Gregarius » BetaNews.Com » août 10, 2012

BetaNews.Com (13 non lus)

Apple price matches iPhone, but it's nothing new -- should you wait anyway?

Publié: août 10, 2012, 8:57pm CEST par Ed Oswald

Here come the iPhone price cuts. With the launch of the iPhone 5 likely a little over a month away, retailers are beginning to drop prices on iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S models in stock in order to make way for the new device.

There's a key difference here over previous pricing changes, and that's the adjustments are originating with the carriers first and trickling down to retailers. AT&T and Verizon's pricing on the iPhone 4 and 4S remain at $99 and $199 for the 16GB model: however Sprint has lowered the price of the 4S to $149.99.

Some retailers have taken things a step further: Radio Shack and Best Buy are also discounting the iPhone 4 8GB, which is now available for $49.99. This results in uneven pricing, including in Apple's flagship stores.

Thus, the Cupertino, Calif. company has authorized its employees to take the seemingly unprecedented move of honoring price matching upon request.

There's only one issue with that: it's actually nothing new for Apple, as far as we can tell. You may not have ever heard of it, but apparently Apple has had a price matching policy for quite a long time, possibly as long as its retail stores have been in existence. There is evidence as far back as 2008 showing Apple price matching on hardware, and we even caught a forum post on MacRumors from 2004 where Apple apparently had listed a similar policy on its online store for a time (the link on apple.com has since been moved or removed).

So while this may seem groundbreaking, the only thing that might be different here is the fact that a tipster got ahold of Apple's price matching plans and sent it off to MacRumors, where details of Apple's policy regarding iPhone pricing first appeared on Thursday.

While the price cut will probably attract some fence-sitters, is it worth it to jump on a new iPhone now? Probably not. Both the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 4S are likely to see a price cut in about a month, when the iPhone 5 is expected to launch. The iPhone 4 will likely become free with a two-year contract, while the iPhone 4S will drop to $99.

If we use Apple's previous strategy as an indication, the 4S will likely only come in an 8GB capacity, so if space is a concern for you, and you don't care about LTE data, buying the 4S at a discount now might be a good deal.

There's another issue, and that's the discount on these models isn't that big: just 25% on the iPhone 4S. If you can hold out just a month more (from what the rumors tell us), for $50 more you could be getting a much better phone.

Matt Brownell of the financial site MainStreet.com just might have the best advice here: "Unless you just dropped your iPhone in the toilet and desperately need a new smartphone now, we suggest showing a bit of patience". Maybe he's right.

Photo Credit: Lou Oates/Shutterstock
Chinese 'kidney for iPad' trial starts

Publié: août 10, 2012, 7:49pm CEST par Wayne Williams

Nine people have gone on trial in the central province of Hunan, China, accused of illegal organ trading and intentional injury after a 17-year old high school student sold one of his kidneys to buy an iPad and iPhone. The teenager, identified in a report by the state-run China Daily as Wang Shangkun from the Anhui province, was allegedly recruited through a chat room by one of the defendants, and paid 22,000 Yuan ($3,456) for the organ, which was removed in an illegal transplant operation by a team from a local hospital. The kidney was sold by the gang behind the trade to an unknown buyer for 150,000 Yuan ($23,566) and a further $10,000 in cash, netting them a profit of around $30,000.

While to Westerners $3,458 seems a shockingly low price to sell a kidney for (especially considering how much the recipient was willing to pay), it’s important to put that figure into context. The average wage paid to workers assembling Apple products at Foxconn is around 2,200 Yuan ($346) a month, so the figure Wang received would have equated to nearly ten months’ salary for someone working at the plant -- a colossal amount of money to a young man still in full-time education.

The trade came to light when the teenager’s mother asked her son how he could afford to buy such expensive electrical devices (the price of an iPad in China starts at 2,988 Yuan ($469) while the most basic iPhone costs 3,988 Yuan ($627) and he confessed all.

Wang reportedly suffered renal failure shortly after the operation and was still too ill to attend the trial’s opening, although his mother, appearing on his behalf, told the court that she did not believe her son had sold his organs expressly to buy Apple products, but had done so because he was concerned about being caught in possession of such a large amount of money.

