As developers for tablets and smartphones we like to keep abreast of the latest mobile technology developments . This is a daily digest of mobile development and related technology news gathered from the BBC, the New York Times, New Scientist and the Globe and Mail to name a few. We scour the web for articles concerning, iPhone, iPad and android development, iOS and android operating systems as well as general articles on advances in mobile technology. We hope you find this useful and that it helps to keep you up to date with the latest technology developments.
NSA Has Ability To Hide Spying Software Deep Within Hard Drives: Cyber Researchers
SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 16 (Reuters) – The U.S. National Security Agency has figured out how to hide spying software deep within hard drives made by Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba and other top manufacturers, giving the agency the means to eavesdrop on the majority of the world’s computers, according to cyber researchers and former operatives.
That long-sought and closely guarded ability was part of a cluster of spying programs discovered by Kaspersky Lab, the Moscow-based security software maker that has exposed a series of Western cyberespionage operations.
Kaspersky said it found personal computers in 30 countries infected with one or more of the spying programs, with the most infections seen in Iran, followed by Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Mali, Syria, Yemen and Algeria. The targets included government and military institutions, telecommunication companies, banks, energy companies, nuclear researchers, media, and Islamic activists, Kaspersky said.
The firm declined to publicly name the country behind the spying campaign, but said it was closely linked to Stuxnet, the NSA-led cyberweapon that was used to attack Iran’s uranium enrichment facility. The NSA is the U.S. agency responsible for gathering electronic intelligence.
A former NSA employee told Reuters that Kaspersky’s analysis was correct, and that people still in the spy agency valued these espionage programs as highly as Stuxnet. Another former intelligence operative confirmed that the NSA had developed the prized technique of concealing spyware in hard drives, but said he did not know which spy efforts relied on it.
NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines said the agency was aware of the Kaspersky report but would not comment on it publicly.
Kaspersky on Monday published the technical details of its research on Monday, a move that could help infected institutions detect the spying programs, some of which trace back as far as 2001.
The disclosure could hurt the NSA’s surveillance abilities, already damaged by massive leaks by former contractor Edward Snowden. Snowden’s revelations have upset some U.S. allies and slowed the sales of U.S. technology products abroad.
The exposure of these new spying tools could lead to greater backlash against Western technology, particularly in countries such as China, which is already drafting regulations that would require most bank technology suppliers to proffer copies of their software code for inspection.
Peter Swire, one of five members of U.S. President Barack Obama’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technology, said the Kaspersky report showed that it is essential for the country to consider the possible impact on trade and diplomatic relations before deciding to use its knowledge of software flaws for intelligence gathering.
“There can be serious negative effects on other U.S. interests,” Swire said.
TECHNOLOGICAL BREAKTHROUGH
According to Kaspersky, the spies made a technological breakthrough by figuring out how to lodge malicious software in the obscure code called firmware that launches every time a computer is turned on.
Disk drive firmware is viewed by spies and cybersecurity experts as the second-most valuable real estate on a PC for a hacker, second only to the BIOS code invoked automatically as a computer boots up.
“The hardware will be able to infect the computer over and over,” lead Kaspersky researcher Costin Raiu said in an interview.
Though the leaders of the still-active espionage campaign could have taken control of thousands of PCs, giving them the ability to steal files or eavesdrop on anything they wanted, the spies were selective and only established full remote control over machines belonging to the most desirable foreign targets, according to Raiu. He said Kaspersky found only a few especially high-value computers with the hard-drive infections.
Kaspersky’s reconstructions of the spying programs show that they could work in disk drives sold by more than a dozen companies, comprising essentially the entire market. They include Western Digital Corp, Seagate Technology Plc , Toshiba Corp, IBM, Micron Technology Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.
Western Digital, Seagate and Micron said they had no knowledge of these spying programs. Toshiba and Samsung declined to comment. IBM did not respond to requests for comment.
