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BetaNews.Com (4 non lus)

New York is trying to force backdoors into phones with legislation

Publié: janvier 16, 2016, 5:13pm CET par Alan Buckingham

Cryptography has become popular in the post-Edward Snowden era. Everyone seems to be worried about being spied upon and is looking for ways to avoid it. While the majority of users likely have nothing to hide, it's still a creepy feeling to know that someone can, and possibly is, checking what you say and do.

There has been a lot of talk about adding backdoors, mostly from those who want to spy and those who simply don't understand the technology. The latest of this is currently taking place in New York.

Legislation has been proposed in the state and it can be viewed here. This actively pursues phone makers like Apple and Google and would like to slap these companies with a fine for each phone sold if each do not comply. It's not cheap, either -- $2,500 per handset.

"Any smartphone that is manufactured on or after January 1, 2016, and sold or leased in New York, shall be capable of being decrypted and unlocked by its manufacturer or its operating system provider".

The proposed bill sounds very familiar -- it's a lot like the Investigatory Powers Bill in the UK, which has support from Prime Minister David Cameron. Worse, it's similar to a proposed law in China, though that was later dropped. The Netherlands, on the other hand, has stated that it is against such legislation.

Apple's Tim Cook has pointed out the inherent problems with the idea of backdoors:

Here’s the situation… on your smartphone today, on your iPhone. There’s likely health information, there’s financial information. There are intimate conversations with your family, or your co-workers. There’s probably business secrets and you should have the ability to protect it. And the only way we know how to do that, is to encrypt it.

Why is that? It’s because if there’s a way to get in, then somebody will find the way in. There have been people that suggest that we should have a backdoor. But the reality is if you put a backdoor in, that backdoor’s for everybody, for good guys and bad guys.

This bill has a lot of hurdles to leap before it can actually pass and become law. Let us hope one of those jumps causes it to stumble.

Image Credit: LovePHY / Shutterstock
ISIS has its own secure messaging system -- this illustrates the futility of communication surveillance

Publié: janvier 16, 2016, 4:01pm CET par Mark Wilson

Moves by governments to monitor web-based communication with a view to thwarting terrorism is utterly, utterly futile. Just like the NSA's dragnet-style dredging for intelligence, mass communication surveillance does little to home in on target -- the ones that government should be concerned about are the very ones who know who to evade detection.

This is something that was perfectly demonstrated this week when it became apparent that ISIS has developed its own secure messaging system. No longer reliant on the likes of WhatsApp, ISIS is using a custom-built, Android-based encrypted messaging tool that is incredibly difficult -- if not impossible -- for the FBI and NSA to monitor.

The news comes from Ghost Security Group, and the counterterrorism network that warns about the capabilities of ISIS. It is the result of having such a high-profile surveillance campaign; the very people who governments might want to monitor have been driven underground. ISIS has already proved itself to be a master manipulator of the media, and the group is also technologically savvy. If the reports about the development of its own messaging app are correct, any surveillance has been rendered impossible.

Of course, this does not mean that surveillance is going to stop -- the government has plenty of other targets to go after besides ISIS -- but it does highlight a serious issue for intelligence agencies. Surveillance, hacking, and tapping are now so well known that any group worth its salt is going to go the extra mile to ensure that it can slip under the radar.

Using a roll-your-own solution means that the government is not able to make formal requests of a company to hand over encryption keys, to provide backdoors, or give up user account information. There's no real solution that the government could employ -- this is a problem largely of its own making, and there is little to be done.

Online surveillance is pointless. It is more trouble than it is worth, and it has been for some time. Of course, you won't hear an admission of futility from the government any time soon…

Photo credit: lavitrei / Shutterstock
Microsoft gets aggressive -- after 18 months nextgen CPUs like Skylake will only support Windows 10

Publié: janvier 16, 2016, 1:32pm CET par Mark Wilson
Microsoft's aggressive pushing of Windows 10 is becoming legendary, with everything from irritating nag screens, to automatic downloading of set up files. Now things are taking a slightly different turn as the company says that after July 17, 2017, 6th generation Intel Core Skylake processors and other nextgen CPUs will no longer be supported for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1.

The announcement comes somewhat out of the blue, and is all the more surprising considering Microsoft's track record of lengthy support periods. Once the new deadline is reached, Microsoft says that it will only release the "most critical" security patches to these now-unsupported platforms, and even then the patches will only be made available if they do not "risk the reliability or compatibility" of other systems.

Microsoft has been boastfully shouting about how many Windows 10 installations there have been since launch, but this latest move suggests that things are not moving as quickly as expected in the enterprise arena. In a blog post entitled Windows 10 Embracing Silicon Innovation, Executive VP Terry Myerson announced a number of "clarifications to [...] support policy". Of course, there is nothing to stop owners of nextgen processors from installing Windows 7 or 8.1 -- it just means that there will be no support from Microsoft. The company does provide some explanation for the decision, but it is likely to lead to further questions:

At the same time, we know many of these customers continue to rely on Windows 7 for its well understood reliability and compatibility. Windows 7 was designed nearly 10 years ago before any x86/x64 SOCs existed. For Windows 7 to run on any modern silicon, device drivers and firmware need to emulate Windows 7's expectations for interrupt processing, bus support, and power states -- which is challenging for WiFi, graphics, security, and more. As partners make customizations to legacy device drivers, services, and firmware settings, customers are likely to see regressions with Windows 7 ongoing servicing.