China banned the trading of human organs in 2007, but demand has led to a growing black market. The Ministry of Health estimates around 1.5 million people in China currently need transplants, but just 5,253 received one in 2011, according to the national kidney transplant registry.

Five of the defendants, including the surgeon who performed the operation, face up to 10 years in prison if found guilty, while the four others, who played more minor roles, will be liable for fines. Wang’s representatives are reportedly seeking 2.77 million Yuan ($435,192) in compensation or, to put it another way, just under 928 iPads.
Legendary fiber optic cable ship burns to a crisp on Skeleton Coast

Publié: août 10, 2012, 6:14pm CEST par Tim Conneally

France Telecom-Orange on Friday announced that an unexplained fire had erupted on its cable ship, The Chamarel, off the Skeleton Coast of Namibia in the Atlantic Ocean. After battling the blaze for several hours, the crew abandoned ship. The vessel was returning from a mission to repair the Sat3/WASC/Safe submarine cable which connects Portugal and Spain to nine West African countries, circles around the southern tip of Africa, and connects to India and Malaysia.

The entire crew of 56 escaped the Chamarel safely, and were recovered by a Namibian fishing vessel and returned to Walvis Bay, Namibia. No injuries were reported, but this is the second incident in a single month where a ship has caught fire in Namibian waters. On August first, a South African Tuna fishing boat caught fire and sank outside of Namibian port city Lüderitz.

The Chamarel, formerly known as CS Vercors, is actually a historically important vessel in international fiber optic communications. The ship was in service since 1975, and laid over a hundred thousand kilometers of cable, including AT&T's TAT-6 transatlantic cable, and EMOS-1 the first Israeli-built undersea cable. In 2000, the vessel was used to set the record for the deepest submarine cable at 1,610 meters (just over one mile).

France Telecom-Orange currently operates six cable ships, four are dedicated to maintenance services in the Mediterranean basin, the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean, and two are used to lay new submarine cable.

Photo Credit: Leon Krauze, Namib Times
Paragon releases Image Backup for Windows 8

Publié: août 10, 2012, 5:20pm CEST par Mike Williams

Paragon Software has released Image Backup for Windows 8, a simple backup tool that runs on Windows 8/ Server 2012 and supports Microsoft’s new Resilient File System, ReFS.

If you’ve used any recent Paragon backup product then you’ll feel at home right away, as the new product uses Paragon’s standard front end menu, which quickly points you to the features you need.

Look a little closer, though, and you’ll find the program is considerably cut down from Paragon’s other free tools. In particular, there’s no “advanced” view, no full program to explore: the front end menu, and the four main wizards it points to, are just about everything you get.

This does at least help to keep things simple, though. And if you check “Change backup settings” in the Backup Wizard then you’ll find there are plenty of useful configuration options here.

Include and exclude filters help to define exactly what you’re backing up, for instance; you can set your archive’s compression level, or split it into equal-sized files; support for VSS will help you to back up locked files, and you can optionally password-protect your archive to keep it safe from snoopers.

Your backup may then be written to any local or network drive, copied to a physical partition, or burned to CD, DVD or Blu-ray discs.

At a later date you can then restore individual files or folders from the image, or the entire thing. And as usual with Paragon backup tools, the program allows you to create a bootable Linux-based recovery environment, which can restore your system partition if Windows will no longer boot.

This has some obvious limitations. There’s no scheduler, for instance. And no support for backing up to FTP, or any other online destination.

Still, Image Backup for Windows 8 is probably the first freeware backup tool to offer Windows 8, Server 2012 and ReFS support, which works for us. And if that’s something you’re looking for, the program is available now.

Photo Credit: Raimundas/Shutterstock
4G LTE BlackBerry PlayBook makes iOS and Android devices feel about as sophisticated as my daughter’s old 'Speak & Spell'

Publié: août 10, 2012, 5:09pm CEST par Randall C. Kennedy

I love underdogs. Whether it’s David vs. Goliath, Rocky vs. Apollo Creed or Microsoft (circa 1992) vs. IBM, I enjoy rooting for the plucky upstart. Which is why I find the resurgence of interest surrounding Research in Motion's beleaguered PlayBook tablet all the more satisfying: Here is a product that stumbled out of the gate and was left for dead, only to slowly crawl its way back into the ring of respectability through a combination of raw talent and sheer force of will.