GETTING THE SOURCE CODE
Raiu said the authors of the spying programs must have had access to the proprietary source code that directs the actions of the hard drives. That code can serve as a roadmap to vulnerabilities, allowing those who study it to launch attacks much more easily.
“There is zero chance that someone could rewrite the [hard drive] operating system using public information,” Raiu said.
Concerns about access to source code flared after a series of high-profile cyberattacks on Google Inc and other U.S. companies in 2009 that were blamed on China. Investigators have said they found evidence that the hackers gained access to source code from several big U.S. tech and defense companies.
It is not clear how the NSA may have obtained the hard drives’ source code. Western Digital spokesman Steve Shattuck said the company “has not provided its source code to government agencies.” The other hard drive makers would not say if they had shared their source code with the NSA.
Seagate spokesman Clive Over said it has “secure measures to prevent tampering or reverse engineering of its firmware and other technologies.” Micron spokesman Daniel Francisco said the company took the security of its products seriously and “we are not aware of any instances of foreign code.”
According to former intelligence operatives, the NSA has multiple ways of obtaining source code from tech companies, including asking directly and posing as a software developer. If a company wants to sell products to the Pentagon or another sensitive U.S. agency, the government can request a security audit to make sure the source code is safe.
“They don’t admit it, but they do say, ‘We’re going to do an evaluation, we need the source code,’” said Vincent Liu, a partner at security consulting firm Bishop Fox and former NSA analyst. “It’s usually the NSA doing the evaluation, and it’s a pretty small leap to say they’re going to keep that source code.”
The NSA declined to comment on any allegations in the Kaspersky report. Vines said the agency complies with the law and White House directives to protect the United States and its allies “from a wide array of serious threats.”
Kaspersky called the authors of the spying program “the Equation group,” named after their embrace of complex encryption formulas.
The group used a variety of means to spread other spying programs, such as by compromising jihadist websites, infecting USB sticks and CDs, and developing a self-spreading computer worm called Fanny, Kaspersky said.
Fanny was like Stuxnet in that it exploited two of the same undisclosed software flaws, known as “zero days,” which strongly suggested collaboration by the authors, Raiu said. He added that it was “quite possible” that the Equation group used Fanny to scout out targets for Stuxnet in Iran and spread the virus.
(Reporting by Joseph Menn; Editing by Tiffany Wu)
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What Apple Is Missing About Cyber Security
Last week, Apple CEO Tim Cook attended a cyber security conference sponsored by the White House, in which he signed up for a framework to share information on cyber threats between companies.
However, in an impassioned speech, he made the case for not violating user privacy even to protect national security, and staunchly refused to share information with the U.S. government. Apple has also made it virtually impossible for law enforcement to obtain data from its devices even with a valid court order.
While it’s easy to applaud Cook’s stance, especially after the NSA debacle, and the CEO is known for his personal commitment to privacy protection, there’s also a problem with his view: namely, it ignores a basic truth about the threat faced by Americans today.
A new report on cyber security showing that since 2013, hackers have infiltrated more than 100 banks in 30 countries and stolen more than $1 billion, not to mention the many large data breaches which occurred in 2014, illustrate just how serious and widespread the problem of cyber crime is. Whether it’s money or sensitive personal data, we are extremely vulnerable to hackers. In the computer age, all our information is stored electronically somewhere and that leaves us exposed even offline.
In this environment, and what Cook seems unable or unwilling to recognize, is that privacy and security are inextricably linked. You can’t have the former without the latter, and just because Apple won’t reveal information to the government doesn’t mean that information could never be hacked by criminals. Let’s not forget that our biggest banks and retailers also promised us protection, but were unable to provide it.
The fact is that no system is foolproof, even with cutting edge technology, and therefore a joint effort by the federal government and private sector, utilizing both military and corporate expertise and maximum resources, is essential for creating a robust defense against cyber crime.
