VoIP Ideal Platform For Controlling Botnets

Botnets and their masters can communicate with one other by calling into the same VoIP conference call and exchanging data using touch tones, researchers demonstrated at Defcon.

This gives the botmasters — whose top goals include remaining anonymous — the ability to issue orders from random payphones and disposable cellular phones, say researchers Itzik Kotler and Iftach Ian Amit of security and risk-assessment firm Security Art.

Using phones and the public phone networks eliminates one of the prime tools bot fighters have: taking down the domains of botnets’ command and control servers, the researchers say. If the botmaster isn’t using a command and control server, it can’t be taken down.

In fact, the botmaster can communicate with the zombie machines that make up the botnet without using the Internet at all if the zombies are within a corporate network. So even if a victim company’s VoIP network is segregated from the data network, there is still a connection to the outside world.

In addition to its stealth, the VoIP tactic employs technology that readily pierces corporate firewalls and uses only traffic that is difficult for data loss prevention software to peer into. The traffic is streamed audio, so data loss prevention scanners can’t recognize patterns of data they are supposed to filter, the researchers say.

The downsides of VoIP as a command channel are that it severely limits the number of zombie machines that can be contacted at once, and the rate at which stolen data can be sent out of a corporate network is limited by the phone system. But Kotler and Amit say the connections are plenty big to send commands in.

During their demo at the conference, the pair had an Asterisk open source IP PBX stand in as the corporate PBX. A virtual machine representing a zombie computer on a corporate network called via TCP/IP through the PBX and into a corporate conference call. A BlackBerry, representing the botmaster dialed in over the public phone network to the same conference call.

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India Wants To Monitor Twitter & Facebook

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.”

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ISPs Close Internet Gap

Broadband speeds on average are within 80 percent of what major Internet service providers advertise, an appreciable increase from two years ago, according to a government study.

The Federal Communications Commission studied cable, DSL and fiber-to-the-home services at 13 top U.S. broadband providers.

The FCC found Verizon Communications Inc’s fiber network was best at meeting or exceeding advertised maximum download speeds, while Cablevision Systems Corp came in last place.

Overall, the numbers were a big boost from 2009, when data indicated download speeds were often about half of Internet service providers’ (ISP) maximum advertised speeds.

“Most major ISPs are providing service close to what they’re advertising. This represents a significant improvement over the findings from two years ago when we first shined a light on this issue,” FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said, unveiling the study’s findings at a Best Buy Co store in the District of Columbia.

During peak consumer usage hours when networks are busiest, actual download speeds varied from 114 percent to 54 percent of advertised speed among the different ISPs, the FCC said.

The complete findings of the report, its raw data and an FCC-prepared guide for consumers will be made available online. The FCC says the data will help consumers decide which Internet speed, service and provider best meet their needs.

“This report pretty well dispels the myth … that there’s a huge gap between advertised and actual speeds, and in fact we do pretty well here in the United States,” said Richard Bennett, a senior fellow at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

Not everyone was impressed with the study’s findings.

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Is Sprint’s Future Questionable?

Sprint Nextel Corp’s shares fell sharply on Thursday as heavy subscriber losses in the second quarter called into question the strategy and outlook of the No. 3 U.S. wireless company.

Sprint had spent heavily to promote its service and better compete against larger carriers Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc. But that strategy backfired as profit margins eroded and customer losses persisted.

The weak results overshadowed Sprint’s announcement of a $9 billion network contract with start-up LightSquared, and sent the stock tumbling to its lowest point since February before recovering a little to close down 16 percent.

Investors questioned whether Sprint would be able to meet its 2011 targets after such a disappointing showing.

“Their cost of doing business went up dramatically,” said Piper Jaffray analyst Christopher Larsen. “People have less confidence they can meet expectations.”

Sprint’s operating profit margin of 16.3 percent was well below the average Wall Street estimate of around 19 percent as the company had changed its product rebate terms in an effort to combat Verizon Wireless’ sale of the Apple Inc iPhone, and an iPhone discount at AT&T.

But the bet did not pay off as Sprint still saw defections of 101,000 net subscribers — also known as post-paid customers — compared with analysts’ expectation for losses of 15,000.

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Nokia Had Horrible Quarter

Nokia has just posted very disturbing quarterly results this morning. The European smartphone giant outlook appears to be getting worse and CEO Stephen Elop has acknowledged that things will not turn around overnight.

Elop is reporting that Nokia’s operating profit is down 44 percent since Q1 and sales of mobile devices are down 23 percent consecutively. While the overall sales of mobile phones and smartphones are down, along with average selling prices.

