Apple

What Hollywood Can Teach Us: Passwords Matter More Than Ever

Andrey Belenko had what you might call a ‘brush with infamy’ earlier this week after a presentation he took part in on the security of Apple’s iCloud became a set piece in the news media scramble to identify the source of a huge trove of leaked celebrity photos – many depicting Hollywood A-List stars in various states of undress. “It’s not the kind of attention you want to receive,” said Belenko, a security researcher with the firm ViaForensics. “It’s all really creepy stuff.” Belenko’s link to the celebrity hacking scandal was a matter of happenstance. He was scheduled to give a presentation at a small, St. Petersburg multi-media conference, Chaos Constructions, over the weekend. Belenko was presenting research he had conducted a year earlier on the security of Apple’s KeyChain technology and iCloud – a talk he had given twice before in the last year. Prior to his talk, Belenko […]

Hack Tool Authors Deny Link To Celeb Photo Leaks

With some of Hollywood’s biggest stars issuing statements on Monday condemning the leak of personal photographs online, attention has turned to identifying the source of the leaks. But more than 24 hours after the photos appeared, there are more questions than answers about its source. Early attention has focused on an automated tool that exploited an apparent vulnerability in Apple’s FindMyiPhone feature. But by Monday, there were denials from the makers of that tool that it played any role in the massive privacy breach that saw photos of A-list celebrities like Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton and others leaked online. Within hours of the photos’ appearance on the image sharing site 4chan, attention shifted to the cause of the leak and the coincidence of the leaked photos with the publication of iBrute, a simple tool available on GitHub in recent days. According to this published report by Owen Williams over at TheNextWeb,  the […]

Redbend-Samsung

Vulnerable Mobile Software Management Tool Reaches Into IoT

You could be forgiven for never having heard of Red Bend Software. The company is small – just 250 employees- and privately held. Red Bend’s headquarters is a suite of offices in a nondescript office park in Waltham, Massachusetts, just off Route 128 – America’s “Silicon Highway.” But the company’s small profile belies a big footprint in the world of mobile devices. Since 2005, more than 2 billion devices running the company’s mobile management software have been sold worldwide. Today, the Red Bend is believed to control between 70 and 90 percent of the market for mobile software management (MSM) technology, which carriers use to service mobile devices. The software enables mobile carriers to do critical tasks, including firmware-over-the-air (FOTA) software updates, mobile device configuration and other on-device changes.  Red Bend counts many of the world’s leading companies in the mobile, enterprise and manufacturing sectors as clients, including Intel, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sharp, LG, Sony, Huawei, China Mobile and Lenovo. For the most part, Red […]

CNN iReport Web Site

CNN App Leaks Passwords Of Citizen Reporters

As camera-equipped mobile phones have proliferated in recent years, CNN pioneered the crowd sourcing of news with its highly successful and much-imitated iReport program. But aspiring iReporters would do well to hold off submitting their stories using CNN’s mobile application for the iPhone – at least for a few days.   According to a report from the security firm zScaler, the CNN App for iPhone fails a basic security test: failing to encrypt traffic sent to and from the application, including a user’s login and password. The flaw, which was only found in the CNN App for iPhone, could allow an iReporter’s account to be compromised, giving strangers access to any stories they have submitted to the news network. CNN senior director of public relations Matt Dornic acknowledged the flaws and said that CNN has updated the application and will be submitting it to Apple as soon as possible. According to a […]

ipad_for_business

Apple And IBM: The Corporatization of Consumerization

Apple Computer has built up a brand so strong that it borders on being a cult. That is why it is jarring to realize that, at the end of the day, Steve Jobs’ baby is just another company that needs to make its numbers each quarter and keep Wall Street happy. The company’s announcement of an exclusive partnership with  IBM is just that: a reminder that Apple’s core business is business, and that the company has been sorely underperforming in a key market: the enterprise. Whatever its faults, IBM is flush with the very things that Apple lacks: the brand, technology, expertise and reach that puts enterprise technology buyers at ease. As we reported, IBM will offer mobile device management, security, data analytics and cross-platform integrations for Apple’s iPad and iPhone that leverage IBM’s cloud services. There will be IBM-managed offerings around mobile device activation, supply and management tailored to businesses. But the partnership is something more- […]