We are no longer dealing with innocuous teenage hackers like the one portrayed in War Games, but sophisticated criminal networks often sponsored by rouge nations. As a result, we don’t just need individual company safeguards but system-wide ones to protect us properly, and that requires cooperation.
That’s why Apple’s attitude is misguided.
A better approach would be for the company to work collaboratively with the government so that it can monitor how its user information is used, contribute its own knowledge and expertise, and work on a broader national solution to privacy protection instead of just championing it internally. That may not be as media-friendly but would likely be more effective.
It would also be more responsible. Apple’s decision may be well-intentioned but the result is that it’s deciding what our government can and cannot do to protect us from crime. That may not place the company above the law but it certainly feels like it’s making its own laws, and that’s scary.
Other articles on Apple by Sanjay Sanghoee: “Has Apple’s value peaked?”
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Before Steve Jobs, An iMac-Like Device 'Was Of No Interest To Apple'
If it weren’t for Steve Jobs, the iMac may have never come to be.
In fact, before the late Jobs became CEO of Apple, the company really wasn’t that interested in what would become one of its most iconic products, according to Jonathan Ive, the senior vice president of design at Apple. The “surprising” revelation can be found in an epically long profile of Ive by Ian Parker, which will be published in the Feb. 23 issue of The New Yorker.
Parker writes:
… Ive told me that, before Jobs replaced [Gil] Amelio, the studio’s work on an iMac-like device “was of no interest to the company.” The comment was surprising: Ive tends to be strenuously courteous toward his employers.
Jobs unveiled the iMac in May 1998, a little less than a year after Amelio was ousted and Jobs took over as interim CEO. The computer, which later came out in a number of candy colors, revolutionized desktop computers.
The iMac was a game changer for many reasons, especially for its design. Before the iMac, computers were bulky, beige boxes. Ive and Jobs changed that. According to Parker’s profile, the iMac “fully launched” Ive, even though Jobs “took much of the credit for its conception.”
Apple didn’t immediately respond to The Huffington Post’s request for comment.
Ive’s design acumen has gone far beyond the iMac in the 17 years since its launch. He’s at least partly responsible for the fact that the iPhone 6 isn’t even bigger than it currently is and that the Apple Watch doesn’t have a circular face, among many other things.
His reach has even gone beyond Apple. According to Parker’s profile, Ive had something to do with the design of the lightsabers that will be used in the upcoming film “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”
Here’s a look at how Mac computers have evolved over the last 30-plus years:
Visit The New Yorker’s website for the full profile.
Giveaway: win 1 of 5 copies of Workflow 1.1
What is Workflow 1.1? Is it really an “essential” tool to add to your tool kit? What is new in version 1.1? Last week MacNN explored these questions in a complete Hands On review. We discussed who this software title would be good for, and who it might not be so good for. We also secured 5 promo codes to give away copies of this software to our readers.
Experts judge '$1bn bank hack' claim
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Code to delete Facebook photos found
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Hundreds Of Unseen NASA Photographs Reveal The Vintage Beauty Of Outer Space
On October 24, 1946, the world was introduced to the first photograph from space, a shot of our tiny planet taken 65 miles above Earth. The artist behind this iconic image was a V-2 rocket, programmed to capture a frame every 1.5 seconds before delivering a steel cassette of film back to the ground just minutes after it launched.
Clyde Holliday, The first photograph from space, October 24, 1946
This photograph is at the center of an auction this month, set to honor the storied tradition of celestial photography. Titled “From the Earth to the Moon: Vintage NASA Photographs of the First Voyages Beyond Our Home Planet,” the auction From the Earth to the Moon (and corresponding exhibition at Mallett Antiques) will showcase 600 visual bits of space program history, everything from the first “selfie” in outer space, belonging to Buzz Aldrin, to an abstract portrait of an eclipse to panoramic views of lunar canyons.
