Vodafone will present the iPhone 3G at Thessaloniki International Trade Fair 2008, Sept. 6-14

Η Vodafone θα παρουσιάσει το iPhone 3G της Apple, στην 73η ΔΕΘ που θα διεξαχθεί στο Διεθνές Εκθεσιακό Κέντρο Θεσσαλονίκης, στις 6-14 Σεπτεμβρίου.

Μπορεί αντί για το περίπτερο της Apple, που αρχικά είχε ανακοινωθεί για την Infosystem 2008, να δούμε το Future Park, όμως το iPhone θα πάει στην Διεθνή Έκθεση Θεσσαλονίκης, δικαιωματικά και από την Vodafone!

Μέσα στα διάφορα άλλα που ανακοινώθηκαν σε Read more

Virusbarrier Mail Gateway (CD-ROM) newly tagged "apple"

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Pavano Shines, I Look Dumb

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Apple Fails to Patch Critical Exploited DNS Flaw

On 08-Jul-08, a massive security patch was released by dozens of vendors for a major vulnerability in DNS (Domain Name Service), discovered by security researcher Dan Kaminsky. DNS is one of the fundamental underpinnings of the Internet, translating domain names (like tidbits.com) into IP addresses (like 216.168.61.78). Because DNS is so core to the functioning of the Internet, this vulnerability is perhaps the most significant security problem to face the Internet in the last decade.

All users who connect to Mac OS X-based servers for DNS lookups are at risk: Apple has not yet provided a patch, unlike dozens of other companies that make or distribute operating systems or DNS server software.

Apple was clearly distracted by the largest set of launches in its history: the iPhone 3G, the iPhone 2.0 software, the .Mac-to-MobileMe transition, and the App Store. Nonetheless, their customers are now in danger and Apple needs to respond immediately.

All companies that provide DNS service to their customers should have already updated their DNS servers. Many have not. You can determine whether your ISP is at risk by visiting Kaminsky’s site and clicking the Check My DNS button. If the site says your DNS is at risk of being poisoned, contact your ISP or your company’s IT department immediately.

Poisoning the DNS Well — Kaminsky accidentally discovered a new technique attackers could use to compromise DNS servers, allowing ne’er-do-wells to convince servers to accept an incorrect IP address for a given domain name from a source other than the one that properly controls information for that particular domain. (This is called cache poisoning.) The attack doesn’t affect the DNS server software - it doesn’t compromise the software itself - but rather the attack changes the information the server stores, or caches, to provide answers about domain names that the server has retrieved from elsewhere.

Thus, when you type www.tidbits.com into a Web browser’s URL field, rather than your computer receiving back the correct IP address from its built-in DNS resolver - 216.168.61.78, in this case - an attacker would indirectly convince that resolver to believe the address was something else, like 172.31.0.16.

Your browser would obligingly use that IP address to make a connection to a Web server while displaying www.tidbits.com in the address bar. That site could be - certainly would be - loaded with malware. This is a particular problem for Windows users, whose systems could be infected simply by visiting a site. With no active exploits for Mac OS X that currently result from visiting a Web page, Mac users are more likely to fall victim to social engineering after visiting a site and being told to re-enter a password or provide details that a trusted site doesn’t normally ask for.

DNS is distributed and can be recursive, meaning a server keeps working through a set of linked responses it gets from other DNS servers until it gets an authoritative answer. Your computer has a “stub” resolver, which knows to ask a full-blown DNS server for the name-to-number conversion. The full-blown DNS server is typically run by your ISP or the company you work for. That DNS server, in turn, asks root nameservers - run by a variety of organizations - where to find details about, say, .com.

The root nameservers direct your ISP or company’s DNS server to the server that has the lookups for that domain. This can go on and on for every dot-separated part in a domain name, but it typically follows this path: root server, top-level (such as .com) domain server, and corporate domain server.

