Brian Donohue

Samsung downplayed a root exploit vulnerability in some of its Exynos processors, and promised a patch for the flaw, according to a company statement acquired by AndroidCentral.

The European Union has set a series of ambitious goals for itself: by 2020, the 27 member states expect to collectively use 20 percent renewable energy, reduce CO2 emissions by 20 percent, and increase energy efficiency by 20 percent. In order to accomplish these goals, Europe will need to perform a major overhaul to its power grid, which will play an integral role in the development of the Union’s proposed energy economy.

The newly emerging Sweet Orange Exploit Kit boasts a 10 to 25 percent infection rate and is promising to drive 150,000 unique visitors per day to the websites of its customers, according to Jeff Doty and Chris Larsen of Blue Coat Security.

A rudimentary, SMS-based botnet is ensnaring Android users into its web with a series of text messages offering free downloads for popular, paid gaming applications, according to Cloudmark researcher Andrew Conway.

An XDA Developers forum member operating under the handle alephzain has created an exploit that obtains root privileges and enables malicious application installation on the many Samsung devices that contain Exynos 4210 and 4412 processors.

Apple shipped fixes for nine vulnerabilities in its QuickTime multimedia platform. The QuickTime 7.7.3 update resolves bugs for Windows 7, Vista, and XP service pack 2 and later.

In what may be the least surprising news of the day, Facebook is again making changes to its privacy controls.The existing privacy controls, which we explored in depth in our How-To Video on the subject, are a bit convoluted. So it makes sense that product manager Samuel Lessin is rolling out some end-of-the-year privacy feature updates on the world’s largest social network that are essentially designed to clarify existing features and seamlessly integrate privacy controls into Facebook’s primary interface.