Tool Created To Hack BlackBerry Passwords

A Russian security firm has upgraded a phone-password cracking software with the ability to figure out the master device password for Research in Motion’s BlackBerry devices.

Elcomsoft said on Thursday that before it developed the product, it was believed that there was no way to uncover a device password on a BlackBerry smartphone or PlayBook tablet. BlackBerry smartphones are configured to wipe all data on the phone if a password is typed incorrectly 10 times in a row, the company said.

Elcomsoft said it figured a way around the problem using a BlackBerry’s removable media card, but only if a user has configured their smartphone in a specific way. In order for Elcomsoft’s software to be successful, a user must have enabled the feature to encrypt data on the media card.

The feature is disabled by default, but Elcomsoft said around 30% of BlackBerry users have it enabled for extra security.

The company’s software can then analyze the encrypted media card and use a brute-force method to figure out a password, which involves trying millions of possible password combinations per second until one works.

Elcomsoft said it can recover a seven-character password in less than an hour if the password is all lower-case or all capital letters. The software does not need access to the actual BlackBerry device but just the encrypted media card.

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Cisco Offers Free iPad/iPhone Video App

Cisco announced improvements to its video product line Thursday to make it easier for businesses to create and share video, including a free app coming soon for iPhone and iPad devices.

The free app will make Cisco’s existing Show and Share software available for iPad and iPhone in late October through the Apple App Store, Cisco officials stated via a Webcast earlier this week.

Show and Share is Cisco’s video-sharing software, which allows users to search and watch videos as well as record and upload their own videos. That software has been available on other hardware, but until now not for the iPhone and iPad.

Also, Cisco said it is integrating its existing Show and Share with its Media Experience Engines 3500 and itsTelePresence Content Server, although it didn’t yet name the products that will provide the integration. Also, a new software release of the 3500 allows it to support Flash, H.264 and Windows Media formats.

An existing software tool called Pulse Video Analytics will soon allow searches of video content by keyword or speaker in the Cisco Show and Share product.

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Most Tegra 2 Tablets Will Get ICS

Sources have confirmed that most Tegra 2 tablets you know will get Ice Cream Sandwich. We are still sniffing around to find out if the ICS is going to end up as Android 4.0 but it will bring phones and tablets much closer and should ship in October or November.

Many Asus, Samsung, Toshiba, Lenovo, Sony and any other Android 3.x compatible tablets on market will have a chance to get the new one. The upgrade will come as manufacturers get it ready and customized for its tablets but most tablets will ship with Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich, probably early next year at the latest.

This is good news for many who were brave to buy the first generation of tablets not based on Apple’s architecture and it will help Google to gather even more momentum for 2012. 2012 looks like a year when Google will be ready for real war against Apple, but at the same time, Android supporters fear that Windows 8 will get a lot of attention when it ships in late 2012.

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Patches Released For Firefox and Thunderbird

The release of Firefox 7 is important because the new version features better memory management and is the first step in Mozilla’s long term plan to make the browser more resource friendly.

Nevertheless, users who upgrade to it will also benefit from improved security as this release fixes six critical and two moderate severity security vulnerabilities.

Four of the critical patches are shared with Thunderbird 7 and address a use-after-free condition with OGG headers, an exploitable crash in the YARR regular expression library, a code installation quirk involving the Enter key and multiple memory hazards.

A moderate severity patch that provides defence against multiple Location headers caused by CRLF injection attacks is also common to both products.

In addition to these patches Firefox 7 also contains fixes for two critical and one moderate severity vulnerabilities, with one of them resulting in a potentially exploitable WebGL crash.

It’s worth pointing out that Microsoft previously motivated its decision to not include support for WebGL in Internet Explorer by saying that the 3D graphics library opens a large attack surface.

So far several serious vulnerabilities have been identified and patched in WebGL, which partially supports Microsoft’s assessment, but the library’s supporters claim this is no different than with other technologies.

Firefox 7 also updates Websocket, a protocol disabled in the past because of security issues, to version 8, which is no longer vulnerable to known attacks.

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Intel, Samsung Behind New Phone OS

Two Linux software groups have decided to collaborate, they said on Wednesday, to develop a new operating system for cellphones and other devices in partnerships with Intel and Samsung Electronics.

However, analysts said the new Tizen platform is likely to struggle to attract wider developer and manufacturer support to compete with the dozen or so other mobile operating systems in a market dominated by Apple and Google’s Linux-based Android.

Even industry majors Nokia and Hewlett-Packard have canceled their mobile platforms this year.

“The best hope for them is that big operators get worried by Android’s increasing smartphone dominance and decide to consciously switch their allegiances to rival platforms to restrict Google’s huge influence over the mobile market,” said analyst Neil Mawston from Strategy Analytics.

LiMo Foundation and the Linux Foundation said the new Tizen platform is an open-source, standards-based software platform that supports multiple devices including smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, netbooks and in-vehicle ‘infotainment’ systems.

The initial release is planned for the first quarter of 2012, enabling the first devices using Tizen to come to market in mid-2012, the two groups said.