Make no mistake: The PlayBook was an impressive device when it first shipped in April, 2011. Bristling with class-leading technology, RIM’s first foray into the tablet market should have been an instant hit. However, the software half of RIM’s winning formula still wasn’t fully baked, with some glaring omissions (email, calendar) and few third party apps to speak of. And, in a truly ironic twist, many early critics actually panned the device for its smallish 7-inch form factor.

The result was anemic sales when compared to the phenomenon that was the iPad/iPad 2, followed by a very public write-off of $500 million worth of unsold Playbook inventory. Viewed in these terms, the PlayBook was declared "TKO", another contender relegated to footnote status in the annals of the iAscendancy.

However, the RIM corner men refused to throw in the towel. They had staked their entire future on a brand new adaptation of the legendary QNX RTOS, and the PlayBook was their only functional device that incorporated a working implementation. Instead, they doubled-down on their PlayBook bet, slashing prices to clear-out the unsold inventory while working on a 4G LTE follow-up that would serve as a laboratory for the company’s real long-term goal: Transitioning its bread-and-butter smart phone business to the now rapidly maturing QNX-based Blackberry 10 OS.

Fast forward to today and things look very different for the Playbook. First, RIM’s aggressive discounting succeeded in moving those unsold units while establishing a sizable niche market of PlayBook die-hards (there are now some 1.5 million devices in the wild -- more tablet units than even the mighty Samsung has shipped). Next, the company’s continued investment in its QNX adaptation, both in terms of the out-of-box OS experience and the supporting developer ecosystem, helped to vastly expand the PlayBook’s available apps catalog while plugging the gaps in its core functionality.

Meanwhile, enterprises that were initially cool to the PlayBook have begun to appreciate the value of its robust, secure OS and highly portable, 7-inch form factor (thanks, Google). From insurance claims processing to law enforcement command and control, the PlayBook is finding a home wherever organizations need a reliable, manageable mobile computing platform that emphasizes build quality and proven capability over snazzy specs.

All of which is why RIM’s introduction this week of the aforementioned 4G LTE Playbook may signify the zenith of the company’s tablet comeback strategy. With a faster CPU/GPU (1.5GHz dual-core TI OMAP 4460) and a fully-baked RTOS that makes iOS and Android devices feel about as sophisticated as my daughter’s old “Speak & Spell”, the new PlayBook once again dances circles around the competition -- for example, delivering a SunSpider score (1397) that even the formidable Nexus 7 can’t touch.

But it gets better. Playbook OS 2.1, which I’ve been beta testing on my own device for several weeks, provides even greater performance and usability improvements while vastly overhauling the platform’s secret weapon: Android application support. In fact, after spending some quality time with Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0.3 running on an Acer Iconia Tab, I have to say that many of my favorite Android apps (gReader Pro, TapaTalk, Twitter) actually run better under the virtualization layer in PB OS 2.1 than they do in their native environment. Multitasking is smoother, and I experience none of the random crashes and reboot-inducing flakiness that plague ICS (sort of a “better Android than Android” type of experience).

Bottom Line: RIM’s plucky little "tablet that could" has come full circle. Once derided for its size, the PlayBook is now appreciated as the device that pioneered the uber-popular 7-inch form factor. And as more users experience the power of QNX, the OS’ reputation for performance, reliability and true enterprise scalability is beginning to precede it.

With an even more powerful and polished QNX implementation (BlackBerry 10) just over the horizon, the PlayBook may finally be getting its second wind. Don't count it out quite yet.

Catch Randall C. Kennedy's smart analysis of tech trends every Tuesday and Friday here at BetaNews.
Auslogics BoostSpeed 5.4.0.0 supports Windows 8, IE10

Publié: août 10, 2012, 4:41pm CEST par Mark Wilson

Who doesn’t love a good tweaking tool? Everyone likes the idea of being able to boost the performance of their computer without having to shell out on potential expensive hardware and Auslogics BoostSpeed is an extremely accomplished utility that enables you to do just this. The latest version of the program is a major upgrade that sees not only added support for Windows 8 and Internet Explorer 10 but also new options that make the app and even more powerful tool for cleaning up and optimizing your computer.

