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BetaNews.Com (6 non lus)

Former Secret Service informant named in 'largest credit card data breach ever'

Publié: août 17, 2009, 10:22pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Today, the US Department of Justice announced that a 28-year-old hacker and former Secret Service informant named Albert Gonzales is being indicted for the third and, by far, the largest crime of his short career: participation in the theft of more than 130 million credit and debit card mag-strip data dumps, in attacks between 2006 and 2008.
Gonzales was already in federal custody for several major data breaches. He faces trial in New York next month for the first, which involved hacking restaurant Dave and Busters' payment system. Then the second case will be heard in Boston in 2010 for Gonzales' involvement in the theft of data off of more than 40 million credit card mag-strips from OfficeMax, Barnes & Noble, BJ's Wholesale Club, and many more.
Just after his arrest, then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey said, "So far as we know, this is the single largest and most complex identity theft case ever charged in this country."
But a statement from the Department of Justice today one-ups that notorious achievement: "The indictment, which details the largest alleged credit and debit card data breach ever charged in the United States, alleges that beginning in October 2006, Gonzales and his co-conspirators researched the credit and debit card systems used by their victims; devised a sophisticated attack to penetrate their networks and steal credit and debit card data; and then sent that data to computer servers they operated in California, Illinois, Latvia, the Netherlands and Ukraine. The indictment also alleges Gonzales and his co-conspirators also used sophisticated hacker techniques to cover their tracks and to avoid detection by anti-virus software used by their victims."
Among the victims listed by the DOJ are Heartland Payment Systems, the sixth largest credit card processor in the United States; national convenience store chain 7-Eleven; and Hannaford Bros. Supermarkets.
Earlier this year, Heartland Payment Systems announced that it was the victim of a massive compromise, but President and CFO Robert Baldwin said, "Our discussions with the Secret Service and Department of Justice give us a pretty good indication that this is part of a group that appears to have done security breaches at other financial institutions."
The case is being overseen by the US Secret Service, and will be heard in US District Court in New Jersey. There, Gonzales will be indicted on charges of conspiracy and conspiracy to engage in wire fraud.
Gonzales allegedly used SQL injections to put "sniffers" on in-store computers which would then capture credit card numbers and account information. This information could then be put on blank cards to drain user accounts of all their cash, or sold on the black market. He already faces life in prison in the Boston case.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
Dell denies Chinese smartphone makes its official debut

Publié: août 17, 2009, 7:52pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

For some time now, Chinese engineers have been working on an offshoot of the Android smartphone OS that uses a proprietary front-end, with the intention of creating a network for functions and applications that will rival that of Apple's iPhone. It's being called the Open Mobile System (OMS), and the app platform is now being referred to as Ophone.
This morning overseas, China Mobile showed off its newly completed Mobile Market applications store, the country's first competitive online market for Ophone apps. Since there is no single Ophone unit for China, multiple manufacturers may be involved in producing the phones themselves; and as attendees of this morning's event learned to their surprise, Dell -- the company that has long been hesitant to enter this market -- was one of them.
Attendees saw a no-frills phone that the Chinese Web site tech.163.com journalists immediately concluded was the Mini 3i, a GSM phone that a leaked document from China Mobile made direct reference to. And indeed, the phone does fit what minimal description there has been of the device.
But a Dell spokesperson told Betanews today that the device shown with Dell's trademark at the China Mobile press event was merely a prototype, produced in very limited numbers, and designed specifically to demonstrate Ophone apps at this show using the Ophone Mobile Market. Individuals should not, we were told, jump to conclusions about whether the phone seen at the show will or will not represent anything Dell may sell in the future.
In other words, the spokesperson affirmed to us, this is not necessarily the Dell Mini 3i. That's important, because while on the one hand, it doesn't appear as though this could be anything else, Dell cannot help but be mindful of the fact that the early take on the device was not very positive, or at least underwhelming.
Dell will be cooperating and participating with China Mobile, though the company is making no official announcement about whether that cooperation involves the marketing and promotion of the Ophone Mobile Market -- which, for now, is the only thing it could be cooperating about.
The spokesperson went on to affirm statements the company has made for several years, as a reminder that devices the company produces and ships in Asian markets may not reflect what the company produces for North America and Europe, and vice versa.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
HTC confirms 'Sense' Android UI upgrade for China

Publié: août 17, 2009, 6:45pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