One of the more memorable lots is a relic from 1969, the year Neil Armstrong first stepped foot on the moon. It wasn’t until two decades after Armstrong became a lunar hero that NASA discovered a surprisingly clear image of him standing near a module, taken by his Apollo 11 colleague Aldrin and subsequently stashed in a Houston archive. Before that, NASA believed the only photos from the lunar surface were blurry shots grabbed by a TV camera and a 16 mm motion picture camera.
Beyond Aldrin’s impressively composed image, the auction offers a number of works by astronauts-turned-artists. There’s John Glenn, the first man to carry a camera into space. Eugene Cernan, the last man to trek to the moon. Ed White, the 1965 spacewalker who documented his time on Gemini 4 in 1965. As Sarah Wheeler, Head of Photographs at Bloomsbury Auctions describes the collection, these photographs reflect not only on the golden age of space travel, but the golden age of photography as well.
After all, the photographs on view are vintage Kodaks, printed shortly after they were taken, estimated to fetch anywhere between £300 to £10,000 ($462 to $15,390).
Harrison Schmitt, Portrait of astronaut Eugene Cernan, explorer of another world, Apollo 17, December 1972
“It’s incredible to realize that many photographs in this auction were unknown to the general public for decades until the complete NASA photographic archive began to appear digitally on the internet,” Wheeler explained in a press statement. “This is particularly true of the collection of mosaics, real boots-on-the-ground panoramas taken by the Apollo astronauts as they explored the lunar landscape. These spectacular images were pieced together from individual Hasselblad frames for internal use by NASA scientists. We know of no such collection ever having been offered at auction.”
Check out a preview of “From the Earth to the Moon,” on view at Mallett Antiques before the works head to auction on February 26 at Bloomsbury Auctions in London.
NBA's Harrison Barnes Shines on Court and Social Media
A while back I wrote a blog post about athletes and social media. Ever since then I have been keeping an eye on athletes that seem to be using social media to maximum effect. One such example is Harrison Barnes (@hbarnes) of the Golden State Warriors.
Heading in to the All-Star break, the Warriors are off to the best start in franchise history. In his third year in the league, Barnes has emerged as a key part of the team’s success. Meanwhile he has already established himself as a super star on social media.
Barnes and other athletes of his generation have grown up around social media, but not all have embraced the medium the way Barnes has. I was intrigued by what Barnes was doing so I tweeted at him. Despite being in the midst of the season with a busy travel, practice and game schedule, he responded. It’s not every day that an NBA star tweets at me, but this level of one-on-one engagement is what makes Harrison Barnes unique. I asked if he would be open to sharing some of his perspective on social media and he graciously obliged.
Although Barnes really only became active on social media when he entered the NBA, he has used these platforms to connect with hundreds of thousands of fans. I asked him about some of the fun ways in which he uses social media and he told me, “Hands down, the most fun I’ve had is with my scavenger hunts. I’ve dropped jerseys, tickets, and other items at random places across the Bay Area, along with clues on social media on how to find them. I have some great stories from those times.”
Talk to people around the Warriors organization and you will find that Barnes is one of the hardest working members of the team, spending countless hours in the gym. While basketball is clearly his #1 priority, his passion for the game seems to be matched by his keen interest in technology. Barnes made headlines last summer when he became an “intern” at Facebook, a role he took on top of his off-season basketball training. According to Barnes, “I would work out each morning, and during rest period go over to Facebook and learn about what they’re doing and how I could more uniquely connect with my supporters.”
Here are some other insights that Barnes shared with me:
BP: What do you view the role of social media being for you on a personal and professional level?
HB: Personally, social media has kept me in touch with close friends and family while I am doing significant traveling. I use Skype, Instagram & Twitter mostly for that. It also has been a great outlet for me to connect with people I respect in other industries (other sports, entertainment, journalists, fitness, etc.). Of course it’s the biggest driver for my consumption of news as well.
