Malware hits millions of Android phones

Older versions of Android are vulnerable to being infected by the Hummingbad malware

Up to 10 million Android smartphones have been infected by malware that generates fake clicks for adverts, say security researchers.

The software is also surreptitiously installing apps and spying on the browsing habits of victims.
The malware is currently making about $300,000 (£232,000) a month for its creators, suggests research.
The majority of phones that have been compromised by the malicious software are in China.

Remote control

A spike in the number of phones infected by the malware was noticed separately by security companies Checkpoint and Lookout. The malware family is called Shedun by Lookout but Hummingbad by Checkpoint
In a blogpost, Checkpoint said it had obtained access to the command-and-control servers that oversee infected phones which revealed that Hummingbad was now on about 10 million devices. China, India, the Philippines and Indonesia top the list of nations with most phones infected by the software.
Hummingbad is a type of malware known as a rootkit that inserts itself deep inside a phone's operating system to help it avoid detection and to give its controllers total control over the handset.
The ability to control phones remotely has been used to click on ads to make them seem more popular than they actually are. The access has also been used to install fake versions of popular apps or spread programs the gang has been paid to promote.
"It can remain persistent even if the user performs a factory reset," wrote Kristy Edwards from Lookout in a blogpost. "It uses its root privileges to install additional apps on to the device, further increasing ad revenue for the authors and defeating uninstall attempts."
Ms Edwards said the recent spike in infections could be driven by the gang behind the malware adding more functions or using their access to phones for different purposes.
The malware gets installed on handsets by exploiting loopholes in older versions of the Android operating system known as KitKat and JellyBean. The latest version of Android is known as Marshmallow.
In a statement, Google said: ""We've long been aware of this evolving family of malware and we're constantly improving our systems that detect it. We actively block installations of infected apps to keep users and their information safe."
Google released the latest security update for Android this month and it tackled more than 108 separate vulnerabilities in the operating system. So far this year, security updates for Android have closed more than 270 bugs.

Dallas shooting: Gunman 'wanted to kill whites' says police chief

 Micah Johnson was a member of the US Army reserve

The gunman killed in a stand-off with Dallas police said he wanted to kill white people, especially officers, the city's police chief has said.

The suspect, named by US media as Micah Johnson, 25, said he was upset about the recent police shootings of black people, Police Chief David Brown said.
Five police officers were killed and seven wounded during a march against the shooting of black men by police.
Three people are in custody but it is not clear if there were other gunmen.
The protest in Dallas took place after this week's deaths of Philando Castile in Minnesota and Alton Sterling in Louisiana.
Mr Brown said the suspect had been killed when police used explosives placed by a robot to end a tense stand-off in a building where he was holed up. Before that, he had spoken to a negotiator.


Facebook images show Micah Johnson giving a black power salute and dressed in military uniform

"He said he was upset about Black Lives Matter [protest movement]; he said he was upset about the recent police shootings," Mr Brown told a news conference.
"The suspect said he was upset at white people. The suspect stated that he wanted to kill white people, especially white officers."
Mr Brown added that the man had said he was not affiliated with any groups and he acted alone.
However, speaking earlier on Friday, Mr Brown had said two snipers had fired from "elevated positions", shooting some officers in the back.

Locusts to 'sniff out explosives'

Scientists are researching technology they hope will allow locusts to detect explosives using their sense of smell.

They say heat-generating "tattoos" will enable them to be guided into dangerous or remote areas via remote control

Neural signals from the locust's brain will then be processed by an on-board low-power processing chip that will decode the information and send a wireless alert back to the authorities.

And the result will appear on a simple LED: red for present, green for absent.

Baranidharan Raman, associate professor of biomedical engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Science Washington University, has studied the way locusts smell for several years.

And the Office of Naval Research in the US has now given him a $750,000 (£565,000) grant to continue his research.

Olfaction, better known as the ability to smell, is considered a primary sensory quality in insects whereas it is more of an aesthetic sense for humans, according to Prof Raman.

But locusts have a similar sense of smell to humans in that they can identify a particular smell even when it is mixed in with other odours.

Prof Raman said they had "robotic noses" that could be trained to pinpoint and recall a smell such as dangerous chemicals.

He told the BBC: "It took only a few hundred milliseconds for the locust's brain to begin tracking a novel odour introduced in its surroundings. The locusts are processing chemical cues in an extremely rapid fashion.

"Even the state-of-the-art miniaturised chemical-sensing devices have a handful of sensors. On the other hand, if you look at the insect antennae, where their chemical sensors are located, there are several hundreds of thousands of sensors and of a variety of types," he said.

Meanwhile, Srikanth Singamaneni, associate professor of materials science, who specialises in nanomaterials, will be creating a plasmonic "tattoo" made of a biocompatible silk that will be applied to the locusts' wings to generate mild heat and help steer them towards particular locations by remote control.

The tattoos will also be able to collect samples of volatile organic compounds in their proximity for other testing methods.

Prof Raman estimates the prototype will be ready for rigorous testing in a year and if successful the locusts could be ready in less than two years.

He also believes this new sensor technology could help to detect medical conditions in humans that are currently diagnosed by smell.

Israel angered by Facebook hatred rules

Government ministers in Israel have accused Facebook of failing to tackle "inciteful" posts against the country on the social network.

Public security minister Gilad Erdan said Facebook had set "a very high bar for removing inciteful content".

