Remote Access Tools Threatens Smartphones

Malware tools that allow attackers to gain complete remote control of smartphones have become a major threat to owners around the world, security researchers say.

In a demonstration at the RSA Conference 2012 here Wednesday, former McAfee executives George Kurtz and Dmitri Alperovitch, who recently founded security firm CrowdStrike, installed a remote access tool on an Android 2.2-powered smartphone by taking advantage of an unpatched flaw in WebKit, the default browser in the OS.

The researchers showed an overflow audience how the malware can be delivered on a smartphone via an innocuous looking SMS message and then be used to intercept and record phone conversations, capture video, steal text messages, track dialed numbers and pinpoint a user’s physical location.

The tools used in the attack were obtained from easily available underground sources, Kurtz said. The WebKit bug, for instance, was one of 20 tools purchased from hackers for a collective $1,400.

The remote access Trojan used in the attack was a modified version of Nickispy a well-known Chinese malware tool.

Learning how to exploit the WebKit vulnerability and to modify the Trojan for the attack, was harder than expected, said Kurtz. He estimated that CrowdStrike spent about $14,000 in all to develop the attack.

But the key issue is that similar attacks are possible against any smartphone, not just those running Android, he said.

WebKit for instance, is widely used as a default browser in other mobile operating systems including Apple’s iOS and the BlackBerry Tablet OS. WebKit is also is used in Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome browsers.

Several mobile remote access Trojans are already openly available from companies pitching them as tools that can be used to surreptitiously keep tabs on others.

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Big Boys Sign Consumer Privacy Pact

Six of the world’s top consumer technology companies have agreed to provide greater privacy disclosures before customers download applications in order to protect the personal data of millions of consumers, California’s attorney general said on Wednesday.

The agreement binds Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Research In Motion, and Hewlett-Packard — and developers on their platforms — to disclose how they use private data before an app may be downloaded, Attorney General Kamala D. Harris said.

“Your personal privacy should not be the cost of using mobile apps, but all too often it is,” said Harris.

Currently 22 of the 30 most downloaded apps do not have privacy notices, said Harris. Some downloaded apps also download a consumer’s contact book.

Google said in a statement that under the California agreement, Android users will have “even more ways to make informed decisions when it comes to their privacy.”

Apple confirmed the agreement but did not elaborate.

Harris was also among U.S. state lawmakers who on Wednesday signed a letter to Google CEO Larry Page to express “serious concerns” over the web giant’s recent decision to consolidate its privacy policy.

The policy change would give Google access to user information across its products, such as GMail and Google Plus, without the proper ability for consumers to opt out, said the 36 U.S. attorneys general in their letter.

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Nokia To Unveil Cheaper Windows Phone

Nokia debuted a new, cheaper and more budget-friendly smartphone using Microsoft’s Windows Phone software, targeting a wider market for its new range of smartphones.

Cheaper phones are the key for Nokia and Microsoft in their battle to win a larger share of the market, analysts say.

In addition to the new Lumia 610 Nokia will also unveil at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona a global version of its high-end Lumia 900 phone, which AT&T is scheduled to roll out in the United States, the sources said.

Nokia is set to unveil the phones at a news conference next Monday, on February 27.

Nokia last year dumped its own smartphone software platforms in favor of Microsoft’s Windows Phone, which has so far had a limited impact due to the high prices of phones using it.

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Intel Wants To Deliver Cheap Smartphones

Intel has revealed some additional information on the 2012 mobile strategy to its partners and it even shared some pricing guidelines for mobile products.

According to a slide entitled Mobile Landscape in 2012, Intel wants to sell mobile phones powered by its CPUs for as little as $199 to $299. This is where Intel sees a market opportunity for its phones and the prices are surprisingly low.

It also places netbooks in the same price range $199 to $299 while Intel based tablets should float between $399 and $499. Naturally more expensive options are always a reality. Tablets can go up to 12.1 inches and the starting price for these bigger machines should be $299, and in the high end the sky is the limit.

Hybrid notebooks should stay at less than $699 and this is a category where you can twist the display, slide the keyboard or even take the keyboard off from the netbook, or tablet. Think Asus’ Eee Pad Slider, Transformer, this will give you an idea of what to expect, but with x86 support. Phones, netbooks, hybrids and tablets are all based on Atom architecture.

Intel plans to sell laptops starting at $3xx and up. Probably slightly more than $300, but less than $400 is what they have in mind. Top notch notebooks based on Core i7 chips will start at less than $799 and Ultrabooks with 11-inch or larger screens might be coming down to $599 to $699. Of course, high end models will end up a lot pricier.

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Adobe Says No To Android’s Chrome

Chrome for Android will not run Flash Player, the popular software that Apple has famously banned, Adobe confirmed Wednesday.

The acknowledgment was no surprise: Last November, Adobe announced it was abandoning development of Flash for mobile browsers. In other words, Google missed the Flash boat by several months.

“Adobe is no longer developing Flash Player for mobile browsers, and thus Chrome for Android Beta does not support Flash content,” said Bill Howard, a group product manager on the Flash team, in an Adobe blog Tuesday.

The stock Android browser included with the operating system does support Flash, noted Howard.

Adobe explained its decision to halt work on Flash Player for mobile browsers as necessary to shift resources, notably to its efforts on HTML5, the still-developing standard that will ultimately replace many of the functions Flash has offered.

