Tag: techeye

New chips put Qualcomm on top for now

Posted on February 20, 2015 by - News

qualcomm-snapdragonQualcomm has released four Snapdragons 415, 425, 618, and 620 which tighten its grip on the mobile chip maket.

All the SoCs support 64-bit, they all connect to 4G LTE networks—the 425, 618, and 620 and can support super-fast 300 megabit per second networks. The last two chips are based around ARM’s new Cortex A72, instead of a more in-house chip design.

The Snapdragon 618 supports a “next generation Adreno GPU,” an integrated category 7 LTE-Advanced modem (300 Mbps download/100 Mbps upload) and dual image signal processors which support 21 megapixel cameras. It also supports HEVC/H.265 video encode and decode.

The Snapdragon 620 is more of the same but with four Cortex A72 cores instead of two word on the street is that it has a better GPU too.

All the chips should be in the shops in the second half of 2015 where they might rule the mid-range market.

Qualcomm has been snuggling up to ARM lately so that it can focus on the other components of the chip, particularly graphics and the various wireless radios. This has meant that it can churn out chips just as the world wants faster, next generation LTE-Advanced networks.

It is clearly in the lead for now, but that is set to change. Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S6 will have its own designed and manufactured chip under the bonnet. This is because it said it did not like what Qualcomm was doing. Sony and HTC are also dissatisfied and are flirting with chips from MediaTek.
LG’s already working on its own “NUCLUN” chip and there is mutterings that even Intel might have something better.

 

Intel is open source king

Posted on February 20, 2015 by - News

Intel Q4_14_ResultsThe once famous proprietary chipmaker Intel is set to become the largest contributor to the open sauce Linux.

A report from the Linux Foundation said Intel was the largest corporate sponsor of new contributions to the Linux computer operating system.

This means that Intel has replaced some top notch software companies, having made more than 10,000 more changes to Linux Kernel.

It makes sense, Linux plays a significant role in computers integrated inside communications networks and industrial equipment, which are vital segments for Intel.

Doug Fisher, who heads Intel’s software group, is also on the board of the Linux Foundation he said that Intel wants to explore new markets through its chips by integrating it in wearable computing, connected appliances and mobile technologies. Intel has hired several thousand software developers to assist in developing new features for Linux.

Intel has made $350 million in revenue during 2014 by using a component of the IT infrastructure it supplies, according to the company’s annual IT business review.

The report suggested Intel is exploiting IT services in a better way like data analytics and collaboration tools for “optimized business workflows and [to] unlock new insights” to generate millions of dollars of new revenue.

ITC intros high speed analytics

Posted on February 19, 2015 by - News

Pic Mike MageeITC Infotech said that it has introduced an enterprise analytics system that lets users more easily access high speed data analytics.

The product, called ZEAS (Z Enterprise Analytics Solution) uses a graphical user interface to analyse big data with the minimum of coding.

The product supports Hadoop open source technology and ITC claims that it will let enterprises analyse big data five times faster than its’ competitors’ offerings.

It also claimed that data analysis projects that would have taken months for experienced Hadoop developers to implement can now be done in weeks.

ZEAS also includes a data operation centre that gives enterprise grade access controls, monitoring and alerting mechanisms for data management.

The company introduced the offering at the Strata+Hadoop World conference held in San Jose this week.

ITC Infotech is a subsidiary of $7 billion company ITC that provides services to global customers. It targets the banking, financial services and insurance sectors.

HP intros open network switches

Posted on February 19, 2015 by - News

HPHewlett Packard said it has launched a line of open network switches for the data centre that gives service providers and Web scale organisations more flexibility for coping with cloud, mobile, social media and big data workloads.

The network switches include options such as choice of hardware and software and branded switches giving access to worldwide local support and services through HP Technology Services.

HP said the products are amongst the first in the category of branded white box switches.

The network switches will be sold to Web scale data centre customers through its partners Acton and Cumulus.

HP’s deal with Cumulus means it will provide Linux OS to cloud based data centres using tools and management from open source and commercial Linux communities.

The first in HP’s line with be two open network switches supporting 10G/40G spine and 10G leaf data centre deployments. The switches come with Cumulus Linux OS.

In the second half of this year, HP will expand the line, hardware and OS software options.

Lenovo installed malware on laptops

Posted on February 19, 2015 by - News

lenovo_hqA security firm made the alarming assertion that Lenovo had pre-installed software on notebooks it sells that makes them more likely to be hacked.

