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Apple iMessage could hurt mobile carriers | TG Daily

October 10, 2011 By Leave a Comment

When Apple launches iMessage, a free alternative to traditional text messaging, it could have a damaging impact on mobile carriers.

The carriers still charge outrageous fees for texting – as much as 20 cents per message. Of course, anyone who texts regularly most likely has an unlimited texting plan for about $20 per month.

But that $20 is not insignificant when added to all the other line-item charges customers have to deal with these days, and many would prefer to scrap that fee altogether.

After all, there have been alternatives to texting since the last century. Phones with a data plan are able to send instant messages through Google Talk, Skype, AOL Instant Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, and others.

And not to be forgotten, it’s simple to send and received e-mails from pretty much any phone these days.

However, texting remains the only real way to send messages to people through a phone number rather than a sceen name or e-mail address, and they can be sent and received without mobile data.

Apple’s iMessage platform, expected to be revealed this week, cannot offer those amenities, but it will allow users to send messages over Wi-Fi and mobile data networks, with an aesthetic that looks like texting on an iPhone, and with technology that can send the messages instantly.

via Apple iMessage could hurt mobile carriers | TG Daily.

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Free Dropbox Forensics Tool | ReadWriteWeb

June 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Dropbox Reader is a set of Python scripts for forensic investigators. The scripts provide investigators with information about a particular Dropbox user’s account and activities, such as the registration e-mail, Dropbox identifier and most recently changed files.

Dropbox Reader was created by Cybermarshal, the computer forensics wing of ATC-NY.

Here’s a list and description of the tools from the product website:

read_config script outputs the contents of the Dropbox config.db file in human-readable form. This includes the user’s registered e-mail address and Dropbox identifier, software version information, and a list of the most-recently-changed files.

read_filecache_config script outputs configuration information from the Dropbox filecache.db file. This includes information about shared directories that are attached to the user’s Dropbox account.

read_filejournal script outputs information about Dropbox synchronized files stored in the filecache.db file. This includes local and server-side metadata and a list of block hashes for each Dropbox-synchronized file.

read_sigstore script outputs information from the Dropbox sigstore.db file, which is an additional source of block hashes.

hash_blocks script produces a block hash list for any file. This block hash list can be compared to the block hashes from read_filejournal or read_sigstore.

dropbox_contains_file script hashes one or more files (as per hash_blocks) and compares the resulting block hash list to the files listed in filecache.db (as per read_filejournal) and reports whether the files are partially or exactly the same as any Dropbox-synchronized files.

via Free Dropbox Forensics Tool.

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Facebook’s new messaging feature raises privacy questions | Science & Technology | Deutsche Welle | 16.11.2010

November 17, 2010 By Leave a Comment

A digital shoebox

Facebook’s messaging system has always been integral to the platform, providing users with a slightly less public forum for discussion than publishing everything on “Facebook Walls,” the bulletin boards that display the activities of a user.

Facebook’s latest plans have created a media stir.

With Messages, Zuckerberg says the concept is to “flatten” the landscape of communication. Teens, he said at the press conference, prefer SMS over e-mail because the latter is too slow, whereas others strictly use e-mail or instant messaging to talk to their friends and family. So Facebook intends to use Messages to aggregate these three different means of communication into one conversation. One user may send an SMS, another might reply with an e-mail, but both messages appear on Facebook as part of a conversation.

The result, Facebook says, will be a continuous collection of conversation history between friends. The image used in promotional material by Facebook is that Messages will be analogous to the boxes of letters people once used to collect and cherish, as a way to remember the course of a relationship.

But what about privacy?

As the new system is gradually rolled out, users will be able to send and receive e-mails with their new @facebook.com e-mail address. At first, Facebook users will only receive mail from their Facebook friends, with all other mail going into an Other or a Junk mail folder. But users may “promote” mail from these folders to their primary folders if they wish.

The conversation history will be stored on Facebook, which could raise security concerns for some. When asked about an option for “off the record” conversations at the press conference, Zuckerberg responded that users would have the option to delete threads or messages, but that “off the record” doesn’t make sense.

In the past, Facebook has weathered criticism for some of the wording in their Terms of Use, which in February 2009, briefly seemed to state that Facebook would own any content a user uploaded to the public site, in perpetuity. Facebook and Zuckerberg quickly moved to douse the flames of public outcry and released a new Terms of Use with the section on privacy right up at the top which states, “You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how it is shared through your privacy and application settings.”

You can’t win (or lose) if you don’t play

via Facebook’s new messaging feature raises privacy questions | Science & Technology | Deutsche Welle | 16.11.2010.

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Researcher finds Safari reveals personal information – Computerworld

July 26, 2010 By Leave a Comment

A feature in Apple’s Safari browser designed to make it easier to fill out forms could be abused by hackers to harvest personal information, according to a security researcher.

Safari’s AutoFill feature is enabled by default and will fill in information such as first and last name, work place, city, state, and e-mail address when it recognizes a form, wrote Jeremiah Grossman, CTO for WhiteHat Security, on his blog.

The information comes from Safari’s local operating system address book.

The feature dumps the data into the form even if a person has entered no data on a particular Web site, which opens up an opportunity for a hacker.

