US warns: hack us, and we might bomb you…
The US revealed its "International Strategy for Cyberspace" (PDF) yesterday. It's mostly blather about how terrific "cyberspace" is, but it gets more specific on a few key issues like national defense. Could our next war start because of a hack? The government says it's possible.
"States have an inherent right to self-defense that may be triggered by certain aggressive acts in cyberspace,” says the policy. Indeed, such aggressive acts might compel a country like the US to act even when the hacking is targeted at an allied country.
“Certain hostile acts conducted through cyberspace could compel actions under the commitments we have with our military treaty partners,” says the document. “When warranted, the United States will respond to hostile acts in cyberspace as we would any other threat to our country.” Read more...
Smartphone Piracy: ‘Life’s Too Short To Worry About It’
[While console providers and publishers are mum about the next generation of piracy prevention as implemented in the Sony NGP and Nintendo 3DS, smartphone developers share their best strategies to combat the scourge.]
Software piracy may have taken a heavy toll on the previous generation of handhelds, and it's a matter of concern for the new models, but when it comes to smartphones, developers shrug. There are more pressing matters, they say.
At least that's what anecdotal evidence from a handful of recent interviews indicates.
Exactly two years ago, then-Sony senior VP Peter Dille stressed the enormity of piracy's effect on the PSP: "We're convinced that piracy has taken out a big chunk of our software sales on PSP. It's been a problem that the industry has to address together."
That same month, Nintendo admitted that it lost trillions of yen a year thanks to software piracy, much of it due to R4 "flash carts" that allow users to download and play pirated DS games.
So it wasn't surprising -- with portable game piracy such a hot-button issue among publishers and analysts -- that Sony and Nintendo turned up the anti-piracy juice on their next generation of handhelds -- the Sony NGP and the Nintendo 3DS. Read more...
Facebook fights California privacy push
California is considering legislation that would tighten Facebook's privacy practices, and the social network is not happy about it.
The bill, Social Networking Privacy Act (SB 242), would require Facebook and other social networking sites to make big changes to the way they handle users' privacy. Industry analysts say social networks like Facebook could be wary of this move for fear that it will lead to a slippery slope of government control and privacy rules.
"Facebook has been very passive about security . They put the onus on the user to figure the security out on their own," said Zeus Kerravala, an analyst at Yankee Group. "Now it would automatically be more secure." Read more...
Hands on: Samsung’s Infuse 4G smartphone is a lightweight heavyweight
For most tech gadgets, the rule is immutable: big equals heavy. If you get a big cell phone -- a Droid X, for instance, or an HTC Evo -- you're going to know that it's in your pocket.
So it was something of a surprise to pick up the new Samsung Infuse 4G.
In addition, the Infuse's screen is bigger: 5.50 in. to the Droid X's 5.25 in. And that bigger screen uses Super AMOLED technology, so it's extremely sharp and bright, with rich colors.
The rest of the hardware is on the high end of standard. The Infuse has a 1.2GHz processor. There are two cameras: one 8-megapixel unit on the back that can capture 720p HD and one 1.2-megapixel unit facing the user. Read more...
Intel speeds up road map to tackle threat from ARM
3-D Transistor This image shows the vertical fins of Intel’s 22 nanometer microprocessor using 3-D Tri-Gate transistors.
Intel will dramatically shake up its microprocessor road map to meet the demand for very-low-power processors and to fend off the competitive threat from rival chip design company ARM, CEO Paul Otellini said Tuesday.
"We decided, looking forward, that our road map was inadequate," Otellini said at the company's financial analyst meeting.
Intel will accelerate its shift to more advanced manufacturing technologies, allowing it to speed the pace at which it can introduce new, lower-power chips, he said. Read more...
Teamviewer Host Lets You Control a Mac Via Android, iPad
TeamViewer, which produces PCMag Editor's Choice for remote-control software, released a free app on Tuesday that lets users control Mac OS X computers from devices running any other major OS, including Mac, Linux, Windows, iPhone, iPad, or Android.
The software, called TeamViewer Host for Mac, not only allows remote control, but also file transfer and remote rebooting. Read more...
Cyber-crooks eye Apple Macs with fake anti-malware
The days when Mac users need not worry about their computers getting infected with malicious software may be coming to an end.
Internet security experts say that cyber-criminals have begun targeting users of the increasingly popular computers from Apple Inc with one of the most pernicious types of malware: fake anti-virus programs.
To date, hackers have focused on writing malicious software for machines running Microsoft Corp's Windows operating system, which inhabits more than nine of every 10 PCs.
But Macs grow in number, they are becoming more attractive targets. Read more...
Who’s Making Apps for Intel Phones? Everybody
As Intel prepares to enter the phone and tablet market, the company is also ensuring that it will have a software ecosystem to support it.
Intel plans to have tablets running Google's Honeycomb Android OS on its own Atom silicon that will be ready to ship by the second half of the year, Renee James, senior vice president and general manager of the Software and Services Group at Intel, said during the company's annual investor meeting at its Santa Clara, Calif. headquarters. Read more...
Researchers Find Android Security Vulnerability
As Google's Android operating system has soared into the top ranks of mobile platforms, a pending question is security. Now researchers from the University of Ulm in Germany have reported that 99 percent of Android-based devices are susceptible to attack.
The researchers found that devices running Android 2.3.3 or older are most vulnerable when logging in over open Wi-Fi because of an insecure ClientLogin authentication. ClientLogin is used for authentication by applications, and it passes an account name and password through a wireless connection. Read more...
Phone 7 Upgrade Adds Business Features and Security
Microsoft unveiled a new swath of business-oriented capabilities for its next-generation Windows Phone 7 platform at the software giant's Tech-Ed conference in Atlanta on Monday. Among other things, the new mobile platform, code-named Mango, will make it possible for mobile workers to synchronize their handset e-mail and calendars with the same apps running on desktop PCs or laptops and gain access to hidden corporate Wi-Fi networks.
Slated for commercial release later this year, Mango will provide security-conscious IT departments with support for complex alphanumeric passwords. Moreover, enterprises will be able to protect corporate e-mails and Microsoft Office documents through the application of new information-rights-management technology being built into Microsoft's mobile platform.
"Mango is a big release and we are seeing more and more capabilities come out," said Al Hilwa, director of applications software development at IDC. Read more...
Symantec looking to buy
Symantec Corp's chief executive is looking to do acquisitions and next week may let investors know just how hungry the security and storage software company will be this year.
Enrique Salem, CEO of the world's No. 5 software maker, has not done a large acquisition since he announced plans a year ago to buy VeriSign Inc's widely used technology for securing payments over the Internet in a transaction worth $1.3 billion.
At the Reuters Global Technology Summit in New York on Tuesday, he said he has not ruled out doing another deal of that size, though his preference is to do smaller, "tuck-in" acquisitions. Acquisition targets that Symantec is focusing on include storage or security companies that provide mobility, cloud computing and virtualization. Read more...
Microsoft: One in 14 Downloads Is Malicious
The next time a website says to download new software to view a movie or fix a problem, think twice. There's a pretty good chance that the program is malicious.
In fact, about one out of every 14 programs downloaded by Windows users turns out to be malicious as Microsoft said. And even though Microsoft has a feature in its Internet Explorer browser designed to steer users away from unknown and potentially untrustworthy software, about 5 percent of users ignore the warnings and download malicious Trojan horse programs anyway. Read more...