68014629
submission
itwbennett writes:
In a recent study, ten volunteers used Android phones that tracked app behavior using a monitoring app, Mobilitics, developed by the French National Institute for Informatics Research (INRIA) in conjunction with the National Commission on Computing and Liberty (CNIL). Almost two-thirds of apps studied in the three-month real-world test accessed at least one mobile phone identifier, a quarter of them at least two identifiers, and a sixth three or more. Apps don’t need many permissions to build up a comprehensive user profile, said INRIA researcher Vincent Roca. He described how, simply by requesting access to the permissions 'Internet' and 'Access_Wifi_State,' an application could identify the phone through the MAC address of its Wi-Fi adapter and track its movements around the world.
68013401
submission
itwbennett writes:
Even for hackers, data is a numbers game. If 10,000 cards are stolen, as few as 100 may have the potential for a successful cash out and maybe 10 cards will actually be productive, says Alex Holden, founder and CISO for Hold Security, a Wisconsin-based company that specializes in finding stolen data on underground websites. And, similar to the gold rush, where many profited by selling shovels and mining equipment, there’s a healthy trade in email lists of potential victims, spam messages crafted to evade filters and specialized malware that can slip past antivirus software. But those expenses all ultimately come out of a hacker’s bottom line. 'Cybercriminals don’t have enough resources to monetize stolen data in big volumes,' adds Andrew Komarov CEO of security company IntelCrawler. 'It really has a small margin, and it is pretty complicated to resell it in big amounts.'
68001419
submission
itwbennett writes:
According to a report in Korean IT Times, Samsung Electronics has begun production of the A9 processor, the next generation ARM-based CPU for iPhone and iPad. Korea IT Times says Samsung has production lines capable of FinFET process production (a cutting-edge design for semiconductors that many other manufacturers, including AMD, IBM and TSMC, are adopting) in Austin, Texas and Giheung, Korea, but production is only taking place in Austin. Samsung invested $3.9 billion in that plant specifically to make chips for Apple. So now Apple can say its CPU is 'Made in America'.
67990155
submission
jfruh writes:
Google Chairman Eric Schmidt told a conference on surveillance at the Cato Institute that Edward Snowden's revelations on NSA spying shocked the company's engineers — who then immediately started working on making the company's servers and services more secure. Now, after a year and a half of work, Schmidt says that Google's services are the safest place to store your sensistive data.
67989755
submission
jfruh writes:
A company called Max Sound has filed a lawsuit against Google and YouTube in Germany over a streaming video patent it holds, but this could be the beginning of a much, much bigger fight. Max Sound claims its patent gives it rights over anyone who uses the H.264 video compression format, which is just about anyone who streams video over the web.
67847741
submission
itwbennett writes:
Swapnil Bhartiya has posted a handy how-to for installing the new Fedora, a process that is made more problematic due to a couple of UX flaws in the Anaconda installer. First, is the all-but-hidden placement of an error message if the user enters a too-weak password. Second, is the de-selection of the 'user creation' button, which would result in the the installation continuing with only a root user.
67776989
submission
itwbennett writes:
Facebook has made several acquisitions over the years to help advertisers target their ads and extend their reach. Custom Audiences is one such targeting tool, allowing retailers to match shoppers in their stores with their accounts on Facebook. It’s often done through an email address, phone number or name. Facebook won’t give hard numbers, but there seems to be a lot of matching going on. For decades, marketers have been trying to understand more about what’s happening at the point of sale, ‘so their systems are really robust at capturing a strikingly large amount of transactions,’ says Brian Boland, Facebook’s VP of advertising technology.
67726727
submission
itwbennett writes:
Glassdoor's annual list of the 50 Best Places To Work is out, and tech companies make a strong showing again this year, with Google coming out on top, and not just among tech companies. What makes Google a particularly great place to work? 'My work is used by lots and lots of users. It's cool stuff that makes people happy. I'm learning a lot which will make me employable within Google and elsewhere. I get to go home whenever I want to enjoy my free time and I make enough money to travel.' says one Google Developer Advocate. Compare that to Qualcomm, which came in 14th overall and 4th among tech companies, where the reviewer, a Qualcomm Staff Engineer/Manager, waxes realistic about the work life balance, saying it is good 'in some divisions.' Or LinkedIn (23rd overall, 8th among tech companies) where work schedules are 'generally pretty flexible.' Or NVIDIA (36th overall, 11th among tech companies) where promotions are meted out based on talent 'over years of experience.'
67721189
submission
itwbennett writes:
IBM and Apple have unveiled the first results of the enterprise IT partnership they announced in July: 10 mobile applications aimed at businesses in six industries as well as government users. One of the apps, for example, allows a flight crew to personalize a passenger's in-flight experience. An app targeted at the banking industry allows a financial advisor to remotely access and manage a client's portfolio. And police officers can use iPhones to view video feeds from crime scenes with an app for law enforcement.
67683597
submission
itwbennett writes:
During a forum on cybersecurity in Washington, D.C. Tuesday, Leslie Caldwell, assistant attorney general with the DOJ's Criminal Division, called for private companies to put more trust in the country's law enforcement agencies. Caldwell pointed to smartphone encryption as one area that is likely to become a problem for law enforcement. ‘We really need to think long and hard about whether we want to create a zone of lawlessness that law enforcement can't access,’ she said. ‘I think that's a very dangerous precedent that's been set.’
67628163
submission
jfruh writes:
The Bluetooth spec never quite became the worldbeater it was billed as, but it's aiming to become indispensible to the Internet of Things. Updates to the spec make it possible for low-powered Bluetooth devices to gain direct access to the Internet, and, perhaps more importantly, make those devices a lot harder to hack.
67627855
submission
jfruh writes:
With Microsoft aiming to make more money from cloud services and software subscriptions, some have speculated that Windows itself might be given away for free with the aim of locking users into Microsoft's ecosystem. But company COO Kevin Turner says that, while Windows 10 pricing hasn't been decided yet, it definitely won't be a "loss leader".
67519637
submission
itwbennett writes:
The allure of mobile devices has led Intel to take some uncharacteristic moves, partnering with Chinese companies to build some smartphone and tablet chips, and relying on third parties to manufacture those chips. Intel is betting the partnerships will accelerate its business in China, where smartphone shipments are booming. But the company wants to regain complete control over manufacturing, and on Thursday said it was investing $1.6 billion over 15 years in a China plant for mobile chip development and manufacturing.
67512639
submission
jfruh writes:
In 2012, Microsoft invested $300 million in Barnes & Noble's Nook division. This week, Microsoft agreed to sell its interest back to B&N so that the struggling bookstore could try to spin the division off as a separate business or sell it. The sale price was so low that Microsoft essentially lost nearly $190,000 every day on the botched attempt to gain access to the e-reader ecosystem.
67512491
submission
jfruh writes:
One of the EU's selling points is that it provides a single regulatory apparatus for the entire European market — but this isn't the case for everything. Data protection laws, for instance, provide a confusing thicket of different regulations across the continent, and now, much to the frustration of large American Internet companies, it seems that a plan to consolidate these rules under a single EU agency are coming apart.
