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Personal data of 170 million Facebook users exposed, collected, and shared without any hacking

Publié: juillet 29, 2010, 11:40pm CEST par Ed Oswald

By Ed Oswald, Betanews

Using publicly available information on Facebook, a researcher has been able to gather personal details of nearly 170 million users of the service, or about a third of all users. The data includes names, addresses, e-mails, phone numbers, and birthdays: essentially anything that was not marked as private is now part of this file.
The file has now ended up on The Pirate Bay, and so far has seen over 10,000 downloads. This could mean hackers would have an easy way to obtain personal information necessary for identity theft and other malicious uses.
Skull Security researcher Ron Bowes was the man behind the work. He did not hack into the service at all but rather scraped the data from Facebook's open directory. While it's a violation of the social networking site's terms of service, nothing is stopping anyone from doing it.
Bowes has decided to make the file a torrent, even though he acknowledged that the more info an attacker had on a person, the higher likelihood of a security breach. His move is somewhat curious considering he arguably could be held liable for attacks as a result of his actions.
Even so, the incident could prove to be a wake up call for those sharing data on Facebook. "I am of the belief that, if I can do something then there are about 1,000 bad guys that can do it too," he told the BBC News Thursday.
"For that reason, I believe in open disclosure of issues like this, especially when there's minimal potential for anybody to get hurt. Since this is already public information, I see very little harm in disclosing it," he argued.
Facebook Spokesperson Andrew Noyes told several media outlets that this was public information and no private information had been disclosed as a result of Bowes' work. The quick downplay of the data leak is probably due to the drubbing the social networking site has taken when it comes to privacy as of late.
To ensure that your own data is not at risk, users of Facebook should take the following steps. Click on "Privacy Settings" under the Account menu option. Ensure that information is not set for "Everyone" to view. Alternatively, the user can also uncheck "Enable Public Search" which would take the account out of the directory Bowes used to do the data mining.
The Skull Security website was inaccessible as of Thursday afternoon.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

Facebook - Pirate Bay - Privacy - Security - Ron Bowes
Researchers find 80 different Android wallpaper apps skimming sensitive data

Publié: juillet 29, 2010, 10:41pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

While the superstar of the Black Hat USA 2010 security conference in Las Vegas this week was Barnaby Jack from IOActive showing off techniques for "Jackpotting" Windows CE-based ATMs, research from security company Lookout has had a much broader impact on consumers, especially those using Android smartphones.
Lookout's "App Genome Project" is an ongoing study of the millions of mobile applications available, the user data that they collect, and threats they present. During their research for the project, the team found a series of simple Wallpaper apps in the Android Market which were suspiciously collecting more data than they needed to.
"The wallpaper applications that we analyzed transmitted several pieces of sensitive data to a server over an unencrypted network connection. The data included the device's phone number, subscriber identifier (e.g. IMSI), and the currently entered voicemail number on the phone," Lookout CTO Kevin Mahaffey said today. "While this sort of data collection from a wallpaper application is certainly suspicious, there's no evidence of malicious behavior. There have been cases in the past on other mobile platforms where well-intentioned developers are simply over-zealous in their data gathering, without having malicious intent."
The group found more than 80 wallpaper apps that did this, and they all traced back to two developers "Jackeey" and "wallpaper," both of whom have since changed their names. The various apps are estimated to have been downloaded between one and four million times.
There's a good chance you have downloaded one if you're an Android user.
"While the data this app is accessing is certainly suspicious coming from a wallpaper app, we want to be clear that there is no evidence of malicious behavior," Mahaffey said today. He also said that Google is aware of the situation and is currently investigating the suspicious apps.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

Google - BlackHat - Genome project - Smartphone - Las Vegas Nevada
Microsoft wants to park a cloud container in your driveway

