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‘iPhone’ Most Searched Term On Internet
December 9, 2011 by admin
Filed under Smartphones
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Apple’s iPhone edged past major news events, celebrities and pop stars as the most searched term on the Internet in 2011, according to Yahoo!
The digital media company said the smartphone proved more popular than reality television celebrity Kim Kardashian, pop star Katy Perry and singer and actress Jennifer Lopez, who placed in the top five.
American Casey Anthony, the woman acquitted of the murder of her young daughter after a highly publicized trial, was No. 2.
“This is the first time since 2002 that we have had a gadget at No.1, which is an iPhone.” Vera Chan, a Web trend analyst at Yahoo!, said in a conference call announcing the results of the review now in its 10th year.
“Even though the product has been around for four years it just became such a major news story,” she added.
Does Yahoo Have a Buyer?
December 8, 2011 by admin
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Blackstone Group and Bain Capital are putting together a bid for all of Yahoo Inc with Asian partners in a deal that could value the Internet company at about $25 billion, a source familiar with the discussions said on Wednesday.
The potential bid by the group, which would include China’s Alibaba Group and Japan’s Softbank Corp, has not yet been finalized, the source and two other people familiar with the matter said.
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, whose primary interest is in buying back a 40 percent stake owned by Yahoo, is keeping its options open and said it has not decided whether to participate in a bid for all of Yahoo.
“Alibaba Group has not made a decision to be part of a whole company bid for Yahoo,” Alibaba Group spokesman, John Spelich, said in an emailed statement on Wednesday.
Yahoo’s shares, which closed at $15.71 on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday, gained 6.4 percent to $16.72 in after-hours trading, valuing the company at more than $20 billion.
RIM’s Playbook Gets Jailbroken
December 7, 2011 by admin
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Three hackers say they have taken advantage of a vulnerability in Research In Motion’s PlayBook tablet to gain root access to the device, a claim that could damage the BlackBerry maker’s stellar reputation for security.
Root access means a user has permission to change any file or program on a device and can control hardware functions.
In a response to questions concerning the issue, RIM said it is investigating the claim, and if a “jailbreak” is confirmed will release a patch to plug the hole.
The three hackers – who identify themselves as xpvqs, neuralic and Chris Wade – plan to release their data within a week as a tool called DingleBerry.
Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android operating systems are frequently attacked by users who want to run programs that have not been authorized by the manufacturers, but breaches of RIM’s software are more rare.
The PlayBook runs on a different operating system than RIM’s current BlackBerry smartphones. However, the QNX system will be incorporated into its smartphones starting next year.
at&t Partners With China Telecom
AT&T Inc and China Telecom have agreed to broaden the range of their partnership in China and the United States and will look into supporting each other in other regions.
AT&T said the agreement would expand its services for business customers in China and that the companies would consider jointly developing services, including video conferencing and managed hosting.
Hackers Attempt To Access AT&T Mobile
November 30, 2011 by admin
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AT&T Inc, the No. 2 U.S. wireless carrier, said it is investigating an “organized and systemic attempt” to access mobile customers’ information but that it did not believe any accounts were breached.
The company, which had 100 million subscribers at the end of the third quarter, said it is advising less than 1 percent of its wireless customers that there was an attempt to obtain information about their accounts.
It said that the parties involved appeared to have used “auto script” technology to see if AT&T telephone numbers were linked to online AT&T accounts.
Spokesman Mark Siegel said AT&T’s “investigation is ongoing to determine the source or intent of the attempt to gather this information.”
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Did Hackers Attack Water System?
November 28, 2011 by admin
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Federal investigators are investigating a report that hackers managed to remotely shut down a utility’s water pump in central Illinois last week, in what could be the first known foreign cyber attack on a U.S. industrial system.
The November 8 incident was described in a one-page report from the Illinois Statewide Terrorism and Intelligence Center, according to Joe Weiss, a prominent expert on protecting infrastructure from cyber attacks.