The program called Superfish, which Lenovo installed on computers intended for home use was software that auto-displays adverts.

And according to Reuters, Errata Security, an American company, said Superfish opens up encrypted connections, so letting hackers take over PCs.

Lenovo officials are on holiday for the Chinese New Year and so far have not responded to the allegations.

However, Ken Westin, a senior security analyst at Tripwire had plenty to say on the matter.

“With increasingly security and privacy conscious buyers, laptop and mobile phone manufacturers may well be doing themselves a disservice by seeking outdated advertising based monetisation strategies,” he said.

“If the findings are true and Lenovo is installing their own self-signed certificates, they have not only betrayed their customers’ trust, but also put them at increased risk,” he added.

 

US banks finally adopt mark of the beast

Posted on February 19, 2015 by - News

Card-fraudUS banks have finally twigged that the reason they keep losing money to credit card theft is because they insist on being the last bastion of low tech cards.

Given the fact that the free market is supposed to decide the best form of technology to defend its transactions, the US banks have been dragging their collective trotters adopting the EMV standard.

Meanwhile in Europe, the birthplace of Europay, MasterCard and Visa (EMV) standard there is a low amount of credit card fraud while in the US it is incredibly high.

Now the US is finally making the transition to secure cards based on the European EMV standard, mostly because the liability shift imposed by the three big credit card brands — Visa, MasterCard and American Express — will start on October.

If the merchant is EMV compliant and has a POS system equipped to read EMV cards, and the card is not, because the financial institution has not started issuing them yet — effectively forcing the merchant to run your card on the magnetic stripe reader — then the bank or credit card issuer has to pay for the misuse of the card.

If the issuer has upgraded to EMV by sending chip cards to its cardholders, but the merchant has not upgraded their point of sale to accept them, the retailer bears the cost for counterfeit fraud.

While all this is a pain for the banks and retailers, it is widely accepted in the US that something has to be done. A wave of data breaches that has hit major retailers such as Target and Home Depot, among others, has convinced many card issuers that the expense of sending new cards fades in comparison to the consequences of new data breaches. It will probably take another three years for full adoption.

Some analysts expect fraud to increase this year, as thieves will step up their efforts to capture more credit card details before the EMV conversion starts to take a grip on their bottom line.

It is unclear why the US has been so slow in adopting the chips, one reason might be the fact that their parts of the US which may refuse to use them because of religious reasons.  Parts of the bible belt believe that the move to such technology is a sign of the “end times” and that any electronic transactions are the same as the “mark of the beast” of revelation.

French spooks behind latest malware

Posted on February 19, 2015 by - News

peter_sellers_3918It seems that the French are not going to stand idly by while other nations spies get all the attention for creating spyware.

Cyphort Labs found a cyber-espionage tool of the kind a nation state would be behind which invades Windows desktop machines and aims at extracting almost anything of value: it steals data from instant messengers, softphones, browsers and office applications.

Dubbed ‘Babar64’  the malware is believed to have been written by French intelligence.

It is a natty bit of code. It logs keystrokes, taking screenshots, steams audio from softphone applications, nicks clipboard data and can steal the names of desktop windows.

The malware creates an invisible window, with no other purpose than to receive window messages. By processing the window message queue it filters out input events and dispatches them to a raw input device object. Said object is configured to grab keyboard events through GetRawInputData.

Babar has two hard coded C&C server addresses included in its configuration data — http://www.horizons-tourisme.com/_vti_bin/_vti_msc/bb/index.php and http://www.gezelimmi.com/wp-includes/misc/bb/index.php

The domain horizons-tourisme.com is a legitimate website, operated by an Algerian travel agency, located in Algiers. The website is in French and still online today. Gezelimmi.com is a Turkish domain, currently responding with an HTTP error message 403, access not permitted. Both domains appear to be of legitimate use, but compromised and abused to host Babar’s server side infrastructure.

Apple poaches staff to get new tech

Posted on February 19, 2015 by - News

How-to-Poach-Eggs_725x408After years of enforcing an illegal cartel which forced staff to stay with it, Apple is now going the other way and poaching staff in a way to get new technology, a court was told.

Electric-car battery maker A123 Systems has sued Apple for poaching top engineers to build a large-scale battery division.

The Tame Apple Press does not question the legality of the move, but just has become all moist about the fact that the iPhone maker may be developing a car.

The court heart how around June 2014, Apple began aggressively poaching A123 engineers tasked with leading some of the company’s most critical projects, the lawsuit said. The engineers jumped ship to pursue similar programs at Apple, in violation of their employment agreements.

