In smart phone news...
The defense contractor arm of Boeing is going to make a highly secure smart phone, based on the Android platform.
"Earlier this week, it was revealed that aerospace firm Boeing was working on a high security mobile device for the various intelligence departments. This device will most likely be released later this year, and at a lower price point than other mobile phones targeted at the same communities. Typically, phones in this range cost about 15,000-20,000 per phone, and use custom hardware and software to get the job done. This phone will most likely use Android as it's main operating system of choice, which lowers the cost per phone, since Boeing's developers don't have to write their own operating system from scratch."
$15-20k per unit. Yep, sounds like a defense contractor. Wasn't it just recently that the NSA announced that it was going to do a secure phone system based on Android? I'm sure their unit cost would be a bit lower.
I am curious, though, who would build this? Boeing is not an electronics manufacturer per se, they're certainly not a cell phone maker. If they intend this for covert use, they're going to have to buddy-up to someone like Nokia or Samsung or LG to make the phone look like a standard smart phone to allay suspicion, plus it can't really have a Boeing label on it, that'd be a bit of a giveaway.
Seems to me that it's a monumental waste of money if the NSA is already doing a similar project.
http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/12/04/15/1513222/boeing-preparing-an-ultra-secure-smartphone
Ah, yes: March 8, NSA and German government encrypting Android phones: http://thewayne.livejournal.com/787608.html
Last month the results of the 'Honey Stick Project' were announced in which Symantec 'lost' several bugged smart phones to see what people do when they find one. The results pretty much confirm the worst of human nature.
"In order to get a look at what happens when a smartphone is lost, Symantec conducted an experiment, called the Honey Stick Project, where 50 fully-charged mobile devices were loaded with fake personal and corporate data and then dropped in publicly accessible spots in five different cities ...Tracking showed that 96-percent of the devices were accessed once found (PDF), and 70-percent of them were accessed for personal and business related applications and information. Less than half of the people who located the intentionally lost devices attempted to locate the owner. Interestingly enough, only two phones were left unaccounted for; the others were all found."
My aunt found a cell phone in a casino. The smart thing to do would be to give it to casino security, instead she took it home. Fortunately it still had a charge when she told me about it, and I found an address book entry for Dad and called it and found out his daughter had lost it, conveniently she worked for FedEx in El Paso, so she called the Las Cruces office and I dropped it off there. I don't think I would poke in to a discovered smart phone beyond trying to identify the owner and get it back to them, but human nature being what it is, who knows? This particular lost phone wasn't a smart phone, which reduces the temptation to pry in to personal information. My phone does contain sensitive information, but the really sensitive info is in a password-protected encrypted system, so it's fairly safe. And there's no banking info on it, nor has it ever accessed my bank account, so that's safe.
Plus, it's an iPhone, so it's easy for me to remotely brick if I lose it, assuming the discoverer doesn't know how to pop the SIM chip.
http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/12/03/12/2351227/honey-stick-project-tracks-fate-of-lost-smartphones
And finally, Google's Android app store Play has been found to have lots of malware lurking inside in the form of apps that send expensive SMS messages without you knowing it.
"We've seen quite a few Android malware discoveries in the recent past, mostly on unofficial Android markets. There was a premium-rate SMS Trojan that not only sent costly SMS messages automatically, but also prevented users' carriers from notifying them of the new charges, a massive Android malware campaign that may be responsible for duping as many as 5 million users, and an malware controlled via SMS. Ars Technica is now reporting another Android malware discovery made by McAfee researcher Carlos Castillo, this time on Google's official app market, Google Play, even after Google announced back in early February that it has started scanning Android apps for malware. Two weeks ago, a separate set of researchers found malicious extensions in the Google Chrome Web Store that could gain complete control of users' Facebook profiles. Quoting the article: 'The repeated discoveries of malware hosted on Google servers underscore the darker side of a market that allows anyone to submit apps with few questions asked. Whatever critics may say about Apple's App Store, which is significantly more selective about the titles it hosts, complaints about malware aren't one of them.'"