The imminent release of Windows 8 is big news for all software developers, and the latest release of Auslogics BoostSpeed not only supports the operating system, it also allows for control of Metro processes as added new tweaks to the Tweak Manager (Yes, we know Microsoft dropped the Metro name). The existing cleanup tools have been enhanced so you will notice that there are new categories available in the Registry Cleaner, Track Eraser and Disk Cleaner making it easier than ever to protect your privacy and delete sensitive data -- these improvements extend to the wiping of USB drives.

As well as deleting unwanted files, the program can also be used to uninstall software that is no longer needed. There are occasional problems with uninstallers that do not do their job properly, and the Force Remove function has been improved here to help you to remove such troublesome apps. To help to boost the speed of your internet connection, there is an improve Internet Optimizer component. Other updated features include support for the latest version of all popular web browsers, including fixes to problems specific to Internet Explorer 9.

Of course, there are also the usual range of bug fixes to be found as well as corrections to errors that had been found in language files. There’s an added bonus as well; a single purchase of the program means that you are able to install the software on up to three computers so you can keep all of the machines in your home optimized. Auslogics has also updated the free version of its Disk Defrag tool, again with added support for Windows 8 and addressing a number of known issues.

You can find out more and download a free trial version of the program by paying a visit to the Auslogics BoostSpeed 5.4.0.0 review page.

Photo Credit: Lilya/Shutterstock
CyanogenMod 9 hits stable release and now you can update OTA

Publié: août 10, 2012, 4:26pm CEST par Mihaita Bamburic

Modders everywhere rejoice: CyanogenMod 9 (CM9) is now a “stable” release for popular Android smartphones, according to a blog post by CyanogenMod team. CyanogenMod 9 is developed from the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), having Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich as its starting point.

The guys behind the project announced that the stable release “will be the end of the line for the ICS branch” and that they will only fix critical bugs from now on. As well, the team will focus only on CyanogenMod 10 and maintaining the CyanogenMod 7 (based on Android 2.3 Gingerbread) codebase. The other great piece of news comes from the development on CyanogenMod 10, which is based on Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean.

At the moment, the list of supported devices includes older smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy S, which is no longer updated by Samsung. It just shows that the modding community can make older Android smartphones, like the Galaxy S, shine again with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. One of the most popular Android smartphones, the Samsung Galaxy S II (i9100) is supported as well, along with its less popular and less known sibling, the Samsung Galaxy S II G (i9110G), but the list obviously doesn’t stop here: AT&T Samsung Galaxy S II, Google Galaxy Nexus (GSM version), Google/Samsung Nexus S, Google/Samsung Nexus S 4G, Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc, Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo, Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini Pro, HTC Sensation and LG Nitro HD among the best known Android smartphones.

The list also includes the is-it-a-phone-or-a-tablet Samsung Galaxy Note (N7000), but CyanogenMod 9 also supports the Samsung Galaxy Tab (including CDMA version).

The modding community has given Android enthusiasts another reason for them to enjoy modding their smartphones. If you liked the concept of Over The Air (OTA) updates when using the official Android version from the manufacturer, you can now get OTA updates for custom ROMs as well, like CyanogenMod 9 for instance. This will surely ease the “pain” of manual updates, especially when new builds, like nightly ones, come frequently enough to be able to want to speed up the process.

I have witnessed first hand what CyanogenMod 9 can do on a Samsung Galaxy S and from my opinion it's an improvement over the stock Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Yesterday I wrote about Android 4.1 Jelly Bean updates on popular smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy S III and HTC One X and based on how CyanogenMod 10 is shaping up, it's going to be even better if history is of any indication.

Android is known for its customization options, the ability to make-it-your-own and the modding community is surely confirming it with each new release. CyanogenMod has been known for more than porting stock Android to one device or another; the team is adding even more customization options as they try to make it even better than how it came from the Android Open Source Project. Is it for anyone? No, but not everything has to be. It’s for enthusiasts, for people that want to tinker with their smartphone, for people that want a newer Android version.

Now that CyanogenMod 9 based on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich has hit “stable” development, will you give it a go on your Android smartphone? And for that matter, how do you feel about modding your smartphone?
Blizzard hacked for real this time -- change your passwords NOW!

