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FYI: 70 NASA Image galleries combined into single, searchable source
by Wayne Billing 22 Jun '15

22 Jun '15

…from: http://nasaimages.lunaimaging.com/luna/servlet/view/all?sort=who http://gizmodo.com/nasa-image-gallery-brings-all-your-favorite-space-photo-… NASA Image Gallery Brings All Your Favorite Space Photos Under One Roof<http://gizmodo.com/nasa-image-gallery-brings-all-your-favorite-space-photo-…> 6,255 2<http://gizmodo.com/nasa-image-gallery-brings-all-your-favorite-space-photo-…> Maddie Stone<http://kinja.com/maddiestone> Filed to: NASA IMAGES<http://gizmodo.com/tag/nasa-images> 6/21/15 3:00pm<http://gizmodo.com/nasa-image-gallery-brings-all-your-favorite-space-photo-…> <http://gizmodo.com/nasa-image-gallery-brings-all-your-favorite-space-photo-…> [NASA Image Gallery Brings All Your Favorite Space Photos Under One Roof] The NASA Images collection<http://nasaimages.lunaimaging.com/luna/servlet/view/all?sort=who>, built and unveiled last week by Luna Imaging, combines over 70 NASA Image galleries into a single, searchable source. These includes familiar collections such as NASA’s Image of the Day Gallery<http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/> and the Jet Propulsion Image Gallery<http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/>, but also plenty of obscure treasures. In total, the collection contains over 100 thousand photographs that range from historic documentation of the Apollo moon missions to the latest shots of distant quasars by the Hubble Space Telescope. […] ….complete HELP/UserGuide at: http://doc.lunaimaging.com/display/V71D/Browsing+and+Viewing+Media#Browsing…

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FYI: iMac (27-inch) 3TB Hard Drive Replacement Program
by Wayne Billing 19 Jun '15

19 Jun '15

…from: https://www.apple.com/support/imac-harddrive-3tb/ iMac (27-inch) 3TB Hard Drive Replacement Program Apple has determined that a very small number of 3TB hard drives used in 27-inch iMac systems, may fail under certain conditions. These systems were sold between December 2012 and September 2013. Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider (AASP) will replace affected hard drives free of charge. Apple is contacting affected iMac owners who provided a valid email address during the product registration process to let them know about this program. If you have not been contacted, but think you have a 3TB hard drive, you can enter your serial number below to see if it's part of this program. Finding your iMac serial number is easy. See how.<https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT201626> The serial number you entered is not eligible under this program because either: - It's not one of the serial numbers in the affected range OR - Our records show that your hard drive has already been replaced. If you paid for hard drive replacement, check with Apple to see if you are eligible for a refund. Replacement Process Apple recommends replacing affected hard drives as soon as possible. Please choose one of the options below: * Apple Retail Store - Set up an appointment with a Genius. * Apple Authorized Service Provider - Find one here<https://locate.apple.com/ca/en/>. * Apple Technical Support - Contact us for local service options. Before you go in for service, Apple strongly recommends backing up your data. Learn more about backup options<https://www.apple.com/ca/support/backup/>. Additional Information You will need to re-install your operating system, other applications and any backed up data after your hard drive is replaced. Please refer to About OS X Recovery<https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT201314> for instructions. If you believe you have paid for a repair or replacement due to this issue, contact Apple regarding a refund. This worldwide Apple program does not extend the standard warranty coverage of the iMac. The program covers affected iMac models until December 19, 2015 or three years from its original date of sale, whichever provides longer coverage for you. Information as of 2015-06-19

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FYI: Twitter on iOS may "bump into" your data plan ceiling
by Wayne Billing 17 Jun '15

