What is Denial Of Service (DoS) Attacks ?

Denial Of Service (DoS) Attacks

A denial of service (DoS) attack is an attack that clogs up so much memory on the target system that it can not serve it’s users, or it causes the target system to crash, reboot, or otherwise deny services to legitimate users.There are several different kinds of dos attacks as discussed below:-

Ping Of Death

The ping of death attack sends oversized ICMP datagrams (encapsulated in IP packets) to the victim.The Ping command makes use of the ICMP echo request and echo reply messages and it’s commonly used to determine whether the remote host is alive. In a ping of death attack, however, ping causes the remote system to hang, reboot or crash. To do so the attacker uses, the ping command in conjuction with -l argument (used to specify the size of the packet sent) to ping the target system that exceeds the maximum bytes allowed by TCP/IP (65,536).
example:- c:/>ping -l 65540 hostname
Fortunately, nearly all operating systems these days are not vulnerable to the ping of death attack.

Teardrop Attack

Whenever data is sent over the internet, it is broken into fragments at the source system and reassembled at the destination system. For example you need to send 3,000 bytes of data from one system to another. Rather than sending the entire chunk in asingle packet, the data is broken down into smaller packets as given below:
* packet 1 will carry bytes 1-1000.
* packet 2 will carry bytes 1001-2000.
* packet 3 will carry bytes 2001-3000.
In teardrop attack, however, the data packets sent to the target computer contais bytes that overlaps with each other.
(bytes 1-1500) (bytes 1001-2000) (bytes 1500-2500)
When the target system receives such a series of packets, it can not reassemble the data and therefore will crash, hang, or reboot.
Old Linux systems, Windows NT/95 are vulnerable.

SYN – Flood Attack

In SYN flooding attack, several SYN packets are sent to the target host, all with an invalid source IP address. When the target system receives these SYN packets, it tries to respond to each one with a SYN/ACK packet but as all the source IP addresses are invalid the target system goes into wait state for ACK message to receive from source. Eventually, due to large number of connection requests, the target systems’ memory is consumed. In order to actually affect the target system, a large number of SYN packets with invalid IP addresses must be sent.

Land Attack

A land attack is similar to SYN attack, the only difference being that instead of including an invalid IP address, the SYN packet include the IP address of the target sysetm itself. As a result an infinite loop is created within the target system, which ultimately hangs and crashes.Windows NT before Service Pack 4 are vulnerable to this attack.

Smurf Attack

There are 3 players in the smurf attack–the attacker,the intermediary (which can also be a victim) and the victim. In most scenarios the attacker spoofs the IP source address as the IP of the intended victim to the intermediary network broadcast address. Every host on the intermediary network replies, flooding the victim and the intermediary network with network traffic.
Result:- Performance may be degraded such that the victim, the victim and intermediary networks become congested and unusable, i.e. clogging the network and preventing legitimate users from obtaining network services.

UDP – Flood Attack

Two UDP services: echo (which echos back any character received) and chargen (which generates character) were used in the past for network testing and are enabled by default on most systems. These services can be used to launch a DOS by connecting the chargen to echo ports on the same or another machine and generating large amounts of network traffic.

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Firefox to introduce click-to-play option to protect against dangerous plugins

Jared Wein of Mozilla blogged last month about a new feature he was developing for Firefox 14 called "click-to-play". The idea is to block the default loading of plugins like Java and Flash when surfing to reduce the memory footprint and provide protection against exploitation of plugin vulnerabilities.

       

If you have ever used NoScript, ScriptNo or Flashblock you will be familiar with this idea. When you load a page like YouTube that has an embedded Flash/PDF/Java object, instead of it instantly loading the video you will see a black box with a logo representing the plugin. When you click on the box it will launch the plugin and the video or other content will be rendered.

Writing in ZDNet's Zero Day blog, Dancho Danchev expressed his opinion yesterday that all Firefox's adoption of this technique will accomplish is slowing down the systematic exploitation of plugins and not really provide meaningful protection.

Sorry Dancho, I don't think I agree with you on this one. While Danchev makes some valid points regarding the continuing prevalence of social engineering to propagate threats, implementing more secure default options are always a good thing.

Many drive-by exploits are invisible to the user and don't involve any social engineering. I would argue the vast majority of what we see in SophosLabs doesn't involve trickery, users simply visiting the wrong blog at the wrong time results in malware being installed without the user even being aware that the page contains a Java applet or Flash object.

This may lead the attackers to move toward social engineering more frequently, but isn't that a good thing? Make users aware of the content they are running and give them a chance to make a decision? I am sure many users will still make the wrong decision, but I certainly want the opportunity to make the correct decision rather than be instantly exploited.

The best example I can think of was a malicious PDF file that was part of an investigation I was involved with. The victim would receive an email with a plausible looking link. They click on the link and the website they are directed to pauses for a second, then proceeds to load with the promised content.

