February 2012
46 posts
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“This notion that apps should pay for bandwidth is insane. Telcos should pay...”
– Tim Bray, Developer Advocate at Google
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Good, Brief, Interview on Trust and Security →
An excellent piece from Bruce Schneier, in interview, concerning the relationship between trust and security. It’s short, so just go read it. For a taste:
My primary concerns are threats from the powerful. I’m not worried about criminals, even organised crime. Or terrorists, even organised terrorists. Those groups have always existed, always will, and they’ll always operate on...
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“The great evil that we as Americans face is the banal evil of second-rate minds...”
– Larry Lessig, from Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress — and a Plan to Stop it.
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The Big Threats to Internet Security →
Dan Goodin has a good piece on one of Bruce Schneier’s recent talks. From the top of the article:
Unlike the security risks posed by criminals, the threat from government regulation and data hoarders such as Apple and Google are more insidious because they threaten to alter the fabric of the Internet itself. They’re also different from traditional Internet threats because the...
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User vs Corporate Understandings of 'Security' →
A really interesting paper on social authentication has just been released that looks at how facial identification ‘works’ to secure social networks from unauthorized access to profiles/records. The authors note that users of social networks are most concerned in keeping their interactions private from those who know the users. Specifically, from the abstract:
Most people want...
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Terrific Set of Short Privacy Papers →
The folks at the University of Cambridge’s Security Research and Computer Laboratory have pulled together a terrific set of short (and accessible) papers on security and privacy. I’d highly recommend taking a look.
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Network Neutrality and Smart Televisions →
From GigaOm, we find that:
Korea Telecom in South Korea has taken an interesting twist on the idea [of network neutrality], and decided to block Samsung’s Smart TVs from accessing the Internet, according to this article from the Maeil Business Newspaper, a large S. Korean daily. That’s right, net neutrality isn’t just for applications anymore.
It’s absurd that so-called...
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“You might think they’d grow faster with all-you-can eat, but I think...”
– Cisco’s Thomas Barnett, explaining why tiered mobile plans saw a 169% increase versus an 83% increase for unlimited mobile data plans
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Is the spectrum crisis a myth? →
Kevin Fitchard has written one of the better (popular) pieces on why we need to get past the spectrum crisis myth. Go read it.
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parislemon: What If... (Office For iPad Edition) →
parislemon:
Watching the back-and-forth yesterday about the whole Microsoft Office for iPad thing was nothing if not amusing. The basic rundown:
“It’s coming, here it is.” “That’s not it.” “Yes it is.” “No it’s not, but we didn’t say it’s not coming.” “A Microsoft employee showed it to us.” “No…
MG has an interesting analysis on what Office for iPad might mean. I have to admit, if MS...
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Want to Claim Congestion? Then Expect Real Audits →
Free is a really interesting new mobile carrier in France, which offers a cheap entry rate of service. It seems as though the incumbent they’re partnered with wasn’t expecting Free’s success and so they want to raise rates on the basis of congestion. Specifically,
France Telecom said its network was being stressed by a rapid growth in traffic brought on by its hosting of new...
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Wireless Interference and Smart Meters? →
Apparently folks in the DSLReports Forums are reporting some issues with their new smart meters:
Users in our forums direct our attention to claims that at least one small WISP has had their service put out of commission due to electric utility smart meters operating in the 900 MHz band. We’ve previously noted how utility smart meters are interfering with residential Wi-Fi routers, and...
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Sony's Smartgrid Micropayment System →
Sony is promoting a product concept: smart electric outlets that enable micro payments and authentication for energy usage at the device level. As described by The Verge:
Sony is developing power outlet technology that uses IC chips to determine a user’s identity or permissions. Possible use case scenarios include managing energy usage in large buildings, device theft prevention, and — yes...
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Tracking by GSM →
From Ars Technica:
The attack works by exploiting features in GSM, or Global System for Mobile Communications, cellular networks that transmit data sent between base stations and phones in clear text. By simply calling the target’s mobile number and monitoring the network’s radio signals as it locates the phone, the attacker can quickly confirm if the person is located in...
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SSL Skeleton Keys →
From the Ars lede:
Critics are calling for the ouster of Trustwave as a trusted issuer of secure sockets layer certificates after it admitted minting a credential it knew would be used by a customer to impersonate websites it didn’t own.
The so-called subordinate root certificate allowed the customer to issue SSL credentials that Internet Explorer and other major browsers would accept as...
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Stupid Problem with BlackBerry Data
I use my mobile phones a lot, and most batteries just barely last me through a day on a single charge. With my iPhone and Windows Phone, when the batteries are almost exhausted, various functions (including radios) are disabled to make the last bit of juice last as long as possible. My BlackBerry does the same thing.
I’m fine with this.
What’s I’m not fine with is the...
