefold to $113.4m compared to a year ago, with sales of 3.6 million devices in the quarter, 7 per cent up from the previous quarter. The firm admitted it had been a "difficult year" as the fitness band craze diminished, with sales down considerably compared to the same period of 2016. …

Analysis Just as the Apple Watch was set to go mainstream, bugs and poor design choices have taken the shine off the latest version of the hardware. Apple Watch has been the only Apple product to get a price cut since Brexit, which saw some prices rise by over 20 per cent. The Series 2 42mm was £399 prior to the product launch last …

The new LTE-enabled Apple Watch 3 appears to suffer from a bug that can keep the touch-screen wearable from connecting to cellular data networks. Multiple reviews of the still-unreleased device have found that when wearing it without its paired iPhone, the Apple Watch constantly tries to connect to nearby Wi-Fi networks, …