What happened? Their browser loaded a booby-trapped PDF without the user even knowing that a PDF file had been downloaded. After exploiting them the page simply redirected them to the originally promised content to allay suspicion.

My opinion? Good on ya' Mozilla. Keep making the bad guys job harder and giving Firefox users better security by default. No single feature wins the war, but every battle counts.

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Apple update to OS X Lion exposes encryption passwords

Apple's had a rough time lately on the security front. Last month it was caught out having delayed the release of a security update for Java, resulting in more than 600,000 Macs being recruited into a botnet. Now a quality assurance mistake can cause OS X users' FileVault encryption passwords to be exposed.

On Friday, David Emery posted to an encryption mailing list disclosing this flaw in the latest OS X Lion security update, 10.7.3, which was released in February.

It appears that a debug option was accidentally left enabled in FileVault, resulting in the user's password being saved in plain text in a log file accessible outside of
the encrypted area.

Anyone with access to the disk can read the file containing the password and use it to log into the encrypted area of the disk, rendering the encryption pointless and permitting access to potentially sensitive documents. This could occur through theft, physical access, or a piece of malware that knows where to look.

To my knowledge, this only applies to users of Snow Leopard who used the FileVault encryption option for their home directories. It does not impact users of FileVault2 who have turned on Apple's full disk encryption, nor does it impact users who did not upgrade from Snow Leopard.

The best course of action is to implement a full disk encryption solution like Sophos SafeGuard for Mac or Apple's included FileVault 2.

                 

Additionally, vulnerable users who do not encrypt their Time Machine backups risk replicating this log file to their backups, which could mean long-term storage of their unencrypted password.

This proves a very important point when it comes to encryption. While choosing a secure algorithm is important, it's rarely the most important factor. How products store, manage and secure keys and passwords is the most common failure point in assuring data protection.

This incident demonstrates the importance of implementation over technical arguments like key strength and password complexity. That Apple promises AES encryption doesn't mean anything if it chooses to store your password in an accessible log file.

Let's hope Apple is able to fix this problem quickly. However, the possibility that the plain text password has been backed up and the difficulty of ensuring both copies and the original plain text password are securely erased means retrieval could still be possible even after the fix is applied.

Once Apple users receive and apply the fix, they would be well advised to consider this password compromised, change it and ensure it is not used on any other systems.

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Microsoft cracks down on racy apps in Windows phone store

Microsoft is working with developers to clean up apps in the Windows Phone Marketplace that contain racy or sexual content. The company said in a blog post it would contact developers whose apps icons and tiles contain racy imagery and that it would enforce its sexual content guidelines more stringently.

In a similar fashion to Apple’s no-nonsense approach to sexual content in the App Store, Microsoft Windows Phone Marketplace guidelines already ban content that “a reasonable person would consider to be adult or borderline adult content.” But Todd Brix, Microsoft's senior director for Windows Marketplace, said, “a more stringent interpretation and enforcement of our existing content policy” will now be in place.

It’s easy to see what Microsoft is talking about. A simple search for the word sex in the Windows Phone Marketplace returns just under 100 results, and the icons and artwork used in some of these apps could be seen as overly revealing of what you expect to find inside. Because Microsoft wants mass adoption of Windows Phones, it will have to offer reassurances to parents that it’s safe for their kids to play with a Windows Phone without being exposed to racy content.

“This is about presenting the right content to the right customer and ensuring that apps meet our standards. We will also monitor customer reaction to apps and reserve the right to remove ones that our customers find offensive,” Brix explained. He said only “a handful” of developers will be affected by the changes, and they will have to address issues relating to the icons and titles of their apps, or they will be removed from the store.

Microsoft’s terms seem to be lenient enough though, as Brix said, “What we do permit is the kind of content you occasionally see on prime-time TV or the pages of a magazine’s swimsuit issue,” so the company is not actually banning sex-related apps. The suggestion for developers is to show male or female models in silhouette, or drawings, rather than provocative imagery.

The racy app purge from Microsoft is a part of wider changes the company is implementing for the Windows Phone Marketplace, which hosts some 70,000 apps (still a fraction of Apple’s 500,000 and Google’s 450,000). Other new measures include cleaning up keywords and categories, thus making searching for apps more effective.

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7 New Educational Startups Founded By Minorities in Tech

One of today’s most challenging yet promising markets is the educational system. If you want to see startups hungry to disrupt an industry, look no further. Founders are trying to solve the problems plaguing our education system: including reconciling student debt, providing students with the skills required to land a job both before and after graduation, and offering the best course material online regardless of age, location and educational level.

Millions of people are headed to the Internet to learn. And now everyone, from professors to entrepreneurs, are looking to launch a platform to solve the problem of a broken traditional educational system  – And many believe that Silicon Valley will have the answers.

If you look at the demographics (high school dropout rates, high unemployment and the number of people taking online courses) you’ll find a common denominator; minorities are leading in three categories. In 2011, only 57 percent of blacks and Latinos graduated from high school, compared to 80 percent of Asians and 78 percent of whites. While data reports that only 1% of tech startups are founded by African Americans, you’ll find a significant number of educational startups founded by minorities (women, Hispanics and African Americans) in the now-increasing 1% of minority tech startups.

