Among the many things that complicate technology, batteries have historically been a big, heavy, environmentally disasterous anchor around everyone’s necks. Researchers at UCLA have recently announced a breakthrough in producing graphene-based “supercapacitors” that essentially takes the best parts of a capictor and a traditional battery to form what may be as transformative as the discovery of electricity. Graphene-based batteries are envisioned to be able to charge in minutes. On top of this, graphene itself is very eco-friendly (compostable, in fact), durable and flexible, almost the exact opposite of current battery technology.
What this means for you:
I don’t know about you, but my mobile devices always seem to be on low battery at the most inconvenient moments. Even if there is a power plug nearby and you happen to have your charging cable, putting your phone/laptop/camera/tablet down in the middle of a busy day (not to mention a public place like an airport) for an hour or more is just not practical. What may be really eye-opening is if graphene battery technology could be used for electric vehicles, specifically electric cars which have been struggling against “range anxiety” in their adoption and spread. Charging stations, once envisioned as impractical (mostly because of the slow charge times) could literally operate with the same speed and convenience as a traditional gas station, paving the way for a fossil-fuel free future. Say that four times fast!
Image courtesy of digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
You might not have realized this, but in 2012, US Copyright Office let an exception to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) expire that suddenly made it illegal to unlock a cellphone you owned, for the purposes of using it with a different carrier. Passed in 1998, the DMCA covers many areas of modern technology, but the exception essentially allowed consumers to unlock phones like the Apple iPhone themselves, as opposed to purchasing a (much more expensive) unlocked phone or asking/paying the carrier to unlock the phone for you after you’ve paid for the phone through a subsidized contract. Though the exception lapsed late last year, the Whitehouse and the FCC have both issued statements urging Congress to legalize unlocking.
What this means for you:
In the US, unlocking your smartphone doesn’t have quite the same value as it does in other parts of the world, primarily because the two largest carriers operate networks that use two different technologies that are not found in any one phone. For example, if you had an AT&T iPhone, you can’t unlock it and move to Verizon, because the actual hardware will only work on GSM networks (Verizon is a CDMA-based network) but you could use it on T-Mobile’s network. The carriers aren’t really interested in seeing the exception renewed, primarily because it narrow’s consumer choice and “locks” unknowning customer with technology that, while simple to crack, is technically illegal to actually do without the carrier’s permission.
The issue rarely surfaces for most consumers anyways, as the carriers offer “free” or heavily discounted phones (with a multi-year contract, of course!) to “new” customers, so most opt to get something shiny and new, versus unlocking their 2-year old phone. The issue here is really more centered around protection of consumer rights and the fact that if you own something, you should be able to do whatever you want with it as long as it isn’t impacting the well-being of others. Unfortunately, the Whitehouse and the FCC can’t do anything about the DMCA or renewing the exception because the Copyright Office is governed by Congress. And we all know how productive they’ve been lately.
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
In what many analysts are seeing as another setback for beleaguered BlackBerry, the US Department of Defense has now announced that it will start allowing the use of iPhones and Android devices in a space that was once the domain of BlackBerry devices. In the early days of mobile email delivery, BlackBerry devices were designed for enterprise-controlled security, where as the other email-capable devices still relied on immature internet standards, or like Apple’s early iPhones, completely eschewed corporate control. Because of this, BlackBerry became the defacto standard for any business that valued security over style, including pretty much every government agency around the world.
What this means for you:
Don’t count BlackBerry out just yet, but the count is getting shorter and shorter, and at some point the referree might need to stop the fight. The Pentagon isn’t getting rid of BlackBerries (that would be a haymaker they won’t get up from), but they are now opening up the space for departments to use solutions from other vendors (namely Apple and Android). This is a signal to the rest of the world that might have been sceptical of iOS or Android’s security status that if the world’s most powerful military is willing to consider using iPhones and Androids, maybe those platforms have finally caught (and passed) BlackBerry on the security front.
As of February 26, 2013, five of America’s largest internet service providers will be putting into effect a copyright policing and enforcement program aimed at curbing online piracy of copyrighted digital content. Officially known as the “Copyright Alert System” but dubbed “Six Strikes” by the media and watchdog groups, the program is the result of a collaborative effort between the entertainment industry and the five ISP’s (AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Verizon) aimed at stemming illegal piracy made trivial and commonplace by peer-to-peer filesharing protocols like BitTorrent and popularized by infamous sites like The Pirate Bay. According to the Center for Copyright Management (formed specifically to manage this program), the aim of CAS is not punitive, but educative. ISP customers suspected of engaging in infringing behavior will be warned multiple times, may have their bandwidth limited or accounts temporarily disabled until they attend what you might think of as the copyright law version of traffic school.
