Heartbleed continues its rampage across the internet. There are too many stories to tell and too little time. Read on only if you have the stomach for it.
- Networking companies Cisco and Juniper have revealed that several dozen models of their hardware devices are affected by the OpenSSL security flaw known as Heartbleed. To see if any of your networking products made this list, Cisco’s advisory can be found here, and Juniper’s here.
- Two sources close to the NSA allege that the spy agency has exploited Heartbleed since it first appeared over 2 years ago.
- Android smartphones and tablets running version 4.1.1 of the Google operating system are vulnerable to the bug. According to Google, this may affect less than 10% of all Android devices, but given that there are nearly 900 million Android OS devices, that still means millions.
- The vulnerability was used to steal 900 taxpayer ID’s from Canada’s Revenue Agency.
What this means for you:
The security implications of the Heartbleed vulnerability are staggering and very difficult to encompass. Now, more than ever, you must keep a close eye on your digital assets and accounts. Confirm with your financial institutions whether or not they were impacted by the bug (most major, commercial banking institutions did NOT use OpenSSL), and if they were, wait until they confirm that they have fixed it before changing your password. Do NOT use any software or websites confirmed to be affected by Heartbleed until they patch the bug, even to change your password. If you do this while the vulnerability still exists, there is a good possibility that hackers can actually see you changing your password and record the new one. Right now, because of the spotlight on this hole, hackers are racing to exploit the panic and confusion, and you are more likely than ever to be hacked. Wait until your websites confirm they have patched the security hole before using them to change your password.
Keep in mind that many, many organizations are still working through the impact this bug has on their technology, and many are just as confused as you might be. There will continue to be a lot of uncertainty and possible panicky responses from company representatives who are ill-informed on their company’s official stance on Heartbleed. The vulnerability affects a technology that is sophisticated and not easily explained, and not even the most eloquent among technology professionals can convey the problem and solutions in easy-to-understand terms. During these uncertain times, constant vigilance is the only weapon many of us have at the moment, so keep your eyes open and your IT consultant on speed-dial!
About a year ago, I shared an article from Ars Technica detailing a chilling and degrading hacker activity called “ratting” wherein your computer could be hacked into covertly spying on you. This disturbing trend now appears to be spreading to Android smart phones; for a short while before it was detected and removed, a seemingly legitimate app was available on the Google Play store that was purportedly for parents to keep an eye on what their children were doing on their smart phones. Unfortunately for the 50 or so people who actually downloaded the program, the real purpose of the app was to install a remote access trojan platform on the device which would enable someone to illicitly use the phones cameras and mics to spy on the user, as well as control other aspects of the phone like sending texts, making calls and sending emails.
What this means for you:
The app was built on a software development platform that is being marketed specifically to hackers, and one of the key selling points is this kit’s ability to build apps that can “hide” from Google’s security scans that usually prevent malware from being uploaded to the Play store. Translation: you can expect more apps like the one mentioned above to appear on the Google Play store. Where before you could, with maybe 99% effectiveness, depend on Google to protect you from harmful apps, you can no longer take for granted that if an app appears on the Google Play store that it is 100% legitimate. To protect yourself as an Android user, you should:
- Make sure to have a reputable Anti-malware app installed (I like Webroot’s Security & Antivirus).
- Read carefully the access permissions each app is asking for before installing.
- Pay attention to user reviews and install count. If the app only has a small number of reviews and installs, give it a few days and check back to see the app survives internet scrutiny.
Fortunately, Google has a means to automatically reach out to any Android phone and purge apps that it has found to be harmful, but it’s much safer and less stressful to avoid being victimized in the first place.
The winter holidays are upon us, and with them comes the shopping, traveling and general merry-making. Law enforcement is also warning about the increasing rate of smartphone thefts as criminals take advantage of the increased distraction, armfuls of packages and winter clothing to abscond with devices they know most people carry and use these days. Though you can do a lot to lower your profile as a potential victim, its an virtual guarantee that a certain percentage of you will have your phone stolen or lost, and aside from the loss of the device itself, your data could also be exploited to your further detriment if your device isn’t properly safeguarded against possible theft. CNET has a comprehensive article detailing how you can secure your data and increase your chances of recovering your iOS, Android or Windows smartphone in case it is stolen, but if you are in a hurry (and who isn’t, these days?), I’ll provide a summary of the basics below.
What this means for you:
For all phones:
- Use a pin, password, or fingerprint to lock your phone.