17 Jun '15

To prevent unwanted data usage, iOS does not autoplay video. Twitter on iOS has changed its default to autoplay all video and Vines and GIFs: …from: http://9to5mac.com/2015/06/16/twitter-ios-autoplay/ Twitter is adding autoplay to GIFs, Vines, and native videos on iOS Zac Hall June 16th, 2015 [Autoplay_videos_on_Twitter] Twitter is turning on automatic playback for certain types of media in your timeline through an update to its iOS app and its website, the social network announced<https://blog.twitter.com/2015/introducing-a-more-seamless-video-experience-…>. Starting today, users will notice that native videos, GIFs, and Vines all autoplay directly in the timeline when browsing Twitter without the need to tap or click to initiate playback. Sound playback for native videos and Vines will still require tapping or clicking to play to avoid hijacking the experience. Users can also initiate full playback by rotating the iPhone to landscape mode when viewing an autoplay video. Not everyone is a fan of autoplaying media, of course, so Twitter says it will provide users with an option to disable the new feature and use the previous click-to-play behavior. Data consumption is also a concern for users, of course, so Twitter promises a WiFi-only option is available. Twitter says it will actually be opting some users out of the new feature as well to avoid issues: “If you’re somewhere with high data rates or you have low bandwidth on your device, we’ll opt you out of autoplay to avoid unexpected charges or slow performance.” Twitter says the new feature is rolling out to its official iOS app<https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/twitter/id333903271?mt=8&at=10laZc> and the web starting today with support in its Android app coming soon. No word on if third-party Twitter apps can or will want to support video autoplay, although GIF autoplay seems harmless and useful. the social network also recently said that it’s removing the 140 character limit on direct messages<http://9to5mac.com/2015/06/11/twitter-dm-limit-ceo-change/> sent between users soon.

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INTEREST: Google Improving Chrome for OS X Performance to Better Rival Safari
by Wayne Billing 14 Jun '15

14 Jun '15

…from: http://www.macrumors.com/2015/06/12/chrome-os-x-performance-improvements-sa… Google Improving Chrome for OS X Performance to Better Rival Safari Friday June 12, 2015 4:52 AM PDT by Joe Rossignol Google senior software engineer Peter Kasting this week announced<https://plus.google.com/+PeterKasting/posts/GpL63A1K2TF> that his team has been working to address Chrome for OS X battery hog complaints by improving the performance of the browser on Mac, especially in areas where Safari appears to do better (via iPhoneHacks<http://www.iphonehacks.com/2015/06/google-working-improvements-address-chro…>). Chrome for OS X has received multiple under the hood improvements that should result in faster performance and longer battery life while browsing. The browser, for example, now requires significantly less CPU usage when loading the Google search results page and various other websites. The other technical changes to Chrome for OS X are outlined as follows: "The team has been working on addressing this; here are some cases that have recently been improved on trunk: http://crbug.com/460102 Before: Renderers for background tabs had the same priority as for foreground tabs. Now: Renderers for background tabs get a lower priority, reducing idle wakeups on various perf test, in some cases by significant amounts (e.g. 50% on one test). http://crbug.com/485371 Before: On a Google search results page, using Safari's user agent to get the same content that Safari would, Chrome incurs ~390 wakes over 30s and 0.3% CPU usage vs. Safari’s 120 wakes over 30s and 0.1% CPU usage. Now: 66% reduction in both timer firings and CPU use. Chrome is now incurring ~120 wakes over 30s and 0.1% CPU use, on par with Safari. http://crbug.com/489936 Before: On capitalone.com, Chromium incurs ~1010 wakeups over 30s vs. Safari's ~490 wakes. Now: ~30% reduction in timer firings. Chrome is now incurring ~721 wakeups over 30s. http://crbug.com/493350 Before: On amazon.com, Chromium incurs 768 wakups over 30s and consumes ~0.7% CPU vs. Safari's 312 wakes over 30s and ~0.1% CPU. Now: ~59% reduction in timer firings and ~70% reduction in CPU use. Chrome is now incurring ~316 wakeups over 30s, and 0.2% CPU use, on par with Safari at 312 wakes, and 0.1% CPU use." Many of the changes will first appear in Chromium before going live on Chrome for OS X.

