|
Post by Admin on Mar 21, 2014 7:48:38 GMT -9
President Obama gets ready to ditch the BlackBerry By Ryan Teague Beckwith, Digital First Media POSTED: 03/21/2014 07:47:50 AM PDT4 COMMENTS| UPDATED: 26 MIN. AGO
The White House is testing Samsung and LG smartphones, which presumably use Google's Android operating system, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Although Obama has said that he uses an iPad to catch up on the news, the newspaper quoted an unnamed source saying that the White House is not testing an iPhone.
While BlackBerry was once at the forefront of phone-based email — so much so that it was nicknamed the “CrackBerry” its high-powered users who were addicted to it — the company fell behind as more consumer-friendly companies like Apple and Google got into the market.
Still, BlackBerry maintained a stronghold at the White House and Capitol Hill, where it still holds sway over politicians and their staffers partly due to inertia and partly because high-security options were in place.
If Obama switches to a modified Android phone, though, that may change quickly.
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Mar 24, 2014 8:37:20 GMT -9
As XP nears its own demise, ATMs face potential crisis Summary: That crisis will depend on how many of the world's ATMs, 95 percent of which have XP on them, can migrate to a newer OS that comes with support
Rajiv Rao By Rajiv Rao for New Tech for Old India | March 24, 2014 -- 16:22 GMT (09:22 PDT) ATM man cash
If some of your worst, paranoid fears involve slotting your ATM card into your neighbourhood machine and then finding out that, lo and behold, every penny in both your Savings and Checkings accounts has mysteriously vanished without a trace—well, that may just become something to take seriously post April 8th say experts.
For April 8th is the day that Microsoft will stop support service to one of their most popular operating systems in history, Windows XP. While around a third to a quarter of the world's PCs are estimated to house XP, apparently 95 percent of the world’s 3 million ATM machines run on it.
Microsoft has said that it will continue to support security products through July 2015, however it has apparently issued a warning stating that "the effectiveness of antimalware solutions on out-of-support operating systems is limited." India's Reserve Bank (RBI) also issued warnings about the April 8th deadline.
As far as India is concerned, it gets a little confusing as to how many of the country’s 110-140,000 plus machines will be affected. Amrish Goyal Microsoft India General Manager (Windows Business) has been quoted widely saying that the number of ATMs in India needing an upgrade will be higher (as a percentage) than the 35 percent XP installed base amongst computers that proliferate in the financial sector. Other figures put it at around 20 percent.
XP India In other words, India's situation may not be as dire as those in other parts of the world due to relatively recent adoption of ATMs which translates into newer models and operating systems.
Still, for the machines running XP, at first glance things don't look so rosy. As this article points out, ATMs in India are run by manufacturers such as NCR and Diebold. Navroze Dastur, managing director at NCR India, is of the opinion that less than 25 percent of XP ATMs will be realistically able to migrate before the deadline. "We had reached out to banks about 6-9 months ago and we've been in dialogue with them about upgrading their ATM network. There are a number of issues with upgrading operating systems… Some of the machines' hardware may not be upgradeable and some may need hardware upgrades for the new operating systems," he said.
In India, a preponderance of XP-run machines belong to nationalised banks that have a reputation of being as nimble as an elephant in the summer heat. Which means, if you own a bank account at any of these institutions, don't count on any speedy changes. If you factor in the cost to upgrade to Windows 7—which could range from a few hundred bucks to a few thousand dollars if the machine needs new hardware—a quick upgrade looks even less likely.
So, how real a security threat is the XP expiration? According to this article two researchers at the Chaos Computing Congress in Hamburg showed how they were able to hack into an ATM in an unspecified European country with a methodology specifically suited to cracking XP using only a pen drive and malware which then gave them complete control of the machine.
On the other hand, here is an excellent, detailed analysis of the issue written by ZDNet columnist Larry Seltzer who thinks that there may be more noise being made than necessary . In short, Setlzer says that ATMs are generally protected pretty heavily with firewalls and antimalware so getting into one of them may not be as easy as the hackers in the previous paragraph make it appear to be.
Much like the whole 'Y2K' end-of-the-world depiction at the turn of this century, the XP expiry will take some watching to see how things unravel.
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Mar 25, 2014 8:17:51 GMT -9
Windows free? More businesses turn to Chrome Google’s cloud system offers low cost, simplicity By Michael O'Dwyer - Tech Page One February 26 2014 Share Share on facebookShare on twitterShare on google_plusone_shareShare on linkedinShare on email Chromebooks — the cheap, cloud-based computers that use Google’s operating system — are becoming increasingly popular for business use.
While IT professionals still prefer Windows-based PCs for desktop publishing and other high-powered processing, Chromebooks offer a cheaper, more secure way to handle many other business functions such as file sharing and video conferencing.
Jason Towns Firebrand Strategic’s Jason Towns forecasts that Google’s Chrome OS will enjoy mainstream adoption within three years. UKNetMail Ltd., a British-based Google Enterprise Partner specializing in the financial sector, has made a rapid switch to Chrome over the past 12 months.
“We have implemented the Chrome OS in several financial institutions,” says co-owner Pavel Dolezal. “And the only feedback we receive is from users who’ve tried them and want to get more of them for the entire organization.”
Because Chrome systems store all their information and software in the cloud, there is little risk of sensitive data being lost or stolen. And Chrome devices, whose main purpose is simply to connect to the Internet, are attractively priced at less than $300 each.
Built for online
“Chromebooks are built to be used online and to be honest, 90 percent of the time that we’re on the computer, we are online,” says Jason Towns, managing partner of Firebrand Strategic, a Washington, D.C.-based boutique business development and strategy agency servicing social improvement startups and nonprofits.