- Encrypt your phone data. iPhones and Windows Phones do this by default, but it must be enabled manually on Android devices.
- Back up your critical data, whether it’s contacts, emails or photos.
For iPhone Users:
- Disable access to any features made available through the lockscreen, such as dialing and texting via Siri.
- Set up an iCloud account and enable “Find my iPhone” so that your device can be tracked in case of loss or theft.
For Android Users:
- Disable access to lock screen features.
- Setup Android Device Manager and make sure tracking and control of your device is enabled.
- If you use a microSD card, be aware that it cannot be wiped remotely like the phone’s internal memory (but it can be encrypted).
For Windows Phone Users:
- Sit back and relax, as tracking is enabled by default and the lock screen doesn’t allow access to anything.
The article is really worth reading. If you truly are pressed for time, skip to the part that is pertinent to your specific phone platform. The author provides much more detail on how each tracking system works, as well as what the systems can and can’t do. It may mean the difference between having a happy holiday or a blue Christmas if (when) you get separated from your smartphone.
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Earlier this year, CEO Thorsten Heins of beleaguered tech company BlackBerry infamously stated, “In five years I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet anymore.” The press had a field day with this quote and the explosive growth of tablets in 2013 alone seems to be proving otherwise. As if to rub Mr. Heins’ and other tablet-doomsayer’s faces in it, October is seeing the launch of multiple new tablets, including new lineups from Microsoft, Nokia and Apple, all essentially debuting on the same day.
Apple dominated the American media on Oct 22 with the debut of “the lightest full-sized tablet” on the market, the iPad Air, weighing in at a diminutive single pound. It also updated the wildly popular iPad Mini with its high-resolution “Retina” display, bringing the 7″ tablet up to par with competing models from Google and Amazon. In an attempt to not be out-done (and sadly not quite succeeding in that effort), Nokia announced its first tablet today as well. The Lumia 2520 will run Microsoft’s Windows RT, a move that analysts questioned given the tepid consumer response to Microsoft’s tablet OS, but is not unexpected in light of the Redmond tech-giant’s recent acquisition of Nokia’s hardware business. Not wanting to be left out of the tablet party, Microsoft held its own midnight release event on Oct 21 at its retail stores around the country to celebrate the arrival of the Surface 2. Despite loud music, flashy displays and enthusiastic staff, the Surface 2 launch parties seemed to be (unsurprisingly) sparsely attended.
What this means for you:
If you’ve been holding off on buying a tablet for some reason, the market is currently overflowing with choices, and many of them are very strong on features and backed by staunch developer support and healthy ecosystems, notably the iOS and Android family of products. Though many are saying it’s too early to tell, the Windows RT and Windows 8 tablets have a stiff, uphill climb in the market, something that is keeping developers away from the OS, leaving Microsoft’s app marketplace relatively barren compared to the competition. There’s been a minor stir of interest in the Surface tablets from the arts industry, primarily because of the hardware’s robust pressure sensitivity, but unless you have a specific use case in mind, I’d steer clear of the Windows tablets for now. If you’ve been concerned about the size and weight of the 10″ tablets (very hard to use as bedtime readers or if you spend any time as a standing commuter) you can’t go wrong with a 7″ tablet from either Apple, Google or Amazon, all of which now feature high-definition screens, robust app stores and great portability.
A new app has appeared on Google’s Play store that purportedly offers Android users the ability to chat with iOS users via Apple’s iMessage platform, and it has security eyebrows raised, primarily because it wasn’t released by Apple. Cydia (app store for jailbroken iPhones) developer Jay Freeman delved into the code of “iMessage for Android” and discovered another alarming fact: the app appears to be authenticating not through Apple’s servers, but through some unknown platform in China, even though it requires a legitimate Apple ID to work. Another developer also noted that this app has the ability to silently download code to your Android smartphone, a permission that could lead to a malware infection. The app is very new and these security peculiarities have yet to be widely verified, but it has already been downloaded from the Play store over 10,000 times.
What this means for you:
Firstly, your Apple ID (which may have money and many, many apps, songs, movies, etc. tied to it) is being passed through an unknown server in China. There is no guarantee that the owners of that server aren’t collecting these IDs for nefarious purposes. Add this to the fact that the app can download code without notifying you, and the scales are now dipping alarmingly towards “dangerous” if not outright “malicious”. Also at stake is the trustworthiness of Google’s Play Store app vetting process – how could this app have possibly made it through without raising some red flags. Sure, there is no love lost between Apple and Google, but Google is usually smart enough to not poison its userbase with a dodgy app just so Android users can text chat with iOS users. It remains to be seen whether this app is truly on the up and up, but all signs indicate otherwise at this point. I’d err on the side of caution and avoid installing this app for now. If you really need to talk to that iPhone user, just send them a text!