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Apple's WWDC Keynote: what hardware support new announcements
by Wayne Billing 09 Jun '15

09 Jun '15

This year’s World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) Keynote saw Apple emphasize “consolidation” around Continuity and related items more than “1001 new capabilities”. Make everything work better rather than make many new things. With that thought, however, there were three new OS announcements: OS X El Capitan, iOS9, and watchOS. The important point was that these new OS announcements all focus on extending the Apple ecosystem across all of it’s devices. Previous announcements have seen OS X start to gather the look and feel of iOS. Now iOS is starting to get some of the feel of OS X. watchOS is getting a bit of both. You can watch the entire keynote at: http://www.apple.com/live/2015-june-event/ ….but, probably the most important bit from WWDC so far is that Apple intends to ensure the widest array of hardware will run the new OS releases. Here’s the list …from: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/06/if-your-mac-or-ithing-runs-yosemite-or… If your Mac or iThing runs Yosemite or iOS 8, it can run El Capitan and iOS 9 Apple doesn't drop hardware for the first time in a long time. by Andrew Cunningham<http://arstechnica.com/author/andrew_cunningham/> - Jun 8, 2015 2:48pm CDT If your Mac can run Yosemite, it can run El Capitan. Here's some good news for just about everyone: For the first time in many years, neither iOS nor OS X drops any current hardware from the system requirements list. If your device can run OS X Yosemite (or Mavericks, or Mountain Lion), it can run OS X El Capitan. If it can run iOS 8, it can run iOS 9. For your convenience, here's the complete list of Macs supported, pulled from this developer support page<https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/mac/releasenotes/General/rn-…>: * iMac (Mid-2007 or later) * MacBook (13-inch Aluminum, Late 2008), (13-inch, Early 2009 or later) * MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid-2009 or later), (15-inch, Mid/Late 2007 or later), (17-inch, Late 2007 or later) * MacBook Air (Late 2008 or later) * Mac Mini (Early 2009 or later) * Mac Pro (Early 2008 or later) * Xserve (Early 2009) And here's the support list for iOS 9: * iPhone 4S, 5, 5C, 5S, 6, and 6 Plus * iPad 2, third- and fourth-gen Retina iPads, iPad Air, iPad Air 2 * All iPad Mini models * Fifth-generation iPod Touch

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INTEREST: Windows 10 (mostly) Available on July 29 & Rumors point to different kind of launch for Windows 10
by Wayne Billing 02 Jun '15

