eBay Chick-fil-A Citibank what are you doing?

 A LOT of port scanning occurs on the Internet.  A LOT.
The Internet accesses things via an IP address and the port at that IP address.
To get an HTTP web page you try to connect to the IP address on port 80. (A standard port number but it can be changed)
 So port scanning tries all the IP addresses and all of the 65536 TCP ports and all 65536 UDP ports.
This takes a lot of time and many "services" run these port scans and publish the results. If you watch a newly connected PC to the Internet it takes a few seconds until it will be port scanned.
 Firewalls, router settings, Windows Defender, IP tables, and many other defenses block these scans.

 It has come to light recently that eBay, Citibank, Chick-fil-A and many other sites will scan your devices to find open ports INSIDE your home network and send the results back to that site. Now all those sites know more about your network defenses and network capabilities than you.

 An explanation: Fraud detection. Most of the reported ports connect to remote access services like TeamViewer, VNC, etc. Criminals use these services to commit fraud. Use a user's open eBay connection to buy items using the user's credentials.

iOS Apps update crazy 26-May-2020

 A bug. Reports of many app updates on iOS devices.  Some report the apps are already updated so should not use a lot of bandwidth.  I has 11 updates.  Wife had 10.

Internet of Things

 Smart refrigerators, smart toasters, smart washers & dryers, smart beds  the list expands daily. The Internet of Things SIG provides methods and techniques to utilize these AND implement many more you may think of. A small investment in hardware, a bit of guidance from the IoT SIG and you too can monitor the soil for moisture from your home at your plot at the garden center.
 A recent article in Reader's Digest has some things getting smart(er).

 Rollbot can deliver a roll of toilet paper to the proximity of the user's smart phone with the app loaded. The Rollbot must be pre-loaded with the toilet paper roll which now has two problems. Loading the Rollbot and finding the toilet paper in stores.

 Socks & Shoes. Sensoria Smart Socks are fitted with  microelectronic chips that relays data on heart rate, pace, cadence, etc. to a smart phone app. Nike has self lacing shoes. After Back to the Future had self lacing shoes (they also flew?) for $400 you can have the latest in self lacing shoes to pair with your smart socks. Some wearable fabric changes color and pattern via microelectronics.

 Have pets? iFetch launches a tennis ball for the dog(s) to fetch and drop back into the device. For the felines ProFlight Panthers Cat Toy Drone flies around the room with the toy for the cat to chase.

You can watch the cat via video camera on drone, have the drone adjust altitude and do collision avoidance built into the drone. No user interaction required.

 News stories show how much pollution has lessened during the global virus measures. Air-Ink is a prototype pen you load up from car exhaust to make the ink.

 When we can travel again, Ovis Suitcase. A self propelled suitcase with facial recognition, collision avoidance, tracking to lessen the hassle we endure. Wondering how the device will track with owners with most everyone else wearing facial covering?  While travelling again Ambassador earpieces. Like air-pods but with microphones and translation software. You use one, the other party uses the other. Good for translating AND Covid-19 transmission.  Smart headphones that can differentiate car sounds from background sounds to warn of potential car-pedestrian contact. Not so good with electric cars i'd imagine.

 Recall Get Smart? The cone of silence? Bracelet of Silence is a wearable that jams Echos and similar smart speakers and other microphones. We have a device that responds with barking dogs by emitting a high frequency burst when a dog barks. It works.

 Ruggie is alarm clock that gets increasingly annoying and only shuts off when a floor mat is stood on for a period of 30 seconds.

 Motion Pillow -  for the people who snore and those who love them. The device has microphones on the bedside table. When these detect snoring noise, the pillow with inflatable airbags adjusts the snoring person's head to stop the snoring.   In the Helpful <> Harmful vain  a report of the spouse imitating snoring sounds to give the sleeping partner a head roller coaster ride.

May Microsoft Patch Tuesday B schedule Windows patch released today 12-May-2020

 111 Vulnerabilities, 16 rated critical.
For our machines the patch installation took over an hour.

We are patch seekers. If you are a patch avoider, set your Windows Update

Samsung smart phone vulnerability 0-click

ALL Samsung smart phones  All  since 2014    since Android 4.4.4  KitKat  have a flaw in the Skia image library that allows a hacker to take control of the attacked Samsung phones with out a user clicking on an image and in some cases, no user notification.

 The attack is involved, it might take many tries, but if successful the attacker can control any/all of the phone's functions. Most successful attacks take several hours of effort to exploit.

 Samsung has a May 2020 security update to address the vulnerability.