Weakening SSL/TLS, But Not Killing It — This attack does not directly disable secure Web connections, although it weakens the signals you rely on for trust, and requires that you be more alert. Secure Web connections use SSL/TLS (Secure Sockets Layer/Transport Layer Security), a mechanism that encrypts a connection and also relies on trust outside that connection to validate the connection. The digital certificates used as the basis of these connections require that a domain name match a particular IP address; but if your DNS has been poisoned, a bogus certificate becomes a much more serious risk.

However, the outside trust element should save you. Certificates must be signed by third parties, known as certificate authorities, like Thawte or Comodo. These authorities are supposed to verify the identity of a party requesting a certificate before the authority signs their request. Authorities charge fees from tens to thousands of dollars depending on how much background checking and control over the certificate is asked for. Details about these authorities are pre-installed in browsers and operating systems completing the circle of trust: Your browser knows an authority’s signature, which enables your system to validate the authority’s approval of a Web’s site certificate.

If an attacker’s fake site tries to present you with a certificate that alleges it’s www.amazon.com, your browser will alert you that the certificate hasn’t been signed or at least wasn’t signed by a known certificate authority. That’s always a reason to refuse a connection, unless you’re connecting to a Web site run by a trusted party that’s given you explicit information about the certificate they’ve chosen to use.

A Coordinated Fix, Except for Apple — While cache poisoning has always been a problem for DNS, the technique Kaminsky discovered is faster and more effective than any previous known exploits. Kaminsky’s flaw allows an attacker to overwrite existing DNS entries that a server has already cached - something never before possible. This vulnerability is a flaw with the protocol itself, and thus affects nearly every DNS implementation in use.

After determining this flaw was legitimate and widespread, Kaminsky immediately contacted major vendors - operating system makers and DNS software developers - and other DNS experts who met secretly at a meeting hosted on the Microsoft campus in March 2008. In an unprecedented move, the vendors all agreed on a simultaneous release of fixes for their products, coordinated with the help of the United States Computer Emergency Response Team (US-CERT).

To obfuscate the nature of the vulnerability, the companies all agreed to use a fix - port randomization - that didn’t necessarily reveal the details of the flaw, thus slowing down the ability of bad guys to reverse engineer it and attack servers before organizations could patch. This lasted for 13 days, until the vulnerability was disclosed by a security researcher who accidentally published a draft blog post with all the details. By 24-Jul-08 exploit modules appeared in the popular Metasploit penetration testing tool, empowering any attacker capable of downloading the tool and using a web browser.

(The brief explanation of the flaw is that by forcing a DNS server to look up certain domains by sending it requests, an attacker can take advantage of a predictable sequence of port numbers to send a massive number of fake answers to the DNS server. If just one of the fake answers gets through, the attacker “wins”; it’s essentially a race in which the bad guy can have a million marathon runners and the good guy thinks they’re off for a solo jog in the park. This can be accomplished in a couple of minutes with Metasploit. Randomizing the sequence of ports used in requests vastly increases the complexity of a bad guy winning. The general vulnerability of predictably used ports was understood in 2001 and built into the DNS server djbdns. The real answer to this problem is DNSSEC, which combines public-key cryptography with DNS, allowing only the legitimate domain owner to provide answers to DNS queries about its domain. DNSSEC has been bogged down for years, but a logjam broke in March 2008, and we’re likely to see real use due to this basic DNS flaw being revealed.)

Apple Punts, Doesn’t Patch Yet — Apple has yet to patch this vulnerability, which affects both the desktop version of Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server. While individual computers that look up DNS are vulnerable, servers are far more at risk due to the nature and scope of the attack.

Apple uses the popular Internet Systems Consortium BIND DNS server which was one of the first tools patched, but Apple has yet to include the fixed version in Mac OS X Server, despite being notified of vulnerability details early in the process and being informed of the coordinated patch release date.