02 Jun '15

<https://r4---sn-j5o5gpx-tfbe.googlevideo.com/videoplayback?initcwndbps=6207…>You can see Windows 10 features in action in the video about 1/2 way down the blog article below …..compare OS X Yosemite features demo can be found at (demo starts around 12 minutes but the interesting bits are around 24 minutes and on): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w87fOAG8fjk …from: http://blogs.windows.com/bloggingwindows/2015/06/01/hello-world-windows-10-… Hello World: Windows 10 Available on July 29 June 1, 2015 by Terry Myerson<http://blogs.windows.com/bloggingwindows/author/terrymyerson/> // PC<http://blogs.windows.com/bloggingwindows/category/pc/>, Tablet<http://blogs.windows.com/bloggingwindows/category/tablet/> // 0 Comments<http://blogs.windows.com/bloggingwindows/2015/06/01/hello-world-windows-10-…> * 129<http://blogs.windows.com/bloggingwindows/2015/06/01/hello-world-windows-10-…> * 84<http://blogs.windows.com/bloggingwindows/2015/06/01/hello-world-windows-10-…> * 1201<http://blogs.windows.com/bloggingwindows/2015/06/01/hello-world-windows-10-…> Today, I’m excited to share the availability date for Windows 10. In fact, I thought I’d let Cortana, the world’s most personal digital assistant, share the news. You can ask Cortana for the answer, or if you don’t have a Windows phone or a PC running the Windows 10 Insider Preview handy….. Through the feedback and testing of over four million Windows Insiders, we’ve made great progress on Windows 10 and we’re nearly ready to deliver this free upgrade to all of our Windows customers*. Do Great Things with Windows 10 We designed Windows 10 to create a new generation of Windows for the 1.5 billion people using Windows today in 190 countries around the world. With Windows 10, we start delivering on our vision of more personal computing, defined by trust in how we protect and respect your personal information, mobility of the experience across your devices, and natural interactions with your Windows devices, including speech, touch, ink, and holograms. We designed Windows 10 to run our broadest device family ever, including Windows PCs, Windows tablets, Windows phones, Windows for the Internet of Things, Microsoft Surface Hub, Xbox One and Microsoft HoloLens—all working together to empower you to do great things. Familiar, yet better than ever, Windows 10 brings back the Start menu you know and love. Windows 10 is faster than ever before, with quick startup and resume. And Windows 10 provides the most secure platform ever, including Windows Defender for free anti-malware protection, and being the only platform with a commitment to deliver free ongoing security updates for the supported lifetime of the device. [….rest of article at link above….] * Initial release will be for PC and tablets. See Windows.com/windows10upgrade<http://www.windows.com/windows10upgrade> for availability and other details. ** Specific features may not be available in certain markets, some features require specified hardware, and Continuum for phone available on select premium models at launch. More details at Windows.com/windows10specs <http://www.windows.com/windows10specs%20> and xbox.com/windows-10<http://www.xbox.com/windows-10>. …from: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/05/rumors-point-to-diffe… Rumors point to different kind of launch for Windows 10 in July by Peter Bright<http://arstechnica.com/author/peter-bright/> - May 29, 2015 4:37pm CDT AMD's Lisa Su let slip in April that the Windows 10 release is scheduled for late July<http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/04/amd-claims-windows-10…>. The Verge is now reporting<http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/29/8685243/windows-10-july-launch-date> that Microsoft is still on track to hit a July date, according to sources "familiar with the matter." The Verge's sources give a little more structure to the timeline. They claim that Microsoft was originally considering announcing a July 29 launch date on April 29 at its Build conference, putting three months between the announcement and the launch. The company didn't go forward with the announcement for fear of not hitting the date. The report says that the company is aiming to finalize the Windows 10 code by the end of June. This point would traditionally be known as "release to manufacturing" (RTM), and historically there has been a gap of several months between RTM and actual end-user availability. This time was used by OEMs to prepare new machines and get them into sales channels in time for the official launch. That timeline is greatly condensed compared to the past, a reflection of the new approach to development and releasing that Microsoft has used with Windows 10. The Windows 10 release should be a usable operating system, but in some sense it isn't feature complete: we know that, for example, Microsoft is going to add extension support<http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/05/all-about-edge-extens…> to its new Edge browser, but the initial Windows 10 release won't include that support. It will be delivered in the coming months as Microsoft continues to update the operating system as part of its new "Windows as a service<http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/01/what-windows-as-a-ser…>" approach. This means that the stream of preview releases will continue even after launch. The previews aren't merely a feature of the beta period; instead, Microsoft will be offering early access to Windows 10 features on an ongoing basis. The "RTM" version is a point-in-time snapshot of Windows 10's development. It should be a stable, production-ready snapshot, but it's a snapshot all the same. The process that created it will continue. The new approach to releasing also means that users of the Insider Preview likely won't have to wait until the formal release date to get their hands on the RTM build. We'd expect that Microsoft will still have some kind of event or marketing blitz to mark the launch (and, with it, the availability of hardware with Windows 10 preinstalled), but Windows 10 should be in people's hands already.