These agreements are in place to stop big companies like Apple from gaining access to technology they have not developed.

“Apple is currently developing a large-scale battery division to compete in the very same field as A123,” the lawsuit read.

A123 Systems has not been doing very well. It filed for bankruptcy in 2012 and has been selling off assets.

The engineers who left were of such calibre that the projects they had been working on had to be abandoned. One of the five defendants, Mujeeb Ijaz, of helping Apple recruit among its ranks.

“It appears that Apple, with the assistance of defendant Ijaz, is systematically hiring away A123’s high-tech PhD and engineering employees, thereby effectively shutting down various projects/programs at A123,” according to the lawsuit.

They are doing so in an effort to support Apple’s apparent plans to establish a battery division that is similar if not identical to A123’s, in competition with A123.”

Apple has been carrying out similar programmes at LG Chem, Samsung SDI, Panasonic, Toshiba  and Johnson Controls Inc.

A123 presented evidence from one of its partners SiNode Systems that “confirms that his work on behalf of Apple is at least substantially similar (if not identical) to his work at A123.”

 

 

Samsung starts mobile payments

Posted on February 19, 2015 by - News

Samsung advertising in TaipeiSamsung has bought US mobile wallet startup LoopPay, which is seen as an  intention to launch a smartphone payments service.

Mobile payments have been slow to catch on in the United States and elsewhere, despite strong backing. Apple, Google, and eBay PayPal have all launched services to allow users to pay in stores via smartphones and the stores themselves are expected to release a new standard of their own.

Most of the problem is that retailers have been reluctant to adopt the hardware and software infrastructure required for these new mobile payment options to work before a standard is sorted out.  There was no point in investing in BetaMax when VHS kills it.

LoopPay’s technology differs because it works off existing magnetic stripe card readers at checkout, changing them into contactless receivers, they said. About 90 percent of checkout counters already support magnetic swiping.

“If you can’t solve the problem of merchant acceptance…, of being able to use the vast majority of your cards, then it can’t really be your wallet,” said David Eun, head of Samsung’s Global Innovation Center.

Injong Rhee, who is leading Samsung’s as-yet-unannounced payments project, said the Asian giant will soon reveal more details of its envisioned service. He would not be drawn on speculation the company may do so during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

He said new phones such as the new Galaxy would support the service.

Samsung had invested in LoopPay, along with Visa and Synchrony Financial, before its acquisition.

Rhee said in an interview that the company intends to roll out accompanying services that go beyond merely turning the smartphone into a wallet, such as by allowing users access to information such as spending.

Lockheed Martin jets into cyber security

Posted on February 19, 2015 by - News

DF-SC-82-10542US defence contractor Lockheed Martin sees cyber security as its number one growth area over the next three to five years.

Although it is better known for its jet aircraft, Lockheed Martin is the main provider of IT technology to the US government, said expects double-digit growth in its overall cybersecurity business over the next three to five years.

Lockheed said it was making strong inroads in the commercial market by using its experience and intelligence gathered while guarding its own networks and those of government agencies.
Chief Executive Officer Marillyn Hewson said Lockheed was providing cyber security services for more than 200 customers around the world in the energy, oil and gas, chemical, financial services and pharmaceuticals business.

Hewson told the company’s annual media day that Lockheed had faced 50 “coordinated, sophisticated campaign” attacks by hackers in 2014 alone, and she expected those threats to continue growing.

Lockheed now represented a large number of companies on the Fortune 500 list, including 79 percent of utilities, 35 percent of oil and gas companies, 46 percent of chemical firms, and 46 percent of financial firms.

It has been helped by the fact that other weapons makers, including Boeing and Harris have largely exited the cyber security business after finding it difficult to generate any real cash.

Sony trims its sails

Posted on February 18, 2015 by - News

Sony buildingsThe CEO of Sony said that the company will boost investment in its PlayStation and camera sensors business over the next three years.

But Kazuo Hirai said today that it may well exit the smartphone business and divest itself of its TV unit too.

Sony has already got out of PCs and is engaged in restructuring which have seen thousands of people made redundant.

Hirai told reporters in a briefing that his goal was to make Sony profitable – it expects to turn in an operating loss for its financial year, which ends on the 31st of March.

Earlier this week, Sony released its intelligent glasses – which have no guarantee of making returns following Google’s decision to go back to basics on its own version of the devices.

Video games, camera sensors and entertainment are all areas which are profitable, but Hirai is tacitly saying that Sony isn’t the giant it once was, when whatever it launched set the scene for others to follow.