So where are all these startups hiding you ask? Well here are seven up-and-coming educational startups founded by minorities that I believe will have an significant impact in the educational space  – not just for minorities but for anyone looking to learn online, current students and teachers alike.

1. UniversityNow

The mission of Universit
yNow is to help ensure that affordable, high quality post-secondary education is available to people everywhere. To accomplish this, UniversityNow is building a network of the most affordable and accessible accredited universities in the world, starting with the launch of New Charter University.
Gene Wade, Co-Founder

2. Houlton Institute

Houlton packages courses into credentialed and non-credentialed programs targeting adult learners. By revenue sharing with partnering institutions, partners are able to monetize their expertise. Houlton creates one-of-a-kind online programs from its unique and exclusive partner network, which are disseminated via Houlton’s scalable, personalized, web-based learning platform.
Dennis Robinson and Dan Merritts, Co-Founders

3. Demo Lesson

Demo Lesson is a revolutionary online hiring platform that gives teachers the power to market themselves.
Mandela Schumacher Hodge and Brian Martinez, Co-Founders

4. Qeyno Labs

Qeyno Labs works with local partners and schools to bring technology-enabled career discovery into under-served classrooms using game-like rewards and mentorship from successful professionals.
Kalimah Priforce, Co-Founder

5. StockOfU

StockOfU allows individuals and businesses to buy “shares” of college students in order to help subsidize a student’s education costs.
Ty McDuffie, Founder

6. Pathbrite

Pathbrite delivers next-generation solutions that help students and learners of all ages collect, track and showcase a lifetime of achievement, and recommend pathways for continuous success.
Heather Hiles, Founder and CEO

7. Code Academy

Code Academy is an 11-week program that teaches people how to build web applications.
Neal Sales-Griffin and Mike McGee, Co-Founders

With these seven startups, and many, many more launching shortly, the educational system is ready for disruption. And after that, the real question is “What impact will these educational startups will have on our economy?”  And “Will they prepare students to land qualified jobs after graduation? Or provide them the skills to launch their own businesses?”

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Amazon releases desktop app for its cloud storage service

If you have an Amazon account, you also have five gigabytes of free online storage for your files at your disposal through the Amazon Cloud Drive service. You may not have known that, though, because accessing that space hasn't been as easy as it is with services like Dropbox and SkyDrive.

That changed Wednesday with Amazon's release of a free desktop program for its cloud storage service. There are versions of the software for Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Mac 10.6 and 10.7.

The software is a cinch to install in Windows. After downloading the program from Amazon, you simply double-click the app's installer. A window will pop up. Click install. At the end of the install, click "finish" and another window will appear asking for your Amazon log-in information. Fill in the fields, and you're ready to start uploading files to the Amazon cloud.

When the drive app is running, you can send files to the cloud by right-clicking on a file on your computer, hovering over the "send to" option and choosing Amazon Cloud Drive from the "send to" menu.

You can also upload files to the cloud drive by dragging them to the cloud icon that appears in the system tray.

When you want to download or manage files on your cloud drive, you have to access it via a web browser. You can go directly to the drive at Amazon's website or right-click on the task tray icon and choose "Open Cloud Drive website" from a pop-up menu.

Website access to files doesn't seem as convenient to me as the kind of local file management that can be done with Dropbox, Google Drive, and SkyDrive.

For example, when you open Dropbox on a desktop, an Explorer-like window appears. You can drag files into the window to upload them Dropbox. You can drag files out of the window to download them. You can also create and delete folders and files--all without diddling with a web browser.

Nevertheless, the new Amazon software at least makes saving digital content to the company's cloud drive much easier and makes the service more useful.

By the way, if 5GB of free cloud storage isn't enough for you, Amazon offers pretty reasonable rates for paid storage: They start at 20GB for $20 a year to 1TB for a $1000 a year.

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Intel-McAfee developing cloud-security strategy

Intel, which last year acquired McAfee for its security expertise, today described work it is doing to provide enterprises with a way to secure data stored in public or hybrid cloud environments.

Jason Waxman, general manager of Intel's Cloud Infrastructure Group, joined with Greg Brown, vice president of network security at McAfee, to describe the strategy that's being pursued to let IT managers gain better understanding about the security of their cloud workloads.

McAfee's ePolicy Orchestrator (ePO) management console, which has long been a workhouse to aggregate multi-vendor security information in addition to McAfee's own products, is well-positioned to audit cloud environments.

By using McAfee ePO with Intel Trusted Execution Technology (TXT) in TXT-enabled Intel servers, it's possible to establish a baseline determination of assurance and confidence when undertaking tasks such as transferring workloads from server to server , for instance, using VMware's VMotion, they said.