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INTEREST: Researchers find Android factory reset faulty and reversible
by Wayne Billing 23 May '15

23 May '15

[complete research paper at: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/fr_most15.pdf]<http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/fr_most15.pdf%5D> …from: http://www.engadget.com/2015/05/22/android-factory-reset-flaw/ Researchers find Android factory reset faulty and reversible by Mariella Moon<http://www.engadget.com/about/editors/mariella-moon/> | @mariella_moon<http://twitter.com/mariella_moon> | May 22nd 2015 at 11:10 pm [cid:5E25E452-1ADD-4266-8E6F-1FA6D57AB041]<http://www.engadget.com/2015/05/22/android-factory-reset-flaw/> Android's factory reset <http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/29/google-wallet-factory-reset-problem/> function isn't as effective as we'd all like it to be, according to a team of Cambridge University researchers. The group estimates that as many as 500 to 630 million Android devices might not be capable of completely wiping the data saved in their internal disks and SD cards. They came to that conclusion after testing 21 devices<http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/fr_most15.pdf> running Android 2.3 to 4.3 from five different manufacturers that already went through factory reset. During their tests, they were able to recover at least part of the data stored in each sample device -- even if it was protected with full-disk encryption. The data they recovered includes contacts, images and videos, texts, emails and log-ins for third-party apps like Facebook and WhatsApp. They were also able to retrieve the master token needed to access all Google user data in 80 percent of the phones. There are many possible reasons for reset failure: according to the researchers, manufacturers sometimes don't load a phone's software with the drivers needed to completely wipe its internal disk or SD card add-on. Also, flash drives are notoriously difficult to erase. It's unclear at the moment if Google or any of the manufacturers whose phones were tested are doing anything about this issue. But if you really want to protect your info before tossing, selling or giving away an old phone, use the most complicated password you can whip up<http://www.engadget.com/discuss/do-you-use-a-password-manager-1q5j/>... or, you know, go to town on it with a hammer. Hide Comments 37Comments

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INTEREST: Apple Announces New Environmental Initiatives in China
by Wayne Billing 12 May '15

12 May '15

…from: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2015/05/11Apple-Announces-New-Environmental… Summary - BEIJING—May 11, 2015 - Apple starting multi-year effort to achieve net-zero impact by Apple Inc. on world’s supply of sustainable pulp, paper, wood products as well as to use 100% renewable energy in worldwide operations - working with World Wildlife Fund - working to bring renewable energy to manufacturing facilities in China after announcing solar project in Sichuan province which will generate more energy than needed for Apple’s Chinese 19 corporate offices and 22 retail stores - partnering with Leshan Electric, Sichuan Development Holding Co, Tianjin Tsinlien Investement Holding Co., Tianjin Zhonguan Semiconductor, and SunPower Corporation to construct two 20 Megawatt solar farms - solar projects designed to minimize ecological impact and protect the grasslands that support the yak population, which is also important to the local economy - Tim Cook, Apple CEO, “it’s important work that has to happen...It’s a responsibility we accept."

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FYI: MacKeeper (anti-virus) celebrates birthday under cloud of class action lawsuit
by Wayne Billing 06 May '15