It’s little surprise that Sony is getting out of smartphones. Samsung and Apple rule the roost but manufacturers in mainland China are selling smartphones at knock down prices with razor thin margins – that’s already had an effect on Samsung’s profits.

 

ARM offers entrepreneurs prizes

Posted on February 18, 2015 by - News

Screen Shot 2015-02-18 at 11.53.01British chip company ARM said it is offering £10,000 in prizes in a contest to create smart devices based on its Cortex-M4 microprocessor.

The competition runs from March to June this year with the goal to create devices in the home automation, measurement, the internet of things or system control.

Registration for the contest starts today and finishes on March 31, 2015. Competitors will receive software development tools, a debug unit, hardware containing the M4 chip and peripheral components.

Competitors can choose from platforms provided by Freescale, Infineon, NXP or ST Microelectronics.

Final prototype designs need to be submitted by the 30th of June 2015, with winners announced in October 2015. There will be five prizes ranging from $500 to $5,000.

Reinhard Kell, director of micro controller tools at ARM said: “New technology invention was previously the domain of those with advanced processor knowledge and access to funding. That has changed now.”

Competitors get a complementary licence for the ARM Keil Microcontroller Development Kit, professional edition.

You can register for the competition by clicking here.

 

IBM makes big data push

Posted on February 18, 2015 by - News

ibm-officeBig Blue said it has introduced data analytics with the introduction of IBM BigInsights for Apache Hadoop.

The offering provides machine learning, R, and other features that can tackle big data.

IBM claimed that while many think Apache Hadoop is powerful for collecting and storing large sets of variable data, companies are failing to realise its potential.

It’s offering has a broad data science toolset for querying data, visualising, and provide scaleable distributed machine learning.

The offering includes Analyst, which includes IBM’s SQL engine, Data Scientist that provides a machine learning engine that ranges over big data to find patterns.

Enterprise Management includes tools to optimise workflows, and management software to give faster results.

IBM also said it has joined the Open Data Platform (ODP) association which is aiming to provide standardisation over Hadoop and big data technologies.

Man says he didn’t hack 160 million credit cards

Posted on February 18, 2015 by - News

Screen Shot 2015-02-18 at 10.53.04A Russian extradited to the US for allegedly hacking into major corporations has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Vladimir Drinkman, who was extradited from the Netherlands, said he didn’t conspire with other people to hack into major financial networks and sell data to other crooks.

Reuters said the attacks, which started in 2005, meant 160 million credit card numbers and hundreds of millions of dollars were extracted from corporations and individual people.

Networks hacked included a Visa licensee, 7-Eleven, JC Penney and Carrefour.

He faces a trial in Newark at the end of his April and if convicted could spend 30 years in jail.

He fought against extradition after being arrested in 2012. Three alleged co-conspirators have so far not been caught, while a fourth Dmitriy Smilianets was also extradited from the Netherlands and is in jail in the USA.

Netgear has a nasty bug in the soap

Posted on February 18, 2015 by - News

original_bug-soapSome Netgear wireless routers have a vulnerability which turns over all the data a hacker needs to break into the network.

The vulnerability is found in the embedded SOAP service, which is a service that interacts with the Netgear Genie application that allows users to control their routers via their smartphones or computers.

Network engineer Peter Adkins said that at first glance, this service appears to be filtered and authenticated, but an HTTP request “with a blank form and a ‘SOAPAction’ header is sufficient to execute certain requests and query information from the device,” he explained in a post on the Full Disclosure mailing list.

As the SOAP service is implemented by the built-in HTTP / CGI daemon, unauthenticated queries will also be answered over the internet if remote management has been enabled on the device. As a result, affected devices can be interrogated and hijacked with as little as a well placed HTTP query, Adkins said.

If this is true then the vulnerability can be exploited both by attackers that have already gained access to the local network and by remote attackers.

All this applies to Netgear WNDR3700v4 – V1.0.0.4SH, Netgear WNDR3700v4 – V1.0.1.52, Netgear WNR2200 – V1.0.1.88 and Netgear WNR2500 – V1.0.0.24.

Netgear was told of the flaw and it replied that any network should still stay secure due to a number of built-in security features, said Adkins.

“Attempts to clarify the nature of this vulnerability with support were unsuccessful. This ticket has since been auto-closed while waiting for a follow up. A subsequent email sent to the Netgear ‘OpenSource’ contact has also gone unanswered.”