Almost 20 years ago, Google pitched Android as the more open alternative to Apple’s walled garden. Last year, Google announced it would begin erecting its own walls through developer verification. The company has issued an update on its plans, affirming that the verification system will begin rolling out in select countries later this year. We’re also learning which app stores are participating in verification and the timeline for key features…

Apple has updated its Beats Studio Buds wireless earbuds to patch a high-severity vulnerability that could be exploited by nearby hackers to eavesdrop on users. The vulnerability, CVE-2025-20701, allowed improper authentication in the firmware running on the Bluetooth-related chips, enabling people within signal range to impersonate devices that had previously been paired with the earbuds. The researchers demonstrated this in a series of end-to-end attacks that allowed them to eavesdrop…

Researchers have uncovered a massive breach of Fortinet firewalls that has given Russian-speaking attackers near-unrestricted access to some of the world’s largest and most powerful organizations, including Oracle, Chevron, Lenovo, Federal Express, a NATO defense contractor, and Fortinet itself. Nearly 74,000 Fortinet devices from more than 21,000 IP addresses in 194 countries have been compromised and their plaintext credentials exposed online, Bob Diachenko, a security researcher and head of SecurityDiscovery.com,…

Tesco, a retail conglomerate headquartered in the United Kingdom, is moving 40,000 server workloads off of VMware amid “abusive conduct” from Broadcom, recent legal filings claim. Tesco filed a lawsuit in the UK’s High Court against Broadcom alleging breach of contract last year. According to a September report from The Register, the lawsuit claimed that in January 2021, Tesco bought perpetual licenses for VMware’s vSphere Foundation and Cloud Foundation, a…

Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s (HPE) new virtualization software promotion will likely pique the interest of end users and resellers who are unhappy with Broadcom’s pricing of VMware. During its HPE Discover event in Las Vegas this week, HPE announced that customers could use its “HPE Morpheus Software—VM Essentials” offering for free for “up to one year,” per a press release. HPE’s website describes its virtualization platform as a “VMware alternative.” It…

Android 17 has been in testing since early this year, with the final beta hitting devices just a couple of weeks ago. Insofar as a mature operating system like Android still has big days, this is one of them. The official Android 17 build is starting its rollout on Pixel phones, adding a small set of new features and laying the groundwork for the future. This release also coincides with…

Last Tuesday, Microsoft patched a vulnerability it rated as max critical in its M365 Copilot AI platform. On Monday, the researchers who discovered the vulnerability and reported it to Microsoft revealed how their proof-of-concept exploit could retrieve 2FA codes and other sensitive data from emails accessible to Copilot. Microsoft and other LLM providers have been unable to prevent their products from complying with malicious requests to reveal data. The root…

The next gadget to bear the storied Commodore branding will be a flip phone. The name behind the bestselling desktop PC in history came back about a year ago. Christian “Peri Fractic” Simpson, best known for running the Retro Recipes (now known as Retro Recipes x Commodore) YouTube channel, acquired the Commodore Corporation and “100 percent of the original and official trademarks that defined the Commodore name since 1983,” per…

Fox Corporation has agreed to buy Roku Inc. for $160 per share, an approximate enterprise value of $22 billion, the firms announced today. The acquisition would unite Fox’s broadcast channels, including Fox, Fox News, Fox Business, and FS1, as well as its streaming businesses, including Tubi, a free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) platform that Fox bought in 2020, with Roku’s own FAST service, The Roku Channel, and Roku’s streaming hardware…