"It's a hardware-based root of trust," said Waxman, noting the technology allows servers to be defined as "trusted" or "untrusted." When combined with McAfee's MOVE AV anti-malware for use in virtualized environments, it's possible to also learn if the server has any "issues identified." In addition, the McAfee Cloud Security Platform, which has been available for some time to allow IT departments to apply access and security policies in the cloud, is being developed further to provide integrity assessment, asset control and protection, and broader auditing capabilities, Intel said. Other McAfee security products, such as Identity Manager and Deep Defender, are also seen as contributing to the security assessment and protections under the strategy.

The end goal is to give IT managers a way to perform a wide variety of security checks on both the servers, usually virtualized, and the data they make use of in public cloud and hybrid cloud arrangements.

"We believe we have a pathway to deliver that vision," said Brown. He noted today the Cloud Security Platform can secure data traffic between the enterprise and the cloud. He said in the future, the goal is to enable perform a wide range of security assessments.

When asked whether the Intel/McAfee strategy for enterprise-to-cloud security will rely on Intel/McAfee products alone, Waxman replied TXT might work with other solutions, but "we'd like to see best practices where people use all of these technologies together." He said other announcements related to the Intel/McAfee cloud security strategy are soon expected in terms of product support.

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Android Network Toolkit (ANTI) Review - Pentest at the push of a button

Recently White-Hat Hacker, Itzhak "Zuk" Avraham, the founder of zImperium unveiled its new app in Blackhat / Defcon19, introducing a new concept where both home users and local IT can have the same tools to, at the push of a button, check for their security faults. The new zImperium product, named Android Network Toolkit (or in short - ANTI), allows professional penetration testers, ethical hackers, IT and home users to scan for security issues in their network.

In a few simple clicks ANTI covers the most advanced attack vectors in order to check for vulnerabilities, even those that up until now could only be performed by top-notch penetration testers. This means that while you might think that you’re safe because you have a firewall on, with ANTI you can check and prove it (or add it to your penetration testing report if you’re doing this as a job). Know if your desktop is easily hackable only a few clicks away by using the ANTI “Penetrate CSE” button, which will perform both MiTM and inject Client Side Exploit to check if you have the latest version of a vulnerable software (e.g: outdated java). You only need to imagine re-producing this using other currently available methods to appreciate why ANTI has gotten so much respect from our community.

“Penetrate CSE” is part of the newly released ANTI3, which covers more vulnerabilities than before. The authors at zImperium will keep improving this product and add even more vulnerabilities in the future.


Upon successful client-side / remote exploitation, the report is updated with the current findings that a specific computer wasn’t patched for a certain vulnerability. Performing MiTM and injecting exploits has never been so easy for the professional penetration tester and is now also available for the home-user and the IT - you don’t have to be a security guru to run security checks!

ANTI runs on Android version 2.1 and up, while CSE vector only one of several capabilities that makes this tool very powerful, especially when it runs on your smart phone!



The app is also capable of mapping your network, scanning for vulnerable devices or configuration issues. It is for use by the amateur security enthusiast home user to the professional penetration tester, ANTI provides many other useful features such as: easy connection to open ports, visual sniffing (URLs & Cookies) and - establishing MiTM attacks (using predefined and user-defined filters), Server Side / Client Side Exploits, Password cracker to determine password’s safety level, Replace Image as visual in demos and Denial of Service attacks. All this is packed into a very user-friendly and intuitive Android app (and soon to be released iOS app).

As zImperium chose to enable ANTI via their website, rather than through the market, thus the APK is installed manually by a few simple steps:
Go to http://www.zImperium.com/anti.html and follow the instructions there. You will receive a download link to your email. Open this link from your smartphone and then install the app as instructed. (Make sure that 3rd Party Applications is enabled in Settings->Applications->Unknown Sources.)

iOS users can join the list of upcoming (public) BETA testers in the same page, by clicking on the Apple icon.

On each run, ANTI will prompt to map the connected network, and when done, it will suggest scanning it for known vulnerabilities and misconfiguration on the targets found. Once a vulnerable target (to remote attacks) is found, it will be marked with red stamp and will appear on the report as a vulnerable device. Displayed in the report is the issue (e.g : MS08-067), how to solve the issue (Windows Update) and how to defend from similar threats in the future (Block port 445 on firewall).

We start by mapping the network - ANTI will scan and detect devices connected to the network. Each device will be displayed with a suitable icon identifying its hardware type and/or the operating system. We can then further scan for vulnerabilities on each of the devices found.

 Now that we have our available targets displayed, we can choose any of them to try and penetrate, connect, or sniff network traffic.

The sniffer captures network traffic and displays images, URL’s, user/password combinations, and cookies - all this is collected from the target in real-time, and displayed on ANTI for viewing and examining. We can click on any of the URL’s/cookies to visit the same site our target is visiting.

ANTI also allows us to connect to open ports on the targets, also displaying the opened ports that were found on previous scans.