The Chrome OS is maintenance and virus-free, lightweight and doesn’t need much processing power to operate, Towns explains.
Integration with Google means that collaborative tasks are easy and all changes are synced to multiple devices automatically.
“The beauty of the Chrome OS is that…data and collaboration flow seamlessly from one device to another, thus making it easy for everyone to choose their own configuration,” says Dolenzai. “In addition, users love the ability to switch devices and resume the work from exactly where it was on the other device.”
Most businesses, of course, can’t switch completely to Chrome because there are still some functions that only Windows can handle.
Depends on need
“It really depends on what that user uses his computer for,” says Towns. “For instance, a graphic designer or photographer that needs apps like the Adobe Creative Suite will not be best served by a Chromebook…because the Chromebook won’t run the main apps that they use [every day].”
Users also can’t do anything without an Internet connection, so working on airplanes or remote areas can be a problem.
“During the 10 percent of the time that we are not online, the Chromebook isn’t as useful,” says Towns. “However, there are many apps that function offline and every month, more offline apps are available.”
The same is true with word-processing functions, Towns notes.
“Those expecting to run Microsoft Office, for example, will be disappointed,” he says. “But let’s remember that Chromebooks run the Google-owned Chrome OS , which is integrated with Google Apps and wide range of Google services. This means that, in most cases, an alternative application is available for most tasks.”
Chrome in schools
A Google-sponsored survey from IDC touts the advantages of Chromebooks for schools, such as reduced IT support, cost of ownership and increased productivity. All of these advantages can translate to businesses, as long as companies understand the limitations of the device.
“Whether or not an organization is an educational institution or business entity, the IT themes are the same,” says Matthew Vollmar, CEO at Newmind Group Inc., a Kalamazoo, Mich.-based provider of managed IT services for transferring legacy systems to the cloud.
“Some of those benefits that relate to Chromebooks in education are also highly apparent in companies,” he adds. “Remote device management, remote document access, user collaboration on project files. The list goes on.”
Though comparing Chrome to Windows is “almost like comparing apples to oranges,” Vollmar says, the gap is beginning to narrow.
VMware’s plan to bring a Desktop as a Service (DaaS) solution for running Windows applications on Chromebooks is likely to entice more businesses to switch.
“Businesses and individuals within businesses that require the use of software that is hardware intensive or dependent on the Windows OS will find Windows a benefit,” says Vollmar. “But even this is being overcome by new technology being developed by VMware.”
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Mar 26, 2014 6:49:34 GMT -9
Google building business-specific features into next Android version: Report Ketan Pratap, March 26, 2014
A new report has emerged claiming that Google is considering adding business-specific features to its next Android iteration, aiming to challenge companies that already offer such services - such as BlackBerry, Apple and Samsung,. The Next Web in a report citing the Information has claimed that the Mountain View giant is making an effort to make its Android OS more striking to business and corporate users, apart from regular Android users - with whom it has been very successful. The original report cites a source involved with Google's upcoming plans who claimed the company is developing business-specific features in the next Android version.
The report adds that Sundar Pichai, Senior Vice President at Google in charge of Android, Chrome and Google Apps, is leading the initiative to enhance security and add new possible features to Android's next OS version.
Some of the new features that Google is said to be working on for Android include strong data encryption; sensitive user data directly stored on to chips; better authentication features (biometric) and new APIs (application programming interface) allowing remote wiping of files from devices and apps.
Earlier this month, Google rolled out encrypted Gmail service, in an attempt to thwart snooping. The company revealed that Gmail would use an encrypted HTTPS connection when you check or send email.
A report on Tuesday suggested that cybercriminals could exploit Android-based smartphones and tablets using bugs that could cause devices to become unresponsive or unusable. Google is yet to respond to the new vulnerability of Android smartphones and tablets.
The Android KitKat's successor, which is yet to be named, could be revealed at Google's upcoming annual developers' conference, I/O 2014. Google announced the dates for its annual developers' conference, I/O which is scheduled for June 25 to 26 in February 2014.
Notably, Samsung has been also pushing its Knox security service for its smartphones and even responded criticism surrounding its service. The Korean giant had also mentioned some tips and tricks on how users could avoid compromising important data on their Knox-enabled handsets.
An earlier report suggested that BlackBerry's Enterprise Service was safer than Samsung Knox.
For the latest technology news and reviews, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter and get the NDTV Gadgets app for Android or iOS.
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Mar 27, 2014 6:23:13 GMT -9
Microsoft’s Office Suite Finally Coming to iPad, Maybe Too Late By NICK WINGFIELDMARCH 27, 2014
One of the most lucrative software franchises in history, Microsoft Office, is finally coming to the most influential computing device of the last few years, the iPad.
Microsoft’s decision to bring Office to the Apple device comes after years of wavering inside the company about the product, as it mulled over the implications for its own efforts to make a tablet computer. To many people, the move is a refreshing sign of a new Microsoft, one slowly unshackling itself from an era when all of its major decisions were made in deference to Windows, Microsoft’s operating system.
But to skeptics, Office for the iPad is arriving dangerously late.
Bits Blog: A Shifting Workplace ExperienceJULY 31, 2013 That’s because the delay has given people who use iPads, especially business professionals, years to get used to using the tablet without Office, a suite of programs that includes Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Start-ups like Evernote, Quip, Smartsheet and Haiku Deck, along with Apple’s own iWork suite of applications, have filled the void left by Microsoft with productivity applications that work on tablets and other devices.