Justice minister Ayelet Shaked wants social media companies to pre-emptively remove content which Israel considers to be a security threat.

Facebook said it worked closely with Israel to tackle threatening content.

Mrs Shaked has complained that threatening content must be manually reported by the website's users before any action can be taken.

"We want the companies... to remove posts by terrorist groups and incitement to terrorism without us having to flag each individual post, in just the same manner, for example, that they today do not allow posts and pages with child pornography," she told Israel's Army Radio.

In a statement, Facebook said: "We have a set of community standards designed to help people understand what's allowed on Facebook.

"We call on people to use our report tool if they find content they believe violates these rules, so that we can examine each case and take quick action.

"We work regularly with safety organisations and policymakers around the world, including Israel, to ensure that people know how to make safe use of Facebook.

"There is no room for content that promotes violence, direct threats, terrorist or hate speeches on our platform."

Blocked

In 2015, Facebook complied with a Turkish court order demanding the blocking of a page it said offended the Prophet Muhammad.

The court had threatened to block the entire website if the social media platform had refused.

At the time, Facebook said its policy was to block access to content within a country if it breaks local law.

The same year, Facebook, Google and Twitter faced pressure in Germany to remove hate speech posted on their websites.

The three internet giants agreed to assess reported posts within 24 hours, evaluating them under German law rather than Facebook's own terms and conditions.

Facebook's latest government transparency report said the company blocked 236 posts in Israel that were alleged to violate local harassment laws, or were related to Holocaust denial.

Suicide bombing near Saudi holy site

The attack occurred soon after sundown during the holy month of Ramadan

A suicide bomber has killed four security officers and injured five others near one of Islam's holiest sites in the Saudi city of Medina, according to the interior ministry.

The bomber struck as the officers were breaking their Ramadan fast near the Prophet's Mosque, al-Arabiya TV says.

The mosque is the burial place of the Prophet Muhammad and Medina the second-holiest city in Islam after Mecca.

Blasts also struck two other Saudi cities on Monday.

That the attack happened in Medina at such a place is likely to leave Muslims around the world aghast.

Suspicion is likely to fall on so-called Islamic State (IS), he adds.

Images showed a blazing vehicle near the mosque in Medina

Social media footage from Medina showed a vehicle on fire in a car park, with two security officers lying nearby.

Other footage showed ambulances and police vehicles streaming to the area.

Some reports say the security officers were about to break their fast when a young man, said by the Okaz newspaper to be 18, approached them to share food. He then detonated explosives.

Qari Ziyaad Patel, 36, from South Africa, who was in the mosque, told the Associated Press news agency people had at first thought it was the sound of the cannon fire that marks the breaking of fast.

The ground shook, he said, adding: "The vibrations were very strong. It sounded like a building imploded."

Al-Masjid al-Nabawi mosque in Medina is one of Islam's holiest sites

Earlier, at least one explosion rocked Qatif, an eastern city which is home to many minority Shia Muslims.

The blast appeared to target a Shia mosque. The attacker was killed but no other casualties were reported.

A suspected suicide bomber also died after detonating a device near the US consulate in the city of Jeddah. Two security officers were slightly injured as they tackled the man, but no-one else was hurt.

No-one has yet said they were behind any of the attacks.

They come with the holy month of Ramadan drawing to a close and ahead of the Eid al-Fitr holiday.

Saudi Arabia has been the target of attacks by IS over the past two years.

In June, the interior ministry said there had been 26 "terror attacks" in the kingdom in that time.

A series of deadly attacks worldwide were either claimed by, or blamed on, IS over the past week:

• A suicide gun and bomb attack targeted Istanbul airport on 28 June. The death toll rose to 45, with 240 injured.

• Attackers struck a cafe in Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka, last Friday night. Twenty hostages and two policemen were killed.

• And a massive truck bomb in Iraq's capital, Baghdad, on Sunday left at least 165 people dead.

Hajj pilgrims to be given e-bracelets

The Hajj attracts huge crowds and has often been very difficult to control

Saudi Arabia is to issue electronic bracelets to pilgrims travelling to Mecca for this year's Hajj, the world's largest Islamic gathering.

It follows a stampede last year in which more than 750 people are believed to have died, with 900 injured.

The bracelets will contain personal and medical information to help authorities care for and identify people, according to the Saudi Press Agency.

Nearly 1,000 new surveillance cameras have also been installed.

The ID bracelets will contain crucial information such as passport numbers and addresses but will also offer information to worshippers, such as timings of prayers and a multi-lingual help desk to guide non-Arabic speakers around the event.

They will be water-resistant and connected to GPS. The information can be accessed by employees of the ministry, and security and services bodies via a smartphone.

Safety push

Cameras have been installed at Mecca's Grand Mosque and will be linked to control rooms staffed by special forces monitoring pilgrim movements for the event scheduled for August, according to Saudi newspapers.

2015 was the deadliest year for the pilgrimage in 25 years.

The tragedy led Saudi's King Salman to promise improvement in the level of organisation and led to a souring of the already-strained relationship with neighbouring Iran.

Iran, which lost 400 of its citizens in the crush, has criticised Saudi Arabia's preparedness and said that it will not send pilgrims to this year's gathering.

The annual pilgrimage to Mecca is attended by more than two million Muslims from around the world and has long been something of a safety nightmare.

Over the years the Saudi authorities have spent billions of dollars on improving transport and other infrastructure.