Report claims U.S. officials believe North Korea hired foreign hackers to hack Sony

After Sony was hacked and its sensitive information have been dumped on the Internet, the FBI named North Korea as the culprit behind the hack. A new report from Reuters cites an official “close to the investigation” that says the U.S. officials believe North Korea hired foreign hackers from outside the country to hack Sony Pictures Entertainment. According to the source, North Korea doesn’t have the capability to “conduct some elements of the sophisticated campaign by itself.” While they maintain that North Korea is behind the “theft and destruction of data” of Sony Pictures Entertainment, the reports says the U.S. officials are investigating if North Korea really did contract hackers from outside its country.

Source: Reuters | Via: Ubergizmo

Kim Dotcom to launch secure chat service ‘soon’

Kim Dotcom of Megaupload (and now Mega) fame has been saying he’s been developing a secure chat service that is more NSA-resistant than other services. It seems the project has finally gained its legs and will be launching “soon.” He suggests the service will be called MegaChat. It’ll be a “fully encrypted” web-based chat and video calling service. You will also be able to send large files through it (of course, using Mega). We don’t know how revolutionary this service will be until we see it though.

Source: Kim Dotcom’s Twitter | Via: Engadget | Image credit: Thierry Ehrmann, Flickr

CES 2015: Samsung to unveil 360-degree pill speaker

CES 2015 is upon us and so tech companies have taken it upon themselves to give sneak peeks before the big consumer tech show. Samsung has unveiled new pill-shaped speakers that will be officially launched in Las Vegas in a few days. It is designed to project sound in a 360-degree radius with the use of Samsung’s Ring Radiator technology.

There will be a larger model (WA7500) that is more a stand type and a lantern-style WA6500 that’ll come with a built-in battery for portability. Both speakers are wireless and use Bluetooth technology.

Source: Cult of Android

Lollipop's memory leak problem confirmed, to be addressed in firmware update

Some Lollipop owners are experiencing some memory leak problems with their devices. Android OS 5.0.1 apparently shuts down apps and constant home screen refreshes. While the Android community has been waiting on Lollipop to come to their devices, it is apparent that there are still a number of bugs to be squashed and that's possibly why it is taking so long to roll out the update.

According to Phandroid, "The thread on Google’s Android Issue Tracker shows a range of Nexus devices afflicted, everything from Nexus 7 2013, to Nexus 4, and Nexus 5 showing Android system eating upwards of 1.2GB+ of RAM (normal usage is around 500MB)." The problem is noted and will likely get a fix soon.

Source: Phandroid