19227668
submission
justice4all writes:
WAC, the operators’ alternative to Google’s app store, has launched its first apps and store fronts
The Wholesale Applications Community (WAC), announced a year ago by mobile services operators to challenge app stores run by Google and Apple, has delivered its first web applications and a white-label app store that can be customised by individual operators.
Mobile operators including China Mobile, MTS, Orange, Smart, Telefónica, Telenor, Verizon and Vodafone are using the WAC platform, with handset makers Huawei, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and ZTE announcing they will support WAC, the organisation said at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona on Monday.
White-label storefront
Ericsson has developed a white-label, WAC-enabled storefront based on IBM WebSphere Commerce software that can be customised by operators to launch their own storefronts, the group said.
“With the commercial launch of operator storefronts, handsets and applications, all based on WAC, we can say that WAC is now officially open for business,” said WAC chief executive Peters Suh, in a statement.
The storefront is offered to operators as a cloud-based service and gives users the ability to browse, buy, download, install and rate WAC widgets and native applications, according to WAC. Operator features include the ability to promote individual applications and automatically provide discounts based on customer preferences and buying behaviours.
The storefront is integrated with WAC’s wholesale catalogue of about 12,000 applications, WAC said.
WAC is in the process of developing an app specification that includes progressively higher-end features. The handsets and storefronts demonstrated on Monday are based on the initial WAC 1.0 specification first published in September 2010, with the availability of WAC 2.0 announced on Monday and WAC 3.0 planned for introduction later this year.
WAC 1.0 supports basic web apps, while WAC 2.0 adds features such as HTML5-based multimedia and WAC 3.0 will introduce more advanced features.
19208556
submission
justice4all writes:
German researchers have discovered a way of stealing passwords from any device running Apple iOS
Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology (SIT) in Germany have found a way to steal passwords from Apple iPhones in six minutes.
The institute’s discovery could pose a security problem if phones are lost, as the attack requires physical access to the device. The researchers’ target was the “Keychain”, Apple’s password-management system. Rather than crack the 256-bit encryption to get to the passwords stored in the Keychain, the researchers explained in a paper (PDF), the institute exploited the fact that the underlying secret the password’s encryption is based on is stored in the device’s operating system.
Jail-breaking tool
This means the encryption is independent from the personal password that is supposed to protect access to the device, according to the researchers. As a result, the required key material can be created from data available within the device and therefore in possession of the attacker.
19094122
submission
justice4all writes:
Google’s head of marketing for the Middle East helped run a Facebook page used by Egyptian protesters
A Google marketing executive has admitted to being the administrator of a Facebook page that helped trigger weeks of dramatic protests in Egypt.
Wael Ghonim, or Ghoneim, the head of marketing for Google in the Middle East and Africa, who has just been released after twelve days in custody, said in a television interview that he was the administrator of the Facebook page “We are all Khaled Said“, which became one of the main tools for organising the protests that began on 25 January. Khaled Said was a 28-year-old businessman who died in June at the hands of undercover police.
Missing for twelve days
Wael Ghonim Picture: Dream TV
Ghoneim himself went missing on 27 January, two days after the beginning of the protests, and said in the interview that he had been held blindfolded by police for 12 days. He said he had not been tortured and had been treated with respect by the security forces who questioned him.
Ghoneim said in the interview on private television station Dream TV he had not wanted to be known as the operator of the Khaled Said page. “I didn’t want anyone to know that I am the administrator,” he said. “There are no heroes; we are all heroes on the street.”
The Google executive, who is based in Dubai, said the protest movement had been initiated by Egyptians, not outsiders.
“This is the revolution of the youth of the Internet and now the revolution of all Egyptians,” he said.
19026136
submission
justice4all writes:
Cyber-threats should be taken seriously, and complex passwords should be dumped, says the father of the firewall, Bill Cheswick of AT&T
WikiLeaks’ head, Julian Assange should be prosecuted for putting lives at risk, and cyber-threats are dangerous because of the very democracy of the Internet, says Bill “Ches” Cheswick, the AT&T technical lead who is widely credited as the father of the firewall.