Microsoft’s shares are trading near their highest point in 14 years, partly in anticipation of Office for the iPad. Microsoft’s new chief executive, Satya Nadella, is expected to announce the product at an event in San Francisco on Thursday.
It once bothered David A. Levine, the chief investment officer of Artivest, a financial services start-up in New York, when he would go to conferences with his iPad, and he could not use Microsoft Word on the device. Instead, he would jot down ideas in the bare-bones note-taking app that comes with the iPad and copy all of the text over to Word on his computer, a clumsy process.
Since last year, his company has done all of its word processing in Quip, an app that works on iPads, smartphones and computers through a web browser. The software lets employees work together on a document and see changes others are making in real time, on whatever devices they happen to be using.
“I don’t miss Word at all,” Mr. Levine said.
The new Office product will test whether one of the great successes of the PC era can thrive in the age of mobile devices. Over the last decade, Office has generated approximately $180 billion in revenue for Microsoft, according to estimates by Nomura Securities. Its growth over that period tracked the ascent of the PC business, in which Microsoft remains an influential player through Windows, the dominant operating system for PCs. For years, whenever someone bought a new PC for their home or business, they usually bought Office to go with it.
PCs aren’t selling as they used to, though. IPads and other tablets have become attractive substitutes for many PC functions, like web browsing, watching videos and reading emails. Last year, global shipments of PCs fell 10 percent from the year before, while tablet sales grew 68 percent, according to the research firm Gartner.
During the holiday quarter, Microsoft said, Office revenue from businesses rose 10 percent while consumer revenue fell 24 percent, partly because it now sells Office as a subscription, which affects its accounting. While Microsoft no longer reveals how much total revenue it gets from the product, the company’s business division reported nearly $25 billion for the fiscal year that ended June 30; 90 percent of that division’s revenue was from Office.
Rick Sherlund, an analyst with Nomura Securities, says he believes Microsoft could add $1 billion or so of additional revenue from Office for the iPad and other devices that don’t run Windows over the next year or so. While it would take more than that to make a big difference for a company of Microsoft’s size, he said investors believed that Microsoft was showing a greater willingness to create products for other companies’ devices.
Adam Tratt, chief executive of Haiku Deck, a presentation app for the iPad that competes with PowerPoint, sees Microsoft’s foray into iPad apps as largely a defensive move, rather than a chance to generate incremental revenue. “The opportunity is to not lose a $25 billion market,” said Mr. Tratt, who was an Office product manager in the 1990s.
Microsoft declined to comment on its plans to bring Office to the iPad before its event Thursday. Microsoft’s previous chief executive, Steven A. Ballmer, said late last year that the company was working on Office for the iPad.
Microsoft has created software for other devices for years. It made Word for the Macintosh in the mid-1980s, and more recently released iPhone apps for its Bing search engine and other services. It offered an iPad version of OneNote, a note-taking application in the Office suite, more than two years ago.
But the iPad and other tablets represent a bigger potential threat to Windows than the Mac, which made bringing the most prominent Office applications to the devices a tough call. For more than two years, Microsoft has had prototypes of Office apps for the iPad working inside the company, according to several people briefed on the products, who asked to remain anonymous discussing the internal development process.
The company was conflicted. It didn’t push forward with the apps partly because it saw the availability of Office for Windows devices, including Microsoft’s own Surface family of tablets, as a way to differentiate its operating system. It turned out that Office didn’t help much with sales of Surface, which first came out in late 2012. That may partly have been because Microsoft didn’t do enough to make Office work well with touch screens.
To Brad Silverberg, a venture capitalist in Seattle with Fuel Capital and a former senior Microsoft executive, the company’s hesitation around bringing Office to the iPad is reminiscent of the early 1990s, when the makers of WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3, successful word-processing and spreadsheet applications, balked at making Windows versions of their products.
At the time, Mr. Silverberg said, he begged the companies to move faster to bring the products to Windows, but they didn’t want to see Microsoft’s software succeed. Microsoft exploited their hesitation.
“It gave Microsoft a huge opening to establish the Office franchise,” Mr. Silverberg said. “Microsoft is in danger of doing the same kind of thing now.”
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Mar 31, 2014 9:11:51 GMT -9
Outlook Web App For Office 365 To Get Smart Clutter Filter, OneDrive For Business Integration Posted 1 hour ago by Frederic Lardinois (@fredericl)
Microsoft today announced a number of forthcoming updates to the Outlook Web App for Office 365 at its Exchange Conference in Austin. Jeff Teper, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of its Office Service and Servers group, said that the overall strategy here is to embrace “cloud-first, mobile-first communications.”
Later this year, Microsoft will introduce a number of new features based on the new Office Graph, which it introduced just about a month ago. One of those is support for Groups, as the company previously announced. Another, Microsoft today said, will be a new feature that is currently code-named “Clutter.” The idea here is to use the knowledge the company gains about your daily activities at work to automatically remove those emails from your inbox that don’t immediately need your attention.
The system will learn from your actions, so that if you ignore emails about a colleague’s vacation pictures, it will assume that those kinds of messages are clutter and hide them. A budget proposal that many people in your company read, however, is likely important and will be highlighted for you. All of this will be completely personalized, but you always get the option to train the system by marking emails as clutter (or not).
Through this, Teper believes “email triage and search will become truly intelligent with the Office Graph.”
The other new feature Microsoft plans to launch soon is support for easier document sharing by leveraging the OneDrive for Business service (which is officially launching on April 1) and the Office Web Apps. Instead of attaching a document, users can simply attach a link to the file on OneDrive and set permissions for who can edit the file; from then on, you can ensure that everybody is working on the exact same copy of a document that’s updated in real time.
