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Remote Access Tools Threatens Smartphones
March 7, 2012 by admin
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Malware tools that allow attackers to gain complete remote control of smartphones have become a major threat to owners around the world, security researchers say.
In a demonstration at the RSA Conference 2012 here Wednesday, former McAfee executives George Kurtz and Dmitri Alperovitch, who recently founded security firm CrowdStrike, installed a remote access tool on an Android 2.2-powered smartphone by taking advantage of an unpatched flaw in WebKit, the default browser in the OS.
The researchers showed an overflow audience how the malware can be delivered on a smartphone via an innocuous looking SMS message and then be used to intercept and record phone conversations, capture video, steal text messages, track dialed numbers and pinpoint a user’s physical location.
The tools used in the attack were obtained from easily available underground sources, Kurtz said. The WebKit bug, for instance, was one of 20 tools purchased from hackers for a collective $1,400.
The remote access Trojan used in the attack was a modified version of Nickispy a well-known Chinese malware tool.
Learning how to exploit the WebKit vulnerability and to modify the Trojan for the attack, was harder than expected, said Kurtz. He estimated that CrowdStrike spent about $14,000 in all to develop the attack.
But the key issue is that similar attacks are possible against any smartphone, not just those running Android, he said.
WebKit for instance, is widely used as a default browser in other mobile operating systems including Apple’s iOS and the BlackBerry Tablet OS. WebKit is also is used in Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome browsers.
Several mobile remote access Trojans are already openly available from companies pitching them as tools that can be used to surreptitiously keep tabs on others.
Google Had Developed Own Currency
March 5, 2012 by admin
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Google once contemplated the idea of issuing its own currency, to be called Google Bucks, company Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said on stage at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona,Spain on Tuesday.
At the end of his keynote speech, Schmidt hit on a wide array of topics in response to audience questions. “We’ve had various proposals to have our own currency we were going to call Google Bucks,” Schmidt said.
The idea was to implement a “peer-to-peer money” system. However, Google discovered that the concept is illegal in most areas, he said. Governments are typically wary of the potential for money laundering with such proposals.
“Ultimately we decided we didn’t want to get into that because of these issues,” Schmidt said.
He also hinted that Google might be preparing for a battle in China once its acquisition of Motorola is complete.
“Google’s been willing to take on China pretty well,” he said in response to a question about whether Google expected to continue to ignore theft of Motorola intellectual property in China, as Motorola has been doing. The acquisition hasn’t closed yet, Schmidt noted. “We’ve taken a pretty strong position on IP. We are well aware of the issues and we are considering your question,” he said.
Google is still waiting for some government approvals of its proposed acquisition of Motorola.
Did AMD Want nVidia Instead of ATI?
While it is ancient history now, it seems that the story about the controversial buying of ATI by AMD was not an easy process.
Forbes has found a deep throat who has left AMD who has told it that AMD approached graphics processor designer Nvidia about an acquisition before snapping up Nvidia rival ATI in 2006. AMD leaders believed that shrinking transistors would create an opportunity to add new capabilities to the processors AMD and rival Intel designed for PCs and servers.
AMD Chief Executive Hector Ruiz decided to bet that AMD could get ahead of rival Intel by grabbing a piece of the market for GPUs. Fusing CPUs and GPUs would let AMD hit the PC market with something Intel wasn’t ready to offer. Initially AMD thought that Nvidia was the best bet but the deal was killed off because Nvidia Chief Executive Jen-Hsun Huang insisted on being chief executive of the combined company.
Ruiz decided it was better to buy Nvidia rival ATI in July of 2006 for $5.4 billion. Nvidia replied by unleashing several strong products, gobbling up market share. AMD has fought its way back, with a strong lineup of graphics processors, Nvidia pushed into mobile processors. Nvidia has a market capitalization of $9.7 billion.
Big Boys Sign Consumer Privacy Pact
Six of the world’s top consumer technology companies have agreed to provide greater privacy disclosures before customers download applications in order to protect the personal data of millions of consumers, California’s attorney general said on Wednesday.
The agreement binds Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Research In Motion, and Hewlett-Packard — and developers on their platforms — to disclose how they use private data before an app may be downloaded, Attorney General Kamala D. Harris said.
“Your personal privacy should not be the cost of using mobile apps, but all too often it is,” said Harris.
Currently 22 of the 30 most downloaded apps do not have privacy notices, said Harris. Some downloaded apps also download a consumer’s contact book.
Google said in a statement that under the California agreement, Android users will have “even more ways to make informed decisions when it comes to their privacy.”
Apple confirmed the agreement but did not elaborate.
Harris was also among U.S. state lawmakers who on Wednesday signed a letter to Google CEO Larry Page to express “serious concerns” over the web giant’s recent decision to consolidate its privacy policy.
The policy change would give Google access to user information across its products, such as GMail and Google Plus, without the proper ability for consumers to opt out, said the 36 U.S. attorneys general in their letter.
Intel To Unleash Shark Bay In 2013
Intel used a saucy word to describe the 2013 Haswell based notebook platform. It tells us that Shark Bay should reinvigorate the notebook experience. Revive would seem to be the more appropriate word in this case.
Shark Bay promises more sensors, faster resume times, Intel smart connect as well as connected stand by. All this will be present on at least some Shark Bay powered notebooks.
