Scary security hole lets attackers remotely control Chrysler with Uconnect feature.

If you have a 2013 or earlier Chrysler product with the Uconnect feature, contact your dealer immediately and get the upgrade to patch this serious, scary security hole.

Reading this article was horrifying as the author described how (with his consent) hackers took over his Jeep Cherokee.  At first they just played w/ the A/C and radio, but later they messed with the transmission and the brakes, all from remote Internet locations.

 

Miller and Valasek’s full arsenal includes functions that at lower speeds fully kill the engine, abruptly engage the brakes, or disable them altogether. The most disturbing maneuver came when they cut the Jeep’s brakes, leaving me frantically pumping the pedal as the 2-ton SUV slid uncontrollably into a ditch.

Source: Hackers Remotely Kill a Jeep on the Highway—With Me in It | WIRED

Force a Windows Update and patch a “serious security hole” ASAP 

Looks like there’s a serious security hole in Windows that is based on a type of font. Presumably, this goes undetected by anti-virus software and can be activated by opening up a Word document.

Don’t wait. Go to Windows Update right now and force a “Check for Updates”, then install the patches.

More details:

The software giant said in an advisory Monday that the vulnerability, if exploited, could “allow remote code execution if a user opens a specially crafted document or visits an untrusted webpage that contains embedded OpenType fonts.”

Source: Microsoft releases emergency patch for all versions of Windows | ZDNet

It’s time to keep your phone on silent by default

This didn’t quite occur to me until I read the article, but yes, it’s time to keep that phone on silent. These days, the phone is either in your hand or on the table where you can see it, so why annoy the rest of us with whatever your ringtone is?

A ringing phone is really a relic of the past when we had one phone in the house and had to hear it ring from anywhere in the home.

Most savvy people know that their phones should be muted in public. According to a Quora poster, all the young, hip “millennials” have switched their phones to silent mode, “even though they use them incessantly.” A brave member of the clan explained what was happening: “It spares the person from the constant beeping of their cell and also from the weird looks that one receives when one’s phone keeps on beeping.”

Source: Attention, people: Your phone should never make noise in public | Fusion