mobile devices Archives

mobile devices

Android Founder: Install Base Fragmentation No Big Deal

July 10, 2013 Paul Roberts

Android owners who were hoping that Google might be on the cusp of cleaning up its balkanized install base won’t be cheered by the latest word from on high: Android co-founder and Google Ventures Partner Rich Miner thinks it’s no big deal. Speaking on Tuesday at an event in Boston, Miner said that fragmentation of the install base was inevitable, given the number and variety of Android devices that are being adopted, according to a report by Xconomy.com.The statement comes as Google is dealing with the fallout from a newly disclosed vulnerability affecting almost all Android platforms that could allow attackers to fool Android into installing and running compromised applications. Miner was speaking at a Mobile Summit forum hosted by the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council. He made his statements while being interviewed by renowned technology journalist and columnist Scott Kirsner (@ScottKirsner) of the Boston Globe on the (evergreen) topic “What’s […]

Updated: Exploit Code Released For Android Security Hole

July 8, 2013 Paul Roberts

A security researcher has published what he claims is a proof of concept program that exploits a security hole that affects hundreds of millions of Android mobile devices.* Pau Oliva Fora, a security researcher for the firm Via Forensics, published a small, proof of concept module that exploits the flaw in the way Android verifies the authenticity of signed mobile applications. The flaw was first disclosed last week by Jeff Forristal, the Chief Technology Officer at Bluebox Security, ahead of a presentation at the Black Hat Briefings in August. Oliva Fora posted his “quick and dirty” proof of concept on GitHub, a code sharing website, on Monday. The simple program leverages APKTool, a common, open source tool for reverse engineering Android applications – decompiling and then recompiling their contents. APKTool is widely used for analyzing and making modifications to closed binaries. His script allows a user to select an Android […]

Security Must-Do’s For Facebook Graph Search

July 8, 2013 Paul Roberts

Facebook finally pulled the covers off its much-anticipated (or dreaded) Graph Search feature on Monday, after about six months in beta. The new search feature greatly expands the kinds of information Facebook users can access on other users of the social network, making it easy, for example, to cross reference data stored in Facebook profiles. For example, users can easily call up a list of their “friends who live in Boston” and like the show “Arrested Development.” Fun! But, as has been noted, Graph Search is also a social engineer’s dream, because it lays bare lots of information – data – that Facebook users shared, casually, and without a thought of how it might be used in combination with other data they shared. For example, researchers have shown that they can use knowledge of a Facebook user’s “Likes” to “automatically and accurately predict a range of highly sensitive personal attributes including: […]

NSA’s PRISM Puts Privacy Startup Silent Circle Into Orbit

July 2, 2013 Paul Roberts

Government surveillance has been getting a lot of attention in recent weeks, with the leak of classified information about spying by the National Security Agency using information provided by U.S. telecommunications and Internet firms including Verizon, Facebook, Google and Apple. The stories have revealed the very different legal standards that govern electronic communications and more traditional communications such as phone and postal mail. They have also put many otherwise lawful Internet users in search of technology that will keep their private conversations and thoughts well…private. That, in turn, has sparked concern in the government that civilian use of encryption will hamper lawful interception of communications. Wired.com reported last week that, for the first time, encryption thwarted government surveillance under court-approved wiretaps. That report, from the U.S. Administrative Office of the Courts (AO), said encryption was reported for 15 wiretaps in 2012, compared with just 7 wiretaps conducted during previous years. […]

Wardriving Goes Corporate: Comcast Turning Residential WiFi Into ‘Millions of Hotspots’

June 12, 2013 Paul Roberts

One of the big challenges to the growth of the “Internet of Things” is access. It goes without saying that, without access to the Internet, almost all of the benefits of connected devices disappear. Your smart phone becomes a dumb phone. Your ‘net connected watch or running shoes or car scream into the void – trying desperately to connect to a network that isn’t there. Here in the U.S., that problem has typically been addressed by routing traffic through 3G or – depending on where you live – 4G wireless networks. However, access to those networks is spotty, especially in the sparsely populated Western U.S. According to a survey by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), much of the Western U.S. is a 3G wasteland, with little or no access to broadband wireless networks. One solution is to tap the loose network of residential broadband subscribers, allowing them to peel […]