Publié: juillet 29, 2010, 8:21pm CEST par Joe Wilcox

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

Cloud computing dominated the morning's Microsoft Financial Analyst Meeting 2010 presentations. COO Kevin Turner and Chief Research Strategy Officer Craig Mundie spent more time talking cloud computing than any other topic. For Mundie, it was a bold departure from previous years, where he spoke broadly and almost exclusively about forthcoming technologies -- typically years from release, if ever. Last year, he asserted that the successor to the PC would be "a room."
Some reasons for Microsoft's cloud focus should be obvious:
1. Azure is available, as of six months ago.
2. Cloud computing is all the rage right now.
3. Microsoft recently released new hosted applications.
4. Competitors are rallying behind the cloud to runaround the Office-Windows-Windows Server applications stack.
5. Hosted apps let businesses offer employees anytime, anywhere, on-anything data access, while better protecting corporate information.
But there is another reason that might be less obvious: New sales. For core products Office and Windows, and increasingly SharePoint and Windows Server, Microsoft is reselling to the same customers. With these established products, the company doesn't have anything really new to offer. C`mon what's all that different between Office 2007 and 2010? Windows 7 is an easier upgrade because most businesses run 9-year-old Windows XP. But Microsoft is still selling to the same customers.
Azure and hosted Microsoft applications are new, fresh products with that familiar look and feel of the old stuff. Microsoft also can solve real-world problems: Helping businesses to meet mobile demands with lower privacy and security risks. It only takes one stolen or lost laptop containing millions of customer records to spoil a corporation's year. Cloud computing provides a means of giving employees greater mobility while holding data behind the firewall.
Mundie used "data authority" to describe Microsoft's approach. "The other thing that we look to the cloud for increasingly is to be the data authority," he told financial analysts. "And I think that will be true whether as a person or an institution you want to have one place where you believe you can put an authoritative copy of information or have it propagate around to all the appropriate applications or devices in your life or work environment."
From the "something new to sell" perspective, Mundie and Turner did more than tell financial analysts about emerging opportunities around the cloud. The executives made sales pitches to potential customers. After all, many of the financial companies represented in the FAM audience should be looking at adopting the kind of cloud services Microsoft offers -- sooner, rather than later. Surely Microsoft would also benefit from financial analysts satisfied with its cloud services. Wall Street's elite make more than recommendations about stock investments. They are IT influencers, even subtly. Satisfied customers are good evangelists.
Successful marketing is also about controlling the vernacular, something Microsoft attempted to do with "software plus services." Today Mundie put firmer spin on "client plus cloud as a computing platform"; the term "client plus cloud" isn't new for Microsoft, but both executives gave it a firm kick. Mundie explained:
Let me talk about role we think the cloud plays. Many people talked about it runs your applications or it's a piece of your infrastructure. But we think of it more broadly...The cloud is a place where we get to do the orchestration across all these myriad devices in your life, across a whole array of applications. The world that many of us have grown...as the mobile environment or personal computing or laptop computing environment were emerging were that each of them was a bit too much of an island. It was a very manual process to maintain the relationship and data and communication that you would ideally want among these devices. And as the number and type of devices grows essentially without bound, it would be a nightmare if this was left as an exercise to the user. So the cloud becomes a place where we can orchestrate the operation of these collection of devices and that will be a very, very important part of what makes this useful and interesting.
But "client plus cloud" isn't descriptive enough. Unless I misunderstood the executives, Microsoft is going into the big-iron hardware business. So "client plus cloud" has broader meaning. Mundie told FAM attendees they can explore a "prototype of a container" with 600 servers "sitting in the parking lot right outside." He explained what such a porta-server farm could do for them: "It's completely self-contained. You don't need chilled water. In fact, you just hook it up to your garden hose. You put in electricity and your fiber optic connection and you can be online...You'll be able to buy these things and just have them delivered in your parking lot and put it anywhere you want. This is the ability to combine the super scale capabilities that [Turner] alluded to and the knowledge and understanding that comes from that with the ability to do creative engineering."
Now that's a sales pitch.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

Microsoft - Business - Cloud computing - Windows XP - Microsoft SharePoint
Motorola beats the street, but smartphone sales haven't rebounded yet