This would well and truly suck. I think that most of the freedoms that Android offers are great, but as it has been said, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance and it's difficult for an end user to be vigilante about the software on their phone because most of us are not programming experts that would allow us to determine if a program is safe or not.
http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/12/04/14/195215/more-malicious-apps-found-on-google-play
"Earlier this week, it was revealed that aerospace firm Boeing was working on a high security mobile device for the various intelligence departments. This device will most likely be released later this year, and at a lower price point than other mobile phones targeted at the same communities. Typically, phones in this range cost about 15,000-20,000 per phone, and use custom hardware and software to get the job done. This phone will most likely use Android as it's main operating system of choice, which lowers the cost per phone, since Boeing's developers don't have to write their own operating system from scratch."
$15-20k per unit. Yep, sounds like a defense contractor. Wasn't it just recently that the NSA announced that it was going to do a secure phone system based on Android? I'm sure their unit cost would be a bit lower.
I am curious, though, who would build this? Boeing is not an electronics manufacturer per se, they're certainly not a cell phone maker. If they intend this for covert use, they're going to have to buddy-up to someone like Nokia or Samsung or LG to make the phone look like a standard smart phone to allay suspicion, plus it can't really have a Boeing label on it, that'd be a bit of a giveaway.
Seems to me that it's a monumental waste of money if the NSA is already doing a similar project.
http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/12/04/15/1513222/boeing-preparing-an-ultra-secure-smartphone
Ah, yes: March 8, NSA and German government encrypting Android phones: http://thewayne.livejournal.com/787608.html
Last month the results of the 'Honey Stick Project' were announced in which Symantec 'lost' several bugged smart phones to see what people do when they find one. The results pretty much confirm the worst of human nature.
"In order to get a look at what happens when a smartphone is lost, Symantec conducted an experiment, called the Honey Stick Project, where 50 fully-charged mobile devices were loaded with fake personal and corporate data and then dropped in publicly accessible spots in five different cities ...Tracking showed that 96-percent of the devices were accessed once found (PDF), and 70-percent of them were accessed for personal and business related applications and information. Less than half of the people who located the intentionally lost devices attempted to locate the owner. Interestingly enough, only two phones were left unaccounted for; the others were all found."
My aunt found a cell phone in a casino. The smart thing to do would be to give it to casino security, instead she took it home. Fortunately it still had a charge when she told me about it, and I found an address book entry for Dad and called it and found out his daughter had lost it, conveniently she worked for FedEx in El Paso, so she called the Las Cruces office and I dropped it off there. I don't think I would poke in to a discovered smart phone beyond trying to identify the owner and get it back to them, but human nature being what it is, who knows? This particular lost phone wasn't a smart phone, which reduces the temptation to pry in to personal information. My phone does contain sensitive information, but the really sensitive info is in a password-protected encrypted system, so it's fairly safe. And there's no banking info on it, nor has it ever accessed my bank account, so that's safe.
Plus, it's an iPhone, so it's easy for me to remotely brick if I lose it, assuming the discoverer doesn't know how to pop the SIM chip.
http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/12/03/12/2351227/honey-stick-project-tracks-fate-of-lost-smartphones
And finally, Google's Android app store Play has been found to have lots of malware lurking inside in the form of apps that send expensive SMS messages without you knowing it.
"We've seen quite a few Android malware discoveries in the recent past, mostly on unofficial Android markets. There was a premium-rate SMS Trojan that not only sent costly SMS messages automatically, but also prevented users' carriers from notifying them of the new charges, a massive Android malware campaign that may be responsible for duping as many as 5 million users, and an malware controlled via SMS. Ars Technica is now reporting another Android malware discovery made by McAfee researcher Carlos Castillo, this time on Google's official app market, Google Play, even after Google announced back in early February that it has started scanning Android apps for malware. Two weeks ago, a separate set of researchers found malicious extensions in the Google Chrome Web Store that could gain complete control of users' Facebook profiles. Quoting the article: 'The repeated discoveries of malware hosted on Google servers underscore the darker side of a market that allows anyone to submit apps with few questions asked. Whatever critics may say about Apple's App Store, which is significantly more selective about the titles it hosts, complaints about malware aren't one of them.'"
This would well and truly suck. I think that most of the freedoms that Android offers are great, but as it has been said, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance and it's difficult for an end user to be vigilante about the software on their phone because most of us are not programming experts that would allow us to determine if a program is safe or not.
http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/12/04/14/195215/more-malicious-apps-found-on-google-play