Archive for Mobile
Author: Dave Lewis
April 30, 2008 at 7:57 am · Filed under Airline Security, Mobile
I wonder if Christopher Soghoian had tried this one? A blogger by the name of Gerald Buckley used his iPhone to provide his boarding pass at a American Airlines gate.
From gwhiz:
I was travelling yesterday to San Antonio. An all-day, down and back.
Last week I went to Houston via Southwest Air and had Twittered I wanted to use my iPhone as my boarding pass. Their gate agent wasn’t playing along. So, had to use the paper ticket. (What they do with those is anyone’s guess).
But, yesterday, I prepared to try it again only this time with American Airlines. The morning flights to Dallas and then on to San Antonio were packed. So, I didn’t want to be the one to cause a ruckus. On the way back (San Antonio to Dallas) I asked the gate agent if he thought the PDF of my boarding pass would scan. He said, “I don’t know. Let’s try it.”
And, it worked great!
No word if he tried this with TSA.
Read on.
Article Link
Author: Dave Lewis
April 29, 2008 at 7:17 am · Filed under Apple, Mobile
OK, I have to admit that I have been waiting for this for a while now. Today brings word that Rogers will be carrying the iPhone here in Canada. The release date has yet to be made public.
From Rogers Press Release:
TORONTO, April 29 /CNW/ - Ted Rogers, President and Chief Executive Officer of Rogers Communications Inc. today issued the following statement:
We’re thrilled to announce that we have a deal with Apple to bring the iPhone to Canada later this year. We can’t tell you any more about it right now, but stay tuned.
Just a few short hours before the announcement folks were dismissing the idea.
From Gizmo Republic:
Another hopeful but naïve iPhone-Canada rumors has reared its head again. Until pigs sprout wings and sail across the sky or Canada shows signs of coming out of the telecommunications dark-age … iPhone is NOT coming to Canada!
Whoops.
Well would you look at that.
Author: Dave Lewis
April 21, 2008 at 8:10 am · Filed under Malware, Mobile
BBC News has an interesting piece dealing with criminals targeting mobile device users.
From BBC:
“There’s a real transition from online in to the mobile space,” said Simeon Coney, head of business development at Adaptive Mobile, which helps operators keep an eye on the malicious traffic flowing across their networks.
In the PC world malicious programs started with viruses designed to be a nuisance but now they have evolved into software designed solely to help their creators make money.
There is no doubt that hi-tech criminals have cottoned on to the fact that making malicious programs, be they trojans or viruses, can be a very profitable business.
That evolutionary process took, said Mr Coney, about 15 years.
I would wager that the time to ramp up on mobile devices will be far shorter.
Article Link
Author: Dave Lewis
April 18, 2008 at 5:27 am · Filed under Access Control, Insider Threat, Mobile
From Internet News:
Apple’s 160GB iPod Classic, introduced last September, is a music and movie lover’s dream machine. But for IT departments, it’s a security nightmare.
That’s because any employee can plug this pocket-sized USB storage device into their computer and use it to steal vast amounts of corporate information, including mailing lists, databases, financial records and confidential customer data.
Of course you don’t need an iPod to steal data: 4GB USB memory sticks are cheap and ubiquitous, or, for employees intent on stealing really large amounts of data, devices like Buffalo’s recently announced LinkStation Mini offer a terabyte of storage in a case that fits in the palm of the hand.
Nothing all that new in this article. But, it does give me an opportunity to point to this piece on the Windows registry for locking out USB storage devices.
Article Link
Author: Dave Lewis
February 26, 2008 at 7:51 am · Filed under Mobile, Terrorism
You know, these are interesting demands from a terrorist group on the run.
From Ars Technica:
The towers and offices of mobile phone operators in Afghanistan are being pressured to shut down operations at night by the Taliban. The former rulers of Afghanistan and current insurgent group held “talks” with the four major mobile companies in Afghanistan today, and gave them three days to go dark for 14 hours per day—or else.
The reason for the threat is the Taliban’s belief that American soldiers and rebels within Afghanistan are using mobile phones to track down remaining Taliban members. “Since the occupying forces stationed in Afghanistan usually at night use mobile phones for espionage to track down the mujahideen, the Islamic Emirate gave a three-day ultimatum to all mobile phone firms to switch off their phones from five in the afternoon until seven in the morning,” Taliban spokesperson Qari Mohammad Yousuf told Reuters, ironically via mobile phone (and presumably during daylight).
This is reminiscent of the Tanya Harding request for a “do over”. And of course there is amusement to be had that they made their demands…via cell phone.