Publié: août 10, 2012, 3:45pm CEST par Cameron Camp

In May we read that game maker Blizzard, developer of a series of popular games including World of Warcraft, Diablo III and Starcraft, was hacked, but that turned out to just be individual compromised accounts from some of its users. Now we read, from Blizzard itself rather than a third party, that they have been hacked and information compromised on their networks. So how are they doing with the breach?

"This week, our security team found an unauthorized and illegal access into our internal network here at Blizzard", the company says. So did they respond well? It seems they got the jump on things and responded quickly, a smart move: "We quickly took steps to close off this access and began working with law enforcement and security experts to investigate what happened."

Next they were specific with what classes of data were, and weren’t compromised, another smart move: "Some data was illegally accessed, including a list of email addresses for global Battle.net users, outside of China". Interesting data point: China users seemed to be exempt. Also they note: "We also know that cryptographically scrambled versions of Battle.net passwords (not actual passwords) for players on North American servers were taken".

But what steps were in place to slow down or stymie would-be hackers? Blizzard continues: "We use Secure Remote Password protocol (SRP) to protect these passwords, which is designed to make it extremely difficult to extract the actual password, and also means that each password would have to be deciphered individually".

And Blizzard took precautions notifying their userbase: "As a precaution, however, we recommend that players on North American servers change their password". Blizzard includes a link to do so, which is helpful. They also suggest changing other passwords you may have used which are similar on other websites, which is a good idea.

While the exact details of the method of breaching their systems still remain to be investigated, it seems they are keeping their users well-informed and provide helpful recommendations, a step in the right direction. While no one wants to be on the receiving side of a breach, importantly, Blizzard pushes information out to the users from the source though a FAQ here, which is proactive. A lot of consumer-facing websites could learn from the things Blizzard is doing right.

If you are a Blizzard user, my colleague David Harley identifies passwords to avoid. Go for a new password that is long (over 8 characters) and hard to guess (not based on things other people might know about you) and use a mixture of upper- and lower-case letters with numbers and punctuation characters if allowed (KerAZg3nes!).

Reprinted with permission

Cameron Camp is a researcher for global security provider ESET and has played a critical role in building the ESET North America Research Lab. Cameron has been building critical technology infrastructures for more than 20 years, beginning as an assembly language programmer in 1987 and eventually becoming an evangelist for Linux and open-source technologies with an emphasis on the security sector. Prior to joining ESET, he founded Logical Web Host in 1998, a data-driven web services company.
Looking for a better file manager? Try muCommander 0.9.0

Publié: août 10, 2012, 2:30pm CEST par Nick Peers

If you frequently wail and gnash teeth at the prospect of opening two separate windows whenever you want to copy one file to another, than a dual-paned file manager is a must. They’re not exactly thin on the ground, but if you’re a multi-platform user you might prefer to stick to a single solution that will run across all your computers, be they Mac, Linux or Windows.

The solution in question is an open-source tool called muCommander 0.9.0, which has just received its first major update in over two years.

muCommander works like many other file managers -- it provides a dual-paned window giving you quick and convenient access to both source and destination folders, and allows you to bookmark favorite locations for easy navigation.

The app also allows you to connect to various remote sources via networking protocols, FTP/SFTP, NFS and HTTP, while built-in tools like a text editor and file packer/unpacker also boost its usefulness.

muCommander does fall down slightly in some areas, however. It’s hampered by the fact its built on Java, which restricts certain functionality. You can’t tap into your OS’s native “Open With” commands for example; instead, you have to grasp the basics of XML to craft your own custom list using the built-in text editor.

You also have to take care when opening files and apps -- certain types (including OpenOffice documents and all OS X apps) need to be launched by selecting the Open Natively command.

If you can get past these niggles, however, then you’ll find a potentially useful file manager lurking. And the latest release -- the first since February 2010 -- adds some useful new features and improvements, too.

The headline new feature is tabbed browsing support -- when browsing, simply right-click a folder and choose Open in new tab to create a multi-tabbed pane. The built-in text editor/viewer has also been improved -- it can now wrap long lines, plus display line numbers. There’s also a new quick list pop-up for root folders -- simply press [Alt] + [5] to display it.

Other improvements include better display of long filenames, with the beginnings and end shown to help with identification, plus the implementation of natural file ordering, so all symbols come before digits.

muCommander 0.9.0 is a free, open-source download for Windows, Mac and Linux. It requires Java 5 or later.

