By MG Siegler
Techcrunch.com
Now that the WWDC keynote is over and I’ve had a little bit of time to reflect, I’ve been thinking about what excited me the most from today’s announcements. The list is long, no doubt. But I think I’m going to have to go with something that surprised me – while at the same time making me look smarter than perhaps I really am. (Again, just perhaps.) iMessages.
As one of the core new features highlighted today in iOS 5, iMessages has one purpose: to kill SMS. That is, traditional carrier-controlled text messages. iMessages will do this by replacing SMS with a service that Apple is in control of across all of their iOS devices. And here’s the real death blow: iMessages will be completely free.
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By Troy Gill
zdnet.com
Cyber crooks are infecting popular mobile platforms through malicious applications and, unfortunately, no mobile platform is immune from the destruction it can cause. According to McAfee’s report, Symbian remains the most targeted mobile platform, though vulnerabilities in both the Android and Apple IOS should not be overlooked.
Android’s open source software is something that gives the platform great appeal, but it is also the basis of its vulnerability. Users may enjoy the freedom to acquire apps both inside and outside the Android Market, but it doesn’t come without risk. The Android Market allows developers to upload apps without first running through an established screening process like one that you might find at Apple’s App Store or when using RIM’s application for BlackBerry. As a result, Google detected more than 50 malicious apps within the Android Market, downloaded to approximately 260,000 Android mobile devices. (Google later remedied the infections remotely via an auto installed software update.)
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Posted on May 26th 2011 in
Cell Phones,
Internet,
Security
By Stefanie Hoffman
crn.com
In what has been up until now unchartered territory, Apple admitted that the recent onslaught of MacDefender malware is a threat to its Mac OS X platform and offered a temporary workaround to mitigate the problem.
Apple issued an advisory Tuesday, warning users about a new strain of Mac Defender malware , also known as Mac Defender scareware, a phishing scam that targets users by redirecting them to fake antivirus Web sites that download malicious code onto users’ Macs. The admission and subsequent advisory represented a stark about-face from the Cupertino-based company’s previous directive that prohibited support staff from offering help to users calling for assistance after becoming infected with the MacDefender malware.
During the phishing attack, Mac users are subjected to a link or pop-up directing them to a fake antivirus site. The site then purports to conduct a scan, and then falsely determines that their machine is infected with a virus. The scammers then offer the Mac Defender fake antivirus software in order to resolve the issue.
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Posted on May 26th 2011 in
Internet,
New to the Internet
By David Kravets
Wired.com
The Department of Homeland Security has requested that Mozilla, the maker of the Firefox browser, remove an add-on that allows web surfers to access websites whose domain names were seized by the government for copyright infringement, Mozilla’s lawyer said Thursday.
But Mozilla did not remove the MafiaaFire add-on, and instead has demanded the government explain why it should. Two weeks have passed, and the government has not responded to Mozilla’s questions, including whether the government considers the add-on unlawful and whether Mozilla is “legally obligated” to remove it. The DHS has also not provided the organization with a court order requiring its removal, the lawyer said.
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Posted on May 5th 2011 in
Internet,
Technologies,
Technology
By Charlie Sorrel
http://www.wired.com
Programmer James Laird wanted to help his girlfriend stream her iTunes music in her new house, so he hacked away at Apple’s private key for streaming music, reverse-engineered the script, and made it available to the public.
Laird calls his open source Perl script Shairport, which lets hardware and software receive AirTunes music from iTunes.
Apple uses a public-key encryption scheme for AirTunes streaming. This lets anyone encrypt and stream audio to the AirPort Express (or other compatible device), but iTunes would only stream to Apple devices. Now, with Shairport, iTunes can be tricked into streaming audio to anything at all.
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Posted on April 12th 2011 in
Audio,
Hacks,
Technology
By David Kravets
wired.com
Sony is accusing alleged PlayStation 3 hacker George Hotz of surrendering two “non-functional” hard drives in violation of a court order, and then taking off to South America.
But Hotz’s lawyer said Wednesday that Sony is “crying alligator tears” over the issue.
Sony is suing the 21-year-old Glen Rock, New Jersey, man on charges he violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by publishing an encryption key and software tools in January that allow PlayStation 3 owners to gain complete control of their consoles. As part of the litigation, a San Francisco federal magistrate ordered Hotz to surrender his hard drives to Sony, so files connected to the hack can be extracted and used as evidence in the case.
But Sony notified the judge that, when it got the drives from Hotz, they were no longer working. “Hotz had removed integral components from his impounded hard drives, rendering them completely non-functional.” (.pdf), the company claimed in a filing.
Stewart Kellar, Hotz’s attorney, said the issue is overblown.
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Posted on April 6th 2011 in
Internet
By Chloe Albanesius
PCMag.com
Net neutrality is in the headlines again, but what does it mean for you? Is this just some wonky, inside-the-Beltway chatter that won’t have an impact on our daily lives or an issue that will affect how we access the Web in the future? The short answer is: both.
The basic news is that the Federal Communications Commission approved net neutrality rules yesterday and those rules give the commission the authority to step into disputes about how Internet service providers are managing their networks or initiate their own investigations if they think ISPs are violating its rules.
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Posted on April 5th 2011 in
Internet
By David Kravets
wired.com
On March 7, Camelot Distribution Group, an obscure film company in Los Angeles, unveiled its latest and potentially most profitable release: a federal lawsuit against BitTorrent users who allegedly downloaded the company’s 2010 B-movie revenge flick Nude Nuns With Big Guns between January and March of this year. The single lawsuit targets 5,865 downloaders, making it theoretically worth as much as $879,750,000 — more money than the U.S. box-office gross for Avatar.
At the moment, the targets of the litigation are unknown, even to Camelot. The mass lawsuit lists the internet IP addresses of the downloaders (.pdf), and asks a federal judge to order ISPs around the country to dig into their records for each customer’s name.
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