Professionally, I view it as my responsibility to connect with and give back to my fans and those that support me. Typically, if I have down time after a workout, I’ll go to social media to update my fans and see what they are talking about. I like hosting Q&A’s during those times to make it spontaneous. I have over 200,000 followers on Twitter & over 350,000 fans on Facebook, and I’m truly humbled by that. I owe it to those people to stay present, give them content they want to see, and have fun with them along the way. I’ve built real relationships with fans from Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and I’m proud of that.
BP: What have you found to be the best social media channel to engage with your fans?
HB: Facebook. That has been the main hub for scavenger hunts and other big contests, and the volume is just higher since there are more fans on there than any other platform. On some posts I get thousands of comments and responses, and Facebook has made hosting Q&A’s easier for me. I also like the fact that I can do more long-form content.
BP: What advice would you give to younger athletes about the role of social media in their personal lives and playing careers?
HB: I’d say to just let it come to you and don’t force it. When you have downtime, talk to your fans. Sometimes the smallest things can go a long way for people that never can come to a game, or even watch a game. Almost everyone can tweet. We didn’t used to have these mediums to do so, and now that we do, take advantage.
BP: What is the biggest thing you learned from your time at Facebook? Will you do something like that again next off season?
HB: I learned that with all the powerful tools and technology we are exposed to today, my quest to build relationships with fans is just starting. To see first-hand how hard Facebook works to constantly improve its product was powerful. I definitely look forward to doing something else like that again. Facebook has been very helpful in working with me.
What was most refreshing to hear from Barnes is that he views social media as a vehicle to communicate with fans rather than a platform to build his brand. In my original post I wrote about how athletes could monetize their social media presence, but Barnes reminded me that isn’t what it’s all about. The true power in social media is being able to connect with others and nobody exemplifies this better than Harrison Barnes.
Call for 'eBay-style' online courts
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MacNN Podcast: Apple Pay, great apps, huge iPhones, Tesla, and more
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Under Armour's Purchase Of MyFinessPal: What Happened To My Data?
with Fatemeh Khatibloo
Like 80 million others, I use MyFitnessPal to log my calories and workouts. I’ve been doing this for about three years. MyFitnessPal made news last week when it was acquired byUnder Armour. I’m sitting here thinking two things: 1) Should I panic? 2) I’m so glad I didn’t link my Nike Fuelband (not compatible) or Withings Body Analyzer (just hadn’t gotten to it yet) with MyFitnessPal. I also had a MapMyFitness (acquired by Under Armour for $150M in 2013) account, but I hadn’t used it as much. I always thought I’d have control over how my data was combined and by whom it would be consumed. There is simply a future promise “to deliver more impactful services and experiences.”
I always knew this would be a risk. I downloaded a free app and willingly uploaded data to it. As an analyst, I also knew at some point that they would need to monetize their audience (yes, they now have ads in the app) and would want a return on their asset: data. Aside from my personal issues, as an analyst, I’m curious about the $475 million paid by Under Armour.
Two things matter in mobile: audience and data. MyFitnessPal has both.
Audience matters because consumers are using fewer and fewer applications on their mobile devices. Brands can no longer pursue a “destination” strategy and expect consumers will come to them. They need to go engage consumers where they are. Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp for19B gave us a sense of just how valuable audience depth, reach and usage is.
Data matters because it helps us simplify or improve mobile experiences by anticipating the needs of customers or to improve the value of advertising – if you are monetizing your app that way. Under Armour just paid475M for MyFitnessPal for the audience, food database and personal data.
Both Under Armour and MyFitnessPal are celebrating. But, what about my data?
The truth is, there are lots of players that *might* have acquired MyFitnessPal that worry me even more: one of the internet giants that already has too much information about me or an insurance company, who might use its data to evaluate claims — or worse, assess insurability. I worry most about what dots are being connected.
At least UnderArmour is a business that has never wavered from its commitment to supporting athletes, servicemen, and civil servants with technically superior products.