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Verizon Sides With Samsung Not Apple

Verizon Wireless, the biggest U.S. mobile operator, has taken a legal stand against Apple Inc’s request to prohibit the sale of some Samsung Electronics models in the United States.

“The requested injunction of certain Samsung products will harm Verizon Wireless and U.S. consumers,” Verizon said in a court filing dated September 23.

“It also has the possibility of slowing the deployment of next-generation networks — such as Verizon Wireless’s — contrary to the stated goals of the U.S. government,” it said.

Verizon Wireless is a joint venture of Verizon Communications Inc and Vodafone Plc.

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Oracle Claims It Lost Over 1 Billion

Oracle now estimates it has lost $1.16bn from Google’s alleged copyright and patent infringement by the Android operating system.

Last year Oracle sued Google claiming that its popular Android operating system infringed Java patents and copyrights. Since then the two sides have been trying to come to an agreement on any damages Google might have to pay.

Initially Oracle claimed $6.1bn from Google, but Judge William Alsup quickly told Oracle to come back with something more realistic. Oracle did just that yesterday with a figure $2.2bn, a figure that Google has urged the court to reject. Now Oracle claims it has lost $1.16bn due to Google’s Android, though this figure is not related to the damages claim it made yesterday.

Google on the other hand has claimed that Oracle’s expert witness Iain Cockburn, who calculated the damages, was a little too zealous in adding up his figures. Judge Alsup has already rebuked Google twice, once for trying to downplay the significance of Android and a second time for trying to use failed licensing talks with Sun to reduce any damage award.

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BlackBerry Falls Behind In Workplace

More workers use iPhone and Android smartphones combined than BlackBerry devices, according to a survey of 1,681 U.S.-based workers released today by Forrester Research.

That finding highlights what many have known for a while about the entrenched workplace smartphone veteran: the BlackBerry faces trouble from its competitors.

The BlackBerry, made by Research in Motion, still leads among U.S. workers, with 42%, the survey said, with Apple’s iPhone accounting for 22% and Android devices, 26%.

The survey also found that nearly half, or 48% of the group, said that they chose the primary smartphone used for their work without considering what their company supports. Only 29% said they chose the smartphone from a list of phones the company supports, while 23% said they had no choice in the matter.

Often, corporate IT shops will choose BlackBerry smartphones when requiring a worker to use a specific smartphone, partly because of the perceived security benefits, many analysts, including at Forrester, have found. The growth in Android phones and the iPhone — many of them brought to workplaces by workers independently — are forcing IT shops to rethink that decision, however.

Ted Schadler, a Forrester analyst, said the survey points to two major trends. The first is that more workers than ever are bringing consumer-focused devices, such as Android and iPhone smartphones, to use for work, and more companies are supporting those devices.

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Did Google Increase Microsoft’s Ad Rates?

Google might have increased Microsoft’s ad rates 50 fold, a Bloomberg report says.

Someone familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is looking into the rate increase.

It will also be looking into other allegations against Google about advertising as a result of complaints from Microsoft.

This is part of a larger antitrust probe into Google that began earlier this year, the source told Bloomberg.

An antitrust lawyer at Doyle Barlow & Mazard PLLC in Washington, Andre Barlow, told Bloomberg that, if true, the Microsoft allegations could be used to help the FTC build a case showing that Google has abused its power as the owner of the world’s most popular search engine, violating the Sherman Act and other antitrust laws.

He said, “A lot of this conduct, when put together with a firm with market power, could be viewed as a violation” of antitrust laws.

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Adobe Patches Security Holes in Flash

Adobe has released a security update for Flash Player in order to address several critical vulnerabilities, including one that is being exploited in the wild.

The Flash Player 10.3.183.10 for Windows, Mac and Linux, and Flash Player 10.3.186.7 for Android, contain patches for six security flaws.

One of them is a cross-site scripting (XSS) weakness that can be exploited to execute rogue actions on behalf of web sites or webmail providers if victims click on maliciously-crafted links.

“There are reports that this issue is being exploited in the wild in active targeted attacks designed to trick the user into clicking on a malicious link delivered in an email message,” Adobe warns in its security advisory.

XSS vulnerabilities are the result of improper user input validation and allow attackers to execute rogue code in the context of the current web site. For example, they can be leveraged to extract session cookies or load rogue forms into legitimate pages, which makes for very credible phishing attacks.

Adobe credits Google for reporting this cross-site scripting vulnerability, which is identified as CVE-2011-2444. This means it might have been detected in attacks against Gmail users.

Two other patched vulnerabilities allow for arbitrary code execution and are located in the AVM stack. One of them can also lead to a denial of service condition. Two remote code execution logic errors and a Flash Player security control bypass have also been addressed.

Users should deploy the new update as soon as possible because browser plug-ins like Java, Adobe Reader or Flash Player are amongst the most attacked pieces of software one can have on a computer. However, unlike Adobe Reader X (10.0) which features sandboxing technology, Flash Player doesn’t have any anti-exploitation mechanism built-in.

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