Later this year, for example, the Outlook web app will start supporting Android phones. As Microsoft acknowledges, many phones already come with built-in support for Exchange and Exchange ActiveSync. The company plans to continue to work with OEMs to offer this kind of native support. At the same time, though, the company says it wants its users to have access to all of the new Exchange features in Outlook, and in order to do that, the company believes a dedicated native app for the Outlook Web App is the way to go. The company previously released similar apps for iPhone and iPad.
Overall, Teper also noted, Microsoft is going through a process of unifying the concepts around Office and plans to continue to invest in features like archiving, eDiscovery DLP and encryption.
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Apr 1, 2014 7:50:10 GMT -9
Oracle MySQL 5.7 Release Boosts Performance, Scalability MySQL 5.7 release exploits latest hardware, introduces beta MySQL Fabric to manage high availability, database sharding.
Oracle on Monday announced MySQL 5.7, an upgrade of the popular open-source database that the vendor says will deliver "significantly higher" performance and improved manageability over MySQL 5.6. To ease management, the company released beta (1.0) MySQL Fabric software for high-availability support and database sharding.
Improving performance at high scale, MySQL 5.7 takes better advantage of high-end, multi-core severs. With MySQL 5.6, performance topped out with 32-core servers, but 5.7 makes the most of top-the-line 64-core servers, according to Tomas Ulin, VP of MySQL engineering.
"MySQL 5.7 is three times faster than 5.5 at high scale and two times faster than 5.6," Ulin told InformationWeek in a phone interview. "We're constantly pushing the limits of where you run into bottlenecks. And it's now at around 60 cores where you see performance flatten out."
In two other upgrades tied to state-of-the-art hardware, MySQL 5.7 can detect when it has direct access to solid state disks, in which case it can turn off unnecessary performance boosters such as double-write buffering, thereby improving efficiency. The 5.7 query optimizer has also been improved, with better control over seek times, memory, RAM tables, and other hardware features that can improve query performance.
"The flexibility of the 5.6 optimizer was limited, so we created an API that has much more granularity around how you can specify costs and performance attributes," said Ulin. With improved granularity you get better control over optimization choices.
In another performance improvement, the MySQL 5.7 connection layer offers higher capacity for short-lived connections, a common challenge for high-scale Web applications. The number of sustainable database connect and disconnect actions over a given time period has doubled, according to Ulin.
MySQL Fabric offers a ready-made framework for ensuring high availability and supporting database sharding. MySQL users have long solved these reliability and scalability challenges on their own, but MySQL Fabric covers the basics of high availability and sharding and is a starting point for additional features to come, says Ulin. General availability will depend on user feedback, he told us, with review periods generally taking two to six months.
With Monday's announcements Oracle also released MySQL Workbench 6.1, an upgrade offering two new features. Visual Explain lets administrators examine the function of a query so they can better understand performance tradeoffs and bottlenecks. A new performance schema dashboard lets administrators study memory usage and performance characteristics.
The release of MySQL 5.7 comes less than a week after Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, and Twitter introduced WebScaleSQL, a high-scale branch of MySQL based on the MySQL 5.6 Community Edition release. NoSQL and NewSQL vendors insist this high-scale enhancement won't be a threat, but Ulin said WebScaleSQL features, developed to improve scalability and to ease administration at scale, will be folded into future MySQL releases.
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Apr 3, 2014 10:58:44 GMT -9
In three hours, Microsoft gave the Windows-verse everything it needs... ...except a Windows strategy. But we can wait for that By Andrew Orlowski, 3 Apr 2014
Analysis In a three-hour session at Build 2014, Microsoft tried to pull itself further clear of the wreckage created by the company's ex-Windows 8 chief Steve Sinofsky.
Most keynotes ramble at least a little bit, but the sheer deluge of updates at Microsoft's annual developer conference yesterday seemed to leave the audience battered and exhausted.
Such was the pace of the bombardment, even the major news that Microsoft was scrapping royalties for all phones and for tablets with displays smaller than nine inches, took barely a minute. This was nothing to sniff at. Microsoft's empire is founded on licensing royalties, and co-founder Bill Gates was reported to be strongly against dropping royalties for Windows Phone, even in the face of competition from almost-free Android.
Let's see what Microsoft got right. Two epic errors stand out as being confronted and dealt with.
In Sinofsky's cultural revolution, pretty much everything went out of the window. The new Metro Modern user interface was a sandbox of touchcreen-friendly tiles. Apps were supposed to be written once for Windows 8 and then run seamlessly on desktop PCs, tablets and phones and look alike, but in reality required developers to target three incompatible APIs. The result was the exact opposite of what Microsoft's management hoped Sinofsky's radical plan would achieve.
Instead of "brute forcing" a new Windows ecosystem into existence, to take second or third place behind Apple's iOS, Sinofsky just created three more mini-Windows, three more minnows.
So instead of providing a bridge for Microsoft's vast developer base to the new Metro world, it instead invited them to jump over the abyss. Why, as a developer, would you want to write code three times for platforms nobody really uses? Legacy enterprise apps were left high and dry.
Microsoft addressed these issues in two ways this week. Finally, at long last, developers can use "90 per cent" (its figure) of the same code base to create Universal Windows apps for Windows Phone, RT, desktop Windows and now Xbox.
That may not be much help if you have already invested a huge amount of time in one of the platforms (say, desktop or Windows Phone), but for greenfield projects, the concept of write-once-run-anywhere is very attractive. For those interested, a guide to building programs for both Windows and Windows Phone is here: part 1, part 2, and part 3.