The attackers obtained access to the network of a water utility in a rural community west of the state capital Springfield with credentials stolen from a company that makes software used to control industrial systems, according to the account obtained by Weiss. It did not explain the motive of the attackers.
He said that the same group may have attacked other industrial targets or be planning strikes using credentials stolen from the same software maker.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are examining the matter, said DHS spokesman Peter Boogaard.
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Apple Has A Hole In MAC OS X
Apple has failed to fix a bug in its Mac OS X operating system that allows processes to bypass the sandbox protection in place.
The flaw was discovered by Anibal Sacco and Matias Eissler from Core Security Technologies. They let Apple know about the problem on 20 September, and while Apple acknowledged their submission, it said that it did not see any security threat, forcing the Core Security Technologies team to publish the report to the public this month.
The problem appears to be with the use of Apple events in several default profiles, including the no-network and no-internet ones. When Apple events are dispatched a process can escape the sandbox, which could be exploited by hackers.
The vulnerability could lead to a compromised application restricted by the use of the no-network profile gaining access to network resources through the use of Apple events to execute other applications that are not restricted by the sandbox, making it a significant security threat.
Only the more recent versions of Mac OS X are vulnerable to this bug, including 10.5.x, 10.6.x, and 10.7.x. Those using 10.4.x are safe from the exploit.
DoJ Charges Clickjacking Perpetrators
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The U.S. Department of Justice is charging seven individuals with 27 counts of wire fraud and other computer-related crimes, accusing the group of hijacking 4 million computers across 100 countries in a sophisticated clickjacking scam.
According to the indictment, the defendants had set up a fake Internet advertising agency, entering into agreements with online ad providers that would pay the group whenever its ads where clicked on by users. The group’s malware, which it had planted on millions of user computers, would redirect the computers’ browsers to its advertisements, thereby generating illicit revenue.
The malware worked by capturing and altering the results of a user’s search engine query. A user would search for a popular site, such as ones for Netflix, the Wall Street Journal, Amazon, Apple iTunes and the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. Whenever the user would click on the provided link, however, the browser would be redirected to another website, one that the group was paid to generate traffic for.
The malware the group used also blocked antivirus software updates, which left users vulnerable to other attacks as well, according to the DOJ.
Comcast Starts IPv6 Network Rollout
Comcast has begun the production rollout of its new IPv6 service, with 100 customers upgraded in San Francisco’s East Bay in one week.
IPv6 is an upgrade to the Internet’s main communications protocol, which is called IPv4. IPv6 features an expanded addressing scheme that can support billions of devices connected directly to the Internet at faster speeds and lower cost than IPv4, which is running out of addresses.
Comcast began an IPv6 trial 18 months ago and is a leader in the deployment of IPv6-based services among U.S. ISPs.
The production rollout began on Oct. 31. It offers customers “native dual-stack service,” which means Comcast is supporting both IPv6 and IPv4 services.
The initial subscribers of Comcast’s production-quality IPv6 service have stand-alone computers running Microsoft Windows 7, Windows Vista or Apple Mac OS X that are connected directly to a Comcast cable modem. Comcast plans to support IPv6 for customers with home routers at a later date.
AMD To Slash A 10th Of Its Workforce
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Advanced Micro Devices Inc revealed a plan on Thursday to save about $200 million of operating costs in 2012 by cutting 10 percent of its global workforce and streamlining internal business processes.
The layoffs mark the first major move by Chief Executive Rory Read, who took the helm in August to try to galvanize a microprocessor maker that has bled market share to larger rival Intel Corp, while missing out on the mobile device boom.
“It’s not too surprising given the operating background of the new CEO and this is exactly what you’d bring an outsider in to do, but their problems go far deeper right now,” said Alex Gauna, an analyst at JMP Securities.
The layoffs should be completed in 2012′s first quarter, AMD said in a statement. Savings generated could help bankroll research and expansion into areas such as low-power chips, emerging markets and cloud computing next year.
In late September AMD, a distant second to Intel in selling microprocessors that are the brains of PCs, warned of manufacturing problems manufacturing it new 32 nanometer Llano chips as well as older 45 nanometer chips.