06 May '15

…from: http://www.macworld.com/article/2919292/apple-security-program-mackeeper-ce… “Executive Summary” - MacKeeper makes “anti-virus” software which it advertises using 60 million ad impressions a month - a class-action suit - near $2M settlement - was brought against MacKeeper contending that MacKeeper software and advertising falsely flagged security and performance problems in order to coax consumers into buying the full version - AV Comparatives, an Austrian company that evaluates antivirus programs, recently tested MacKeeper on a fresh, fully installed and patched version of OS X Yosemite. MacKeeper marked the system as having “serious” problems stemming from more than 500 MB of “junk” files. - the free version fixed 85 files and indicated that a further 1,500 files could be fixed if the full version of MacKeeper was purchased - many of the tools in the MacKeeper bundle, which includes an antivirus (AV) scanner and 15 other utilities, are already in OS X or are available for free - MacWorld (and other Internet sites) have instructions on uninstalling MacKeeper (see link in article below) MacKeeper celebrates a difficult birthday under the cloud of a class action lawsuit [mackeeper 1] MacKeeper<http://mackeeper.com/>, a utility and security program for Apple computers, celebrated its fifth birthday in April. But its gift to U.S. consumers who bought the application may be a slice of a $2 million class-action settlement. Released in 2010, MacKeeper has been dogged by accusations that it exaggerates security threats in order to convince customers to buy. Its aggressive marketing has splashed MacKeeper pop-up ads all over the web. The program was originally created by a company called ZeoBIT<http://zeobit.com/> in Kiev, Ukraine. The country—full of young, smart programmers—has long been a hub for lower-cost software development and outsourcing. The class-action suit<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2071537-zeobit-class-action-complai…>, filed in May 2014 on behalf of Pennsylvania resident Holly Yencha, contends that MacKeeper falsely flagged security and performance problems in order to coax consumers into paying $39.95 for the full version. The suit sought $5 million in damages. It is close to being settled, according to recent documents filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. Under the settlement terms<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2071538-zeobit-class-action-settlem…>, ZeoBIT would put $2 million into a fund for those who want a refund, but admit no fault, which is customary in such settlements. It has yet to be approved by a judge. MacKeeper was wildly lucrative for ZeoBIT. As many as 650,000 consumers bought it in the U.S., according to documents filed in the suit. At $39.95 per copy, ZeoBIT would have made $26 million in revenue in the U.S. alone. New owners. Same problems? In April 2013, ZeoBIT, which now lists its headquarters as Sunnyvale, California, sold MacKeeper to a company called Kromtech Alliance Corp. Kromtech was closely affiliated with ZeoBIT in Ukraine, and many employees of ZeoBIT transferred to the company, which lists its headquarters as Cologne, Germany. [mackeeper 2]<http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2015/05/mackeeper-2-100583591-ori…> MacKeeper evaluates a computer’s health as “serious” even if it is a freshly installed and patched version of OS X Yosemite. (Click to enlarge.) An effort has been under way by Kromtech to rehabilitate the image of MacKeeper to keep the franchise going. But concerns remain over how MacKeeper diagnoses a computer’s health. AV Comparatives<http://www.av-comparatives.org/>, an Austrian company that evaluates antivirus programs, recently tested the latest trial version of MacKeeper at the request of IDG News Service. It was installed on a fresh, fully patched version of OS X Yosemite, Apple’s latest operating system. In theory, the system should have had no problems. MacKeeper warned in red in several places with exclamation points that the computer’s condition was “serious” due to more than 500MB of “junk” files. After fixing 85 files for free, it warned more than 1,500 need cleaning—but only if the full version of the program was purchased. Those that supposedly need cleaning up included language files. [mackeeper 3]<http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2015/05/mackeeper-3-100583592-ori…> MacKeeper justifies its “serious” evaluation of a computer saying it is not in danger, but contends that junk files could eventually affect its performance. (Click to enlarge.) Jeremiah Fowler, MacKeeper’s U.S.