Bluetooth 4.1 Goes IPV6

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) has announced Bluetooth 4.1, the first version of Bluetooth to lay the foundations for IPV6 capability.

The first hints of what the Bluetooth SIG had planned for this new version were revealed to The INQUIRER in October during our exclusive interview with Steve Hegenderfer at Appsworld. There, he revealed his aspirations for the Bluetooth protocol to become integral to the Internet of Things.

At the front end of Bluetooth 4.1, the biggest change for users is that the retry duration for lost devices has been increased to a full three minutes, so if you wander off with your wireless headphones still on, there’s more of a chance of being able to seamlessly carry on listening upon your return.

Behind the scenes, devices fitted with Bluetooth 4.1 will be able to act as both hub and end point. The advantage of this is that multiple devices can share information between them without going via the host device, so your smartwatch can talk to your heart monitor and send the combined data in a single transmission to your smartphone.

This sort of “pooling” of devices represents an “extranet of things”, and the technology can therefore be applied to a wider area in forming the “Internet of Things” too.

The other major additions are better isolation techniques to ensure that Bluetooth, which broadcasts on an unregulated band, doesn’t interfere either with itself or with signals from other protocols broadcasting at similar frequencies, including WiFi.

The Bluetooth protocol has retained complete backwards compatibility, so a new Bluetooth 4.1 enabled device will work seamlessly with a Bluetooth 1.0 dongle bought in a pound shop.

In addition, Bluetooth 4.0 devices can be Bluetooth 4.1 enabled through patches, so we should see some Bluetooth 4.1 enabled hardware arrive early in 2014.

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Adobe Reader Security Issue Found

McAfee has discovered a vulnerability in Adobe’s Reader program that allows people to track the usage of a PDF file.

“Recently, we detected some unusual PDF samples,” McAfee’s Haifei Li said in a blog post. “After some investigation, we successfully identified that the samples are exploiting an unpatched security issue in every version of Adobe Reader.”

The affected versions of Adobe Reader also include the latest “sandboxed” Reader XI (11.0.2).

McAfee said that the issue is not a “serious problem” because it doesn’t enable code execution, however it does permit the sender to see when and where a PDF file has been opened.

This vulnerability could only be dangerous if hackers exploited it to collect sensitive information such as IP address, internet service provider (ISP), or even the victim’s computing routine to eventually launch an advanced persistent threat (APT).

McAfee said that it is unsure who is exploiting this issue or why, but have found the PDFs to be delivered by an “email tracking service” provider.

The vulnerability works when a specific PDF JavaScript API is called with the first parameter having a UNC-located resource.

“Adobe Reader will access that UNC resource. However, this action is normally blocked and creates a warning dialog,” Li said. “The danger is that if the second parameter is provided with a special value, it changes the API’s behavior. In this situation, if the UNC resource exists, we see the warning dialog.

“However, if the UNC resource does not exist, the warning dialog will not appear even though the TCP traffic has already gone.”

McAfee said that it has reported the issue to Adobe and is waiting for their confirmation and a future patch. Adobe wasn’t immediately available for comment at the time of writing.

“In addition, our analysis suggests that more information could be collected by calling various PDF Javascript APIs. For example, the document’s location on the system could be obtained by calling the Javascript “this.path” value,” Li added.

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Apple Loses Court Case

Apple has lost a patent lawsuit against a small Spanish company, allowing the firm to continue selling its tablet computer.

Apple filed the case a year ago when it obtained an injunction from a local court to ban imports of the NT-K tablet into Spain. However, according to court documents, the Spanish court has vacated the injunction, saying that there are no legal grounds to block sales of the device.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the NT-K tablet is made in China and sold in Europe by Nuevas Tecnologias y Energias Catala, based in the eastern Spanish region of Valencia.

The NT-K tablet runs a Spanish language version of Android written by Nuevas Tecnologias’ programmers.

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HTC Is On A Buying Spree

Taiwanese handset maker HTC has been on a shopping spree to reshape its business, though it remains to be seen if the strategy will help it gain ground on rivals such as Apple, Samsung and Research In Motion.

HTC has bought or invested in at least six companies this year, many of which provide technologies to improve how users consume and share content on its devices. It’s a big change for the Taiwanese manufacturer, which focused for much of its existence on hardware, leaving software and content to its partners.

Times have changed, however, with rivals like Apple and Nokia building whole ecosystems around their products, including app stores and content delivery systems. HTC has shifted its focus before, moving from contract manufacturer for Microsoft’s smartphones to selling its own HTC-branded devices. It must now evolve once more.