It's interesting to note that while Windows 7 is singled out for its "understood reliability and compatibility", the same description is not applied to Windows 8.1 despite it receiving the same support treatment. For home users this is unlikely to be too much of an issue -- although obviously there are some people who will be affected -- but it is a different story for enterprise customers. With this in mind, Microsoft has created a program that means the company will provide support for a range of Skylake devices, as detailed by PC World:
- Dell Latitude 12
- Dell Latitude 13 7000 Ultrabook
- Dell XPS 13
- HP EliteBook Folio
- HP EliteBook 1040 G3
- Lenovo ThinkPad T460s
- Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon
- Lenovo ThinkPad P70
This list, which Microsoft will continue to update, specified which devices will be singled out for special attention.

For the listed systems, along with our OEM partners, we will perform special testing to help future proof customers' investments, ensure regular validation of Windows Updates with the intent of reducing potential regressions including security concerns, and ensure all drivers will be on Windows Update with published BIOS/UEFI upgrading tools, which will help unlock the security and power management benefits of Windows 10 once the systems are upgraded.

Microsoft's announcement is an interesting one -- not just for what it means, but for the way in which it was delivered. This is a fairly significant change (or 'clarification' if you like) to support policy, but it was hardly shouted from the rooftops. The blog post from Myerson also manages to bury the meat of the announcement by starting off with singing praise from partners and customers about how excited they are to be working with Microsoft and upgrading to Windows 10.

The post is also used to 'clarify' the Windows support policy:
- Windows 7 will continue to be supported for security, reliability, and compatibility through January 14, 2020 on previous generation silicon. Windows 8.1 will receive the same support through January 10, 2023. This includes most of the devices available for purchase today by consumers or enterprises.
- Going forward, as new silicon generations are introduced, they will require the latest Windows platform at that time for support. This enables us to focus on deep integration between Windows and the silicon, while maintaining maximum reliability and compatibility with previous generations of platform and silicon. For example, Windows 10 will be the only supported Windows platform on Intel’s upcoming “Kaby Lake” silicon, Qualcomm’s upcoming "8996" silicon, and AMD’s upcoming "Bristol Ridge" silicon.
- Through July 17, 2017, Skylake devices on the supported list will also be supported with Windows 7 and 8.1. During the 18-month support period, these systems should be upgraded to Windows 10 to continue receiving support after the period ends. After July 2017, the most critical Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 security updates will be addressed for these configurations, and will be released if the update does not risk the reliability or compatibility of the Windows 7/8.1 platform on other devices.
As noted by Anantech, it is a little surprising that an announcement has not been forthcoming from Intel. But it does mean that fingers of blame will be pointed at Microsoft rather than individual manufacturers when companies discover that their hardware is no longer supported by the operating system they want to use. Is it a smart move on Microsoft's part that will ultimately be well-received, or is it a worrying development that sees the company exerting too much control over enterprise customers? Only time will tell.

Image credit: ollyy /Shutterstock
Prediction #8: Apple WILL NOT buy Time Warner

Publié: janvier 16, 2016, 10:52am CET par Robert X. Cringely

If my last prediction about the Internet of Things becoming a security nightmare seemed a no-brainer to half of my readers, as some commenters suggested, this prediction that Apple won’t buy Time Warner will probably be a no-brainer for the other half, simply because it is always easier to say an acquisition or merger won’t happen than that it will. But I think there is something to be learned from why I don’t think this acquisition will take place -- something that says a lot about Apple as a company.

That this topic comes up at all is because, as frequently happens these days, activist investors are trying to bully Time Warner into selling all or part of itself, this after having already bullied the company into spinning-off its cable TV operation and then its print publishing operation. So now what’s mainly left at Time Warner are cable TV networks, TV and film production and distribution, and a modest online operation. All of this, but especially premium cable channel HBO, is supposed to appeal to Apple’s eye for quality.

The thinking is pretty simple: Apple wants to build an Internet virtual cable TV service and having an HBO exclusive will cement the success of that service.

If it were that simple I’d agree heartily, but there are a couple problems with this idealized picture. For one, even if Apple buys just HBO or all of Time Warner that ownership doesn’t convey anything like exclusivity. HBO has existing agreements with hundreds of cable and satellite providers around the globe and nothing exclusive can happen until those deals run out or are canceled, which would take years or cost billions in penalties.

Apple might be interested in Time Warner anyway -- and I might urge Cupertino to take the chance -- except there’s a key acquisition benchmark that isn’t being met here, which is sales per employee. Time Warner’s is too low.

Who pays attention to sales per employee, anyway? Well Apple does and always has, and if you look at the acquisitions the company has done, none of them as far as I can tell caused Apple’s overall sales per employee to drop.

Apple’s annual sales per employee stand at about $2.12 million. Time Warner’s is $1.1 million, which is high by most standards (IBM, in comparison, has approximately $250K in sales per employee) but under investor pressure TWI’s $1.1 million is probably as lean as the company can get, meaning it simply isn’t an Apple-like business.

Adding 65,000 TWI employees to the 110,000 folks already working at Apple would inevitably change and hurt the company. At least that’s the thinking on this subject explained to me one day by Steve Jobs, himself, who I guess probably came up with it. Steve told me he wouldn’t buy a company unless it was strategic and matched or exceeded Apple’s labor leverage.

Even Apple’s controversial 2014 Beats acquisition meets the test. Beats had $1.5 billion in sales and 700 employees for an average of $2.14 million in sales per employee. Apple immediately laid-off 200 Beats employees, remember, raising sales per employee at both Beats and its new parent. The layoffs were done in the name of reducing duplication and redundancy, but isn’t that the entire point of this benchmark, making the overall enterprise even more efficient?

So Apple won’t buy Time Warner because doing so would be too disruptive to the acquiring company and Steve Jobs would appear in Tim Cook’s dreams to torment him about it. You know he would.

But this doesn’t mean Apple won’t make a big acquisition this year, just that it has to be strategic and meet the benchmark. I have an idea what such an acquisition might be and that will be my next prediction.

What company do you think Apple will buy in 2016?