Cheswick has a lot of security opinions to share with eWEEK Europe, on a visit to London, but we need to sort out the paternity issue first. “Am I the father of the firewall?” he says. “There are probably about ten fathers of the firewall,”
This may be false modesty. If you check the Wikipedia entry on firewalls, his name comes first. He co-wrote (with Steven Bellovin) the first book on the subject in 1990 (Repelling the Wily Hacker), and coined the term “proxy”.
He remains a lead member of technical staff at AT&T, the former owner of Bell Labs, where he and Bellovin worked in the late 1980s to develop practical systems to keep malicious network activity out of connected systems.
19025920
submission
justice4all writes:
James Brokenshire has signed the UK up to the EC cyber-crime directive despite major grey areas
A new European Commision directive on cyber-security is to be adopted by the British government despite being described by Home Office minister James Brokenshire as “not perfect”.
The directive softens the borders between European Union member countries’ law enforcement domains by requiring each of them to establish a central cyber-security operation which can be contacted by other states. Such contacts will have to be responded to within eight hours under the ruling.
Hackers And Toolmakers Criminalised
James Brokenshire
Within each country, the development and sale of applications designed to aid cyber-crime will be a criminal offence. There will also be a minimum sentence of five years in prison for individuals found to be members of a criminal gang.
The new laws would also guard against a European WikiLeaks scandal by making it an offence to intercept confidential data. How this will be interpreted is not yet clear because it does not explain if the initial hacker would be solely responsible or whether anyone receiving the information would also be liable to prosecution – in the way that receiving stolen goods is considered a crime.
19001078
submission
justice4all writes:
hacker has admitted to hacking into virtual gambling servers and making off with billions of gambling chips
A 29 year old man from Paignton, Devon, is facing a potential prison sentence after he admitted to hacking into the servers of American gaming company Zynga Corporation and making off with $12 million (£7.5 million) worth of gambling chips.
According to the ‘This is South Devon’ website, Ashley Mitchell pleaded guilty to five hacking charges in Exeter Crown Court, including accessing the servers belonging to the Zynga. He also asked for 41 other offences to be taken into consideration.
Judge Philip Wassall said Mitchell faced a substantial jail term for the ‘sophisticated’ offences, and Mitchell was remanded in custody after the judge adjourned the case for reports.
Discounted Chips
According to some news reports, Mitchell was able to get access by posing as one of Zynga’s website administrators. He was then able to transfer 400 billion gaming chips into a number of Facebook accounts, said to be worth $12 million if Zynga had issued them legitimately.
18930972
submission
justice4all writes:
Facebook has launched a shopping discount service based on its Places app in the UK
Facebook has launched its Places Deals feature in the UK, which rewards users for ‘checking in’ to various locations using their mobile phones.
Users logging into Facebook Places will see yellow and green icons next to their nearby places, allowing them to claim deals by checking in at those places and showing their phone in the associated venue. “In just a few clicks, you can get individual discounts, share deals with your friends, earn rewards and secure donations for good causes,” said the company.
Facebook launched the feature in the US in November 2010, threatening the money-making strategies of services such as Foursquare and Gowalla that have long been offering deals and coupons to people who check-in to businesses. Places Deals has now been expanded to Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Canada.
Initial UK partners reportedly include Starbucks, which will offer a free coffee to the first 30,000 customers checking in using the Facebook Places app, and food chain Yo Sushi
18415962
submission
justice4all writes:
Students arrested on suspicion of using stolen credit cards and bogus PayPal accounts to sell on eBay
Two Foreign exchange students from Vietnam are accused of being mules for an international identity theft ring believed to have stolen millions of dollars from online merchants, according to an affidavit filed by federal investigators in Minnesota district court.
The affidavit sought a search warrant to raid the home of two Vietnamese exchange students attending Minnesota’s Winona State University. During the resulting raid, federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement unit seized documents and computer equipment, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune.
