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Comment Not a cell phone... (Score 1) 5

by machxor (#36942664) Attached to: Best Off-Road Smart Phone?
You seem to be asking two distinct questions so I'll answer the second. If I'm heading for the woods I certainly don't rely on my cell phone. A good handheld dedicated GPS device for navigation and a VHF/SSB radio for emergency communication. A portable radio is still going to have issues in mountains on short range frequencies and not provide enough power for realistic long range communication. Then there is the issue that someone has to be listening. In any case if there aren't cell towers near your location then there isn't much a "better" phone can do about it. In any case the dedicated GPS handheld and a cell phone (w/ GPS also probably) would still be a better option because you can leave the phone powered off while navigating and still expect it to have a charge when you need to make emergency contact after walking around for hours trying to find your way out.

Comment Re:Complete access to the internal memory? (Score 1) 238

by machxor (#36915130) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: How Do You Protect Data On Android?

Even more because simply attaching the phone to a USB port allows complete access to the internal memory and SD card regardless of whether a password is entered.

No, it doesn't. You get access to /sdcard (whether it corresponds to a physical SD card or not), but that's it. You don't get access (even read access) to sandboxed application and system data storage, unless your phone is rooted.

So the obvious answer is that, if you want security, don't root your phone. It should be kinda obvious that if you can do what you want with the phone via USB, so can any application running on your PC.

Even if you're not kernel-rooted chances are (depending on the phone) all the hacker has to do is bypass your lock screen to enable usb debugging and root the phone himself.

Comment Re:Think of it as 4.0.2 (Score 1) 599

by machxor (#36598756) Attached to: The Enterprise Is Wrong, Not Mozilla
I'm not an average number and admittedly hadn't been paying attention to the release schedule changes. So when version 5 all of a sudden popped up I hesitated to upgrade as version 4 was still working fine for my development needs and what not. Had this actually been 4.0.2 I probably wouldn't have hesitated as minor versions generally don't introduce breaking changes.
Android

Submission + - Owning the Android Market For Fun and Profit (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: Security researcher Jon Oberheide demonstrated several problems with the Android Market and the way that it does app installation recently, and was able to slip proof-of-concept potentially malicious apps into the market. He has written a detailed explanation of the Market and Android OS bugs that enabled the operation and why it's such a security mess.
"While we might not be able to spoof an INSTALL_ASSET message down the GTalkService pipe without owning Google’s infrastructure, maybe we can trick Google’s servers into initiating an INSTALL_ASSET on our behalf! After all, if the legitimate Market app is able to POST an install request to the Market servers and trigger an INSTALL_ASSET, why can’t an illegitimate app make the same request?" Oberheide wrote. Answer: It can.

Comment Re:Good...? (Score 2) 318

by machxor (#35952888) Attached to: Apple Updating iOS To Address Privacy Concerns

How do you suppose the phone company knows what cell you're in, so they can route calls to your phone? How do you suppose they get their E911 data?

As long as you have the thing powered on, the phone company know where you are. And if the police want to know, they won't go to your house, hack your computer, and read the log backup. They'll just go to the phone company with a subpoena.

This whole controversy was much ado about nothing. The only thing that was different was that the user had access to the data that "the man" had all along.

Yes because the only people who would be interested in this data are those that already posses a legal method of obtaining it...
Businesses

Submission + - ERP Vendors Get Into Medical Marijuana Business (itworld.com)

Submitted by
jfruhlinger
jfruhlinger writes: "As medical marijuana is legalized in more and more states, a new market is emerging for ERP applications that can handle this unique business. Many people running medical marijuana dispenseries aren't used to running legitimate businesses and need technical help doing so. In addition, the drug itself is tricky to keep track of; as one vendor puts it, "there's no other product that is sold by weight that evaporates, dehydrates and [turns into] shake,""

Submission + - China DDOS an online petition to free Ai Weiwei (change.org) 3

Submitted by
decora
decora writes: "If you are reading this on April 21, 2011, then you probably won't be able to connect to the linked story. That is because: "For the past three days, the Change.org website has been repeatedly targeted by cyber attacks coming from China that aim to bring our site down, which would keep people from signing the petition.", which demands the release of artist Ai Weiwei."

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