All users of Mac OS X Server who use it for recursive DNS must immediately switch to an alternative or risk being compromised and traffic being redirected. Installing the above-mentioned BIND should be relatively trivial for anyone who can compile software at the command line. The Mac community could take this up if someone created a compiled version of BIND 9.0.5-P1 and distributed it for simpler installation.

With active exploit code available in a common attack tool, it is imperative that Apple fix this vulnerability. Due to their involvement in the process and the ability of other vendors to fix their products in a timely fashion, it’s hard to imagine any possible justification for Apple’s tardy behavior.

If you are unable to patch a server system with new code, you could reconfigure those servers to forward DNS requests to alternative platforms, such as BIND on Linux or Unix, or Microsoft servers, until Apple issues a patch. Ask your ISP or network provider for assistance.

Although the desktop version of Mac OS X is also technically vulnerable, current attacks are directed at servers, so there’s no need to panic.

This is an extremely serious security issue and we hope Apple will act responsibly and address it immediately, despite their initial tardiness. Read more

Never Switched to Swhich Back!

I’ve used Mac for 2 years in Ai (The Art Institute). The programs that we were using were FinalCut Pro, DVDStudio, and Adobe After Effects CS2. I had the most painful computer experience of my life! They tell you Macs DO NOT crash. And they mean it like if they crash, it will be the END OF DAYS! Those piece of craps crashed on me more than ANY OS I’ve used. Even my hacked PSP does not crash that much while loading homebrew! And you might say well that one Mac had problem. NO! I used different machines! At the end I just told my instructor that I’ll use my BEAUTIFUL PC to hand in my projects. Come on! Why using a Mac when we have the Premier Pro in Windows? Why using DVDStudio when we have Encore in Windows?

The other thing that bothers me alot was after my first few weeks that I started hitting some usability roadblocks here and there that I strongly disagreed with. I’d google or ask other Mac users about their solutions to these issues and would always receive a similar answer: “Why would you want to do that?” or “You shouldn’t be doing it that way anyway.” Thats fine - so I’d go off and look for a workaround. Unfortunately, because of Apple’s lack of transparency and lack of customizability - I usually found myself out in the cold. Eventually I found myself with this mountain of usability issues and no workarounds that really impeded my day-to-day use. I was back in the same position I was.

The problem was not the software, but the Apple’s and the Apple community’s attitude. The attitude is that if users want to do something the “non-blessed” way they are confused or incorrect. Want two mouse buttons on your MacBook Pro? “You can do that this other way.” Want to play music without storing your whole library in iTunes? “Why would you want to do that?” Want to use something besides iTunes to load your iPod? “Thats silly.” Want to run on different hardware? “Thats a bad idea.” All this was happening while Apple was clamping down on iPhone modding. Its total lack of transparency (both through code and legal action) assured that you did things their way and “only” their way. I’ll be the first to admit I’m not Apple’s target market (nor should I be), and ultimately their extreme efforts to prevent myself and others like me from improving and customizing their product was a deal killer for me.

Apple is not delivering an OS, or hardware, or even software. They are delivering an end-to-end technology experience, and if you are willing to just go with their experience you’re in good shape, but if not - you’re screwed. Apple is for people who are willing to buy into one way - their way - of doing things. Its purely the Apple way or the highway. Ironic given their 1984-esque commercial that implies Apple is for people who wanted to break the mold. Undeniably Apple has made some great choices with its harnessing of open source which contributed to my decision to switch, but its foolish to not recognize “why” those open source projects were successful in the first place.

If you’re willing to put your user experience in the hands of those at Apple, getting a Mac may be a great solution for you. Ironically, if you really want to “think different” there are many better options like Windows or Linux! Read more

Windows Vs Mac

A few years ago as you know, apple was making their own processors. And they were always comparing their CPUs with Intel CPUs. Things like Mac CPUs are x times faster than Intel CPUs and so on. Then suddenly, they stopped making their own CPUs and turned to Intel to make processors for Macs. So they started making Mac with Intel cores. If you’re CPUs were better than Intel, why did you back down? It’s still a mystery!