What this means for you:
The subject of copyright infringement is a touchy subject on the digital frontier. As you might have suspected, there is a lot of money at stake, and the entertainment industry has enough lawyers to invade a small country. They also have plenty of powerful friends in Washington, DC who aren’t above floating ruinous legislation to protect Hollywood’s royalties at the expense of hard-won digital freedoms and privacy. Rather than seeing everything setback decades by politicians and lawyers, the ISPs have struck a deal with Hollywood to police themselves to keep the government out of their business. Digital rights activists have raised a stink about the “Six Strikes” program, primarily because several of the big 5 haven’t really formalized the rules that will be used to govern how infractions will be handled. On top of this, there is a $35 charge to appeal any supposed infraction, driving the “innocent until proven guilty” crowd into a frenzy. It’s still way too early to tell if or how this program will work, but it’s moving forward, whether the internet likes it or not.
Just this past week I received 2 emails that looked very legitimate, but were in actuality very cleverly designed phishing emails meant to trick unwary individuals into making some bad decisions. And when I say “cleverly designed” I mean that even to my experienced eye, the emails looked very real, with properly implemented graphics, clever use of recognizable branding and even using text from actual legitimate emails to camoflauge the hook.
How did I know they were not the real deal? Well, first off, Gmail’s spam filters flagged them right away (score one for Google!) but there were a couple of other things that immediately marked them as fishy, and a little more investigation revealed the true colors of these sophisticated phishing attempts. These types of emails will happen more frequently once the cybercriminals realize how much more effective they are, so I think it’s time I showed you some techniques for spotting counterfeits before they trick you.
Apply Common Sense
Are you a customer of the company, service or brand that sent you an email asking you to do something? Is what they are asking you to do something that makes sense for that particular company/service/brand? In the example here, I received an email that looks like it was from ATT notifying me that my monthly account was ready for review. OK, this would have passed the “smell test” for me a couple years ago, but I’m not an ATT customer anymore. However, ATT is the largest cellular provider in the US, so it’s not inconceivable that many, many people thought this was a legitimate email.
Who’s the email from? And who is the actual recipient?
In the fake ATT email, you can see clearly that the sender on this email is totally bogus (outlined in RED at the top). Why would ATT be sending an email from the IRS? Always look closely at who the sender was on the email, especially if it looks like it’s something you might expect to see in your email box. Is that email address actually correct. Call up the sender to ask if they actually sent the email.
In my second example, the sender actually looks like it might be legitimate at a passing glance. They got the domain right, so now you have put your security glasses on and take a harder look. This particular email was sent to a recipient address that is an alias for a webmaster inbox for one of my clients. I know for a fact she uses Quickbooks, but I also know she would never have used this particular email address to register the product or create an account because it goes to my email box, not hers. On top of this, there are several other addresses in the CC field (including 2 that weren’t actually email addresses), something you should never see when receiving a legitimate, automated email from a company like Intuit.
But once again, the content looks legitimate, and it’s not unlikely that the phisher landed a few hooks, considering how widely used Quickbooks is in the business world. So, let’s dig a little deeper!
Are the embedded links legitimate?
Outlook provides a handy feature that allows you to roll over a link in an email and see the actual URL of the link, even if it isn’t typed out in the email (which it never will be in a phishing attempt). Webmail users may not have this function handy, depending on the browser and the service you are using. Regardless of what program you are using, NEVER CLICK LINKS THAT YOU CAN’T ACTUALLY VERIFY, AND IF YOU HAVE THE SLIGHTEST HINT OF DOUBT, STOP CLICKING AND START DIALING FOR A HUMAN! (If ever there was a justified need for all caps and bold, that was it.)
In my two examples, you can clearly see that neither of the “call to action” links actually go to sites that have even the remotest connection to either of the services they purport to represent. Why would my American ATT account need me to click a domain in Australia? Why would I ever download US Withholding Data from a domain with “latina dot com” in the name?
What this means for you:
These types of emails will continue to become harder to spot, and I will guarantee you that the cybercriminals will continue to improve their counterfeiting techniques once they see how effective they are as compared to the past easy-to-spot and detect trash that normally fills our Junk folders. Unless the good guys come up with better ways to protect us (and they haven’t yet!), the best defense is (as my good friend Prof. Moody likes to shout) “Constant vigilance!” Take the time to read all emails carefully, and think twice before clicking once.
In a rare public admission, Apple has indicated that some of its own internal Macintoshes have been compromised in a cyberattack that security researchers believe similar to the one that breached Facebook last week. Announcements from Apple of this type are very rare, as Apple has long touted one of the strengths of its platform was how “unhackable” it was compared to Windows. In this particular case, Apple has little to lose, as it’s pointing the finger of blame for the hack at Java and a vulnerability that was taken advantage of to gain access to Apple employee computers.
What this means for you:
Apple’s recent breach is just one more notch in cybercrime’s belt that includes a long list of illustrious companies like the Wall Street Journal, Twitter, Facebook, Jeep, and Burger King, not to mention the numerous intrusions of government agencies and countless hacks of businesses that go unnoticed and un-reported. In the case of the Apple and Facebook breaches, the source has been tied to a mobile development website that both company’s employees accessed, and according to both companies, there appeared to be no evidence that customer data was compromised in the attacks. As I’ve maintained all along, the business world is now entering a new age of security unknowns as serious criminals continue to exploit technology to serve their needs, and are able to outspend and outgun the average small and medium size business. Before the age of computers and the internet, your odds of being targeted by a criminal organization were minute compared to today, where organized crime can now “crowd-source” affiliate-based networks that pay anonymous hackers in any number of a dozen untraceable ways to rent out zombified computers and webservers by the hour for a handful of dollars, and use pre-scripted attacks to launch massive, shot-gun targeted campaigns that only need to snag a small percentage of victims in order to be profitable. This is not some imaginative, cyberpunk movie plot – it’s happening right now, as you read this article. Moving forward, the only way to combat this growing threat will be a combination of vigilance and smart investments in security technology, policy and training.