After playing a bit with the app, I feel comfortable enough to try and penetrate one of my computers, running Windows7 or Mac OS X that are updated only to 1 month prior to this report. I choose the target and click ‘Penetrate CSE’. This plug-in is injecting javascript code using MiTM into target's traffic and redirect traffic to a URL serving Client Side Exploit. Once the target got exploited, ANTI reveals several functions that can be executed over the exploited target: Send screenshot of the current desktop, execute command. The controller functionality is implemented in a very easy-to-use and fun (!) way, allowing both advanced users and home-users to understand the risks of the found vulnerability - while zImperium censored any real possibility to cause real damage to the target, they allow basic information gathering and real life demos such as ejecting the CD-ROM, or grabbing a screenshot (for the assessment’s final report).

I decided to try the password-cracker on my router. I then realized (the good old hard way) that I better change my password ASAP since it took ANTI less than 30 seconds to crack! Next I executed the cracker on my target running a SQL server and, lo and behold, ANTI didn’t discover the passwords - due to use of high complexity passwords. These results were enough to get me to (finally!) change my router’s password.

There are additional functionalities built into ANTI, such as a unique and fully functional HTTP server that allows publishing files on your device, as well as uploading files to the device, visual traceroute using google-maps, and more.

Once we are done testing, the most important ANTI function is the Report - Everything we have found in the network, vulnerable devices, opened ports, and extra information that will later assist when preparing the assessment report - all is summed up in text and emailed. ANTI3 supports multiple networks so now you can fully use it for your daily penetration tests. And everything is extremely user-friendly!

Download ANTI3 from zImperium website

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Intel unveils new Core processors code-named Ivy Bridge

Intel on Monday announced its first third-generation Core processors code-named Ivy Bridge, which are faster and more power efficient than Core processors now used in laptops and desktops.

The initial Ivy Bridge lineup includes 13 quad-core processors for high-end desktops, laptops and all-in-one designs, said Kirk Skaugen, corporate vice president and general manager of Intel's PC Client Group at an event in San Francisco that was webcast.

Intel will announce new Ivy Bridge chips for ultrabooks and mainstream laptops and desktops in the coming months, he said. The company has 570 PC designs -- 270 desktop and all-in-one and 300 laptop designs -- in addition to the 100 ultrabook designs for Ivy Bridge already in the works.

The ultrabook chips will be dual-core and low voltage, and small enough to fit into the thin designs of ultrabooks, which will be no thicker than 18 millimeters (0.7 inches). There have been "priority calls" in building Ivy Bridge ultrabook chips related to the thinner system designs, but the chip production is ramping up fast, Skaugen said.

Intel hopes future Ivy Bridge ultrabooks will blur the lines between laptops and tablets with touchscreens, long battery life, always-on connectivity, and gesture and voice recognition capabilities. Intel has said starting prices of ultrabooks will drop to US$699 by the end of the year.

Intel's first Ivy Bridge chips include eight Core i7 processors, five Core i5 processors, and one unlocked Core i7-3920XM Extreme Edition processor, which Skaugen called the world's fastest mobile processor. Acer announced new systems based on the quad-core Core i5 and i7 processors, with desktops priced from $699 and $1,199.

Most laptops and desktops today come with Core processors code-named Sandy Bridge, which were introduced early last year. The new Ivy Bridge chips provide up to twice the high-definition multimedia and 3D graphics performance and a 20 percent CPU improvement, Skaugen said. Acer has said that it measured Ivy Bridge processors providing a 20 percent CPU performance improvement compared to Sandy Bridge processors.

3D transistors are another major factor in performance improvements with Ivy Bridge chips. Those transistors improve application and graphics performance while preserving laptop battery life. Intel has said that 3D transistors -- part of Intel's new 22-nanometer manufacturing process -- will consume a little less than half the power and be 37 percent faster than the company's existing 32-nm process chips, which have 2D transistors. The 3D transistor technology replaces a flat, 2D transistor arrangement with a 3D structure that rises up from the silicon substrate.

There are also new security and graphics improvements with the new chips, which were not previously available. The new third-generation Core processors has on-chip support for DirectX 11, which will boost the graphics performance on Windows systems.

In the chip redesign, the company implemented a new graphics subsystem with twice the number of transistors that allowed it to boost graphics performance, Skaugen said. The new HD 4000 and HD 2500 graphics cores support input of up to three monitors at the same time.

The Thunderbolt interconnect will also start reaching PCs via motherboards supporting the Ivy Bridge platform. Thunderbolt, introduced over a year ago, is a high-speed connector technology to move data between computers and peripherals, and is mostly found on Apple's Macintosh PCs. Thunderbolt laptops are expected to come later this year from PC makers like Lenovo, Acer and Asus.

Intel has also implemented the new QuickSync 2.0 on Ivy Bridge chips for quicker transcoding of specific video formats. The new technology can transcode video 23 times faster than a three-year-old PC, Skaugen said. The new Quick Sync technology is twice faster than the same technology introduced in last year's Sandy Bridge Core microprocessors.

