Windows 10 Steals Your Internet Bandwidth to Send Updates to Others, Disable It Here

Short Bytes: Windows 10 steals your internet bandwidth without your knowledge to share updates with others. This option is enabled by default in Windows 10 Home and Windows 10 Pro. You can turn this feature off in your update settings. Read more to know detailed instructions.

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ong back in March, SPRTech reported that Windows 10 will be downloading and distributing updates to others using peer-to-peer (P2P) protocol. Now that Windows 10 is released, and you can grab with even without any upgrade icon, Windows 10 is busy using your internet connection to distribute updates to other people on the Internet. Actually, Microsoft has done this to reduce the stress on its servers.  Earlier, it was expected that this feature will only work for PCs on your local networks.

Windows 10 steals your internet bandwidth due to a feature called Windows Update Delivery Optimization. It is enabled in Windows 10 Home and Windows 10 Pro versions. Windows 10 Enterprise and Education have this feature enabled, but it works only for the PCs on your own local network.

Just like torrents, everyone having Windows 10 on their PCs, by default distributes some updates to the people who need it. This makes the update process for other fast and less troublesome for Microsoft. Using your data connection to share updates may seem like a good gesture, but what if your data connection isn’t unlimited?

For those who are having a limited data connection, this feature will use lots of your allotted data and you won’t even realize it. Microsoft has said that this feature will only share updates and it won’t download or send any personal data.

Windows 10 steals your Internet Bandwidth, How to Stop It?

Follow these simple steps to turn off the Windows Update Delivery Optimization feature in Windows 10 to save your data:

• Search for “Windows update settings” in the Start menu and click on the desktop app.

• Under the “Windows Update”, find and click on “Advanced options.”

• Now under “Choose how updates are installed” click “Choose how updates are delivered.”

• Disable the toggle under “Updated from more than one place.”

This looks a great feature for getting updates quickly and sharing updates with your local network PCs if you are running Windows 10 Enterprise and Windows 10 Education. But knowing that Windows 10 steals your Internet bandwidth on Windows 10 Home and Windows 10 Pro versions, and spends your data without your knowledge, it doesn’t feel that great.

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What is Traffic Fingerprinting and How it is Used to Attack Tor Network

Traffic fingerprinting is a technique used to sniff the web traffic by analyzing the data packets’ flow pattern- without removing the encryption. This technique has been recently used successfully to break the layers of anonymity of the Tor network users and hidden services.

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he Tor network is one of the most used popular system used to provide anonymity to the Internet users. People dive into the dark paths of the Deep Web using Tor network and remain hidden from the ordinary world. People like journalists, hackers, law enforcement officials, whistleblowers – and criminals have been using Tor network from a long time. But, lately, many security researchers have outlined the possible loopholes in Tor network that could be exploited to deploy an attack.

Just a few days ago we read about Tor Honeypot that could be used to set up a trap to capture the Tor user’s identity. Today, we are telling you about a research done by MIT and QCRI researchers that outlines vulnerabilities in Tor’s design. Before going into the details, let me explain the working of Tor as traffic fingerprinting is a continuation of the same.

How Tor works and why it’s called “The Onion Router”

A Tor network consists of many Tor-installed computers connected to the Internet. Each time a Tor user makes a request to visit a website like SPRTech, his/her computer will enclose this Web request in multiple encryption layers, and forward it to the a computer(called guard) which is a part of the Tor network. This selection is totally random and user’s request could be forwarded to any computer on the network. Now, guard computer will peel off the top layer of encryption and pass it to another random computer- and so on. As the wrapped request reaches the last computer, the final encryption layer is peeled off.

So, multiple layers of encryption like layers of onion – hence, Tor is an acronym for “The Onion Router.”

This last computer is known as the exit node and it knows the request’s final destination. Thus, the guard knows the address of the user, and the exit knows the address of the destination. 

The Tor network also provides some “hidden services” that protect the anonymity of destination site as well. These websites are configured to access traffic coming only through Tor network. The host’s computer uses Tor routers as the “introduction points” that are used by people to access the hidden website’s content.

If a person wants to browse the hidden service, a “Tor circuit” is created. User’s and host’s computer build Tor-secured links to the introduction point- that forms this Tor circuit. Identifying more hosts, routers, and the browser- Tor circuit builds another circuits. It’s called a rendezvous point and once again it has an anonymous location.

What is traffic fingerprinting and how is it used to attack Tor network?

What is traffic fingerprinting? The basic website traffic fingerprinting refers to recognize the web traffic by analyzing the patterns, responses, and packets sent and received in a particular direction- everything despite the use encryption or anonymity.

How is it used to attack Tor network? The traffic fingerprinting in Tor requires that attacker’s computer to act as the guard on a Tor circuit. If an attacker manages to connect lots of machines to the Tor network, there are good odds that, on some occasion, some computer of attacker will be at the right place and at the right times to sniff the traffic.