Image courtesy of Idea go / FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
Confirming what many commercial security companies already claim, a security bulletin published on the Public Intelligence website by the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation identifies the Android OS as the most attacked mobile operating system. Nearly 80% of all malware threats in 2012 targeting mobile devices were focused on Google’s platform. The distant second place (19%) was held by Nokia’s Symbian OS, most commonly found on older feature phones. At the other end of the spectrum was Apple’s iOS, which despite being one of the most popular mobile devices on the planet, was only targeted less than 1% of the time in 2012.
What this means for you:
The malware focus on Android is not unexpected: the platform is fractured across multiple versions and multiple carriers, and there are hundreds of thousands of phones running older versions of Android that have well-documented security flaws that have been fixed in later versions. Unlike Apple’s relentless updating of the iOS, many Android phones rely on the carrier to push OS updates, which they do reluctantly, if at all, especially to hardware lines that are no longer being sold or considered a significant portion of the market.
Unfortunately, the carriers have also locked down the OS on many models, requiring a series of highly-technical processes to “unlock” and “root” the phone to force an update to the OS. Of course, doing so voids any warranties with the carrier, and has a chance of “bricking” the phone itself if the process is done incorrectly, or if it is updated with an OS that has bugs or is incompatible with that specific model phone.
Here are some things you can do if you find you are using an Android phone running an older version of the OS:
- Contact your carrier to request an OS update. If they tell you one is not forthcoming immediately, or that your particular model is essentially no longer receiving updates, let them know you are concerned about security flaws in the older OS, and ask for an upgrade to recent model phone.
- Whether or not a new Android phone is in your future, you should be extremely careful about “sideloading” apps. Only install apps from Google’s Play store, and be very careful following app install links from anyone. Instead, get the name of the app you want to install, go to the Google Play app already installed on your phone, search and install from there. If you can’t find the app, it’s likely the link was to a sideloading site (and potentially unsafe), or a disguised attempt to get you to install malware on your device.
- Install a malware protection app. Several reputable companies make apps for Android. I’ve been using SecureAnywhere from Webroot for several months now, without issue, and I will soon be testing Kaspersky’s app. Look for a name you recognize, and give their app a try. Some of them might slow your phone down on ocassion as they scan for issues, but the temporary inconvenience may save you from serious heartache later on.
Lest you think Facebook is the only security punching bag getting a beating lately, two significant flaws in the Android application platform have been revealed by overseas security teams. Without going into the gory details, each team has found a different way to create a trojanized APK (the file format in which Android apps are delivered) that is indistinguishable from the original. This would allow an app to appear and function normally, but also execute functions like transmitting your passwords, texts, emails on the sly. Google has already put together a fix and distributed a patch to OEM manufacturers, and supposedly they are able to detect this sort of exploit on the Google Play Store.
You need to worry if you “sideload” apps on your Android phone, which is to say you get apps from sources other than Google Play. Keep in mind, even Amazon’s App store counts as a sideloading source, and as of the moment, they aren’t scanning for this vulnerability.
What this means for you:
Even though Google has issued a fix for this particular vulnerability, they can’t force the update upon the millions of Android phones out there affected by this weakness, as that task lies with the phone manufacturers and the carriers. With the exception of avid power-users, most Android users are unaware that their Android OS may be months or years out of date, primarily because cellular carriers insist on selling phones that use a modified version of the OS that does not automatically get updated when Google updates the core version of Android. On top of this, the carriers are notoriously slow in issuing updates. If you are wondering what folks are talking about when they are discussing “Gingerbread”, “Honeycomb”, “Ice Cream Sandwich” and “Jelly Bean”, they are referring to the various versions of Android OS, where Jelly Bean is the latest. Supposedly this exploit exists as far back as “Donut” (ver 1.6).
Even worse, certain older models of Android phones may never get updated, as the carrier has essentially abandoned firmware updates for phones that are “retired” from active support. Users of these phones have essentially two options: root, unlock and update the phone with a custom version of the Android OS developed by the open source community, or buy a new phone. The former option is definitely not for technically-disinclined. Given the gravity of the vulnerability, the carriers may issue patches for the majority of its phones, but I wouldn’t hold your breath.