Publié: juillet 29, 2010, 8:18pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Shaumberg, Illinois electronics company Motorola Inc. on Thursday posted its earnings for the second quarter of 2010. The company's total revenue was $5.41 billion, which beat Wall Street's estimates of $5.19 billion, but was still down against last year's $5.49 billion. The company reported a strong flow of cash for the quarter, with overall earnings of $162 million, up sharply from last year's $26 million. Total sales, however, were down some $83 million against the same quarter last year.
Of Motorola's four divisions: Mobile Devices, Home, Enterprise Mobility Solutions, and Networks, the latter two divisions were the main drivers of profit for the company.
During the quarter, Motorola's Enterprise Mobility solutions scored several noteworthy government contracts, including one to build the first 700MHz LTE public safety network for the San Francisco Bay area, and several Project 25 contracts (interoperable digital two-way radio for first responders) in Georgia, Maryland, New York and Washington. The group also announced the ES400, a dual-mode GSM/CDMA Enterprise Digital Assistant touted as the smallest in its class.
Sales for the quarter amounted to $1.8 billion, a $165 million increase over the same quarter last year.
Though sales were down in the Networks division, the group was sold earlier in July to Nokia Siemens for $1.2 billion. Motorola will retain rights to its iDEN business as well as the majority of its network-related intellectual property. This is viewed as an overall win for the company.
By the first quarter of 2011, Motorola is expected to split into just two divisions, which will amount to a consumer-facing side (made up of the current Home and Mobility groups) led by Co-CEO Sanjay Jha, and an enterprise side (Enterprise mobility solutions) led by Co-CEO Greg Brown.
The mobile device group is still facing declining numbers. Last year, the group shipped 14.8 million units during the second quarter, and this year it shipped 8.3 million, 2.7 million of which were smartphones. Total mobile sales were also down against last year, going from $1.82 billion to $1.72 billion.
The company, however, continues to release compelling smartphones powered by Google Android, and Jha says he expects the group to post its first uptick in sales since 2006 in the third quarter, and a return to profitability in the fourth. This will be due, in part, to the top-of-the-line Droid X on Verizon Wireless which has been in short supply since launching on July 15.
Disclosure: Tim Conneally is a Motorola shareholder.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

Motorola - Greg Brown - Verizon Wireless - Business - Wall Street
70% of Microsoft cloud 'wins' are new customers

Publié: juillet 29, 2010, 6:57pm CEST par Joe Wilcox

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

Microsoft COO Kevin Turner made the bold statement this morning during the company's annual FInancial Analyst Meeting. "One of the most exciting things about our cloud strategy is that 70 percent of the wins in the cloud that we had in Q4, ladies and gentlemen, were new Microsoft customers," Tuner told financial analysts. "Yeah, new Microsoft customers. They were IBM Lotus Notes customers, Novell e-mail customers. They were all this other stuff, in addition to the Microsoft customers, that we're actually able to grow our portion of the pie this next year in a very dramatic way, because we can explode worker productivity."
"New" and "customers" are two words not often conjoined at Microsoft. The company's enterprise products are so well established, new sales are usually to existing customers. That Microsoft is adding any new customers from its cloud services is significant. The number Turner stated is staggering, assuming his definition of "new" means a customer who isn't using Microsoft products somewhere else, which is a tough claim for this reporter to believe.
Turner identified cloud computing as one of several "big focus" areas for enterprises. "The first one is around rebooting, retransitioning, replatforming ourselves, if you will, around leading with a cloud with our customers," he said. If you want to go to the cloud, we'll help you do that. We've changed that. I don't believe that was a good move strategically, and it's one I'm personally course correcting on as a direction."
The statement is surprising. In January, I raised concerns that Microsoft's Azure cloud strategy had changed shape -- that the deliverable looks more like a cross between Amazon cloud services and hosted Microsoft applications than the operating system in the sky vision previously outlined by Ray Ozzie, chief software architect. That Turner, who represents the Office and Windows hawks, is presenting the cloud strategy is troubling. What about Ozzie? The cloud had been his baby and the way for Microsoft's reinvention.
Still there's some sense to Microsoft's approach. Turner used "Access Anywhere" to describe what I've long called "anytime, anywhere, on-anything" computing. Turner's term is more concise but similar concept. Businesses can take control of their information by providing access through hosted services. Employees can benefit from mobile computing without taking precious data outside the firewall on laptops, smartphones and other mobile devices.
"We now have over 10,000 paying customers on our cloud infrastructure platform and that number is continuing to grow every day," Turner said. (By the way, I could not get Microsoft's video plug-in to work in any non-Internet Explorer 8 browser; I've pulled the quotes from the live transcript, which uses a Java plug-in.)
"Our second big focus for businesses clearly is around the Windows 7 and Office 2010 refresh," Turner told FAM attendees. Microsoft sells nearly 8 copies of Windows 7 a second. "For the first time in a long time, we grew share versus Apple in the United States in laptops per IVC this past year. Thanks to Windows 7. In fact, we were up 2.7 points against Apple in the United States in laptops." That Turner must even mention Apple says something about how he views the Mac maker competitively. Apple's market capitalization exceeds Microsoft and only a few hundred million in revenue separated the companies during second calendar quarter.
Turner identified several competitors that Microsoft is targeting: Google, IBM, Oracle and VMware. He ended his presentation by returning to the cloud. "Our client software that connects to the cloud and the better our cloud software is the more value that will drive to our on premises client software, and we're going to continue to push on that in a very profound way," he said.
What that really means: For enterprises, Microsoft is attempting to extend its Office, Windows, Windows Server application stack to cloud services. If businesses buy into Microsoft's cloud, they get the integrated benefits. It's not an open stack.
Turner talked about the future, which is exactly the right approach. As I asserted yesterday, today is about tomorrow -- Microsoft conveying what it will accomplish in the near future rather than what financially happened in the past.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