Also they’ve always been saying how bad Windows is and how much viruses Windows have (I haven’t got any virus for 8 years!) and simply how crappy Windows is. Ok let says Windows is what you’re saying (IS NOT!). If Windows is as bad as you’re saying, WHY did you make your computers hybrid to install Windows on them too? It’s a very simple question. Windows is bad so why did you make your Macs compatible with Windows? Yes, this is still a mystery too!

Apple also have been saying how they always update their OS and how Microsoft doesn’t do that. Let me see. Apple makes a few changes. Add a couple of option buttons to the programs that they’ve had for a very long time, then they increment the version of their OS by .1 and call it a new OS. Nothing has been changed. It’s just all minor changes but now you have to go and buy a new disk for about $120. What does Microsoft do? Well they make a new OS every 3 to 5 years but for those minor changes that Apple charges, they simply let you download it for free as an update. So which one would you like better?

You know how I see Apple company? I see them like one of those students that were always bullying other students. Apple is SO childish and because they can’t compete with other companies, they starts to make fun of other companies (You can easily find examples but I’ll give you one, “Hello I’m a Mac, and I’m a PC…”.).

Now you might think that Apple is the winner now. Because Macs now can run Windows too. No it’s exactly the other way around. Microsoft didn’t do a THING. They are happy. On the other hand Apple made them selves compatible with Windows. That means that they still rely on Microsoft and it also means Windows will sell even more than before!

So who is the winner?
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REFILE - CORRECTING NAME OF DEVICE Indian actress Rituparna …

(Reuters) - REFILE - CORRECTING NAME OF DEVICE

Indian actress Rituparna Sengupta holds her new Apple iPhone 3G at Telcel Center during its launch in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata August 22, 2008. Vodafone Essar and larger rival Bharti Airtel will start selling the device starting Friday. Apple Inc has issued a software update for the latest iPhone to help fix connection problems that led to a flurry of online complaints from customers, a European mobile service provider said on Tuesday as Credit Suisse reported strong U.S. sales of the device. One of the key attractions of the latest iPhone is its faster, third-generation (3G) Web connections when compared with the first iPhone that was launched in mid-2007. REUTERS/Jayanta Shaw (INDIA)

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Gizmodo Explains: What You Didn’t Know About the iPhone’s 3G

Yeah, yeah, you get it: The new iPhone uses AT&T’s best-in class (in NYC at least), 3G high-speed network, one that’s getting faster and more spread out all the time. But there’s a lot you probably didn’t know about the technology involved: How fast can you really go on the thing? Why did AT&T feel the need to cap the iPhone’s speed? If you want answers to these and other questions, you came to the right place.

Hokay, the iPhone 3Gness makes browsing a whole 2.4x faster than EDGE in Apple’s test. (One thing that we can’t explain: Why did Apple chose lonelyplanet.com for its performance benchmarks?) The 3G goodness is real: We’ve been conducting our own testing of AT&T’s HSDPA in the New York area (including suburbs) and it really is faster and more readily available than Verizon’s EV-DO 3G network. (For a quick primer on different kinds of 3G like HSDPA vs. EV-DO and other mobile terms, click here.)

But the iPhone 3G is rated for 1.4Mbps, a nice clip but not the 3.6Mbps downstream that AT&T’s HSDPA is capable of. (The carrier loves to brag that it’ll have 7.2Mbps by the end of the year.) So why not crank up the iPhone to those better data rates? Turns out, according to AT&T people we talked to, 1.4Mbps is the capped bandwidth for all mobile smartphones on the network for a few reasons.

(UPDATE: AT&T is saying they’re not capping the phone at 1.4mbps, but that’s what its capable of doing now, due to factors below. There’s no difference except intent, and AT&T is careful around words like “Cap” these days.)