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Self-Mutating Trojans Come to Android →
Symantec is warning that the next generation of smartphone viruses has come:
Researchers from security vendor Symantec Corp. have identified a new premium-rate SMS Android Trojan horse that modifies its code every time it gets downloaded in order to bypass antivirus detection. This technique is known as server-side polymorphism and has already existed in the world of desktop malware for many...
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Chrome Kills CA Revocation Checks →
From Ars:
“While the benefits of online revocation checking are hard to find, the costs are clear: online revocation checks are slow and compromise privacy,” Langley added. That’s because the checks add a median time of 300 milliseconds and a mean of almost 1 second to page loads, making many websites reluctant to use SSL. Marlinspike and others have also complained that the...
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“The most important detail to focus on, is (per comment 12 by Brian Trzupek...”
– Christopher Soghoian, in comment about Trustwave
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Wind on a Leaf: Dear startups and other relevant... →
chartier:
Not offer a way to download our data in some sort of a standard, transparent, and at least somewhat human-siftable format
Hide or otherwise be opaque about precisely what personal data you smuggle out of our devices
Not offer a one-to-two-click process for deleting our accounts
Fail to actually remove our data from your servers after we delete our accounts (while complying with...
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“Phone hacking, for the most part, depends on remote access. Hackers obtain...”
– Kim Davis, from Internet Evolution
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iOS is a Security Vampire →
I’m sorry, but what Path did is (in some jurisdictions, such as my own) arguably a criminal offence. Want to know what they’ve been up to?
When developer Arun Thampi started looking for a way to port photo and journaling software Path to Mac OS X, he noticed some curious data being sent from the Path iPhone app to the company’s servers. Looking closer, he realized that the...
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MegaUpload's Shutdown: Financial Implications for... →
Mike Masnick points out something that a large portion of the media missed in initial discussions surrounding the MegaUpload seizures:
There’s a key point in all of this that we missed in our earlier analysis about paid accounts at Megaupload. In the indictment, the government seems to assume that paid accounts are clearly all about illegal infringing works. But that’s not always the...
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Skype, the FBI, and MegaUpload →
In the aftermath of the MegaUpload seizures we’ll hopefully learn more about how the FBI gained access to Skype transcripts. As reported by CNet,
TheFBI citesalleged conversations between DotCom and his top lieutenants, includinge-mailand Skype instant-messaging logs. Some of the records go back nearly five years, to MegaUpload’s earliest days as a cyberlocker service—even...
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It's Time to Stop Buying the Capacity Crisis Myth →
From DSL Reports,
As usual though, actually bothering to listen to and look at the data tells a different story. Nobody argues that spectrum is infinite, but buried below industry histrionics is data noting that there really isn’t a spectrum crisis as much as a bunch of lazy and gigantic spectrum squatters, hoarding public-owned assets to limit competition, while skimping on network...
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Precious Fragmentation: Nokia Windows Phone... →
preciousfragmentation:
In the autumn, they announced the Lumia 800. It was beautiful, powerful, and unique looking, very European. Then, at CES this year, they announced the Lumia 900, essentially the same as the 800, but bigger, and with LTE functionality, built for North American hands. Now, there’s a rumour about…
The point that customers can ‘trust’ Apple because of the...
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New malware infects millions of Android users →
ch3ukl1:
Symantec has identified 13 apps on the Android Market that are all hiding Android. Counterclank, a Trojan horse that steals information, and could also download more files and display ads on the device.
These apps are still available on the Android market, and up to five million handsets could be infected. The popularity in Android will continue to make it a lucrative target....
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Practical Quantum Computing? →
From the article:
So-called quantum key distribution is unconditionally secure—it offers perfect secrecy guaranteed by the laws of physics.
Or at least that’s what everyone thought. More recently, various groups have begun to focus on a fly in the ointment: the practical implementation of this process. While quantum key distribution offers perfect security in practice, the devices...
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Google Responds To Privacy Concerns With... →
From the lede:
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA—Responding to recent public outcries over its handling of private data, search giant Google offered a wide-ranging and eerily well-informed apology to its millions of users Monday.
“We would like to extend our deepest apologies to each and every one of you,” announced CEO Eric Schmidt, speaking from the company’s Googleplex headquarters....
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Sign the petition: Respect the privacy of cell... →
beatyourselfup:
Thanks to a nationwide ACLU campaign to learn how our cell phones are being used to monitor us, we now know that cell phone service providers keep a staggering amount of data about their customers:
Call records up to seven years.
Contact information of who you’ve exchanged text messages for up to seven years.
Cell tower history — which helps track the movement of your cell...
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Making Sense of Twitter 'Censorship' →
Jillian York, the Director of International Freedom of Expression at the EFF, has a good (and quick) thought on Twitter’s recent decision to ‘censor’ some Tweets in particular geographical areas. Essentially,
Let’s be clear: This is censorship. There’s no way around that. But alas, Twitter is not above the law. Just about every company hosting user-generated content has, at...