Intel also wants to bring more improved connected capabilities to 2013 notebooks. It promises NFC support, Thunderbolt paired up with now standard Intel Wireless display.
With more fuzz about sensors, NFC, all-day battery and thin and light approach Intel’s notebook of the future is basically a tablet with a keyboard that probably costs a bit more money and offers traditional PC functionality.
Did Google Bypass Privacy Rules?
February 28, 2012 by admin
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In the wake of reports that Google had circumvented privacy settings in Apple’s Safari browser, Microsoft announced today it had discovered that the Web giant had done the same with Internet Explorer.
“When the IE team heard that Google had bypassed user privacy settings on Safari, we asked ourselves a simple question: is Google circumventing the privacy preferences of Internet Explorer users too?” IE executive Dean Hachamovitch wrote in a blog post this morning. “We’ve discovered the answer is yes: Google is employing similar methods to get around the default privacy protections in IE and track IE users with cookies.”
The blog post, which details Microsoft’s findings and offers privacy protection tips, said it has contacted Google about its concerns and asked it to “commit to honoring P3P privacy settings for users of all browsers.”
Google countered that Microsoft backs a system that is dated and impractical.
“It is well known–including by Microsoft–that it is impractical to comply with Microsoft’s request while providing modern Web functionality,” Rachel Whetstone, senior vice president of communications and policy for Google, said in a statement to CNET this evening. “We have been open about our approach, as have many other Web sites.”
P3P, or Platform for Privacy Preferences, is an official recommendation of the World Wide Web Consortium that sites use to summarize their privacy policies.
Nokia To Unveil Cheaper Windows Phone
February 27, 2012 by admin
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Nokia debuted a new, cheaper and more budget-friendly smartphone using Microsoft’s Windows Phone software, targeting a wider market for its new range of smartphones.
Cheaper phones are the key for Nokia and Microsoft in their battle to win a larger share of the market, analysts say.
In addition to the new Lumia 610 Nokia will also unveil at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona a global version of its high-end Lumia 900 phone, which AT&T is scheduled to roll out in the United States, the sources said.
Nokia is set to unveil the phones at a news conference next Monday, on February 27.
Nokia last year dumped its own smartphone software platforms in favor of Microsoft’s Windows Phone, which has so far had a limited impact due to the high prices of phones using it.
Future PCs Will Be Constant Learners
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Tomorrow’s computers will constantly improve their understanding of the data they work with, which in turn will aid them in providing users with more appropriate information, predicted the software mastermind behind IBM’s Watson system.
Computers in the future “will learn through interacting with us. They will not necessarily require us to sit down and explicitly program them, but through continuous interaction with humans they will start to understand the kind of data and the kind of computation we need,” said IBM Fellow David Ferrucci, who was IBM’s principal investigator for Watson technologies. Ferrucci spoke at the IBM Smarter Computing Executive Forum, held Wednesday in New York.
“This notion of learning through collaboration and interaction is where we think computing is going,” he said.
IBM’s Watson project was an exercise for the company in how to build machines that can better anticipate user needs.
IBM researchers spent four years developing Watson, a supercomputer designed specifically to compete in the TV quiz show “Jeopardy,” a contest that took place last year. On “Jeopardy,” contestants are asked a range of questions across a wide variety of topic areas.
Watson did win at its “Jeopardy” match. Now IBM thinks the Watson computing model can have a wide range of uses.
Social Networks Go Verified Accounts
February 23, 2012 by admin
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Celebrities and other public figures will soon have the ability to verify their accounts and display a preferred “alternative name,” TechCrunch reports.
In an effort to stop impostors, Facebook will reportedly soon allow celebrities and other public figures to verify their accounts in much the same way that Twitter does.
The social network will begin notifying public figures with many subscribers that they can verify their accounts by submitting an image of a government-issued ID, allowing them to display a preferred pseudonym instead of their birth name, according to a TechCrunch report. Facebook will then manually approve the “alternative names” to confirm they are the real stage names or pen names.
Facebook users must be chosen to participate in the program; there is no way to volunteer for verification. However, unlike Twitter, verified accounts will not receive a special badge indicating verified status.
Verification will allow celebrities to be more readily accessible to fans when using their stage names instead of what is officially listed on their birth certificates. The program will also gain more prominent placement in the “People To Subscribe To” section.
New Chip To Cut Cost Of LTE Smartphones
February 22, 2012 by admin
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Chip manufacturer Renesas Mobile has unveiled the MP5232, a processor that will allow vendors to build LTE (Long Term Evolution)smartphones with a price tag between $150 and $300, the company said Wednesday.
The big advantage of the 1.5GHz dual-core processor is that it is a single-chip product that can do both 3G and LTE, eliminating the need to use separate chipsets for the two technologies. A more integrated device results in a cheaper product that takes up less space and uses less power, according to Malik Saadi, principal analyst at Informa Telecoms and Media.
The cost is important, because for LTE to take off, there is a need for smartphones that cost less than current products, according to Renesas.
In addition to smartphones, the MP5232 can also be used to power tablets, said Renesas.
One of the challenges of developing chipsets for LTE is the plethora of frequencies used. Renesas hasn’t specified which bands the MP5232 can handle, but says it is designed to support all major operators and their respective requirements.