Microsoft - Apple - Google - Windows 7 - Cloud computing
Amazon debuts 3rd generation Kindle e-reader: smaller, lighter, cheaper, better

Publié: juillet 29, 2010, 4:37pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Amazon, online retailer and e-book pioneer announced Thursday the latest generation of its popular 6" Kindle e-book reader.
The Kindle received an overhaul similar to the one its big brother Kindle DX got on the first of July, with a new graphite chassis, improved screen resolution, and lower price.
Today's upgrade, however, goes a little further to improve the Kindle product line.
In addition to the 20% smaller, 15% lighter enclosure and 50% higher-contrast E ink screen, the third generation Kindle has double the storage of its predecessor, built-in Wi-Fi in addition to its free international 3G wireless, and 20% faster page turns at a price of only $189.
When the Kindle 2 launched last year, it was sold for $259. Due in part to serious competition from Borders and Barnes and Noble in the e-reader market, Amazon slashed the price of the Kindle in June.
With the new Wi-Fi capability, Amazon has introduced another version of the Kindle to the product line, one without a 3G radio. This version will sell for only $139 and have all the rest of the features of the $189 model.
On the software side, Amazon says it has improved the PDF reader, sped up the experimental Webkit browser, and added text to speech capability in the menu system to improve accesibility for the visually impaired.
Though the Kindle already offered Text-to-Speech on all of its Kindle books, the Author's Guild made a move last year to let the publishers decide on a book-by-book basis whether that feature could be turned on. However, with the recent amendment to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the publisher-placed text-to-speech lock could be broken if no versions of a particular e-book have the accessibility feature turned on.
The Kindle's most popular accessory, the leather case, has also been upgraded to match the new Kindle. The case now features an LED lamp that is powered by the Kindle's own battery. The innovative new case utilizes gold-plated conductive hinges to pull electricity from the Kindle Battery.
The new Kindles will begin shipping on August 27 and can be pre-ordered from Amazon today.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

Amazon Kindle - Amazon - Wi-Fi - Digital Millennium Copyright Act - Speech synthesis
'Facebook Questions' launches, lets you poll Facebook's 500 million users

Publié: juillet 29, 2010, 12:16am CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Facebook today officially introduced a new feature called Facebook Questions, the social network's take on crowdsourced question and answer sites like Yahoo Answers, Quora, and Hunch.
The new feature, still classified as a beta, lets users ask questions of the vast Facebook community of more than 500 million simply by typing them into a new field labeled "What do you want to know?"
While it has not yet been rolled out to all users, the new Facebook Questions feature will appear as a button labeled "Ask Question" across a users' homepage.
Along with asking simple text questions, users can also include photographs, links, or polls. The topic of the question can then be tagged, and users who have that same topic listed in their interests will see the question. For example, if you have a question about the TV show "24," users who have the show listed on their profile under "Likes and Interests" will be more likely to see your question than someone who does not.
"Keep in mind that all questions and answers posted using the Questions application are public and visible to everyone on the Internet," Facebook Product Director Blake Ross reminded users today.
Like Yahoo Answers, there is no limit to what topics a user can provide answers to. They can simply browse through questions and provide their answers as they like.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

Facebook - Yahoo Answers - Facebook Questions - Social network - Quora