Daily Tech News and Updates

The best prepared meal delivery services to use for 2020: Home Chef, Daily Harvest, Veestro, Gobble and more - CNET

No-fuss, oven-ready meal kits.

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Facebook's Zuckerberg defends decision to leave up 'inflamatory' Trump posts about Minnesota protests - CNET

President Trump's posts, which included a seeming threat of National Guard shooting citizens caught looting, were censored by Twitter. But not by Facebook.

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The best meat delivery services in 2020: Omaha Steaks, Thrive Market, Crowd Cow and more - CNET

Explore your options for high-quality beef, pork, chicken and seafood all delivered to your door.

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A popular encryption algorithm is being killed because it is too weak

The developers of two open source code libraries for Secure Shell, which is the protocol used by millions of computers to create encrypted connections, have decided to no longer support the Secure Hash Algorithm 1 (SHA-1) due to growing security concerns.

As reported by Ars Technica, developers using the OpenSSH and Libssh libraries will no longer be able to use SHA-1 to digitally sign encryption keys going forward. In its release notes, OpenSSH explained why it will no longer support SHA-1, saying:

“It is now possible to perform chosen-prefix attacks against the SHA-1 algorithm for less than USD$50K. For this reason, we will be disabling the "ssh-rsa" public key signature algorithm by default in a near-future release. This algorithm is unfortunately still used widely despite the existence of better alternatives, being the only remaining public key signature algorithm specified by the original SSH RFCs.”

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SHA-1 is a cryptographic hash function that was first developed in 1995. It is used for producing hash “digests” which are each 40 hexadecimal characters long and these digests are meant to be distinct for every message, file and function that uses them.

Hash collisions

A collision is a cryptographic term used to describe when two or more inputs generate the same outputted digest and researchers began warning that SHA-1 was becoming increasingly vulnerable to collisions almost a decade ago.

In 2017, SHA-1 fell victim to a collision attack that cost $110,000 to produce which lead to a number of browsers, browser-trusted certificate authorities and software update systems to abandon the algorithm though some services and software continued using it despite the risk.

However, in January of this year, researchers showed that an even more powerful collision attack could be launched for just $45,000. This chosen-prefix attack showed that it is possible to modify an existing input and still end up with the same SHA-1 hash and an attacker could use this method to alter documents or software to bypass SHA-1-based integrity checks.

While OpenSSH and Libssh will no longer support SHA-1, the encryption algorithm is still supported in recent versions of OpenSSL.

We've also highlighted the best VPN services

Via Ars Technica

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Exclusive: Vivo X50 to launch in India soon

The Vivo X50 series has been gaining a lot of attention off late. The new device may represent an even more important event for Vivo as a brand in India as it may be just the right one to mark its return to the high-end smartphone space in the country.

Sources aware of the developments have confirmed to us that the upcoming Vivo X50 will indeed be making its way to India, soon after the Chinese launch, which is scheduled for June 1. It’s unclear which variant will be coming, but the teaser did suggest that it will be the Vivo X50 Pro.

This will mark the return of Vivo’s X series to India after over two years, with the last one being the Vivo X21 in 2018. Even more recently, it has primarily focussed on the budget and mid-range segments, but a proper flagship has always eluded India.

The Vivo X50 Pro is a camera-centric premium mid-ranger which will be powered by the Snapdragon 765G with at least 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. If the same specifications make it to India, it will be one of the first phones in the country to sport this chipset. Besides, it will also be 5G-capable. Most of its specs have already been leaked from a recent product briefing in its home country. Other key details include a 4,315mAh battery and support for 33W fast charging.

It will also bring a new premium design with a curved, 6.56-inch high refresh rate display along with a tiny 32MP punch-hole selfie camera on the front, and a frosted glass back. A sizeable camera island will also adorn the back, with four shooters lined up. The primary camera will be a 48MP Sony IMX598 image sensor, followed by an 8MP ultra-wide shooter, a 12MP short telephoto lens and an 8MP periscopic long telephoto lens.

Vivo claims that the primary camera will have industry-leading image stabilisation with a new “micro-cloud” system with up to 3-degrees of compensation on either of the axes. This complicated mechanism is also the reason why the camera bump is so significant.

There is no word on the exact availability, but considering that Vivo is in advanced stages of planning the device’s launch in India, we expect it arrive on Indian shores soon enough. And, Vivo’s first pair of TWS earphones may also tag along.

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OnePlus inadvertently disables ‘X-Ray’ filter with an update sent to its global phones

Images: Ben Geskin / Twitter

OnePlus accidentally pushed an over-the-air update that disables a filter that can see through some thin black plastics and, in certain cases, clothes.

Though OnePlus said on May 19 that it would temporarily disable the filter in the Chinese version of its operating system in an update, the company hadn’t planned on removing the filter from its global software. Instead, OnePlus said it would update the filter. The recent update removed the filter for people outside of China anyway.

The filter, called “Photochrom,” creates an X-Ray-like effect by using the infrared sensors built into the OnePlus 8 Pro to capture light that’s not visible to the human eye. The feature was intended to be used to create interesting-looking photos. But it...

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Exclusive: Zoom plans to roll out strong encryption for paying customers only

Zoom , the video conferencing provider whose business has boomed with the COVID-19 pandemic, plans to strengthen encryption on video calls made by paying clients and institutions like schools, but not for users of its popular free accounts, a company official said Friday.

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Friday, 29 May 2020

Hash collisions