Until you are able to verify your Android smartphone is running a version of the OS that fixes this vulnerability, don’t sideload applications. If you want to be extra safe, avoid using smartphone apps that transmit sensitive information like banking passwords, pins and other sensitive personal information. As I’ve reiterated before, exercise caution before convenience, especially when it comes to protecting yourself.
Remember last week when I reported on a “small” privacy blunder committed by Facebook and their data portability app? Security software maker Symantec announced over the weekend that they noticed Facebook’s Android app behaving inappropriately, to the tune of uploading the phone number of the device to Facebook’s servers the first time the app is installed and launched, prior to any logins or other interaction by the phone owner. According to Facebook, they never used this information, and have since deleted it from their databases. Seeing as the Android Facebook app has been downloaded by several hundred million people, up until this “bug” was discovered and remedied, several hundred million people had their phone numbers harvested by Facebook without their explicit permission.
What this means for you:
Maintaining control over the privacy of your personal data requires constant vigilance on your part, and trustworthiness on the part of those who are requesting the use of your data. In this specific instance, a list of several hundred million mobile numbers isn’t very useful without any other meta data, but it highlights the larger issue at hand: can Facebook be trusted to be good stewards of your personal data? Should they have ever been trusted to the extent that most people have up until now? Recent events should put a great deal of caution into even the most open social networker, and should serve as a red-flag warning to everyone. Organizations are only as good as the people who run them. Apps are only as good as the people who program them. If your privacy is important to you, pay close attention to how others respect that privacy. Don’t reward bad or careless behavior with your dollars or loyalty, and don’t let inertia alone keep you from making informed choices.
FYI: “Facepalm”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facepalm
BlackBerry (formerly RIM) has been struggling in the smartphone market, having recently fallen into 4th place behind even Microsoft’s fledgling foray into that space. Despite the recent release and generally positive reviews of their 10-series phones, the mobile device manufacturer ceded their corporate dominance years ago to the crushing flood of iOS and Android devices primarily because of the company’s failure to stay competitive on the software side. In a move that has analysts scratching their head, BlackBerry is now making a play via software with a new platform called “Secure Work Spaces” which aims to allow for peaceful and secure co-existance of personal and corporate data on smartphones, including iOS and Android devices.
What this means for you:
Corporations struggle with allowing their employees to use corporate phones for business, and vice versa, with corporate phones and personal usage, primarily because the risk of security breaches is much higher on the personal side. BlackBerry’s new platform is designed to create a partition that keeps the two work spaces (see what they did there?) separate, giving enterprises complete control over corporate data without the distasteful invasion and control over the personal aspects of devices. There are other companies working on this same concept, and have been in the space longer, but BlackBerry’s reputation (and probably some nostalgic sentiment) may win the heart’s and minds of corporate IT managers. Seeing as BlackBerry has historically been a company that depends on hardware sales for revenue, many think that BlackBerry is either making a desperate or cunning pivot to the software space, knowing that there is little chance they can recover any ground in the mobile device race.
Apple officially announced the next version of their mobile device operating system at the Worldwide Developer Conference on June 10th. The rumors of a redesigned interface proved to be true, as iOS 7 showed off a completely reskinned interface that features a more muted color scheme with “flattened” elements, a marked departure from the infamous “lickable” buttons and widgets of previous iterations. The new look was also backed by many updates to interface mechanics, expanded multitasking, redesigns of some of the built-in apps, and the launch of Apple’s own streaming music service, a direct competitor of similar services like Spotify, Pandora, and Google’s Music All Access.
What this means for you:
If you have an iPhone 4 or iPad 2 or newer, then the OS update will be automatically pushed out to you when it is released this Fall. Aside from the new look, iPhone users will enjoy the new “control center” function – a slide-up widget that allows you to access commonly used iPhone settings like toggles for Wifi, Bluetooth, Airplane Mode. The expanded multi-tasking capabilities will now grant the ability to all apps to work in the background (iOS 6 restricted this capability to a handful Apple apps only) without significant drains on the battery, so content-based apps can grab content as it becomes available (push-based) versus when requested by the user (pull-based).
If you are an Android user, you may be scratching your head and wondering why it’s taken Apple so long to bring features like the above to the iPhone. To be fair, Apple has been focusing their energy on a foolproof OS, which sometimes means making compromises on capabilities, but with an eroding marketshare and Samsung hot on their heels, the gloves have come off in the smartphone wars. For a full list of features, you can visit Apple’s iOS 7 website.