Article Link
Tags: Taliban, Terrorism, Cell Phones
Author: Dave Lewis
February 13, 2008 at 7:24 am · Filed under DR/BCP, Mobile
Not being a Blackberry user (strictly by happenstance, I’d love to have one) I missed the outage that occurred on Monday. This is not the first time there has been a large scale Blackberry outage. Almost a year ago the RIM network suffered a significant outage leaving a large swath of customers in the dark. Regarding Monday’s outage,
From Tech World:
“RIM is continuing to investigate the exact cause” of the outage, the company said in a statement Tuesday. Late Monday it apologised for any inconvenience caused by the incident, which left customers throughout North America without current email for about three hours starting around 3:30 pm Eastern Time.
It was the second major outage in less than a year for the popular mobile data service, on which about 12 million subscribers depended at the beginning of last December. The previous problem, which occurred last April, was caused by a minor software upgrade that went awry, followed by a failed switchover to a backup system, according to RIM. The company said soon afterwards that it had identified “certain aspects of its testing, monitoring and recovery processes that will be enhanced” as a result of the failure.
I hope that the RIM crew are having a better day today.
Article Link
Tags: RIM, Blackberry Outage, Blackberry Network Collapse
Author: Dave Lewis
January 7, 2008 at 8:58 am · Filed under Mobile, Terrorism
Al-Qaida has moved its PR campaign to the mobile market with the addition of video content for cell phones.
From CBC:
Video messages of al-Qaida leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri can now be downloaded to cell phones, the terror network has announced, as part of its attempts to further extend its reach.
The announcement was posted late Friday by al-Qaida’s media wing, al-Sahab, on websites commonly used by Islamic militants. As of Saturday, eight previously recorded videos were made available including a recent tribute to the slain former “al-Qaida in Iraq” leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed by U.S. forces in Iraq in June 2006.
In a written message introducing the new cell phone videos, al-Zawahri, al-Qaida’s No. 2 figure, asked followers to spread the terror group’s messages.
Now, I think it would be truly amusing if someone were to hack their content servers and trojan the videos. That would be amusing to no end to watch as their supporters have their cell phones bricked.
Article Link
Tags: Al-Qaida, Mobile Terror Messages, Terrorism. Terrorist
Author: Dave Lewis
December 12, 2007 at 8:26 am · Filed under Legal Aspects, Mobile
From The Washington Post:
A consortium of consumer groups is planning to urge federal regulators to clarify how much control cellphone companies can have over the messages and services delivered over their networks.
In a petition to be filed with the Federal Communications Commission today, these groups say the agency should prohibit wireless carriers from blocking text messages sent by any company, nonprofit group or political campaign. These groups — including Public Knowledge, Free Press, Media Access Project, Consumers Union and the New America Foundation — also say carriers should deliver all text messages to their customers, including those sent by competing phone services.
“Mobile carriers currently can and do arbitrarily decide what customers to serve and which speech to allow on text messages, refusing to serve those that they find controversial or that compete with the mobile carriers’ services,” the petition says. “This type of discrimination would be unthinkable and illegal in the world of voice communications, and it should be so in the world of text messaging as well.”
Interesting. My favourite was years ago when a certain mobile carrier in Canada used to send text messages to my cell promoting their services and then they turned around and billed me for the incoming text message.
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Tags: SMS Filtering, Text Message Censorship, Filtering SMS Messages, SMS Messages
Author: Dave Lewis
November 6, 2007 at 9:14 pm · Filed under Mobile
Clueless journo…
From Fox WSJ:
Here’s the first thing that will happen when a phone with Google’s operating system hits the market: Information-technology departments will ban employees from connecting phones that run Google’s operating system to their computers or the corporate network. The reason is that Google’s operating system is open, meaning anyone can write software for it. That includes bad guys, who will doubtlessly develop viruses and other malicious code for these phones, which unsuspecting Google phones owners will download. Employees could spread the malicious code to the rest of the company when they synch their phones to their computers or use it to check email.
Sigh
Article Link
Tags: Google Phone, WSJ
Author: Dave Lewis
November 5, 2007 at 9:21 am · Filed under Mobile
The nefarious furry toothed hacker set loves to go after the 800 lb gorilla in the room. In this case the silverback in question is none other than Google. There is an ever growing cloud of smoke building around the repeatedly denied Google Phone (gphone?) which we first talked about last March.
More smoke:
- Google expected to disclose cellphone initiative
- Google in talks with Verizon Wireless: sources
- France Telecom denies Google talks about handset
- Report: Google phone platform due out in mid 2008
Now, the race to break a Google phone would be as feverish as the race to break the iPhone. But, will it be a similar situation?
From ZDNet:
Rumors have been circulating all year about the 2008 debut of “The Google Phone” but Google has been calculated in sharing only bits of insight with every developing story. In a recent Cnet.com posting by Elinor Mills we learned “In addition to the ad-supported phone services bundling Google Maps, YouTube and Gmail, the operating system would be open to developers to build additional features.” The catch phrase in this news as a mobile security expert is “open to developers” which should strike up some level of anxiety.
Interesting. Do I smell BBQ?
Article Link
Tags: Google Phone, GPhone, Google Phone Hacker
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