SanDisk Debuts Wireless Flash Drive

SanDisk on Monday announced a line of wireless flash drives that can hold up to 64GB of data.

The new drives include the Connect Wireless Flash Drive — a thumb drive — and the Connect Wireless Media Drive, a larger, but still pocket-sized storage device. The Connect Wireless Flash Drive comes in 16GB and 32GB capacities; the Connect Wireless Media Drive comes in 32GB and 64GB capacities.

The Connect Wireless Flash drive is 3.07-in. x 1.04-in. x 0.54-in. The Connect Wireless Media Drive is 2.6-in. x 2.6-in. x 0.52-in.

The Connect Wireless drive family allows users to not only store but share and stream files across multiple mobile devices. They offer up to eight simultaneous device connections and three media streams, and support separate streams of 720p video content at 2MB/sec to three or five devices concurrently (for the Flash Drive and Media Drive, respectively).

According to a SanDisk spokesman, video streaming performance isn’t affected by multiple streams because device limits are set at a point that supports the streams without degradation. Devices can connect to the drives up to 150 feet away.

The Connect Wireless drives work with all iOS and Android devices, and Kindle Fire tablets, as well as PC and Mac computers. The drives are compatible with Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP and Mac OS 10.6 or higher

Movies, music, photos and documents can be loaded onto the wireless drives by simply dragging and dropping the files, which can then be accessed via the SanDisk Connect apps. Those apps are available for download from the App Store, Google Play Store and the Amazon Appstore for Android.

The drives contain an internal router, so no external router or Internet connection is needed to stream media. In order to use the drives, mobile device users simply download SanDisk’s Connect App.

The drives run on lithium-ion batteries. A single charge provides up to four hours of wireless streaming, with streaming data protected by Wi-Fi Password Protection (WPA2).

“With the new SanDisk Connect product line, we’re raising the bar on what consumers can expect from personal storage,” said Dinesh Bahal, vice president for product marketing for SanDisk.

The SanDisk Connect Wireless Flash Drive is available in 16GB or 32GB capacities for $49.99 and $59.99, respectively. In the U.S., it is available for preorder on Amazon.com, Newegg.com and Micro Center, with availability at Best Buy starting in August. It will also be available for preorder on Amazon.com in Germany and UK.

The SanDisk Connect Wireless Media Drive has a retail price of $79.99 for 32GB or $99.99 for 64GB storage capacity. It is available for preorder in the U.S. on Amazon.com, with availability in Germany and UK in the fourth quarter of 2013.

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WiLan Loses In Court

Wi-Lan has suffered defeat in its patents trial against Alcatel Lucent, Ericsson, HTC and Sony, as a Texas court decided that the firms did not infringe its patents.

Wi-Lan filed a lawsuit against Alcatel Lucent, Ericsson, HTC and Sony in 2010 claiming the firms infringed patents that relate to data transmission over wireless networks. However a Texas court ruled that the four firms did not infringe Wi-Lan’s patents and found one patent Wi-Lan asserted against HTC and two it asserted against Alcatel Lucent invalid.

Wi-Lan had asserted that Alcatel Lucent and Ericsson infringed three patents, none of which claims were upheld by the court. The firm also asserted that HTC and Sony infringed another patent, and there the court not only judged against infringement but invalidated the patent.

Alcatel Lucent and HTC both said that Wi-Lan was trying to stretch its patents to cover technology in their devices.

Sally Julien, a spokeswoman for HTC said, “HTC believes that Wi-Lan has exaggerated the scope of its patent in order to extract unwarranted licensing royalties from entities who have been focused on bringing innovation forward in their own products.”

Kurt Steinert, an Alcatel Lucent spokesman said, “We think this validates our belief that Wi-Lan was stretching the boundaries of its patents, and the jury confirmed that belief.”

Wi-Lan has managed to get several companies to license its technology including Dell and Panasonic, and in May it initiated legal proceedings against Blackberry over a patent relating to Long Term Evolution network technology. However in this case the firm did not prevail against two large telecom equipment companies and two big smartphone makers.

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Microsoft Drops The Surface

Microsoft has dropped the prices on its Surface RT tablets by as much as 30%, with the entry-level 32GB model selling for $349.

