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The FCC Gives AT&T The OK
December 28, 2011 by admin
Filed under Smartphones, Telecom
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The U.S. Federal Communications Commission approved AT&T’s US$1.9 billion buying of spectrum from Qualcomm on Thursday, allowing the carrier to salvage one ambitious deal to acquire more spectrum, after squashing its planned merger with T-Mobile USA.
AT&T announced its plan to buy the Qualcomm spectrum last December, a few months before it revealed the much larger proposal to merge with T-Mobile for $39 billion. It said both were motivated by the need for more radio spectrum to increase the coverage and capacity of its LTE (Long-Term Evolution) network. AT&T withdrew the T-Mobile plan on Monday after the FCC, the Department of Justice and others said it was not in the public interest.
With the Qualcomm purchase, AT&T will get 6MHz of spectrum across the country in the coveted 700MHz band, as well as another 6MHz of spectrum in five major metropolitan areas: New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and San Francisco, according to the FCC’s order released Thursday. Those five markets represent about 70 million potential subscribers. The carrier has said it plans to use it as a supplemental downlink for its LTE network, allowing for faster and more consistent mobile data service.
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Does LightSquared Interfere With GPS?
December 24, 2011 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
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A second round of tests on LightSquared’s proposed land-based mobile data network again showed interference with a majority of GPS devices, except for cellphones, two U.S. federal departments stated Wednesday.
LightSquared wants to build a network of 4G LTE (Long-Term Evolution) base stations around the U.S. that would operate on frequencies close to those used by GPS (Global Positioning System) receivers. But the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will not approve the company’s plan unless potential interference with GPS has been resolved. Tests earlier this year showed the network could cripple many GPS devices.
The second round of tests was conducted last month and concentrated on LightSquared operating in a lower block of frequencies farther from those used by GPS.
“Preliminary analysis of the test findings found no significant interference with cellular phones,” the Department of Defense and Department of Transportation said in a statement on Wednesday. “However, the testing did show that LightSquared signals caused harmful interference to the majority of other tested general purpose GPS receivers. Separate analysis by the Federal Aviation Administration also found interference with a flight safety system designed to warn pilots of approaching terrain.”
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RIM’s Playbook Gets Jailbroken
December 7, 2011 by admin
Filed under Consumer Electronics
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Three hackers say they have taken advantage of a vulnerability in Research In Motion’s PlayBook tablet to gain root access to the device, a claim that could damage the BlackBerry maker’s stellar reputation for security.
Root access means a user has permission to change any file or program on a device and can control hardware functions.
In a response to questions concerning the issue, RIM said it is investigating the claim, and if a “jailbreak” is confirmed will release a patch to plug the hole.
The three hackers – who identify themselves as xpvqs, neuralic and Chris Wade – plan to release their data within a week as a tool called DingleBerry.
Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android operating systems are frequently attacked by users who want to run programs that have not been authorized by the manufacturers, but breaches of RIM’s software are more rare.
The PlayBook runs on a different operating system than RIM’s current BlackBerry smartphones. However, the QNX system will be incorporated into its smartphones starting next year.
Hackers Plan To Go After Fox
Anonymous plans to take out the Fox news network because of its coverage of the Wall Street Protests.
Dubbed “Operation Fox Hunt”, Anonymous announced the plans on YouTube to attack the Fox News website on the anniversary of Guy Fawkes Day. Anonymous is also planning to target former Fox News personality Glenn Beck as well as current Fox News representative Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly during “Operation Fox Hunt”.
Anonymous said that it has had a gutsful of “right wing conservative propaganda” and “belittling the occupiers” of the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. Anonymous recently a distributed denial-of-service attack against the Oakland police department’s website after a 24-year-old wounded Marine home from serving two tours in Iraq was critically injured in the Occupy Oakland protest. Police allegedly threw an object that fractured the marine’s skull landing him in the hospital.
SEC Asks Companies To Disclose Attacks
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U.S. securities regulators formally asked public companies for the first time to disclose cyber attacks against them, following a trend of high-profile cyber crimes.
The Securities and Exchange Commission issued guidelines on Thursday that laid out the kind of information companies should disclose, such as cyber events that could lead to financial losses.
Senator John Rockefeller had asked the SEC to issue guidelines amid concern that it was becoming hard for investors to assess security risks if companies failed to mention data breaches in their public filings.
“Intellectual property worth billions of dollars has been stolen by cyber criminals, and investors have been kept completely in the dark. This guidance changes everything,” Rockefeller said in a statement.
“It will allow the market to evaluate companies in part based on their ability to keep their networks secure. We want an informed market and informed consumers, and this is how we do it,” Rockefeller said in a statement.
There is a growing sense of urgency about cyber security following breaches at Google Inc, Lockheed Martin Corp, the Pentagon’s No. 1 supplier, Citigroup, the International Monetary Fund and others.