“We will continue to leverage our experience with Flash to accelerate our work with the W3C and WebKit to bring similar capabilities to HTML5 as quickly as possible,” Danny Winokur, the Adobe executive in charge of interactive development, said last year. He was referring to the World Wide Web Consortium standards body and WebKit, the open-source browser engine that powers Chrome and Apple’s Safari. “And we will design new features in Flash for a smooth transition to HTML5 as the standards evolve.”

Analysts read the move as a tacit surrender to the trend, first seen at Apple, to skip support for Flash on smartphones and tablets. In 2010, former Apple Steve Jobs had famously dismissed Flash as unsuitable for mobile devices because it was slow, drained batteries and posed security problems.

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The U.S. Is Falling Behind

The U.S. government is losing a race in cyberspace — a social-networking race for the hearts and minds of the Internet community, a computer security expert said Wednesday.

Other countries — and many companies — are using social-networking tools to their advantage, while the U.S. government has taken tiny steps forward, said Rand Waltzman, a program manager focused on cybersecurity at the U.S.Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

The Chinese government pays citizens to patrol social-networking sites and dispute negative talk about all levels of government or any aspect of Chinese life, and companies such as Dell and Best Buy are training workers to respond to complaints on Facebook and other social-networking services, Waltzman said at the Suits and Spooks security conference in Arlington, Virginia.

U.S. regulations prevent the government from undertaking similar campaigns, he said. “Any time you want to go to the bathroom, you need presidential approval,” he said.

The U.S. will not be able to protect its residents if it cannot engage in its own covert social-media operations, Waltzman said.

Waltzman told about a U.S. special forces unit in Iraq in 2009 that attacked an insurgent paramilitary group, killed 16 of the members of the group and seized a “huge” weapons cache. As soon as the U.S. unit left the scene, the Iraqi group returned, put the bodies on prayer mats, and uploaded a photograph from a cheap mobile phone, he said. The group put out a press release in English and Arabic.

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Google Goes Pay To Track

Amid widespread concern about its new privacy policies, Google is now facing additional criticism over a deal to offer users Amazon gift certificates if they open their Web movements to the company in a program called Screenwise.

Google says the program launched “near the beginning of the year,” but the company’s low-key offer was disclosed Tuesday night on the blog Search Engine Land.

Google is asking users to add an extension to the Chrome browser that will share their Web-browsing activity with the company. In exchange, users will receive a $5 Amazon gift when they sign up and additional $5 gift card values for every three months they continue to share. (Amazon is not a partner in the project.) Users must be over age 13, and minors will need parental consent to participate. The tracking extension can be turned off at any time, allowing participants to temporarily close their metaphorical shades on Google.

The company says the program will help it “improve Google products and services and make a better online experience for everyone.”

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iPhone Adds To Sprint’s Losses

Sprint Nextel posted a bigger loss, reflecting the higher costs of offering Apple Inc’s iPhone. But the loss was smaller than expected because its signed up fewer new customers than expected.

Since Sprint subsidizes the cost of some of its phone sales, its costs rise and profit dwindles the more customers it wins. But since subscriptions fell short of expectations, its loss was smaller than expected.

Sprint’s loss was 35 cents per share excluding unusual items compared with Wall Street expectations for a loss of 37 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters.

Its profit margin based on operating earnings before interest, depreciation and amortization (OIBDA) fell to 9.5 percent from 16 percent a year earlier but beat expectations for 8.6 percent, according to eight analyst estimates Reuters compiled.

“It’s still unbelievably depressed and subscribers were below expectations,” said Roe Equity Research analyst Kevin Roe who also noted that Sprint’s targets for the full year were not particularly impressive.

The margin decline was hurt by the hefty cost of selling the iPhone.

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Intel Buys RealNetworks Patents

Intel on Thursday said it had agreed to acquire RealNetworks streaming media patents and video codecs in a move aimed at improving the multimedia experience delivered through devices based on its chips.

The chip maker has agreed to purchase video codec software and about 190 patents and 170 patent applications worldwide, for $120 million. RealNetworks is best known for its RealPlayer multimedia software, which offers multimedia streaming based on its own codec.

The purchase will help Intel offer “richer experiences” across a wide spectrum of devices, including through laptops and smartphones, the company said in a statement. A company spokeswoman declined further comment on specific plans for patents and software.

Intel has been beefing up its on-chip multimedia capabilities to handle more realistic graphics as the company develops newer generations of chips. The new laptop chips code-named Ivy Bridge due later this year for ultrabooks will be the first to have integrated support for Microsoft’s DirectX 11. Smartphones and tablets based on Intel’s Atom chip code-named Medfield will be released later this year.

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Will Samsung Overtake Apple

Yesterday, DigiTimes released its comprehensive Global Smartphone Industry 2012 forecast report, which entails the total number of global smartphone shipments in 2011 along with estimates of smartphone manufacturer ranking by volume in 2012.

According to the report, global smartphone shipments are projected to top 464 million units in the entirety of 2011, with Apple being the top ranking vendor in terms of shipment volume, followed by Samsung Electronics and Nokia. On the Google Android side of matters, it is expected that Samsung will overtake Apple in 2012 as the “world’s largest smartphone vendor by volume.” In addition, HTC will overtake Nokia for the third-place spot.

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