The 64GB Surface RT was also discounted by $150, and now sells for $449, or 25% off its former price.

When Microsoft launched the tablet, it sold the 32GB device for $499 and the 64GB configuration for $599.

Microsoft started selling the Surface RT at the lower prices Sunday, as did some of its U.S. retail partners, including Best Buy and Staples. On its website, Staples noted that the discounted prices are valid until July 20, and only while supplies last.

Microsoft’s website, however, listed no caveats, hinting that the lower prices might be permanent or at least will be honored for longer than one week.

The prices are another attempt by Microsoft to clear its existing inventory in preparation for a second-generation line of Windows RT devices. Previously, Microsoft had launched multiple deals to rid itself of the poor-selling tablet, most recently in June when it slashed prices by 60% in a bid to get universities and K-12 schools to buy the device.

Earlier, it kicked off a buy-a-Surface-RT-get-a-free-cover deal that ran until June 30. And at several conferences, including June’s TechEd North America and this month’s Microsoft Partner Conference, the company sold attendees a 64GB Surface RT for $100, 83% off list price.

Today’s sale prices were nearly Microsoft’s cost, which according to estimates of the tablet’s component prices, runs the company at least $284 for the 32GB Surface RT.

Microsoft has not abandoned Windows RT, the pared-down operating system that powers the Surface RT, but virtually every third-party OEM has either pointedly ignored the OS or publicly announced that they would not support it with devices of their own. Instead, the OEMs have flocked to Windows 8 Pro, even though some analysts question the value of touch devices on a platform whose biggest selling point is legacy software that doesn’t support touch.

Microsoft has not revealed sales figures for the Surface line — which also includes the Surface Pro, powered by Windows 8 Pro — but estimates by research firms like IDC have been lackluster.

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Malware Infections On Android Rising

An increasing number of Android phones are infected with mobile malware programs that are capable of turning the handsets into spying devices, according to a report from Kindsight Security Labs, a subsidiary of telecommunications equipment vendor Alcatel-Lucent.

The vast majority of mobile devices infected with malware are running the Android operating system and a third of the top 20 malware threats for Android by infection rate fall into the spyware category, Kindsight said in a report released Tuesday that covers the second quarter of 2013.

The Alcatel-Lucent subsidiary sells security appliances to ISPs (Internet service providers) and mobile network operators that can identify known malware threats and infected devices by analyzing the network traffic.

Data collected from its product deployments allows the company to compile statistics about how many devices connected to mobile or broadband networks are infected with malware and determine what are the most commonly detected threats.

The malware infection rate for devices connected to mobile networks is fairly low, averaging at 0.52%, Kindsight said in its report. These infected devices include mobile phones as well as Windows laptops that use a mobile connection through a phone, a 3G USB modem or a mobile hotspot device.

In January the number of infected mobile phones accounted for slightly more than 30% of all infected devices connected to mobile networks, but by June they grew to more than 50%.

The vast majority of infected mobile phones run Android. Those running BlackBerry, iOS and other operating systems represent less than 1% of infected mobile devices, Kindsight said.

When calculated separately, on average more than 1% of Android devices on mobile networks are infected with malware, Kindsight said in its report.

The malware threat most commonly seen on Android devices was an adware Trojan program called Uapush.A that sends SMS messages and steals information, Kindsight said. Uapush.A was responsible for around 53% of the total number of infections detected on Android devices.

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Are CCTV Cameras Hackable?

When the nosy British bought CCTV cameras, worried citizens were told that they could not be hacked.

Now a US security expert says he has identified ways to remotely attack high-end surveillance cameras used by industrial plants, prisons, banks and the military. Craig Heffner, said he discovered the previously unreported bugs in digital video surveillance equipment from firms including Cisco, D-Link and TRENDnet.

They could use it as a pivot point, an initial foothold, to get into the network and start attacking internal systems. Heffner said that it was a significant threat as somebody could potentially access a camera and view it. Or they could also use it as a pivot point, an initial foothold, to get into the network and start attacking internal systems.