2TB USB Thumb Drive On The Horizon?
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According to a video posting on YouTube of memory card maker Transcend and Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) have joined forces to produce a USB 3.0 flash drive with up to 2TB of capacity.
The drive, described as measuring as long as a human thumb and slightly thicker than a penny, was video taped at the Display Taiwan 2011 technology show. The model on display had only 16GB, but the display states that it’s capable of scaling to 2TB.
The Linux Kernel Got Hacked
Servers that are part of the Linux kernel.org infrastructure were affected during a recent intrusion where attackers managed to gain root access and plant Trojan scripts.
According to an email sent out to the community by kernel.org chief administrator John Hawley, known as warthog9, the incident started with the compromise of a server referred to as Hera. The personal colocated machine of Linux developer H Peter Anvin (HPA) and additional kernel.org systems were also affected.
“Upon some investigation there are a couple of kernel.org boxes, specifically hera and odin1, with potential pre-cursors on demeter2, zeus1 and zeus2, that have been hit by this,” Hawley wrote.
The intrusion was discovered on 28 August and according to preliminary findings attackers gained access by using a set of compromised credentials. They then elevated their privileges to root by exploiting a zero-day vulnerability that the kernel.org administrators have yet to identify.
Fortunately, logs and parts of the exploit code were retained and will help the investigation. A Trojan was added to the startup scripts of affected systems, but gave itself away through Xnest /dev/mem error messages.
According to the kernel.org admins, these error messages have been seen on other systems as well, but it’s not clear if those machines are vulnerable or compromised. “If developers see this, and you don’t have Xnest installed, please investigate,” the administrators advised.
The good news is that the exploit failed on systems running the latest Linux kernel version, 3.1-rc2, which was released two weeks ago. This is possibly the fortunate consequence of one of the bugfixes it contains.
India Wants To Monitor Twitter & Facebook
August 13, 2011 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
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India’s Communications Ministry has received a request from the Home Ministry to monitor social networking websites such as Twitter and Facebook amid fears that the services are being used by terrorists to organize attacks.
The request suggests that the Indian government is trying to expand the scope of its online surveillance for national security purposes.
Telecommunications service providers in India provide facilities for lawful interception and monitoring of communications on their network, including communications from social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter, in accordance with their license agreements, Milind Deora, the minister of state for communications and IT, told Parliament, according to the country’s Press Information Bureau.
But there are certain communications which are encrypted, Deora said Friday.
The government did not provide details of what encrypted data they would like to have access to. A spokesman for the home ministry said on Monday that additional
information can only be provided in Parliament while it is in session.
Under new rules to the country’s IT Act that came into force earlier this year, websites and service providers are required to provide government security agencies with information on private accounts, including passwords, on request without a court order.
Most companies, however, are not willing to share information with law enforcement agencies unless they have a court order.
Twitter states in its guidelines for law enforcement that “non-public information about Twitter users is not released unless we have received a subpoena, court order, or other valid legal process document.”
Accused Hacker Out On Bail In England
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The accused ‘Topiary’, whose name is Jake Davis, was charged on Sunday and bailed by the courts yesterday. He was charged with five offences: Unauthorised access to a computer system, Encouraging or assisting offences, Conspiracy with others to carry out a Distributed Denial of Service Attack on the website of the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, Conspiracy to commit offences of Section 3 Computer Misuse Act 1990, and Conspiracy with others to commit offences of Section 3 Computer Misuse Act 1990 contrary to Section 1 of the Criminal Law Act 1977.
According to a report at the Guardian, his bail conditions are that Davis must wear an electronic tag, not access the internet, and not leave his house between 10pm and 7am.
Davis, who appeared outside court wearing sunglasses and holding a copy of “Free Radicals: The Secret Anarchy of Science” by Micheal Brooks and who allegedly authored the Rupert Murdoch is dead story that appeared on the hacked web site of the Sun newspaper, has already gained support on the internet in general and especially on Twitter.
Defense Dept. IT Is ‘Stone Age’
U.S. Marine Corps Gen. James “Hoss” Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, issued a stinging critique of the Defense Department’s IT systems and said he sees much room for improvement.
Cartwright, who was speaking at the FOSE information technology conference in Washington,DC, said the DOD is sending increasing amounts of data, such as video, to soldiers on the battlefield, and it’s beginning to build an architecture “that starts to take us where we need to be.” But Cartwright quickly tempered that.
“Quite frankly, my feeling is — at least being a never-satisfied person — the department is pretty much in the Stone Age as far as IT is concerned,” Cartwright said.
Cartwright cited problems with proprietary systems that aren’t connected to anything else and are unable to quickly adapt to changing needs. “We have huge numbers of data links that move data between proprietary platforms — one point to another point,” he said.
The most striking example of an IT failure came during the second Gulf War, where the Marines and the Army were dispatched in southern Iraq.