Photo Credit: cybrain/Shutterstock
Add Ring3 API Hook Scanner to your security toolkit

Publié: août 10, 2012, 1:17pm CEST par Mike Williams

Detecting rootkits and similar stealthy malware is always a challenge, so it can be a good idea to equip your PC with third-party tools which may be able to help.

And the latest candidate is the rather geekily-named Ring3 API Hook Scanner, a new NoVirusThanks release that will scan your system for some user mode hook types (inline, IAT, EAT) and report on anything it finds.

As usual with NoVirusThanks tools, the program is well packaged and easy to use. There’s no installation, no hassles with adware or anything else, just unzip the download and launch either the 32 or 64-bit version, according to your needs (either way, there’s no driver required).

Then just click Scan and, if there are any hooks, within a few seconds you’ll see these listed, with details including the hook type, the owning process and module, the API function being hooked, relevant memory addresses, and so on.

Or, if even that’s too much hassle, a command line interface allows you to automate the process. Add a line such as Ring3Scan.exe /pid:all /log:C:\Ring3Hooks.log to a script and all you’ll have to do is check the log file occasionally for the latest details.

This is of course still a fairly basic tool, limited in what it can find, and no substitute for a full-strength rootkit detector.

Ring3 API Hook Scanner is also small, simple, easy and convenient to use, though, and that’s why it merits a place in every geek’s portable security toolkit.

Photo Credit: sommthink/Shutterstock
Pixelmator 2.1 supports Retina Display, iCould sync

Publié: août 10, 2012, 12:01pm CEST par Mark Wilson

If you’re looking for a powerful image editing tool, the likes of Photoshop are going to spring to mind first. But there are plenty of much lower cost tool available that are more than adequate for the job, and one of these app is Pixelmator. This is an image editing package that has been around for some time, and the seemingly minor update to version 2.1 brings about the introduction of a number of important new features and options.

It makes sense for any image editing app to offer the best possible visual performance, and this is something that is greatly helped by the addition of support for Retina Display. This means that you can view the images you are working on greater detail than ever before and the UI is also made more accessible due to the clearer buttons and toolbars. There’s also support for Mountain Lion now, but there are more changes and additions to explore.

Any image editor worth its salt includes a range of special effects that can be applied to your own images, and five new ones have been added here -- Vintage, Miniaturize, Black and White, Rain, and Snow. To make it easier to browse through these and the other effects that are available, there is a new Effects Browser. This enables you to preview special effects and try out ideas before applying them.

New alignment guides are on hand to help you to position objects in your projects, but one of the most interesting new features is iCloud integration. This is great if you find that you are regularly working with more than one Mac as it allows for automatic synchronization of your work between machines. This is a nice touch that saves you the effort of having to manually transfer files between computers.

You can find out more and download a free trial of the app by paying a visit to the Pixelmator review page.
The problem with cloud security is...

Publié: août 10, 2012, 2:46am CEST par Stephen Cobb
Sharing details of the hack that “wiped his life” has earned Mat Honan a place in the annals of information system security; the specific interdependence of flawed authentication systems that cost him so dearly -- encompassing Apple, iCloud, Amazon.com, Gmail and more -- would probably still exist if Honan had not gone public. Wired has the full story for those who have not been watching it unfold on Twitter.

As news spread last weekend about how much of Honan’s data the hackers had wiped out -- by social engineering Apple Support into wiping his iPhone, iPad and MacBook -- the company quickly moved to suspend over-the-phone resetting of Apple ID passwords. Amazon also reacted and, according to a follow-up report in Wired: “handed down to its customer service department a policy change that no longer allows people to call in and change account settings, such as credit cards or email addresses associated with its user accounts”.

Problem solved? Not really

While it is now impossible to replicate the exact hack that wiped Honan’s life -- which is some comfort, I suppose -- it is entirely possible that there are other ways to exploit weak links in authentication methods currently used by separate but inter-twined information systems. Based on several decades spent observing patterns of system abuse, I would say it is extremely likely that:
- More hacks like this are possible
- More people than ever are looking for them right now
- Not all of those people have honorable intentions
In technical terms the online world currently suffers from an atrocious conflation of identifiers with authenticators (your phone number, email address and Social Security number are identifiers, not authenticators). This situation is compounded by a widespread failure to implement shared secrets effectively (the name of your first pet is not a shared secret and asking for all the digits of my pin number is profligate and inviting of interception). Underlying all of this mess is an excessive reliance on single-factor authentication and an alarmingly widespread misconception that multiple authenticators equals multi-factor.

