Android respawn horror: Hacker says hackers’ phones hacked
Claims that both CDMA and 4G networks were compromised at the recent Defcon security event in Las Vegas have raised little surprise, but the vulnerability of handsets is hotly debated.
The claim was made by coderman, a stalwart of security conferences, who reports that he witnessed an advanced man-in-the-middle attack operating on both CDMA and UMTS networks and masterminded by an amalgam of Anon and Lulz. This attack was apparently able to identify connected devices and run through known exploits before falling back to ask the user's permission to install.
The symptoms of infection include "3G/4G* signal anomalies", "Android [device] at full charged plugged in, but dropping to <50% charge once unplugged", "Android services that immediately respawn when killed" and "a hard freeze, and then take[ing] a long time to reboot". Read more...
Samsung aims to boost tablet storage with new SSDs
Tablet users may need more storage capacity in the future, and Samsung Semiconductor on Thursday announced it is now making its fastest solid-state drives for tablets and laptops with capacity of up to 512GB.
The PM830 SSD offers throughput to transfer movies at faster speeds and also to shorten boot times of PCs to 10 seconds, the company said in a statement. The SSD offers throughput of 6 gigabits per second, which doubles the speed of older Samsung SSDs .
The PM830 will also be available in capacities of 128GB and 256GB, though the company declined to reveal price and availability information. The SSDs are targeted at use for "premium notebooks" and tablets, the company said. Read more...
Court: Clogging email and voicemail systems can be legal
A U.S. Appeals Court handed down a ruling this week that, at first blush, gives the public free reign to overflow a company's public email and voicemail systems in the name of a legitimate cause, even if they are intentionally hindering the company's ability to do business in the process.
Companies would be well served to pay attention to the ruling, which continues to flesh out the arguably vague U.S. Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. It means that, while they may be legally protected from such activities as malicious hacking and spamming, they can't legally prevent people from using public communications channels -- such as email and phone -- to protest a company, even if their tactics amount to a well-orchestrated DoS-style attack.
Whether the precedent set by the ruling should be viewed as a victory for proponents of free speech or for bad guys looking for loopholes to wreak havoc is best left to the beholder. Read more...
Google+ Games goes live
Google's new social network, Google+, took a big step forward Thursday by adding games to its site.
Google+, which is less than two months old, said Thursday afternoon that it's beginning to roll out a games button at the top of users' streams. The highly popular Angry Birds is one of the first games to be added to the site, along with Zombie Lane and Edgeworld.
Vic Gundotra, senior vice president of engineering at Google, announced the gaming news in a blog post. Gundotra noted that users will be able to click on a Games button that will be placed above their streams. The button takes them to a games page, allowing games to be available when users want them and hidden when they don't.
"The experiences we have together are just as important to our relationships," wrote Gundotra. "We want to make playing games online just as fun, and just as meaningful, as playing in real life. That means giving you control over when you see games, how you play them and with whom you share your experiences." Read more...
Mozilla on track to ship Firefox 6 next week
Mozilla is on track to release Firefox 6 next week, according to notes posted on the company's website.
Developers have signed off on Firefox 6 and anticipate no problems that could delay the Aug. 16 release of the browser upgrade, meeting notes show.
"On track with a few bugs still remaining. No concerns for Tuesday," the notes stated.
Mozilla has used a new rapid-release schedule since this spring. The schedule delivers a new version of Firefox every six weeks, a move many have compared to the pace Google has maintained for its Chrome browser for more than a year. Read more...
NuCaptcha improves integration of Captcha system
A company that makes a security product designed to thwart problems such as comment spam has added new security and customization features for website owners.
NuCaptcha's self-titled product takes a different approach to the Captcha, which stands for "Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart."
A Captcha is usually a jumbled sequence of text that a person must enter before they can perform some transaction on a website, such as signing up for a new e-mail account or writing a comment on a blog. Read more...
Google claims Microsoft improperly showed Android code to expert
Google asked the USITC (U.S. International Trade Commission) yesterday to block the testimony of a Microsoft expert witness in the latter's 10-month-old action against Motorola over patents allegedly used by Android.
In a motion filed with the ITC Wednesday, Google asked that Robert Stevenson, an expert hired by Microsoft, be barred from testifying about the Android source code at an upcoming hearing because Microsoft violated a confidentiality agreement struck between Microsoft, Motorola, and Google.
According to Google, Microsoft did not ask permission before showing Stevenson the Android source code. Read more...
HP offers integrated management for IT services
In what the company describes as a premium service, Hewlett-Packard is offering to help the world's largest organizations impose some discipline on how they manage their multitude of IT service contracts.
HP's MSI (Multi-Supplier Integration) will provide CIOs and other business managers with a uniform way of evaluating the quality of their IT services, as well as a process to quickly restore services to operations should they fail, explained Peter Yates. Yates is the director of the service, which is part of the HP Enterprise Service Management division.
"This offering is for our top 500 customers. It is a large enterprise play," Yates said. Such customers, Yates said, "have the biggest IT spend, have the biggest scope, have the largest global footprint -- and they have the biggest challenge in integrating all these capabilities." Read more...