Industry analysts are taking off their rose-colored glasses after examining the results of BlackBerry’s largely lackluster launch of their OS 10 platform. Original estimates had the newly renamed company (formerly Research In Motion) selling as many as 1.75 million new phones following the Jan 30 debut. Using words like “soft launch” and “modest demand”, analysts are now revising their estimates down by as much as 83%, putting BlackBerry’s comeback into serious doubt.
What this means for you:
It’s probably too early to call it, but BlackBerry really needed a big splash with the 10 launch and to keep surging forward with momentum to stay on par with upcoming anticipated Samsung and Apple launches on tap for Summer. Early reviews indicate that version 10 phones have caught up with the competition, but the technology hasn’t leapfrogged the competition, something BlackBerry really needs to do to gain any footing in this market, as they can’t outspend Google, Apple or even Samsung. If your company is heavily invested in BlackBerry and still supports it for corporate communications, you can’t go wrong with a Z10 or Q10, as long as your IT department has committed to keeping their BB infrastructure current. If they seem even the littlest bit wishy-washy on that subject, or they already support Android and iOS devices, you’ll make a safer investment in another platform.
Microsoft is (re)launching Outlook.com and consolidating its various “free” email service domains under the Outlook.com brand in an effort to regain the former glory it once held with Hotmail.com which has since fallen to a distant third behind Google’s Gmail and Yahoo Mail. Microsoft estimates it will be spending anywhere from $30 to $90 million in marketing in all the major media over the next 3 months on a combination of attack ads aimed at Gmail users as well as informational campaigns they hope will help persuade users to switch (back, in many cases) to Microsoft.
What this means for you:
If you already have a Hotmail.com or MSN.com email address and you haven’t already converted over, you’ll be migrated over to Outlook.com gradually as Microsoft consolidates the services under the new brand. If you are considering switching (or opening another webmail account), the only feature Outlook.com is offering that differs from the competition is Contacts stored in your online address book will automatically update information based upon information available on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Gmail does this with G+ but you have to resort to third-party extensions and services to mine the other social media sites for this information. Beyond this feature, Outlook.com is mostly playing catch-up to Gmail, though their marketing dollars may steal some of Yahoo’s marketshare despite the company’s revamp of its webmail service a little over a year ago.
Windows users will probably be unsurprised to note that Adobe’s ubiquitous Flash plug-in requires yet another patch. This time, unfortunately, Adobe is scrambling to release version 11.6 to rectify 2 serious security holes that are already being exploited in the wild, and not just on Windows machines; Macs and even Linux is affected by the latest flaws.
What this means for you:
The flaws fixed by the above release may allow malicious websites to install malware either from just visiting a compromised website, or by redirecting your browser to open infected Microsoft Word documents or Adobe PDFs. There are malware websites being found on the web right now that can take advantage of unpatched Flash plugins and they will wreak havoc on your computer.
Patch Flash now. Here’s how:
- Go to Adobe’s website: http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/ (works for any platform)
- Windows: Go to your Control Panel and look for the “Flash Player” control panel icon. Click the “Advanced” tab and then the “Check Now” button.
If you want to verify you’ve updated to the correct version, you can check it by visiting this link after patching: http://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/
Microsoft seems to be taking Fat Tuesday to heart: this month’s package of software updates includes a whopping 57 fixes for security flaws across most of its current product line. Microsoft isn’t the only one patching: Adobe also has a handful of security fixes for its products – the most commonly installed are Flash and Acrobat. The security exploits patched are just as potentially dangerous as the vulnerabilities patched in Internet Explorer.
What this means for you:
Ideally, you either have an IT department watching out for you and making sure your software is being updated in a timely fashion, or you have Automatic Updating turned on and will automatically download and apply all critical and important patches released by Microsoft and Adobe. In the case of the former, it may actually be a week or two before the actual patches are applied, as many IT departments routinely test all MS patches before distributing them through the enterprise, mostly to ensure Microsoft doesn’t break something proprietary to your company’s platforms. And in the case of this month’s Patch Tuesday, they will have much more to test and deploy.
If your computer is relying on automatic updates received via the internet, make sure you pay attention to the little message popups in the lower right corner of your screen. Windows Update will let you know when its doing its thing, and will also notify you when it has finished applying the necessary patches. Not sure whether your machine has been patched? For most versions of Windows (XP, Vista, 7) you can click the Start Menu and select “All Programs” and scroll until you find “Windows Update”. Review the information on the screen, and if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to call us for a second opinion!