It's quite astonishing Sinofsky plowed on with the incompatible sandboxes for as long as he did, without being collared. It was only the flight of successful executives escaping his cultural revolution that forced then-CEO Steve Ballmer to take notice, and deal with the carnage.
Secondly, Microsoft has devised a cunning way for developers to keep ancient yet critical code while migrating to the new world. The Brokered Windows Runtime allows old software to communicate with Modern touch apps in a separate process "outside the app container."
Microsoft demonstrated a new Windows RT sync app that talks to some old database code using synchronous calls, but without blocking the user interface thread as synchronous calls used to do in the Victorian era (eg, 1995). This service doesn't apply to consumer apps, because only enterprises are permitted to sideload apps. But there is an awful lot of ancient code out there in the business world that's been thrown a lifeline.
Microsoft's comparison of handheld and desktop machines and their uses This ... has to be pointed out to people? Again, it's astonishing that Microsoft urged developers to embrace the Metro/Modern touch world and didn't allow them to bring their investments forward.
The addition of the Xbox One as a build target for Universal Apps is a nice bonus. Microsoft devoted lots of time describing examples of what Kinect could do – and many are not games. All in all, the Windows world is far healthier than it has been in the past two years. So developers will be a lot happier
(I've since had a hands on with Windows 8.1 Update and will write this up separately.)
What we didn't hear from Microsoft was a clear over-arching direction. Whether, for example, the software giant will continue Surface, its own tablet hybrid hardware. Or how it justifies retaining Bing and Xbox. You'll note it has been obliged to give a seat to an activist shareholder who lobbies strongly against such strategies. It's unfair to expect new CEO Satya Nadella to show his hand – he's barely got his feet under the table. But at some time in the near future, some time this year, he's going to have to do just that. ®
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Apr 4, 2014 6:23:33 GMT -9
It's about time: New atomic clock is more accurate April 04, 2014 00:40 GMT BOULDER, Colo. (AP) -- Good news for people who are sticklers for punctuality: The National Institute of Standards and Technology has a new atomic clock that isn't supposed to gain or lose a second in roughly 300 million years. The new clock was launched Thursday. It's located at the institute's Boulder center. The Boulder Daily Camera reports the clock is the nation's civilian time standard. The U.S. Naval Observatory maintains military time. The new clock is about three times more accurate than the old one. The institute says it will keep operating both and use comparisons to improve them. Banks, computer networks and others use the atomic clock to synchronize their own. The institute's radio broadcasts update about 50 million timekeepers daily. Its Internet service gets about 8 billion automated synchronization requests daily. Information from: Daily Camera, www.dailycamera.com/
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Apr 7, 2014 8:07:03 GMT -9
How to Support Windows XP Now That Microsoft Isn't By Paul Rubens April 7, 2014 09:54 AM ET Add a commentinShare CIO - Millions of PCs running Windows XP face a tsunami of hacker attacks starting tomorrow, when Microsoft ceases support for the aging, still-popular, operating system
After tomorrow, there will be no more security updates, so it's likely that black hats will release a torrent of stockpiled malware to exploit vulnerabilities that Microsoft will no longer patch. "Some hackers are bound to be hanging on to exploits and waiting for support to end, says Chris Sherman, a security analyst at Forrester Research. "If you knew of a vulnerability, why wouldn't you?"
Hackers will also be able to examine Microsoft's future Windows Vista and Windows 7 security updates to gain insights into the underlying vulnerabilities they patch and apply that knowledge to exploit similar vulnerabilities that will exist in Windows XP. The end of Windows XP is a potential problem for companies because of the sheer number of XP machines out there. Forrester estimates that 20 percent of business endpoints run XP, with as many as 23 percent in the public and healthcare sectors; retailers are also at risk. Research by Fiberlink, an IBM-owned mobile device management company, likewise found that up to 20 percent of the endpoints it surveyed run XP - and that excludes a few large financial companies that are very heavy XP users.
If Windows XP Support Is Ending, Why Are Companies Still Using It?
A good question to ask is why these systems haven't been migrated to a more modern operating system. After all, Microsoft announced the date for the end of support for Windows XP back in April 2012.
"Some organizations have underestimated migration times, some thought that the issue was not important, and it's possible that some IT departments didn't get the funding to carry out a migration," says Michael Silver, a research vice president at Gartner. He adds that some organizations didn't take the end of support date seriously or are content to upgrade to a newer version of Windows as they go through their hardware refresh cycles.
In addition, plenty of organizations use legacy applications that can be run only on XP because they are incompatible with later versions of Windows. Others are unwilling to upgrade because drivers are unavailable for expensive pieces of equipment that they use, such as medical devices.
Automation Can Expedite Windows XP Migration
Migration is certainly time-consuming, but the actual time required depends on the amount of resources that a company has available. "You could migrate 20,000 machines over a weekend - if you have 20,000 technicians," Silver points out. The key to quick migration without using huge amounts of human resources is automation.
French academic institution EHESP is one organization that carried out such a migration is, switching 600 PCs running Windows XP to Windows 7 in one month using just three IT staff plus a consultant. It did so by partially automating the procedure using Dell's Migration Fast Forward Service, a master image from a pre-configured PC environment and a Dell KACE deployment appliance.
"After testing our software for compatibility, we migrated from old computers to new ones, and from Windows XP to Windows 7, at the rate of about 30 PCs per day," says Gwendal Rosiaux, EHESP's IT and Telecommunications Department Manager. "I am absolutely sure that this was quicker and cheaper than trying to migrate without automation."