HTC's 'Sense' UI is a large part of what makes the HTC Hero such a desirable handset for Android fans. The interface, centered mostly around home screen widgets, was debuted earlier in the summer and was expected to arrive on other "non-Google" HTC Android handsets.
Since there are only three HTC Android handsets, and all of them are Google-branded in the US so far, this meant at the time that the UI was not coming to the States.
As expected, HTC announced this morning that users of the HTC Magic on Taiwan's Chunghwa network will be able to upgrade to the Sense UI for free in the month of October.
Despite the fact that the MyTouch 3G (T-Mobile and Google's version of the Magic) is outwardly indistinguishable from the Magic, it is still unlikely that it will officially be upgradeable.
Sense has actually proven to be quite a resource-hungry UI, what with all of the widgets simultaneously running in the background and MyTouch 3G actually has less memory to work with. Some have speculated that this is the real reason Sense will not be making it to Google phones and not for licensing issues. A side by side comparison of the two devices shows that the Magic has 288 MB of RAM and the MyTouch3G has only 192 MB.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
A browser war veteran turns wannabe

Publié: août 17, 2009, 5:53pm CEST par Carmi Levy

By Carmi Levy, Betanews

Marc Andreessen is a brilliant guy. His Mosaic browser, which eventually morphed into Netscape, introduced us all to the concept of surfing and ushered in the Internet as we know it. His new way of looking at online services -- which seems ho-hum today but was radically transformational 15 years ago -- freed us forever from the tyranny of arcane, unfortunately named services like Archie, Veronica, Jughead, and Gopher. In taking Netscape public, he set the stage for dot.com-era IPOs that created countless tech billionaires-as-rock-stars and defined an era when technology's potential was seemingly limitless. Let's call him brilliant and visionary, then.
However, even geniuses have their bad days...sometimes, they have many. Netscape was eventually wiped off the relevance map when Microsoft finally woke up to the Internet reality and paved over the landscape with Internet Explorer. The Internet bubble burst as the perverse logic that drove much of it -- eyeballs, "stickiness," and the ridiculous notion that bricks-and-mortar were headed for permanent and complete obsolescence -- was finally and thankfully replaced by the old rules of business that dictated you needed to generate revenue, and that revenue needed to exceed your costs.
Succeeding despite adversity
Still, Mr. Andreessen has always managed to come out on top. At the height of the industry's headiness, he sold Netscape to AOL for $4.2 billion and hung around for a bit as AOL's CTO. Later, he went on to establish Loudcloud and eventually sold it, as Opsware, to HP for $1.6 billion. Last month, he and Ben Horowitz founded a new venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz, and targeted its first $300 million fund at tech entrepreneurs. Let there be no doubt that Andreessen is Silicon Valley royalty.
One of the fund's first beneficiaries is RockMelt, a startup that plans to release a new browser. The company isn't saying much (yet) but it promises the new browser won't be derived from any existing technology. Instead, it'll be built entirely from scratch. In the era of Web 2.0 and increasingly dynamic and interactive online services, a browser based on modern principles and optimized for this environment is definitely a good thing. The real question is whether the world needs a new social media-aware browser. Or even cares. After all, it's not like Flock has set the world on fire.
As I stare at my machine (a typical laptop running a typical OS and a typical array of productivity and connectivity applications), I realize I've got more ways to surf the net than any one person really needs. My list of installed browsers includes Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome. I certainly don't need them all, but since they're free and since some sites tend to work better in some than in others -- Chrome, for instance, does funny things to some of my blog posts, while Firefox plays nice -- I feel better keeping them all around, just in case.
Clinging to yesterday's thinking
And when RockMelt goes live, I'll probably download and install it, too, because it'll also be free, and my hard drive's big enough to handle as many browsers and plug-ins as I could ever hope to have. But just because I can and will doesn't mean it'll ever make money. And there's the rub: I fear Mr. Andreessen is chasing yesterday's dream -- namely recapturing the browser-based glory he knew when Netscape was the Internet for most of us -- while the rest of the online world long ago moved on.
Oh sure, alternative browsers are alive and well. Mozilla's Firefox has hacked out an incredibly respectable 20% global usage share, and challenged the old assumption that no one could beat Internet Explorer because it came installed on every Windows PC. Firefox proved that if you built it, and built it well, savvy users would take the time to make the switch. Google's Chrome proved the need to return to our Internet roots with a small, light, blazingly fast browser that dispensed with the bloat that had gradually converted the average browser from a climbing-the-stairs-victoriously Rocky into the equivalent of a long-retired, unshaven, pot-bellied, dog-slow, has-been "Rocky VI."
So, yes, the world needs better browsers today. And will continue to need them tomorrow. But, sadly for Mr. Andreessen, we no longer need to add another name to the list of browser vendors fighting for our desktop loyalty. The big boys already have it covered, and with each successive update, are finding ways to deliver greater Web 2.0-era functionality with less bloat and less instability.
I'm not certain I understand how RockMelt plans to carve out a business model by slicing the browser market even more thinly and hoping advertisers come along for the ride. Notably, Mr. Andreessen sits on both Facebook's and eBay's boards of directors. No doubt he's imagining some kind of connection that would allow RockMelt to improve the user experience for social media and other interactive services. But until we all decide our current browsers are patently unable to get the job done -- something I'm just not seeing -- it's difficult to imagine IE and Firefox users running for the exits.
We need more than browsers
We no longer lack the tools to explore the Internet at a basic level. I'm sure I'm not the only one who questions how a me-too product is going to improve our collective online capability. Geeks may appreciate the fresh technology under the hood, but attributes like that hardly matter to the vast majority of consumer and business users who wouldn't even know or care what browser they're using. For them, good enough has always been good enough, and only a new category of software, beyond the browser will justify any differential mindshare. And revenue.
RockMelt answers a question no one's been asking for much of the last decade, and would have been much better off looking beyond the browser to an entirely new way of experiencing online services. Mr. Andreessen's always done extraordinarily well with the new, the different and the radical. As he looks for other places to invest his $300 million, I humbly suggest he keep that in mind.
Carmi Levy is a Canadian-based independent technology analyst and journalist still trying to live down his past life leading help desks and managing projects for large financial services organizations. He comments extensively in a wide range of media, and works closely with clients to help them leverage technology and social media tools and processes to drive their business.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
Sony takes more control of Sony Ericsson, appoints Stringer to chair

