Secret File

More Recognition of GIGABYTEs Overclocking Leadership

Over at eTeknix, Ryan Leiserowitz posted a review of our GIGABYTE GA-X99-SOC Chamption motherboard. Ryan is a hardcore overclocker, and this was his chance to put the board through its paces.


Ryan mentions in his review that the board has enough features for pro-overclockers, and is priced competitively enough that amateur overclockers dont have to think twice about including one in their next system build.

“From pro-overclockers to enthusiast system builders, if you’re wanting to push your hardware to the limit, the GX-X99-SOC is the perfect tool for the job,”  Ryan writes. 

In the end eTeknix gave the board their "Overclockers Dream" award. Thanks guys!

Available link for download

New Version Of Linux Email Client Geary Released PPA

Geary 0.11.0 in Ubuntu GNOME (GNOME Shell) 16.04

Geary features include:

• quick account setup;
• supports Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Outlook.com, and popular IMAP servers (Dovecot, Cyrus, Zimbra, etc.);
• mail organized by conversations;
• ability to answer directly in conversations or open it in a separate window
• signature support;
• full-featured HTML mail composer;
• fast keyword search with values like from:john;
• desktop notification of new mail.

Geary 0.11.0 in Ubuntu (Unity) 16.04

Changes in Geary 0.11.0:

• added archive special folder support;
• added is:read, is:unread: is:starred search operators;
• fixed using multiple search operators - to:, from:, etc.;
• work around crashes caused by WebKitGTK+ 2.4.10;
• fixed a crash when searching;
• fixed images not being displayed in some HTML messages;
• fixed empty main window when opened from notification;
• fixed UI freezing when network connections are lost;
• work better with Cyrus & other servers when network unreliable;
• enabled the use of custom FTS3 tokeniser in SQLite 3.12 and later;
• fixed inconsistent Composer Detach button placement;
• documentation improvements;
• updated UI translations.

Install Geary in Ubuntu or Linux Mint

sudo apt install geary

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:geary-team/releases
sudo apt update
sudo apt install geary

Download Geary 0.11.0 source.

Available link for download

Millions of Android App Downloads Infected with Cryptocoin Mining Code

Researchers have found apps in the Google Play store which are secretly hijacking mobiles to mine cryptocoins.

More than a million Android smartphones are mining cryptocoins without the owners knowledge, via apps downloaded from Google Play which stealthily incorporate hashing software.

Researchers at security company Trend Micro say they have found at least two apps on the Google Play store, Songs and "Prized", which contain code to join any phone that has them to a cryptocoin-mining "pool". Each app has had between 1m and 5m downloads, meaning that up to 10m phones might be affected. Songs was still available at the time of publication. An email to the developer had not been answered by time of publication.

The subverted apps seem to include a request to run the mining software within their terms and conditions - meaning that once the user clicks "OK" they have in effect given it permission to steal their processing time. Trend Micro criticised "the murky language and vague terminology" of the terms and conditions.

The company also discovered bitcoin-mining code hidden in repackaged versions of Football Manager Handheld and TuneIn Radio outside Google Play. There is no suggestion that the ones on the official store are affected.

Trend Micro was expanding on an initial report by security firm G Data International in February, detailing the malware ANDROIDOS_KAGECOIN.HBTB, which uses the modest processing power of individual mobiles to generate or mine bitcoin, dogecoin and litecoin without the knowledge of the owner of the devices it is running on.

ANDROIDOS_KAGECOIN.HBTB works by injecting legitimate cryptocurrency mining code from an existing app into "repacked" versions of Android apps.

"The miner is started as a background service once it detects that the affected device is connected to the Internet. By default, it launches the CPU miner to connect to a dynamic domain, which then redirects to an anonymous Dogecoin mining pool," explained Trend Micro in a blog post.

The research company Canalys commented that "negative security PR continues to hurt Google Plays brand image." Security researchers have continued to discover malware variants targeting Android. But Trend Micros discovery is one of the most serious, because it involves apps with huge download numbers that are available on Google Play.

As the blog post points out, mining for cryptocoins in the background when a device is connected to the internet (i.e. throughout the day) saps its battery life, while charging it more often will wear it down in the long term.

"Users with phones and tablets that are suddenly charging slowly, running hot, or quickly running out of batteries may want to consider if they have been exposed to this or similar threats," suggested the company.

Both G Data and Trend Micro sell security software for Android, so have clear commercial reasons for highlighting malware on the platform in order to attract new customers. This also gives them a good reason to have a clear overview of emerging threats to Android devices.

Available link for download