Custom Support for Windows XP Worth Price of Compliance Microsoft will in fact produce security patches for Windows XP after April 8, but these will only be available to companies willing to pay for custom support. There's no official price list for this service, but it's generally accepted that the cost is about $200 per machine for the first year, doubling every subsequent year.
The high cost of custom support has put many organizations off pursuing this option, but Silver recommends that organizations think again. "We've seen the maximum price shifting," he says. "We're hearing of caps in total support costs which are lower than those in the past, so it is definitely worth talking to Microsoft about this."
Companies in regulated industries that don't take this approach could risk compliance problems, as they will be running an operating system that has not been patched for known vulnerabilities. "Ultimately it's up to the auditors, but there would be a lot of uncertainty in saying that a system is secure if it hasn't been patched," he warns.
Chuck Brown, a Fiberlink director, agrees. "On the U.S. Federal side, machines won't be compliant (if they are running XP)," he says. "And I'm surprised on the financial services side with the worldwide regulations that exist that they could think that (machines running XP) wouldn't be out of compliance."
Third-party Windows XP Security Controls Have Potential
There are other ways to try to secure XP machines beyond getting custom support from Microsoft. One option is implementing sufficient security controls to prevent exploits reaching them. That's the approach used by Arkoon+Netasq, a French company that offers a service called ExtendedXP. This combines a security agent running on each XP endpoint with a service that monitors the overall XP threat environment and suggests any measures that need to be taken to mitigate them.
Another option is to use virtualization to isolate individual applications - an approach taken by California-based security software vendor Bromium. The company's vSentry product creates hardware-isolated micro-virtual machines for each end user task. If an attack occurs within a hardware-isolated micro-VM, it automatically remains isolated from CPU, memory, storage, device access and network access. When the user task is terminated, any malware is automatically destroyed, the company claims.
"Sixty percent of malware uses PDF files as a vector, so these types of isolation products can offer valuable protection," Forrester's Sherman says. "The problem is that only some apps are supported."
He also suggests using application whitelisting technology to try to prevent unknown code being executed, although he points out that whitelisted applications can still be compromised.
Since most malware requires administrator rights, privilege management solutions - which allow the use of accounts with standard privileges, elevating them to administrator accounts only when necessary to perform certain tasks - can be an effective way to reducing risk.
A Microsoft vulnerabilities study carried out by Avecto, a privilege-management software vendor, found that 92 percent of the critical vulnerabilities highlighted in Microsoft's 2013 security bulletins would be mitigated by removing administrator rights. This included 96 percent of critical vulnerabilities affecting Windows and 91 percent of vulnerabilities affecting Microsoft Office.
Simple steps such as disabling Java and Flash and using a third-party browser such as Chrome, which will continue to be updated, can also improve a Windows XP machine's security posture.
There's also the "zero" option: Disconnecting XP machines them from the Internet to isolate them from Internet-borne threats. But Silver points out that there's still a risk of infection by malicious software (such as ransomware that encrypts data) introduced on a USB stick.
Luckily, Windows XP Risk Falls Over Time
The danger of running Windows XP machines is likely to increase over the next 12 months, as newer vulnerabilities that are patched in Windows Vista and Windows 7 are exploited in XP. The good news is that, ultimately the risk will go down, Silver believes.
That's because the installed base of Windows XP machines will fall to such a low level that it's no longer attractive for malware authors to target - as is the case with Linux and OS X machines.
"For the next year or so, the risk of running XP machines will be high. Beyond two or three years, there will be less risk," Silver says. 'But that is a long time for organizations running XP to have to ride out."
Paul Rubens is a technology journalist based in England. Contact him at paul@rubens.org.
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Apr 8, 2014 8:39:33 GMT -9
Running Windows XP programs on Linux Mint with CrossOver
SUBSCRIBE TO: Enterprise Software TOPICS: Enterprise Software, Linux, Software, Windows 55 By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols for Linux and Open Source | April 7, 2014 -- 21:15 GMT (14:15 PDT)
There are two basic ways to run Windows programs on Linux. One is to use CodeWeaver's CrossOver Linux. This program enables you to run many popular Windows applications on Linux. Supported Windows applications include Microsoft Office (from Office 97 to Office 2010), Internet Explorer 8, all current versions of Quicken up to 2014, and some versions of Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop CS.
Run Windows apps on Linux? Sure, all you need is CrossOver and Wine. Besides work stuff, CrossOver also runs games. For example, you can play such popular online games as World of Warcraft and Guild Wars.
How to install Windows apps on Linux with CrossOver (Gallery) An even better way, if you have powerful enough hardware, of running Windows XP apps on Linux is to use a virtual machine (VM) program such as Oracle's VirtualBox or VMware Player. The problem with these is that they don't run well on older XP systems with limited resources. If CrossOver supports the applications you need you won't need to worry with fitting a VM on your older XP system.
Why Linux Mint is a worthwhile Windows XP replacement
CrossOver is based on the open-source project Wine, an implementation of the Windows application programming interface (API) on top of the Unix/Linux operating system family. Wine is a mature project with 20 years of work behind it.
Technically, you don't need CrossOver Linux to run Windows applications on Linux. You can do it with Wine alone — if you know what you're doing. What CrossOver brings to the table is automated installation of Windows applications and technical support. CrossOver makes it much easier to install and manage Windows applications.
CrossOver, which is available as a 30-day free trial, costs $59.95; this includes 12 months of upgrades and technical support. CrossOver is supported on Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, Debian, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It should work on any Linux, but those are the distributions that CodeWeavers officially supports.