A major one is battery life—the faster you burn, the faster your battery dies, so going full steam at 3.6Mbps would cut you well short of that nice round five hours. A second one is cell site congestion and backhaul (carrier-speak for size of the wired dataline that connects cell sites to the actual telecom infrastructure). While everyone at AT&T, from the top down, is adamant that AT&T is “comfortable” with their ability to meet the huge data draw once 3G iPhones hit the streets, it’s not like the pipe is unlimited.

AT&T wasn’t able to give a breakdown as to how many of their towers have fiberoptic pipes as opposed to slower copper T-1 lines. Nor could they say how quickly they could add capacity to a site that is pummeling their demand expectations, since it varies from site to site. Ones in dense urban areas are loaded up with more backhaul and can handle more users than one closer to the edge of their 3G footprint. Still, generally speaking, more users on a site means more congestion, so if you’re slurping from a site that’s really slammed, it will be slower. As with all radio technologies, proximity also matters. (Hint: For the absolute fastest speeds, wait until 3am and then go sit right next to your favorite cell site.)

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Apple Developing Own Chips For iPhone

The market potential for proprietary mobile processor designs from chip makers like Samsung Electronics and Intel Corp. were dealt a considerable blow earlier this week when Apple chief executive Steve Jobs revealed that his company will start designing its own breed of chips to power the next-generation of Multi-Touch devices that won’t be available to rivals.

South Korea-based Samsung has long been central to Apple’s handheld efforts (1, 2, 3), supplying the primary SoCs — or system-on-chips — for everything from the iPod nano to the iPhone. Meanwhile, Intel has been in the running to assert its Atom processors at heart of a larger iPhone-like Multi-Touch internet tablet that’s also under development at the Cupertino-based electronics maker, and was at one time believed to have sealed the deal.

Unfortunately for the two industry heavyweights, Apple appears to have other plans to further innovation around its Multi-Touch platform that will reduce its reliance on chip designs conceived largely by third parties. In an interview following his keynote address at the Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, Jobs told the New York Times’ John Markoff that his firm’s recent $278 million acquisition of a small fabless semiconductor company called P.A. Semi was an investment in the future of its handheld products.

“PA Semi is going to do system-on-chips for iPhones and iPods,” he said, ending speculation as to the precise motives behind the April buyout. The initial uncertainty stemmed from the fact that PA Semi was best know for chips based on IBM’s Power technology, an architecture that Apple abandoned two years ago when it moved its Mac line of personal computers to Intel’s architecture.

But as Jobs explained to the Wall Street Journal two months ago, Apple has always been integral in the design of chips used in iPhones and iPods even though they were developed by third parties like Samsung. It was to this end that the value in PA Semi emerged, not for its existing technologies but for its expertise in designing embedded processors to do almost anything the iPhone maker wants them to do.

For Apple, the advantages of bringing PA Semi in-house are many. In particular, it will afford the company to innovate in a way going forward that will differentiate its handheld products from a growing array of competitive devices that will be left to rely on technologies available to the broader industry. It will also allow the company, which is synonymous with secrecy, to keep a tighter lid on its intellectual property and future product plans.

Still, there’s hope for chip makers like Samsung and Intel in that that Apple will still need to rely on a third party to manufacture the chips it develops on its own, given that PA Semi doesn’t own a fabrication facility. It’s also possible that the PA Semi team could build onto chip designs initially conceived by one of the semiconductor giants. That’s of course assuming Jobs and Co. don’t have an even bigger plan brewing to somehow serve as its own SoC manufacturer.

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Is The 3G iPhone Worth It?