When a Tor circuit is established, the systems on Tor network pass a huge amount of data. MIT News writes: “By looking for patterns in the number of packets passing in each direction through a guard, machine-learning algorithms could, with 99% accuracy, determine whether the circuit was an ordinary Web-browsing circuit, an introduction-point circuit, or a rendezvous-point circuit.” To achieve this, breaking Tor’s encryption wasn’t necessary.

Similarly, using a Tor-enabled computer, traffic analysis could identify the hidden services with 88% accuracy. So, if the attacker happens to be in luck as a guard for a user, he/she can tell which sites the user accessed.

How to defend against traffic fingerprinting in Tor network?

Researchers recommend to mask the sequences to make all the sequences look identical- actually, send dummy data packets to make all different circuits look the same.

“We are considering their countermeasures as a potential improvement to the hidden service,” they add. “But we think we need more concrete proof that it definitely fixes the issue.”

Traffic fingerprinting in Tor network isn’t something that could be done over a period of few days. An attacker must spend a long time to collect data and to dig deeper into the network.

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CISA Bill To Give Your Entire Personal Info To Government

The recently proposed Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) by the government looks like another surveillance law that outrightly gives it the power to look through your personal information without issuing any warrants.

Most of you think that the data that social media websites store about you is used for the ads that you see in your feed, but what if it was a part of a bigger plan and all of your personal information is being shared with the government. The latest CISA bill proposed by the American government intends to do exactly the same.

As per the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act or CISA bill, the service provider companies would be given an authority to keep an eye on their users. Then in order to defend this act of spying from the previous surveillance laws, the companies will have to share the information of users that seem like the potential threats or “cyber threat indicators” with the government. NSA has already disclosed its snooping tool XKEYSCORE that can get them your complete information just using your email id.

There have been regular protests by the citizens against the government intrusion, but all the acts are dismissed in the name of national security. The laws such as Electronic Communications Privacy Act 1986 allows government to snoop through your emails and now the CISA bill adds to the woes of the public.

The government’s proposed cybersecurity bill looks like just another surveillance law in disguise. How much of the cybercrime will be stopped- it can’t be deduced, but this law gives the government a complete authority to snoop through the accounts and gather your personal information.

Whistleblower Edward Snowden has previously revealed how NSA compromises the privacy of US citizens and the extent of government’s intrusion. So, for all the details he has diverted, the White House wants to send Snowden to prison.

The CISA bill is currently pushed in the US Senate and will allow the government to collect all the data including those of potential hackers.

There has been an ever going debate whether the government should be allowed to intrude its citizens’ privacy and call it the measures against the cyber threats.

The Internet is a platform for freedom and self-expression and should remain so. The government needs to come with better plans to counter the attackers without creating fear in the mind of its citizens.

What do you feel about CISA bill? Tell us in comments below.

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Mark Zuckerberg: Virtual Reality is the Obvious Next Step for Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg announces Virtual Reality to be the next step after video for Facebook in its Q2 earnings call. Immersive 3-D content will be the future for human communication overtaking videos and gaming.

There us no stopping to Facebook CEO and Co-Founder Mark Zuckerberg. After the recent announcement of surfacing targeted videos on the Home Page, Zuckerberg gave another one of his ambitious proposals to the investors at the company’s second-quarter earnings call on Wednesday.

Human communication in the IT era began as text messages, then it moved to photographs, currently we are streaming through videos and as Mr Zuckerberg plans then immersive 3D content is the obvious next thing after video. He has ambitious plans for the future that involve the virtual reality taking over almost all the spheres of social media, gaming, and change the human interaction like never before.

Facebook has acquired VR startup Oculus in March last year and since then have been aggressively promoting the Virtual Reality future for everyone. The Oculus Rift headsets will be available for consumers in 2016.

Zuckerberg said “There’s always a richer way that people want to share and consume thoughts and feelings”

Facebook meanwhile, continues to grow its user base worldwide with 968 million desktop users accessing the website on an average per day in June this year compared to 829 million users per day in June last year. The social media giant earned a whopping US$4.04 billion in revenue in the Q2 this year while the previous year record of Q2 revenue was US$2.91 billion.

Facebook has lately been spending a lot on its research and development wing focusing on building drones and lasers that apparently would beam down cheap Internet to about 5 billion people on the globe.

Google isn’t far behind when it comes to innovations. Just a few days back Google and the Sri Lankan govt signed a MoU for the Project Google Loon that will provide cheap 3G Internet service covering the entire island nation with 13 of Google’s balloons beaming the network from the stratosphere over the country.

Facebook is big on innovations and creativity included with shrewd business strategies. Well, the stats talk for themselves.