18415688
submission
krou writes:
According to StatCounter, the month of December saw the first time where IE usage in Europe was knocked off the top spot by Firefox. Firefox usage sat at 38.11%, with IE sitting at 37.52%. Aodhan Cullen, CEO of StatCounter, stated that "This appears to be happening because Google's Chrome is stealing share from Internet Explorer while Firefox is mainly maintaining its existing share." Google Chrome was in 3rd place with 14.58% of market share.
18400202
submission
justice4all writes:
The ongoing cyberwar over Wikileaks has taken a new turn with individual countries now being attacked
The hacktivist group known as Anonymous is now thought to be targeting sovereign nations, after it launched attacks against the government websites of Zimbabwe and Tunisia.
Anonymous has achieved notoriety in the past few months following the arrest and subsequent bail of WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, who faces a court appearance in the UK later this month for leaking sensitive US diplomatic cables.
The group has previously targeted companies such as Mastercard and PayPal with distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS), after they withdrew their support for the Wikileaks website.
Nations Targeted
Indeed, the attacks are thought to be so serious that Scotland Yard has confirmed it has been investigating the Internet vigilante group for some time.
Meanwhile, in the United States, the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) has created a taskforce, which has been lumbered with the unfortunate moniker of WikiLeaks Task Force (or WTF for short).
And in a new turn of events the hacking group is switching away from companies, and now seems to be targeting countries that are hostile to Wikileaks.
18184696
submission
justice4all writes:
One of the defendants in the Pirate Bay trial says he will take his appeal bid to the Supreme Court in Sweden
One of the defendants of the Pirate Bay trial, the Swedish tech magnate Carl Lundstrom, has confirmed he will appeal the sentence imposed by a Swedish appeal court, by taking his case to Sweden’s Supreme Court.
Lundstrom, along with his three co-defendants – Peter Sunde, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, and Fredrik Neij – were found guilty of being accessories to copyright violations by a Swedish court back in April 2009.
The copyright test case against The Pirate Bay was brought by the Swedish subsidiaries of leading music and film companies, including Sony BMG, Universal Music, EMI and Warner Brothers.
18092170
submission
justice4all writes:
Apple, Oracle and EMC are apparently the joint owners, with Microsoft, of 882 patents bought from Novell
It has emerged that Microsoft’s partners in the consortium that bought 882 patents from Novell last month are Apple, Oracle and EMC.
When Novell was bought by Attachmate in November, a Microsoft-backed consortium called CPTN acquired 882 patents for $450 million, from the one-time leader in networks and application software. There is still no word which patents have been bought, but the other members of the consortium have been revealed as three dominant industry players.
According to a page on the site of the German federal antitrust authority (the “Bundeskartellamt”), CPTN is composed of Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and EMC, and its key business is unsurprisingly ”
Members of the consortium have taken controversial stances on patents in the past — Oracle is currently suing Google over the implementation of Java in the Android OS, and Apple is suing Nokia and HTC.
18067296
submission
justice4all writes:
The judge overseeing the trial of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange yesterday gave permission for two journalists to post Twitter updates, in what is thought to be only the second time that members of the media have tweeted from the inside a courtroom.
As the hearing began at 2pm on 14 December, special correspondent for The Times, Alexi Mostrous tweeted: “judge just gave me explicit permission to tweet proceedings ‘if it’s quiet and doesn’t disturb anything’.”
Freelance reporter and freedom of information campaigner Heather Brooke also said: “In an amazing nod to the fact we live in digital age, judge has said we can tweet”.
18027130
submission
justice4all writes:
Amazon says its sites in Europe suffered hardware problems, not a WikiLeaks cyber-war attack
Amazon sites in Europe were offline for half an hour on Sunday, but the online seller says the problem was due to hardware faults, not an attack inspired by the continuing WikiLeaks cyber-war.
The Amazon sites for the UK, Germany, Italy and France were all out for about half an hour around 9pm Sunday night. Amazon had been a target of reprisals last week, for removing WikiLeaks from its servers, but the outage was apparently caused by hardware problems, not a denial of service (DoS) attack.