To myself, and my Forrester colleague Fatemeh Khatibloo, Under Armour recognizes an important opportunity in the fitness market: “app overload”. This is the sense that we all just have too many apps, and too many have redundant qualities. Most of us tend not to have especially deep loyalties to these myriad tools, so we might have three fitness apps on our device, collecting significantly similar data, but each with different data visualizations or other features that make them unique.
If UnderArmour can successfully consolidate, standardize, and resolve the data that sits within MyFitnessPal and MapMyFitness, here’s what it wins:
First, it becomes the fitness destination for 120 million users of fitness apps. This is what we mean by “intelligent agents,” or services that consolidate an individual’s data from many sources, but within a single “category.” [this needs more explanation and fleshing out]
Second, it has created the most valuable focus group (for its category) on the planet. UnderArmour now has the ability to study actual behavior data, not just self-reported data, with respect to how frequently people exercise, how/where/when they exercise, and the full spectrum of consumer- and professional-level fitness activities. From a product development/product marketing perspective, this is priceless.
Finally, if UnderArmour decides to monetize the consolidated data from the apps it has acquired, it would be a tremendously valuable entrant in the global data economy. And this could all be done in a privacy-compliant way: the firm could, for example, sell city or state governments data about running/biking/hiking trail usage. It could help urban planners understand actual use of city paths to help them optimize energy usage (eg, one path might be more trafficked, therefore need better nighttime lighting), plan for future bike lanes, etc.
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Comets Are Just Like Deep Fried Ice Cream, According To Science
Astronomers have long known that comets are cosmic snowballs with a soft interior and hard surface. But the exact composition of that surface — and how it forms — has been somewhat of a mystery, until now.
In a new study, scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory mixed together ice and organic dust to simulate how a comet forms. And they found that the crunchy comet crust is much like something very decadent and delicious…
“A comet is like deep fried ice cream,” study co-author Dr. Murthy Gudipati, principal scientist at JPL in Pasadena, Calif., said in a written statement. “The crust is made of crystalline ice, while the interior is colder and more porous. The organics are like a final layer of chocolate on top.”
Yum?
For the study, the scientists used an icebox-like cryostat device dubbed Himalaya to simulate the conditions that a comet’s icy materials would experience in deep space as they journeyed toward the sun, Discovery News reported.
(Story continues below.)
The cryostat instrument, nicknamed “Himalaya,” that researchers used to study the icy conditions under which comets form.
First, the team flash-froze a special mixture of water vapor that was infused with organic compounds called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, which are common in deep space. Then the researchers used Himalaya to slowly warm their “comet” from minus-406 degrees Fahrenheit to minus-190, mimicking what it would experience if traveled toward the sun.
Then something quite strange happened.
“The PAHs stuck together and were expelled from the ice host as it crystallized,” Antti Lignell, a postdoctoral scholar at the California Institute of Technology, who led the study, said in the statement. “This may be the first observation of molecules clustering together due to a phase transition of ice.”
According to the researchers, when the PAHs were expelled from the ice mixture, that left room for water molecules to link up and form more tightly packed structures of crystalline ice — and voila, a hard comet surface was made.
“What we saw in the lab — a crystalline comet crust with organics on top — matches what has been suggested from observations in space,” Gudipati said in the statement. “Deep fried ice cream is really the perfect analogy, because the interior of the comets should still be very cold and contain the more porous, amorphous ice.”
The study was published online in The Journal of Physical Chemistry on Oct. 10, 2014.
A Closer Look At The Action Center in Windows 10 for Phone
As I put in my initial thoughts post last week, there are a lot of changes coming in Windows 10 for Phone aimed at brining the Little OS That Could to par with Android and iOS. While the final verdict of if that was achieved will come out in the months ahead, there are clear indicators already in the Preview that point to Microsoft taking a big step forward in making the user experience in this release far more friendly and customizable. One of those areas is the Action Center. Action Center itself in Windows Phone is not new. It’s
The post A Closer Look At The Action Center in Windows 10 for Phone appeared first on Clinton Fitch.
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