The company also introduced new features to keep PCs secure at the operating system level. OS Key and OS Guard features will provide hardware-level security to prevent malware attacks and will be available on PCs running Microsoft's upcoming Windows 8 or Linux operating systems, Skaugen said. Intel has also implemented a new antitheft technology to lock down stolen PCs and the new version will be able to unlock systems via SMS.

There are some hardware-level improvements as well. Data will shuffle inside PCs a lot quicker, thanks to on-chip support from the new PCI-Express 3.0, the successor to the current PCI-Express 2.0 data transfer protocols. PCIe 3.0 can move data at 8 gigatransfers per second, which is faster than PCIe 2.0, which had a speed of 5 gigatransfers per second.

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Vodafone offers $1.68 billion for Cable & Wireless Worldwide

Vodafone has offered to acquire Cable & Wireless Worldwide (CWW) for APS1.04 billion (US$1.68 billion), as it aims to strengthen its enterprise offerings and network holdings, the company said Monday.

CWW owns the U.K.'s largest fiber network for business users, and an international cable network spanning approximately 425,000 kilometers, according to its website.

"This will strengthen our enterprise business both in the U.K. and internationally," said Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao during a conference call presenting the deal. "We are convinced that we are getting interesting assets," he said.

The deal would make Vodafone the operator of the second-largest telecommunications network in the U.K., based on revenue, according to Vodafone. Today, Vodafone operates the fourth-largest U.K. network by revenue.

Vodafone first confirmed its interest in CWW in February. A Vodafone acquisition of CWW makes very good sense, Shaun Collins, CEO at market research company CCS Insight, said at the time. Enterprise and fixed services are Vodafone's growth engines, and buying CWW would help the operator expand its offerings, he said.

Also, CWW has the highest penetration of the business fixed services market in Asia-Pacific of the European and U.S.-owned telecoms service providers, David Molony, principal analyst at Ovum, said via email.

CWW's directors have agreed to recommend the deal, the company said, while according to Vodafone shareholders that own about 18.6 percent of the shares have also agreed to the deal.

Vodafone reserves the right to increase its offer if a another company comes up with a competing bid, it said.

Tata Communications had also showed an interest in acquiring the company, but pulled out last week, according to CWW.

Cable & Wireless Worldwide was created in November 2009 when Cable and Wireless announced its intention to separate its Communications and Worldwide business units. Last year, ex-Vodafone executive Gavin Darby took over as CWW's CEO.

Vodafone expects the deal will be approved during the third quarter.

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Android apps: record taps like smartphone keylogger or give your Android rabies

As you hold your smartphone and type, the phone vibrates, and security researchers have created software that uses those typing keystroke vibrations as a type of keylogger for Android smartphones. University of California security researchers Hao Chen and Liang Cai developed an Android app, TouchLogger, to show a relationship between keystroke vibrations and the keys that are being tapped. In fact, the privacy attacking app "correctly inferred more than 70% of the keys typed on a number-only soft keyboard on a smartphone." The researchers said TouchLogger should perform even better on tablet computers and devices that have larger screens.

The monitoring of motion that infers keystrokes begins after a user has installed TouchLogger, and granted "motion sensor privilege." Motion-sensor output is not regarded as private by mobile operating systems, so they hope to raise awareness that side channel attacks using motion can leak confidential data. Chen will present his research at the HotSec '11 conference in San Francisco, California.

According to the paper, TouchLogger: Inferring Keystrokes On Touch Screen From Smartphone Motion [PDF], "Attacks using sensors on smartphone raises the awareness of privacy attacks on smartphone sensors. Besides the obvious privacy concern over the GPS sensor, researchers have shown attacks using the camera and microphone. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first to show the privacy risks of motion sensors."
The TouchLogger app "infers the landing locations of the typing finger based on the device orientation and then looks up the corresponding keys based on the current soft keyboard configuration." The keys that correspond with digits 1 and 9 have the highest accuracy. How hard you tap the smartphone, "resistance force" and where the supporting hand holds the smartphone are all factors which affect angles and keystroke vibrations. Researchers discovered that the supporting hand portion might be the only "significant impact" on the TouchLogger accuracy.

This image of the TouchLogger data collection app is "Figure 3" from the research paper.

While Chen said he hasn't seen proof of criminals using touchscreen keyloggers to secretly monitor and steal confidential data from smartphone users, crooks may already being using motion as a side channel attack.
Another little Android app tidbit includes animal activists tainting the an older version of the 'Dog Wars' game app with a "Dogbite" trojan.  The Beta 0.981 version is not in the official Android Market but is still circulating on pirate sites. Symantec reported, "Once started, the service proceeds to send out a text message to everyone on the contact list of the compromised device with the following message: 'I take pleasure in hurting small animals, just thought you should know that'."

While Symantec's Irfan Asrar discovered the compromised device attempts to sign up to a PETA text/alert service, "we have no reason to believe that PETA had anything to do with this app, and that it is most likely the work of someone attempting to associate the app with PETA or to gain sympathy by the association."