He will show how to exploit these bugs at the Black Hat hacking conference, which starts on July 31 in Las Vegas. Heffner said he has discovered hundreds of thousands of surveillance cameras that can be accessed via the public internet.

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Will Icahn Boot Michael Dell?

Carl Icahn reportedly is drawing up a shortlist of potential Dell CEO replacements for Michael Dell should his bid for the company be successful.

Icahn and Southeastern Asset Management have made a bid to rival that of Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners in the high stakes fight over Dell and its board. Now it is being reported that Icahn has already started drawing up a list of candidates that he and Southeastern Asset Management will propose as replacements for Michael Dell as CEO of Dell.

Icahn has previously warned that should his offer for Dell be accepted by the shareholders he would look to not only oust Michael Dell as CEO but replace the firm’s board of directors. Reuters reports that Icahn is casting his net far and wide, including consideration of former HP CEO and current Oracle co-president Mark Hurd.

According to Reuters’ sources Cisco director Michael Capellas, IBM services head Michael Daniels and Oracle’s Hurd are all in the frame, although none of the individuals would confirm having been approached by Icahn.

Michael Dell’s initial plan to buy back the company he founded has met with strong opposition by existing shareholders, some of whom think they are getting shortchanged. According to Michael Dell, the firm’s reorganisation into an enterprise IT vendor will be easier if the company goes private and doesn’t face investor and market scrutiny.

So far Dell’s board is backing Michael Dell’s and Silver Lake Partners’ buyout offer, suggesting that Icahn’s offer is short of cash. However some of Dell’s investors might like the drastic action that Icahn is promising, along with the fact that his offer allows existing shareholders to maintain a diluted stake in the company.

Should Icahn manage to get his takeover offer accepted by Dell’s shareholders, it will set up a sensational return to the PC industry for Hurd and give Dell renewed momentum to compete with HP.

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IBM Buys SoftLayer

IBM has signed an agreement to purchase SoftLayer Technologies, as it looks to accelerate the build-out of its public cloud infrastructure. The company is also forming a services division to back up the push.

The financial details of the deal were not announced, but SoftLayer is the world’s largest privately held cloud computing infrastructure provider, according to IBM.

IBM already has an offering that includes private, public and hybrid cloud platforms. The acquisition of SoftLayer will give it a more complete in-house offering, as enterprises look to keep some applications in the data center, while others are moved to public clouds.

SoftLayer has about 21,000 customers and an infrastructure that includes 13 data centers in the U.S., Asia and Europe, according to IBM. SoftLayer allows enterprises to buy compute power on either dedicated or shared servers.

Following the close of the acquisition of SoftLayer, which is expected in the third quarter, a new division will combine its services with IBM’s SmartCloud. IBM expects to reach $7 billion annually in cloud revenue by the end of 2015, it said.

Success is far from certain: The public cloud market is becoming increasingly competitive as dedicated cloud providers, telecom operators and IT vendors such as Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard all want a piece. The growing competition should be a good thing for customers if it drives down prices. For example, Microsoft has already committed to matching Amazon Web Services prices for commodity services such as computing, storage and bandwidth.

Not all hardware vendors feel it’s necessary to have their own public cloud. Last month, Dell changed strategy and said it would work with partners including Joyent, instead of having its own cloud.

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Twitter’s Authentication Has Vulnerabilities

Twitter’s SMS-based, two-factor authentication feature could be abused to lock users who have not enabled it for their accounts if attackers gain access to their log-in credentials, according to researchers from Finnish antivirus vendor F-Secure.

Twitter introduced two-factor authentication last week as an optional security feature in order to make it harder for attackers to hijack users’ accounts even if they manage to steal their usernames and passwords. If enabled, the feature introduces a second authentication factor in the form of secret codes sent via SMS.

According to Sean Sullivan, a security advisor at F-Secure, attackers could actually abuse this feature in order to prolong their unauthorized access to those accounts that don’t have two-factor authentication enabled. The researcher first described the issue Friday in a blog post.

An attacker who steals someone’s log-in credentials, via phishing or some other method, could associate a prepaid phone number with that person’s account and then turn on two-factor authentication, Sullivan said Monday. If that happens, the real owner won’t be able to recover the account by simply performing a password reset, and will have to contact Twitter support, he said.