Apple had to release a new iPhone this WWDC.  Steve Jobs knew it, and so did the shareholders.  If they had not, this year’s WWDC would have been considered a failure, a waste of money by some.  Luckily Steve did introduce the 3G iPhone, but did it meet expectations?  Here are some of the rumors that were curculating:

• Better camera
• Better Bluetooth
• 3G
• GPS
• Better speakers
• Thinner
• Video calling
• 32GB
• White version
• Better battery

There were probably a few more that I have forgotten, but you get the idea.

So, how many did Apple actually include in their “iPhone 3G?”

• 3G
• GPS
• Better Speakers
• Thinner
• White Version
• Better Batery

To some, this could be considered a “failure,” that the 3G iPhone did not meet expectations.  But to others this is all they needed.  Personally, I would have liked to have a better camera, even if it doesn’t contain Video Calling (something I would rarely use anyway).  If iPhone is to compete with the Nokia N Series phones, it needs to have at least a 5MP camera.

But Apple have saved themself with another major point.  Price reduction.  It’s incredible to think you can pick up the 3G iPhone, the iPhone we have now plus more, for only $199USD.  This is the price which will be employed in most countries selling iPhone.  To think it’s nearly a third of the price of iPhone 8GB this time last year is an incredible plus for this phone.

This is why other manufacturers, such as Nokia, should be, and are getting scared.  I think that Apple will sell Millions of iPhone’s within the first week of launch, easly achieving and surpassing it’s 10m goal.  Just like Steve said, price was the biggest obstacle for iPhone 1.

Why is it this cheap?  Does this mean it’s crappy?  Not at all.  Apple “sell” it to the carriers, the carrier subsidizes it, and then makes up for it’s losses with a contract to the buyer.  This is why unlocking now poses more of a threat than ever to individual carriers, especially AT&T in the US.  If people just went in to an Apple Store, bought an iPhone and took it home to unlock, AT&T is actually losing money.  Think of it like this:

Imagine Vodafone is having a sale on iPhone and you can get it for $150USD.  The Australians will be so excited.  But the problem is, Vodafone charges you $500USD/month (note that these figures are inaccurate ) for mobile broadband.  But over the road is the old Telstra store. They offer iPhone for $199USD, and they have mobile broadband for only $10USD/month.  Obviously everyone will want to buy iPhone on Vodafone and use it on Telstra.  This would mean Vodafone is being “ripped off” and “scammed,” as they are actually losing money.  So it is now more important than ever that Apple make sure unlocking is tight.

AT&T needed a plan.  Remember that “…and you can set up iPhone in the comfort of you home” stuff?  Well, turns out it’s not so great.  It’s amazing how a company can change sides like that; if you went on the Apple site one week ago it would be speaking of the merits of home activation.  Yet now you are required to activate at the store at the time of purchase.  If that can not be done (eg. if iPhone is a birthday present), you have a 30 day period in which to activate.  And what’s the point in unlocking your iPhone if you have to return it to AT&T in 30 days time.

Think of it like this: your iPhone is a company.  You are a shareholder, and so is AT&T.  They are legally able to take your company off you if you do not meet the requirements.

This makes me feel a bit strange.  Do I own my iPhone? Hmm…

Another thing Apple has changed their mind on overnight is carrier exclusivity.  Australia has iPhone on 3 of it’s major networks: Telstra, Optus and Vodafone.  This is to enable Apple to reach its small goal of 10m iPhones by the end of 2008.  This number will be more like 18 million.

Apple have fixed the hardware unlock and PwnageTool exploits in this 3G iPhone.  I think that everything is jailbreakable, but unlocking is a different story.  It should eventually be unlocked, but first you must get past the activation obstacle.  There will be numerous suppliers on eBay and other sites offering iPhones without this activation restriction.  The new 3G iPhone has a new modem bootloader (for it contains a 3G chip) meaning it will be starting from scratch to get this beast unlocked.  But first we must be able to write to the root filesystem in order to “hacktivate” the iPhone and then flash over some kind of hacking tool or hacked file.

It’s one year ago all over again.

Tell us what you think by voting in the poll on the right.

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