-based spokesman, said that Kromtech has toned down its warnings, but defended the program’s evaluations. “Sure, it may not be this massive amount of data, but these are things that you’ll never use,” Fowler said. “You’ll probably never activate Chinese.” Fowler pointed out that there is a pop-up window with more information on one of the warning screens. That message justified the warnings and said MacKeeper found “a relatively large amount of unneeded files” that could eventually affect a computer’s performance or security. Ad behavior MacKeeper has also taken heat for aggressive and pervasive advertising. Fowler said the company buys upwards of 60 million ad impressions a month, making it one of the largest buyers of web traffic aimed at Mac users. MacKeeper has even posted a statement<http://mackeeper.com/why> on its website to answer why people see its ads so often. It has also had issues with some affiliate advertisers, who were attracted by the 50 percent commissions<https://affiliates.mackeeper.com/faq#What> Kromtech pays for sales of MacKeeper. Some affiliates have wrapped MacKeeper ads into advertising software programs, or adware. It’s a category of much-loathed tools that offer some functionality such as search but are primarily designed to deliver ads. Thomas Reed, who writes The Safe Mac<http://www.thesafemac.com/> blog, discovered the reach of MacKeeper affiliates. Reed developed a program called AdwareMedic<http://www.adwaremedic.com/index.php>, which removes adware from Macs. The program is free. Reed wrote<http://www.thesafemac.com/ongoing-mackeeper-fraud/> in November that he found an adware program called Downlite that, if installed on a Mac, would redirect someone to MacKeeper’s website site if they tried to download AdwareMedic. Kromtech has taken steps to reign in unethical affiliates, Fowler said. More than 80 percent of ZeoBIT’s affiliate agreements have since been suspended, and the company’s new compliance department closely vets new ones. Still, the bad practices of former affiliates caused damage to MacKeeper’s reputation, Fowler said. [mackeeper icon] MacKeeper wants to be a one-stop shop, but its subscription pricing includes many unnecessary utilities already included in OS X or easily found for free. These days, MacKeeper has gone to a subscription-based pricing model rather than a $39.95 one-off payment. It costs $7.95 a month in the U.S. for the premium, year-long plan. Its latest feature is offering phone support from Apple-certified technicians, which it calls Human Inside. On its website, MacKeeper assigns a value to each of its tools, contending the bundle would be worth $510 if bought individually. “Save up to 97 percent,” it says. But many of the tools in the software bundle, which includes an antivirus (AV) scanner and 15 other utilities, are already in OS X or available for free. For example, MacKeeper licenses technology in its AV scanner from Germany-based Avira, which offers its Mac security product<http://www.avira.com/en/free-antivirus-mac> for free. On its pricing page, MacKeeper estimates the value of an AV scanner at $79. Curiously, MacKeeper doesn’t offer updates or what’s called real-time protection—where files that are downloaded or opened are scanned for malware—unless the customer buys its “premium” version, according to Dennis Technology Labs<http://www.dennistechnologylabs.com/>, which also tested MacKeeper for IDG News Service. Avira’s free Mac AV product “includes updates and real-time protection,” the labs noted. Other MacKeeper tools already have an equivalent in OS X. MacKeeper’s file shredder tool, listed as a $10 value, replicates “secure empty trash,” built into OS X. The “default apps” tool is similar to Apple’s Finder. When asked about the duplication, Fowler contended that MacKeeper is designed to provide one interface for utilities for less technical people who aren’t familiar with Apple computers. For what it’s worth, Macworld has two how-tos on uninstalling MacKeeper<http://www.macworld.com/article/2861435/how-to-uninstall-mackeeper-from-you…> from your Mac and squashing its popups<http://www.macworld.com/article/2861868/how-to-remove-mackeeper-part-ii-the…> too. Kromtech continues to market the program aggressively and participated<http://www.macworld.com/article/2026792/expo-notes-mackeeper-takes-a-more-s…> at the Macworld conference last year and the Consumer Electronics Show in January in Las Vegas. Over five years, 20 million copies of MacKeeper have been sold, Kromtech claims. But ZeoBIT’s proposed settlement over MacKeeper doesn’t include Kromtech as a released party, which means it could be targeted by future lawsuits. Edelson PC, a technology focused law firm that filed the suit, said it could not comment.