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iPhone hacked into spiPhone to eavesdrop and track what you type on nearby PC

You sit down at your desk, set down your mobile phone, boot your computer and then start work. Would it occur to you that a hacker might be using your smartphone as a spying device to track what you were typing?

Thanks to a hack by a research team at George Institute of Technology, your mobile phone can now be turned into a spiPhone that eavesdrops on the sound of your fingers tapping away on the keyboard to detect pairs of keystrokes and determine what you're typing. According to Georgia Tech, the snooping works by "using a smartphone accelerometer - the internal device that detects when and how the phone is tilted - to sense keyboard vibrations as you type to decipher complete sentences with up to 80% accuracy."

Here's the deal, you could download an innocent looking app that doesn't ask for any special permission to access your smartphone sensors. But whammo! You could be a targeted victim for spying because most mobile phones have no accelerometer security and request no permission for access to the accelerometer. You would not know the app was laced with a specially crafted malware to turn your phone into a spiPhone.

In case you are unfamiliar with an accelerometer, it can be found in all sorts of consumer electronics for the purposes of detecting motion input, orientation sensing, or be used for image stabilization. Accelerometers are common in smartphones "to present landscape or portrait views of the device's screen, based on the way the device is being held." In fact, accelerometers are inmany devices such as Wii remotes and nunchuks, Nintendo 3DS, and PS3 DualShock 3 remotes, car collision notification systems that call for help after "detecting crash-strength G-forces," and even "sleep phase" alarm clocks use an accelerometer to sense a sleeper's movement so it will not awaken a person during the REM phase.

Although the accelerometer spying experiments started with an iPhone 3GS, it was too difficult to decipher the typing results. Patrick Traynor, assistant professor in Georgia Tech's School of Computer Science, said, "But then we tried an iPhone 4, which has an added gyroscope to clean up the accelerometer noise, and the results were much better. We believe that most smartphones made in the past two years are sophisticated enough to launch this attack."

Researchers previously tapped into microphones for this type of attack, but manufacturers have installed security precautions in mobile phones' microphones; when a user installs a new app, the phone's OS asks if the app can access the mic. While a phone's microphone is much more sensitive and can analyze vibrations about 44,000 times per second, compared to an accelerometer which samples vibrations only 100 times per second, the accelerometers in most phones have no security precautions.

 "The way we see this attack working is that you, the phone's owner, would request or be asked to download an innocuous-looking application, which doesn't ask you for the use of any suspicious phone sensors," said Henry Carter, a PhD student in computer science and one of the study's co-authors. "Then the keyboard-detection malware is turned on, and the next time you place your phone next to the keyboard and start typing, it starts listening."

The eavesdropping technique does not detect single keystrokes, but "works through probability and by detecting pairs of keystrokes." It "listens" to "keyboard events" in pairs, then determines if the keys typed were on the left or right side of the keyboard and if they were close to each other or farther apart. Then it takes those pairs of keys depressed and runs them against a preloaded dictionary with 58,000 words, "each word of which has been broken down along similar measurements (i.e., are the letters left/right, near/far on a standard QWERTY keyboard)." It works reliably on words that are at least 3 letters and can accurately decipher what was typed about 80% of the time.

Traynor said not to be paranoid that hackers are spying on your keystrokes through your iPhones. "The likelihood of someone falling victim to an attack like this right now is pretty low," he said. "This was really hard to do. But could people do it if they really wanted to? We think yes." Until manufacturers build in some security on accelerometers, Traynor added that users can get around this vulnerability by keeping their mobile phones in their pockets or purses, or move the phone further away from the keyboard.

The findings of this research, "(sp)iPhone: Decoding Vibrations From Nearby Keyboards Using Mobile Phone Accelerometers," and will be presented this week at the 18th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security in Chicago.

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Two free security programs for Mac users

Here are two free applications that will help protect your Mac from malware, viruses and trojans.

1. Sophos Anti-Virus Home Edition

Official description:

"Stops all threats, even those designed for Windows. Not only is your computer safe, files you send to other computers are safe from threats too. Thanks to Live Anti-Virus, you have a direct line to SophosLabs for the latest threat intelligence.

You might not want to immediately delete any bad files our scans find. No problem. You have the flexibility to quarantine questionable files and check them again later, or you can have them immediately removed from your computer. The choice is yours.

We've put the entire force of our business-strength threat expertise behind Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac. That means you're using the same product that protects organizations like Conair, the Paideia School and Miami Dade Public Schools.

We keep our antivirus light and easy. Once installed, it'll work quietly in the background with your choice of scanning on-access, on-demand or on a schedule. And of course, it will alert you when it finds something nasty."

2. ClamX AV

Official description:

"ClamXav is a free virus scanner for Mac OS X. It uses the very popular ClamAV open source antivirus engine as a back end and has the ability to detect both Windows and Mac threats.