There's also one good free program, PlaysOnLinux, which duplicates some of CrossOver's functionality but doesn't have as much support. If you're new to Linux, CrossOver is the best way to go. Since you can try it for free, you'll know before you buy it, if can support your favorite Windows applications.
Windows XP and Linux Mint: Brothers at the interface (Gallery) CrossOver runs on pretty much any x86 Linux system. To install the program, you simply download the appropriate version, Mint in our case, and open the downloaded file. This will bring up the Package Installer; you simply click on the "Install Package" button and you'll be on your way.
Once that's done, installing Windows applications tends to be easy. From the CrossOver interface, you just choose what Windows applications you want from the list of supported applications. You can also install applications that are not "officially" supported. For example, I always put one of my favorite HTML editors, NoteTab, on Linux even though it's not officially supported.
You can also install useful Windows components aside from the actual applications. For example, I usually install the most common Windows fonts, such as Arial and Times Roman.
Windows XP: The end of the line
Some applications will require that you install some Linux components as well. Usually there are 32-bit libraries that you'll need even if you're running a 64-bit version of Mint. The CrossOver installation program gives you detailed instructions on when and how to do this.
In my experience with CrossOver, which goes back for more than a decade now, I've found that most supported Windows programs run well on CrossOver. Don't get me wrong, it doesn't run all Windows programs. Also, I sometimes find graphic glitches, with Linux and the Windows app fighting for the same screen space.
That said, I've found CrossOver to be very useful, especially on low-powered systems. If you have one special Windows program you must still run, Linux or no, CrossOver could be exactly what you need.
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Apr 9, 2014 8:22:18 GMT -9
StoreDot: Inside the nanotech that can charge your phone in 30 seconds
TOPICS: Emerging Tech, Hardware 4 By Niv Lilien for Tel Aviv Tech | April 9, 2014 -- 12:16 GMT (05:16 PDT)
StoreDot's labs in Ramat Gan. Image: Niv Lilien In offices in a dusty street near the Diamond Exchange building in Ramat Gan, something interesting is afoot: a company called StoreDot is working on battery technology that many mobile users will have been longing for for some time.
The basis of StoreDot's work was discovered during a University of Tel Aviv research project into Alzheimer's disease. The researchers found that a certain peptide molecule that 'shortens' neurons in the brain causing Alzheimer's was also seeming to show high capacitance, thanks to an ability called 'charge trapping' — where electrons are effectively held in place.
According to Professor Gil Rosenman, who worked on the project and is now StoreDot's chief scientist, two of these molecules can be used to create a viable crystal only two nanometers long. These crystals form the NanoDots at the heart of Storedot's technology.
Artificially synthesised from the same building blocks — elements such as oxygen and hydrogen — as natural peptides, these NanoDots could prove disruptive to multi-billion-dollar industries such as batteries, displays, image sensors, and non-volatile memory.
Doron Myersdorf, former head of SanDisk's SSD division and now StoreDot's CEO, says that the company has decided to focus on NanoDots' uses in smartphone related technologies, including faster memory; more sensitive camera sensors ultrafast-charging batteries; and flexible, energy-efficient displays.
Founded in 2012, StoreDot is now chiefly concentrating on the last two areas. Demoing this week at Microsoft's ThinkNext event in Tel Aviv, StoreDot showed a prototype of a battery using NanoDots — powering a standard Samsung Galaxy S3 smartphone — that charged from flat to full in under a minute.
How does it work? The NanoDots cover the tiny 'cavities' that cover an electrode found in a standard battery, extending its reactive surface, and allowing its capacity to be increased tenfold. Through the addition of the NanoDots, the electrode becomes "multi-function" — at one end, the electrode stores electrical energy creating a capacitor, and at the other, lets it flow into the battery's lithium.
In layman's terms, StoreDot has created a 'buffer' that stores electrical current coming from the wall socket over a period of around thirty seconds, then letting it flow slowly into the lithium. Myersdorf says that eventually, the company plans to get rid of the lithium in the battery altogether.
Changing the chemical reactions occurring inside the battery should also improve battery life in long run — allowing thousands of charge cycles instead of hundreds today — while still keeping the same weight and form factor.
The NanoDots have other intriguing qualities too. When embedded into polymer and everyday screens, they can replace the toxic materials like cadmium used in modern displays. They can also be manufactured in different colours, using a special version of basic colours to create a full, rich colour matrix.
StoreDot's team, at the behest of manufacturers, is using blue backlighting instead of white, and the NanoDots can be used in both LCD an bio-LED screens — or, in Myersdorf's words: "We can do displays for both Samsung and Apple", a reference to the different display technologies each company is using today (Apple with LCD, Samsung with organic LED).
StoreDot already has prototype displays in its lab, and showed me this week how it's lighting a standard iPhone display. There's not a full colour range yet — only 70 percent — but the company is working towards more than a full NTSC colour gamut. StoreDot future displays are equally free of toxic materials and, as a bonus, they're flexible too.
The NanoDots also have applications in the pharmaceutical industry as drug delivery agent and could one day replace metals such a gold or silver currently needed to penetrate cell membranes and deliver the active ingredient.
With several patents filed and several more pending, as well as a big smartphone company onboard as an investor, Myersdorf intends to have his company's products ready for marketing in 2015 and on sale in 2016. But don't rejoice too much just yet: StoreDot's new batteries will cost twice as much as the regular ones.
