Eliana Willis

Lance Whitney/ZDNETGoogle today uses Play Protect to scan your Android device for malicious or suspicious apps, but nasty and clever apps can still sneak past and infect your device with malware or spyware. Now, a new option possibly coming to Android 15 or a future version of the OS will try to quarantine potentially hostile apps.Spotted and tested by Android Authority writer Mishaal Rahman, the app quarantining feature first popped up in Android 14 QPR2 Beta 1 in November 2023. This suggests that Google started testing the feature in an Android 14 beta with potential plans to roll it out in Android 15 or beyond.Unfortunately, Google has pulled the developer page for “Quarantined Apps,” according to Rahman. While the setting that would support app quarantining at the OS level still exists, there’s not even a command line option to quarantine an app. Furthermore, neither the Google Play Store nor Google Play Services apps request any type of permissions for app quarantining.Also: The top six Android 15 features I’m most excited aboutAs such, Rahman speculates that the feature may not appear in Android 15, but a future release instead. Regardless of the timing, here’s how the feature would work, based on Rahman’s early testing.Quarantining an app would be similar to suspending it, which is how Google’s Digital Wellbeing tool prevents you from using an app as a way to avoid distractions. A quarantined app would still be visible on the home screen launcher and in the Settings screen on your Android device, but certain aspects or features would be disabled. More

Bellwether’s tools use AI and ML to analyze aerial imagery of disaster scenes. Bellwether The National Guard will soon start taking advantage of AI to help it more quickly respond to disasters. The new AI tools will be able to evaluate aerial images of disasters in just a few seconds, identify any critical infrastructure being […] More

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes/ZDNETIn an attempt to steal mobile users’ data, malicious actors are targeting Verizon and T-Mobile employees.Current and former Verizon and T-Mobile employees told Bleeping Computer that they’ve received unsolicited messages from unidentified cybercriminals offering up to $300 to perform SIM swaps. In some cases, the attackers are asking the employees to respond to them by text, while others said they could discuss the details on encrypted messaging platform Telegram.”I got your number from the T-Mo employee directory,” one of the messages to a T-Mobile employee said. “I’m looking to pay someone up to $300 per sim swap done, if you’re interested, reply and we can talk.”Also: 6 ways to protect yourself from getting scammed online, by phone, or IRLA SIM swap attack typically involves a cybercriminal getting a wireless carrier to direct service to their phone instead of the actual customer paying for that service. This often leads to identity theft, loss of sensitive information, and financial scams. What’s worse, SIM swap attacks are on the rise.In 2022, the FBI issued a warning to consumers that SIM swap attacks are growing. The agency received 320 SIM swapping complaints between January 2018 and December 2020 that cost victims $12 million. In 2021, that number jumped to 1,611 complaints and more than $68 million in losses. In 2022, complaints jumped to more than 2,000 and losses totaled nearly $73 million. More

Maria Diaz/ZDNETWhat’s the deal? The Blink Mini 2 More

The number of significant new AI models coming out of industry has surged in recent years relative to academia and government.  Stanford HAI The seventh-annual report on the global state of artificial intelligence from Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence offers some concerning thoughts for society: the technology’s spiraling costs and poor measurement of […] More

South_agency/Getty Images The XZ Utils backdoor (CVE-2024-3094) may not have been an isolated incident, according to a joint statement by the Open Source Security Foundation and the OpenJS Foundation. If you’re unaware of the XZ Utils saga, my esteemed colleague, Steven Vaughn-Nichols, covered the story in “This backdoor almost infected Linux everywhere: The XZ Utils close […] More