This is possible because Twitter doesn’t use any additional method to verify that whoever has access to an account via Twitter’s website is also authorized to enable two-factor authentication.

When the two-factor authentication option called “Account Security” is first enabled on the account settings page, the site asks users if they successfully received a test message sent to their phone. Users can simply click “yes,” even if they didn’t receive the message, Sullivan said.

Instead, Twitter should send a confirmation link to the email address associated with the account for the account owner to click in order to confirm that two-factor authentication should be enabled, Sullivan said.

As it is, the researcher is concerned that this feature could be abused by determined attackers like the Syrian Electronic Army, a hacker group that recently hijacked the Twitter accounts of several news organizations, in order to prolong their unauthorized access to compromised accounts.

Some security researchers already expressed their belief that Twitter’s two-factor authentication feature in its current implementation is impractical for news organizations and companies with geographically dispersed social media teams, where different employees have access to the same Twitter account and cannot share a single phone number for authentication.

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the issue described by Sullivan.

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Lenovo Soars

PC sales in China and high growth in smartphones sales helped boost Lenovo’s net profit for its fiscal fourth quarter by 90% year-over-year.

For the quarter ended March 31, Lenovo’s net profit was $127 million, the company said on Thursday. Revenue shattered records and was at $7.8 billion, growing 4% from the same period last year.

In Lenovo’s home market of China, the company had an operating margin of 4.9%, an increase of 8% year-over-year. The company also saw continued profitability in its mobile devices business, which makes up 9% of its overall sales. At the end of the quarter, Lenovo’s smartphone shipments were up 206% year-over-year.

Globally, PC shipments were down 13.9% year-over-year in the quarter, the market’s steepest decline since research firm IDC began tracking the market in 1994. Lenovo itself posted flat year-over-year PC shipment growth in the period.

Smartphone and tablet popularity have hurt PC sales, according to analysts. Computers running Microsoft’s Windows 8 have also failed to drum up consumer interest in the previous two quarters.

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Lenovo, however, has managed to weather the slowdown by taking advantage of the Chinese PC market, where it has an over 30% market share. Close to half of the company’s revenue comes from the country, now the world’s largest PC market.

The company is now close to surpassing leading PC vendor HP for the top spot. The company had a 15.3% share of the market in this year’s first quarter, while HP had a 15.7% share.

But the Chinese PC maker also plans to focus more of its investment on tablets, smartphones and enterprise hardware, the company’s CEO Yang Yuanqing said in a statement. Earlier this year, Lenovo also reorganized its operations to sharpen the company’s branding and compete better in high-end products.

For the current fiscal year, Lenovo aims to ship 50 million smartphones, up from 30 million last year, Yang said Thursday in an earnings call. It aims to ship 10 million tablets, a five-fold increase from the previous fiscal year.

Most of Lenovo’s smartphone sales come from China, but the company has also begun selling handsets in the emerging markets of Russia, India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam. In addition, Lenovo is preparing to bring its smartphones to the U.S. and European markets, Yang said, without saying when.

Did Apple Trick Sharp?

Sharp is really regretting its dependence on Apple as its main customer.

While it made sense at the time to be extremely pleased when Apple sucked up most of its capacity with screens for its iPhone and iPad, now the tide has turned the outfit is reporting a bigger than forecast loss. Sharp is now suffering from low output at its factories and forced to write off excess capacity.

The company had a $5.1 billion net loss for the year which is much worse than it predicted. At the start of the year, Sharp was forced to curtail production of 9.7-inch screens for Apple’s iPad. That has stepped up the urgency for Sharp to find new customers and uses for its leading-technology displays and may make it harder for the company to convince investors and lenders it remains a viable company.

Sharp will officially announce its results for latest business year on May 14. To make matters worse the company is also taking a charge to put aside cash for possible fines from a display price-fixing investigation in Europe, the sources said. Sharp in October received a $4.4 billion bailout from banks including Mizuho Financial Group and Mitsubishi Financial Group in return for mortgaging nearly all its factories and offices in Japan and pledging to cut 10,000 jobs.

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