“It is no longer enough to focus only on hardware innovations,” said Ryan Lee, an analyst with Taipei-based Topology Research Institute. HTC’s acquisitions, which include both technology and patents, “pave the way for HTC’s greater competitiveness,” he said.

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Shareholder Group Demands RIM Shake-up

An activist shareholder in Research In Motion said on Tuesday it wants the struggling BlackBerry maker to seriously ponder selling itself or spinning off its patent portfolio, sending RIM’s share price higher.

Jaguar Financial Corp said it wants the Canadian company’s board to take control from co-Chief Executives Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie and for up to five of RIM’s independent board members to explore options to maximize shareholder value.

RIM shares were up 1.3 percent at midday Tuesday at $30.52 on the Nasdaq and gained 2.3 percent to C$30.26 on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Both markets were down sharply
overall. RIM shares have lost almost half their value since the start of the year.

“Our call is for (RIM’s board) to take action; no more study, take action. Take action now, before it’s too late,” Jaguar Chief Executive Vic Alboini said in an interview.

Alboini said Jaguar has talked to a select group of shareholders and received broadly positive feedback for its plan.

“We haven’t found one who wasn’t supportive,” he said. “We haven’t found any opposition.”

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Verizon Ending Unlimited Data Plan In July

We are closer to reaching the end of Verizon Wireless’s limited-time offer of unlimited data, says the Wall Street Journal‘s AllThingsD. The website reports that the wireless carrier plans to introduce new tiered pricing plans next month for new smartphone customers — including those buying Apple’s iPhone 4.

If true, the report hardly comes as a surprise. Back in January, when Verizon became the second carrier in the U.S. to offer iPhone service, the company said it would offer subscribers a $30-a-month unlimited data plan for the iPhone’s launch, but highlighted the fact that the offer was for a limited time only.

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Samsung Sues Apple

In the uber competitive world of mobile device development suing is fast becoming a sport engaged in by all of the titans of technology. Add another lawsuit to the pile as Samsung Electronics hits Apple with lawsuits in three countries alleging infringement of patents on smartphone technologies. Last week Apple sued Samsung for allegedly copying the designs of Apple’s iPad, iPod Touch and iPhone in its Galaxy smartphone and Galaxy Tab tablet PC.

On Thursday, the South Korean electronics maker sued Apple in Seoul alleging five patent infringements, in Tokyo over two alleged infringements and in Manheim, Germany, over three.

“Samsung is responding actively to the legal action taken against us in order to protect our intellectual property and to ensure our continued innovation and growth in the mobile communications business,” the company said in a statement.

According to Samsung, the lawsuits say Apple infringed on patents concerning reducing data transmission errors in WCDMA (Wideband CDMA) mobile networks, tethering mobile phones to PCs so the PC can use the phone’s wireless data connection, and reducing power consumption when transmitting data over HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) networks.

Apple’s lawsuit filed on April 15 in the U.S. says Samsung copied external design features on the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. The lawsuit further alleges that Samsung designed application icons for that come close to icons on Apple’s devices.

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iPhone 5 May Debut In September

Apple’s next-generation iPhone will have a faster processor and will start shipping in September, several sources with direct knowledge of the company’s supply chain said.

The production of the new iPhone will start in July/August and the smartphone will look very similar to the current iPhone 4, one of the sources said on Wednesday.

The iPhone -debuted in 2007 with the touchscreen, on-demand application template now adopted by its rivals- remains the gold standard in the booming smartphone market.

Reports on the timeline of the new iPhone launch vary, though it is largely expected that Apple will likely refresh its iPhone 4 later this year.

The sources declined to be identified because the plans for the new iPhone were not yet public. An Apple spokeswoman in Hong Kong was not available for comment.

The iPhone is one of Apple’s most successful products, with more than 16 million sold in the last quarter of 2010 and the product accounted for more than a third of the company’s sales in the quarter.

The current iPhone 4 was launched by Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs in June last year and began shipping the same month in 2010.

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Mobile Panic Button Coming Soon

The U.S. State Department is putting its money where its mouth is, according to the Daily Mail. It is funding the creation of an application that will allow pro-democracy activists to delete all incriminating evidence on their mobile phones with a single click while sending out an alert to their fellow activists.

The “panic button” will send out a text message to everyone in the user’s address book, then erase both that address book and the phone’s call history. This will be an important tool, given how thoroughly governments go through dissident’s communications devices as a matter of course these days.

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Adobe Flash Exploited

Hackers have found a way to exploit  Adobe Flash Player by using a zero-day vulnerability by using Microsoft Excel documents that was confirmed by Adobe yesterday. Adobe representatives that they will not be able to patch Flash until next week. Therefore, if you use Flash you are on your own until next week.  Read More….