Source: Facebook

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How to Stop Windows 10 From Sharing Your WiFi Password

Windows 10 is released and I’ve been writing about the new features Microsoft is planning to provide in this next version of Windows. In this article, I’m going to talk about the WiFi Sense feature built into Windows 10 and how to stop it from sharing your WiFi.

WiFi Sense was originally launched as a Windows Phone 8.1 feature that has been promoted to the Windows 10 PCs. This feature allows you to share WiFi network access using your Facebook, Outlook and Skype contacts. When turned on, WiFi Sense works in background and looks up for the open WiFi networks that your PC can use for running internet.

So, if you visit a public place with open WiFi or your friend’s home, your device will automatically detect the open internet and use it. Thus WiFi Sense does these things on its own and saves you from the hassle of providing tiny details. When you connect to a WiFi network in Windows 10, you’ll have the option to make your internet “shared with your contacts.”

The Microsoft forum lists its primary features as follows:

• Automatically detect and connect you to the open WiFi networks.

• Accepting the WiFi network’s terms of use on your behalf.

• Allowing you to exchange password protected access with your contacts and get the internet access without sharing the password.

Now, let me tell you something more about it. WiFi Sense can make use of your Facebook, Skype and Outlook accounts and download any networks that are being shared with you. It allows your PC to determine who your friends are and who are ready to share their internet with you.

Another thing, Microsoft doesn’t ask for your permissions to access the Skype and Outlook contacts as these services are owned itself by Microsoft.

How to enable or disable WiFi Sense?

To configure WiFi Sense, you need to go to Settings and select Network and Internet.

Then head to WiFi and find Manage WiFi Settings.

Here you can enable or disable WiFi sense on your Windows 10 PC. Apart from this, you can choose the sources that will be used by Windows 10 to share the Internet with – Facebook, Outlook and Skype.

To stop Windows 10 from sharing your WiFi password, you need to uncheck all the boxes you see in “Manage WiFi Settings.”

Note: If you choose to share your internet with your contacts, keep in mind that this sharing is “indiscriminate.” It will share your internet with ALL your friends.

How to Change Default Browser and Programs in Windows 10

Short Bytes : Windows 10 upgrade keeps your files, apps, and settings, but it changes your app preferences of last OS. Today I’m going to tell you  how to change default browser and programs in Windows 10. This isn’t some rocket science, but those who are having troubles navigating through new  Window 10, they’ll find it helpful.

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indows 10 is now released and people have upgraded their PCs to the last version of Windows. To smoothen the upgrade process, Microsoft has even released a media creation tool that upgrades genuine Windows 7 and 8 PCs to Windows 10 without the need of any upgrade icon. You can also read our special Windows 10 FAQs that will make the upgrade terms and issues clear to you. Well, I’ll assume that you’re here as you’ve already installed Windows 10 on your PC.

Microsoft promises that Windows 10 upgrade will save your apps and preferences. It keeps the files and app nicely, but some default programs in Windows 10 are changed fro what you had selected in your previous OS. So, today I’m going to tell you how to change default browser and programs in Windows 10.

As compared to the earlier versions of Windows, changing default apps and preferences needs a couple of more clicks. This has even urged Mozilla CEO to write an angry open letter to Microsoft CEO asking to bring back the choice and control to users.

For changing default browser and programs in Windows 10, there are two methods. One is using the new Settings app and the other one is our vintage Control Panel method. Let’s tell you how to it one by one: 

How to change default browser and programs in Windows 10 using Windows 10 Settings app?

Using the Settings, not all default apps can be changed. These programs include Music Player, Browser, Video Player, Mail, Calender, and Video Player. For these settings, take a look at how to change default browser and programs in Windows 10 using this method:

Press Win+I to open the system menu. Here you can multiple options like system, personalization, update and security etc. Click on “System”.

Now you’ll see a new window before you with “System” settings. It’ll be having options like Display, Notifications & actions, Apps & Features etc. Locate “Default apps” at the bottom of the list. Click on it.

A new window will open with default apps for Music Player, Browser, Video Player, Mail, Calender, and Video Player. To change the default app, you need to click on any one of these and a small pop up with the complete list of available apps will appear. Here, you can select you default app.

This method provides only a few preferences. To dig deeper and change more settings, you can use the Control Panel method.

How to change default browser and programs in Windows 10 using Windows 10 Control Panel?

Open Comtrol Panel on your Windows 10 PC by typing in the search box, or by right-clicking on the Start button to reveal different options. When Control Panel is opened, locate “Default Programs” and click on it.

In the Default Programs windows, you can see different setting related to the programs Windows uses by default. Find “Set your default programs” at the top of the list and click on it.

Now comes the final step. You can see all the programs listed in the left and the options related to them in the right. To make any program a default program, or to check its status, you jut need to click on it. Doing this, available options will appear on the right. You can now make this app a default program or customize it a bit more. This was all about this tutorial on how to change default browser and programs in Windows 10.

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