Publié: août 17, 2009, 5:18pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

It's difficult to say which company has suffered most from the bad global economic climate -- Nokia, Motorola, or Sony Ericsson -- but if you ask any of their executives candidly, they'll probably point to their own firms. Last quarter, Sony Ericsson reported shipping 43% fewer phones than in the same quarter of 2008; and in terms of income, the company is bleeding at the rate of a third of a billion euro per quarter.
At the time, company president Dick Komiyama promised he would continue focusing on a return to profitability. This morning, it was learned that Sony has told the division president he can start thinking about focusing someplace else -- preferably, retirement. Effective immediately, Ericsson Executive Vice President Bert Norberg will scoot Komiyama to just a part of the president's chair, until the last quarter of the year when Komiyama will be out altogether. Though Komiyama will officially be sharing the presidency with Norberg until then, no one's under any illusion that this sharing will be anything more than official.
Meanwhile, Ericsson President and CEO Carl-Henric Svanberg will step aside from his chairmanship of the jointly-owned phone producer, to make way for Sony President and CEO Sir Howard Stringer. That means Sir Howard now plays four roles in the global conglomerate, up from the three roles that already seemed daunting enough for the former executive producer of the "CBS Evening News." Already Chairman and CEO of Sony Corp., Sir Howard moved into that president's seat just last February, in a move that the wide-ranging executive tried desperately to characterize as temporary.
Norberg's ascent into the Sony Ericsson presidency may carry with it his software division's plans for high-end handsets, which involve Google's Android. Last month, the firm produced a video showing its own innovative UI, code-named "Rachael," built on an Android platform.
But while Rachael may solidify Sony Ericsson's standings in the smartphone field, it's in everyday cell phones where the biggest challenges lay. Concentrating on the higher end these past few quarters did manage to double its gross margin, from "ridiculous" to at least "tolerable," but with sales volume slipping to tragic levels, that hasn't meant much.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
Back up the Pirate Bay!

Publié: août 17, 2009, 5:00pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

With the future of the Pirate Bay still up in the air, an anonymous user has created an archive of the torrent indexing site just in case things don't go well with its acquisition and transition into a "legitimate" service.
The user has made a mostly complete archive of The Pirate bay and all of its 873,671 hosted torrents available as a 21.3 GB download. The Pirate Bay's tracker claims to track over 2 million torrents, but most of these were not hosted by the Pirate Bay.
The description of the archive says, "I crawled their index and since I don't have the hardware necessary to deploy it to the public, I have decided to release the database. Remember that all torrents from TPB now have the new tracker openbittorrent.com included, so they will continue to track even after the TPB tracker shuts down. I have included the program I made to crawl the index, and a mockup Web site that can read the...sqlite3 database."
TorrentFreak spoke to the creator of the archive, who said, "I suppose I want us to have assurances. If the TPB deal disappoints us, we can just put it up again."
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009