Multi-factor authentication refers to the three factors:
- Something you know, like a password
- Something you have, like a physical key
- Something you are, like your face or your fingerprints or the veins in the palm of your hand
Asking me for two or three or more pieces of information that I know is not multi-factor authentication. Why large companies with big research budgets get things like this wrong is hard to fathom and it strikes me as unfair to force consumers to become security experts just to safely navigate services for which someone is paying (either the consumer themselves or the people paying for ads on ad-supported sites or within ad-supported apps and services).

The challenges of restricting access to online data and services are compounded by the shift to email+password for authentication instead of username+password (a person’s email is easier to guess or discover than a non-public username). Then there is the apparent inability of some organizations to keep passwords from prying eyes. As previously reported, millions of passwords were disclosed in June alone, from LinkedIn, eHarmony and Last.fm. Last month more than 400,000 usernames and passwords were stolen from Yahoo, while the social networking site Formspring, clothing company Billabong, gaming site Gamigo, and forums at Phandroid and Nvidia, all suffered similar breaches.

I’m sure regular readers are weary of the advice to change passwords, choose hard-to-guess passwords, and use different passwords for different services. To that we may have to add: use different email addresses for key services that employ email addresses as account identifiers. We might also add: let your frustrations be known to the major online players. There are better ways to do authentication and we need to let companies know we expect better of them.

Aftershocks will likely continue

How much will this incident impede adoption of consumer cloud services in general and Apple’s iCloud in particular? Well, until authentication services improve, I don’t see many security experts recommending you trust your data backup to general purpose cloud services such as those offered by Google, Amazon, Dropbox, Microsoft or Apple. The news for providers of dedicated online backup services such as Mozy and Carbonite may not be as dim. If your entire business model is backup you are likely to pay close attention to how you manage it.

In the meantime, there is likely to be renewed interest in offline backup, things like USB hard drive (ironically an area in which Apple has excelled in the past -- Time Machine in OS X is my personal backup of choice). Here at ESET we have definitely seen increased readership of the article Options for backing up your computer by security Aryeh Gorestsky (11-page .pdf file).

Reprinted with Permission

Photo Credit: doomu/Shutterstock

A Certified Information System Security Professional since 1996, Stephen Cobb has more than 20 years’ experience helping companies, government agencies and consumers to manage their computer security and data privacy, notably in the area of emerging threats. Now based in San Diego, he works on the Research team at ESET in the role of security evangelist.
Google Android app translates photos

Publié: août 10, 2012, 12:27am CEST par Patrick Roanhouse

Google Translate for Android, today available as v2.5, packs some smoking new features: voice-to-text and text-to-voice translation in more than 64 languages and -- get this -- photos.

New features to this version include live/instant language translation results as you type. Allowing you to get the translated text sooner. For people who use the speech-to-translation option, you can now choose your dialect preference for your speech/voice input. For Japanese language users there is now support for handwriting multiple characters at once, allowing for words to quickly be written in for both travelers and native Japanese people.

The app has also been given permission to check network availability when sending requests. Making sure that the network is there before it sends your text to be translated by the Google Translate service in the cloud.

But the biggest new feature is that of in app picture text translation. The app now has an added button at the bottom showing the Android camera icon. You can now take pictures of signs and billboards, and with a highlight of the particular text you want translated you will get the text translation in the top of the app window. The photo translation feature requires phones with Android 2.3 and above. Etienne Deguine, Google Translate associate product manager, explains:

By integrating Google Goggles’ optical character recognition technology, we’ve made it possible for you to use the camera of your Android smartphone to input text without typing. This makes Google Translate for Android one of our most intelligent and machine learning-intensive apps. Speech recognition, handwriting recognition, OCR, and machine translation all rely on powerful statistical models built on billions of samples of data.

Obviously influenced by the late science fiction author Douglas Adams, the Google Translate team is really making the mobile Google Translate app a must have for all people with Android phones. The only downside to Google Translate is the app requires an Internet connection to work. The app is available now from Google Play.