“All a malicious website would have to do to surreptitiously extract Address Book card data from Safari is dynamically create form text fields with the aforementioned names, probably invisibly, and then simulate A-Z keystroke events using JavaScript,” Grossman wrote. “When data is populated, that is AutoFill’ed, it can be accessed and sent to the attacker.’

via Researcher finds Safari reveals personal information – Computerworld.

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Researcher finds Safari reveals personal information – Computerworld

July 26, 2010 By Leave a Comment

A feature in Apple’s Safari browser designed to make it easier to fill out forms could be abused by hackers to harvest personal information, according to a security researcher.

Safari’s AutoFill feature is enabled by default and will fill in information such as first and last name, work place, city, state, and e-mail address when it recognizes a form, wrote Jeremiah Grossman, CTO for WhiteHat Security, on his blog.

The information comes from Safari’s local operating system address book.

The feature dumps the data into the form even if a person has entered no data on a particular Web site, which opens up an opportunity for a hacker.

“All a malicious website would have to do to surreptitiously extract Address Book card data from Safari is dynamically create form text fields with the aforementioned names, probably invisibly, and then simulate A-Z keystroke events using JavaScript,” Grossman wrote. “When data is populated, that is AutoFill’ed, it can be accessed and sent to the attacker.’

via Researcher finds Safari reveals personal information – Computerworld.

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FBI investigating iPad e-mail leaks – Computerworld

June 11, 2010 By Leave a Comment

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has opened an investigation into the leak of an estimated 114,000 Apple iPad user e-mail addresses.

Hackers belonging to a group called Goatse obtained the e-mail addresses after uncovering a Web application on AT&T’s Web site that returned an iPad user’s e-mail address when it was sent specially written queries. After writing an automated script to repeatedly query the site, they downloaded the addresses, and then handed them over to Gawker.com.

Now the FBI is trying to figure out whether this was a crime. “The FBI is aware of these possible computer intrusions and has opened an investigation into addressing the potential cyberthreat,” said Lindsay Godwin, an FBI spokeswoman.

The investigation was opened Thursday by the FBI's Washington Field Office, she said. Godwin did not know if the investigation was opened at the request of Apple or AT&T. AT&T declined to comment, and Apple has not replied to requests for comment.

According to Gawker, Goatse hackers were able to download e-mail addresses belonging to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer. They also gained access to addresses belonging to employees of Google, Amazon, Microsoft and the U.S. military.

via FBI investigating iPad e-mail leaks – Computerworld.

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AT&T bug discloses 114,000 iPad owners’ e-mail addresses – Computerworld

June 10, 2010 By Leave a Comment

A glitch in AT&T’ Web site has exposed the e-mail addresses of more than 100,000 iPad buyers.

The data was downloaded by a hacking group known as Goatse Security, which obtained the information after stumbling upon a program on AT&T’s Web site that would send back the iPad user’s e-mail address when given a unique SIM card identification number known as an ICC-ID (Integrated Circuit Card Identifier).

By guessing ICC-ID numbers, the hackers were able to download 114,000 e-mail addresses, according to the Web site Gawker, which first reported the news on Wednesday.

“AT&T was informed by a business customer on Monday of the potential exposure of their iPad ICC-IDs,” AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel said in an e-mail message on Wednesday. “This issue was escalated to the highest levels of the company and was corrected by Tuesday; and we have essentially turned off the feature that provided the e-mail addresses.”

AT&T said the only information hackers could have obtained as a result of this bug was the e-mail address attached to the iPad. That data could have been misused by spammers.

AT&T plans to inform customers whose e-mail addresses were obtained, Siegel said. “At this point, there is no evidence that any other customer information was shared.”

There are some pretty powerful iPad users out there, apparently.

After examining the hackers’ data, Gawker found e-mail addresses belonging to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and ABC News Anchor Diane Sawyer, as well as addresses belonging to Google, Amazon, Microsoft and the U.S. military.

via AT&T bug discloses 114,000 iPad owners’ e-mail addresses – Computerworld.

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Hewlett-Packard Wants to Print for Smartphones – NYTimes.com

June 7, 2010 By Leave a Comment

As the world’s largest technology company, H.P. sells a wide variety of products but got much of its profit from printers and their pricey ink. More recently, H.P. has built up a large technology services arm as well, which has helped round out its business. But the printing division accounts for about a fifth of its revenue and a third of its profits.

The new printers — which build on a limited experiment last year — will range in price from $99 to about $400. Every one will come with what H.P. executives billed as a breakthrough feature — its very own e-mail address.

H.P.’s engineers hit on the e-mail address as an easy, familiar way for people to send print jobs to the Web-ready printers. You can, for example, take a photo with a phone, e-mail it to your printer’s address and have the printout waiting for you at home. Or, you can share the printer’s e-mail address with family and friends. This means that someone can buy Grandma a Web-ready printer and have it pump out photos of the grandchildren without Grandma having to do much of anything. (Except buy that pricey ink.)

H.P. is also lining up partners for a Web site, the ePrintCenter, which the company envisions as the kind of app store that Apple, Google and others have for their smartphones. The idea is that the partners — so far, H.P. has lined up 40 — can build software and services for its Web printers.

via Hewlett-Packard Wants to Print for Smartphones – NYTimes.com.

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