ClamXav can be setup up as passive or active: scan only the files you tell it to or your entire hard drive, whichever you prefer; you can also choose to activate Sentry to monitor your hard drive and scan new files as they arrive.

Clean, simple-to-use interface
Clearly lists infected files
Free virus definitions (usually updated daily)
Save your favourite scan locations for easy access
Customise the toolbar - or hide it entirely
Send selected files to quarantine or trash with one click
Specify files to exclude using plain text* or by using drag & drop from the Finder
Specify schedules to update virus definitions and perform scans
Use ClamXav Sentry to monitor your hard drive and scan new files as they arrive†
Use the bundled ClamAV engine or bring your own installation†
Compatible with Mac OS X 10.5, 10.6 and 10.7 Lion"

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Windows 8 will be offered to consumers in three versions

Windows 8 will be offered to PC users in standard and Pro editions, backed up by a pre-installed ‘RT’ version for tablet computers based on the ARM chip, Microsoft has announced.

The plan is a helpful streamlining of the confusing array of versions of Windows 7 that appeared at launch in 2009, including Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Enterprise, Professional, and Ultimate.

The standard edition – called simply Windows 8 – will be the version pushed at most consumers, including those upgrading from Windows 7 32-bit and 64-bit. This will offer a range of Windows 8-specific features including Internet explorer 10.

Pro will add to this a number of more technical features BitLocker file encryption, an encrypting file system, support for Hyper V, group policy and remote desktop. Pro users that want the Windows Media Center will be able to add this as an upgrade.

The third and brand new flavour will be Windows RT (also referred to as ‘Windows on ARM’ or ‘WOA’), designed as a pre-installed version for tablet computers running the ARM chip. It will also run ARM-based laptops though these have yet to appear.

Despite the common Windows moniker, RT is really a parallel version of Windows that sets the operating system’s future course as software oriented towards devices other than the traditional PC.

The name references WinRT (Windows Runtime), the programming environment for the OS’s dedicated Metro apps, a nomenclature that might confuse some users to start with. Microsoft’s view is that this version will only be available with a new device and so consumers will only encounter it as part of that buying decision.

“We have talked about Windows 8 as Windows reimagined, from the chipset to the user experience. This also applies to the editions available – we have worked to make it easier for customers to know what edition will work best for them when they purchase a new Windows 8 PC or upgrade their existing PC,” explained Microsoft’s Windows communication manager, Brandon LeBlanc.

Finally, there will be a ‘bulk’ edition of Windows 8, basically a packed version of Windows 8 Pro for enterprises.

Upgrade pricing is some way from being announced but is expected to be along similar lines to Windows 7.

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Windows 8 Enterprise to embrace 'bring your own device' culture

Microsoft has bowed to the age of consumerisation and ‘bring your own device’ (BYOD), announcing features in the next version of its business OS, Windows 8 Enterprise, it hopes will fit in with the trend towards device hopping and home working.

Only days after revealing that the Windows 8 for consumers will come in three versions, there had been some curiosity as to how the business version of Windows 8 would accommodate the consumer trends that have become a subversive influence in many enterprises.

In a new blog, Microsoft marketing director Erwin Visser confirmed that Windows To Go will be an important part of the Enterprise package, allowing employees to securely boot their business desktop from a USB drive image on a home PC.

The company has even revised its licensing approach under its Windows Software Assurance to allow users to legally use the desktop and USB drive images of versions of Windows 8, a concession that extends using a companion license to up to four devices, Visser said.

Another intriguing feature is DirectAccess, an alternative way for remote PCs to connect to business networks without having to tunnel in through a VPN. The advantage of DirectAccess is mainly that it allows admins to fully manage the connecting PC by policy.

DirectAccess has been around since Windows 7 which suggests that Windows 8 Enterprise will refine its integration. Another Windows 7 generation technology, AppLocker (a way to restrict which apps can be run) looks to have been given a similar if unspecified makeover.

BranchCache, however, will be all new, a technology that lets users cache web content and files from central servers (especially Windows Server 2012) in order to cut down on WAN traffic.

Windows 8 Enterprise PCs and tablets (that means Windows 8 RT users running ARM-powered devices) will also, of course, be able to run Metro apps, including Microsoft hopes those specially developed to enhance the business environment.

On one hand by embracing BYOD and consumerisation in Windows 8 Enterprise, the new OS looks like an important change of direction – the company has seemed to be behind workplace trends in the past, preferring that businesses and users fit into its pre-defined technological roadmap.

On the other hand, the company probably has no choice. Consumerisation threatens the hegemony of Windows by pushing people to other devices that don’t run it, particularly rival smartphone and tablet operating systems and Apple hardware.

Microsoft will be hoping that Windows 8 Enterprise and its BYOD makeover offers enough reasons for business to upgrade from older versions rather than hedging their bets while the consumerisation wave changes the landscape further. That would erode Microsoft's revenues. Windows 8 Enterprise is the company's plan to stop the rot.

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