Elop labelled the results as “clearly disappointing” and went on to say that competitive pressures are continuing. He tried to paint a somewhat more positive outlook for the rest of the year, thanks to Nokia’s clear strategy and several major product launches.

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Mobile Networks Near Capacity

Mobile networks in North America are using 80 percent of capacity, with 36 percent of base stations facing capacity constraints, according to a survey by investment firm Credit Suisse.

Networks in other regions also are more than 50 percent utilized, with the global average at 65 percent, Credit Suisse said after surveying carriers around the world. That level of use matches the average “threshold” rate that would trigger the service providers to start buying more network equipment, the report said. Looking ahead, on average the carriers expected their utilization rate to grow to 70 percent within 12 months.

Credit Suisse used the results to predict new sales by makers of cellular equipment, such as Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia Siemens Networks and Huawei Technologies. But at a certain level, heavy use of a base station can also affect the mobile experience of individual subscribers. The survey found that 23 percent of base stations worldwide had capacity constraints (defined as a utilization rate over 80 percent during busy hours), while 36 percent in North America were under that kind of pressure.

The North American networks were 72 percent utilized two years ago. The region’s carriers expect the rate to ease back down to that point within two years. North American service providers are likely to buy more equipment soon, because having their networks 74 percent filled is the threshold rate in that region, the survey said.

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Flaw in Intel’s 320 Series SSD Confirmed

There had been talk on the Internet in reference to the nasty bug discovered and reported on Intel’s support forums regarding the data loss on its recently released 320-series SSDs and today, Intel has finally and officially confirmed it.

The users have mentioned that under power failures, the drive reverts back to 8MB capacity and thus looses all the data stored on the drive. According to preliminary reports the drive tries to reconnect with the SATA port rather than to go for a proper shutdown.

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Cisco And HP At Odds Over Catalyst 6500

It appears that HP is calling Cisco out on its advertisement that it’s new improved Catalyst 6500 switch is better than anything HP has to offer. As many IT professionals already know Cisco finally introduced the long-awaited upgrade to the very popular Catalyst 6500. The new Catalyst it equipped with Cisco’s Supervisor Engine 2T, a 2-terabit card which can manage 80 Gbps and triples the 6500′s throughput from 720 Gbps to 2Tbps and quadruples the number of devices that can connect to the network. These stats are based on literature from Cisco’s point of view. Cisco also states that an upgrade to Supervisor 2T on existing Catalyst switches would cost customers around $38,000. However, Cisco is saying if you went the same upgrade path with a comparable HP switch architecture; it would cost the customer more than $100,000 and would only give the customer 720 Gbps of throughput.

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HP Announces TouchPad 4G Deal

Hewlett-Packard announced it would release a 4G TouchPad tablet with upgraded hardware that will be available on AT&T’s wireless network.

The tablet will have a 1.5GHz processor, which is a change from the dual-core 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor available with older Wi-Fi-only TouchPad models that went on sale just two weeks ago.

Last August Qualcomm said that by the start of this year it would ship the dual-core Snapdragon QSD8672 chip that could run at clock speeds of up to 1.5GHz.

The TouchPad will have 32GB of internal storage, GPS and built-in AT&T wireless mobile broadband capabilities, HP said in a statement. Specific pricing and availability will be announced at a later date.

Wireless connectivity will be available through AT&T’s DataConnect mobile data plans for tablets or Wi-Fi hotspots around the country, HP said.

TouchPad users have expressed concerns about the device’s performance, especially the long load times for some applications. HP attributes the performance issue to software problems and said it will deliver an over-the-air software update that should resolve some performance problems.

Some buyers also were concerned about the TouchPad’s weight of about 1.6 pounds (740 grams), which is heavier than Apple’s iPad at 1.32 pounds. The TouchPad includes a 9.7-inch screen and comes with WebOS 3.0, which is also used in smartphones.

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nVidia’s Tegra 3 Coming To Smartphones

It appears as though Nvidia’s next generation quad-core Kal-El (Tegra 3) quad core SoC will also show up on smartphones too. Originally, it was believed that the SoC would only support the ever growing tablet space.

Inside sources have confirmed that projects are already underway and that Tegra 3 aka Kal-El smartphones will be make a debut as well.

Nvidia had hoped to get a lot of play out of Tegra 2, unfortunately the chip was not as embraced as Nvidia had wanted. Even though the Tegra 2 SoC did manage to get a few design wins.

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