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Apr 11, 2014 7:40:07 GMT -9
Heartbleed's engineer: It was an 'accident'
SUBSCRIBE TO: Security TOPICS: Security 19 By Charlie Osborne for Zero Day | April 11, 2014 -- 09:37 GMT (02:37 PDT)
heartbleed-200x242 The Heartbleed bug has rocked the security industry and web services in the past few days. However, the programmer responsible for the oversight says that it was an accident that the flaw was introduced in the first place.
Heartbleed is an encryption flaw which affects OpenSSL's 1.0.1 and the 1.0.2-beta release, 1.01 which is used widely across the web and in a number of popular web services. The flaw can theoretically be used to view apparently-secure communication across HTTPS, usually denoted by a small closed padlock in a browser's address bar.
The data potentially at risk includes everything from passwords and encryption keys to financial details and personal identifiable information -- allowing a hacker to dip in, swipe data, and leave no trace of their existence.
Commenting on the discovery, Bruce Schneier wrote on his security blog Schneier on Security:
"Basically, an attacker can grab 64K of memory from a server. The attack leaves no trace, and can be done multiple times to grab a different random 64K of memory. This means that anything in memory -- SSL private keys, user keys, anything -- is vulnerable.
And you have to assume that it is all compromised. All of it. ‘Catastrophic’ is the right word. On the scale of one to 10, this is an 11." OpenSSL programmer Robin Seggelmann told the Sydney Morning Herald that the vulnerable code leading to the Heartbleed flaw, part of the OpenSSL project, was submitted by him and reviewed by peer programmers involved in the scheme.
This code was refined by additional programming for the encryption protocol, later used by millions of websites, and it was this bolt-on coding that introduced the bug, caused by "missing validation on a variable containing a length." Neither Seggelmann or a peer reviewer noticed the missing validation, and so the code eventually made its way from development to the released version of the encryption software.
The German software developer denies that the security flaw was included deliberately, and told the publication that which the error introduced into OpenSLL was "trivial," the impact was "severe."
Seggelmann noted that conspiracy theories are tempting ways to explain the bug, especially in light of ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden's document leaks detailing the surveillance activities of governments worldwide. While admitting it is "a possibility" that spy agencies may have known about and exploited Heartbleed in the past two years, the vulnerability was "was not intended." Seggelmann commented:
"In this case, it was a simple programming error in a new feature, which unfortunately occurred in a security relevant area. It was not intended at all, especially since I have previously fixed OpenSSL bugs myself, and was trying to contribute to the project." Many sites have patched the security flaw, including Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, Reddit and Instagram. You can use LastPass' Heartbleed checker to see if your favorite web service are still vulnerable to the flaw, and once these companies have patched up, then changing your password is recommended.
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Apr 14, 2014 8:40:08 GMT -9
T-Mobile to Eliminate Overage Charges for All Plans Starting in June Brandon Hill (Blog) - April 14, 2014 10:56 AM T-Mobile to drop overage charges, throttle data instead T-Mobile CEO John Legere is at it again. The boastful Legere recently launched a three-pronged strategy to take on the U.S. wireless giants like AT&T and Verizon. He first introduced a $40/month Simple Starter plan, and followed it up with “no extra charges” for LTE versions of popular tablets (along with 1GB of additional data for voice customers). Today, Legere announced that T-Mobiles is “[abolishing] consumer overage” charges. For example, for AT&T subscribers on a 10GB Mobile Share plan will pay $15 per gigabyte for usage over their monthly data allotment. Instead of hitting customers with fees, T-Mobile will simply throttle your data connection to sub-LTE speeds. T-Mobile's fine print on the announcement stipulates: No overages for U.S. domestic calls, texts, and data usage only With most customers opting for unlimited plans for voice and texting, T-Mobile’s latest announcement will mainly benefit those on grandfathered voice/texting plans that regularly blow past their plan limits. "Today I'm laying down a challenge to AT&T, Verizon and Sprint to join T-Mobile in ending these outrageous overage penalties for all consumers - because it's the right thing to do," said Legere in T-Mobile’s official press release on the change. "Overage fees are flat out wrong.” T-Mobile CEO John Legere Legere, however, took to his own blog to use more colorful language to berate AT&T and Verizon, while praising his “Un-carrier” strategy. “If I’m right, the consumer wireless movement is rapidly approaching a tipping point. And that’s when things really get interesting. The first year of Un-carrier has been terrific, but it’s going to pale in comparison to what lies ahead,” Legere continued. “Imagine the smile on my face as I watch millions upon millions of Americans flipping the bird to the insanity and pain of the past and joining this consumer revolution – while I sit back and watch the competition flounder.” Those are strong words from the underdog in the U.S. wireless market. But it’s only a matter of time before AT&T and Verizon respond by making adjustments to their policies as well. After all, nearly every new initiative introduced by T-Mobile over the past year has resulted in copycat responses from the two largest wireless carriers. - See more at: www.dailytech.com/TMobile+to+Eliminate+Overage+Charges+for+All+Plans+Starting+in+June/article34713.htm#sthash.sUkbAq0z.dpuf
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Apr 15, 2014 10:01:43 GMT -9
Office 365 Personal now available for $7 per month BY ZACH HONIG @zachhonig APRIL 15TH 2014, AT 12:03:00 PM ET 130
Office 365 Personal, a leaner version of Microsoft's subscription-based productivity suite, is now available for $70 per year or $7 per month. The new package lets you use Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Publisher and Access on one Mac or Windows computer and one tablet. You also get smartphone access with Android, iOS and Windows Phone devices, online versions of Office, 27GB of online storage and 60 Skype minutes each month. Power users can access Office from up to five computers by opting for Office 365 Home instead, which will run you $100 per year or $10 per month.
|
|