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INTEREST/FYI: Suggestions on cleanly erasing your hard drive under OS X
by Wayne Billing 19 Apr '15

19 Apr '15

Securely and completely cleaning your hard drive on your computer has risen in importance as a data integrity concern to the university as more and more breaches elsewhere of confidentiality and security have been published. This concern has been heightened further now that Apple hardware repairs are leaving the U of Manitoba campuses. [NOTE: one proven method of securing the storage local to your computer is to ensure all your data and information are stored externally to the device. Whether it is on to a network server and even just locally attached external drives, this makes it easier to isolate your data and information if the computer itself needs to be taken away for disposal or repair. Keep in mind that even using an external location for your files could still mean that email passwords and the like are still stored with the SYSTEM on the local hard drive so you may wish to delete email account setups, browser history, and such before sending the computer away to ensure they cannot be accessed.] ….from: http://www.macworld.com/article/2906499/mac-911-how-to-erase-your-macs-hard… Mac 911: How to erase your Mac's hard drive the right way [disk utility hero] When you sell or donate a Mac or give it to a family member, it’s best to make a clean break: wipe the puppy clean, reinstall the latest version of OS X, and hand off a system that you’re not worried has remnants of yourself on it. But how can you be sure? Readers have written in with several related questions, so let’s talk this week about erasing a drive, how FileVault 2 encryption can play into it, and out-of-date Recovery Drive partitions. Erase and leave no trace Reader Jim Kay, who asked about migrating from one Mac to another a couple of weeks ago, had a second question as well that opens a delightful can of worms: Since I’m looking to resell my current Mac, how do I reinstall OS X, so as to wipe my hard drive and resell knowing the new buyer has a cleaned-up computer, and my files are nowhere to be found on it? Wiping or erasing a drive has a surprising number of definitions. In the olden days, in the long ago, we ran utility software that often came from third parties, which would simply delete the catalog and related records. Such an erase was, in practice, the best way to create a clean installation. But it doesn’t make all the files on the disk unrecoverable—it just makes them harder to retrieve. To get rid of old data in a thorough fashion, you need use a multi-pass approach, in which every bit of storage in the disk is overwritten with new data (often zeroes). That’s been built into Apple’s Disk Utility for years. When you select a volume in Disk Utility and then the Erase tab, you can click Security Options to pick how many times the drive is overwritten: once, three times, or seven times. Once is considered enough for regular purposes, while three and seven correspond to different U.S. government security guidelines. [mac 911 secure erase options 580] Securely erase your hard drive with Disk Utility. Before Lion, you had to boot from a CD or DVD system disk or a third-party utility, like Disk Warrior, or from an external drive with OS X installed. Then you’d run Disk Utility to erase your startup drive. But this has become easier since OS X Recovery<https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314> was added in Lion. Restart a Mac and hold down Command-R after the startup chime sounds, and the computer boots into the recovery mode. Select Disk Utility from the startup menu, and you can erase your startup drive securely. [mac 911 erase tab disk utility]<https://cms-images.idgesg.net/images/article/2015/04/mac-911-erase-tab-disk…> You'll save a little time if you do an erase without overwriting, then reinstall OS X, then Erase Free Space with an overwriting option. There’s a slightly different way to accomplish the same goal. First, erase a drive without the overwriting part, and reinstall OS X. After you boot, launch Disk Utility, select the startup volume, and click the Erase tab. Now use the Erase Free Space option, which also offers 1, 3, and 7 passes of erase, and only empties out unused parts of the disk. The advantage is that your computer remains available (though often slow) while this operation is underway. Along with both Secure Erase and the Erase Free Space options, which can take a very, very long time even for a single pass, you’ve got two other options, one of which you don’t need to enable. Even better with SSD and FileVault 2 If your Mac has an Apple-installed or third-party SSD, you can’t use Secure Erase, nor do you necessarily need it, as Apple explains in a support document<https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201949> (see the note at the end). SSD data can’t be trivially recovered because of how SSDs optimize storage to reduce wear and tear. This is by no means foolproof, and one should assume that there are forensic tools available that can reconstruct erased SSDs—some are for sale, but I haven’t tested their claims. Apple doesn’t provide in-depth details on why it made its statement about SSDs as it does for some security claims, and thus it’s impossible to confirm. However, there’s a simple way with both SSD and regular hard drives to perform a fantastically quick and reliable erasure: using FileVault 2. FileVault 2<http://www.macworld.com/article/2880039/how-to-encrypt-your-mac-with-fileva…>, the full-disk encryption (FDE) option that first appeared in OS X 10.7, keeps your startup drive encrypted at all times. Whenever you boot your Mac and log in to one of the accounts that’s authorized to boot with FileVault 2, OS X encrypts everything written to disk and decrypts everything read on the fly. [filevault]<https://cms-images.idgesg.net/images/article/2015/02/screen-shot-2015-02-04…> If you use FileVault, any data "left behind" on your erased hard drive will be totally unreadable by your Mac's next owner. With a FileVault-encrypted startup disk, you can restart into OS X Recovery and launch Disk Utility to erase the volume. However, before erasing, you need to select the disk and then choose File > Unlock “volume name”. Enter the password for any FileVault-enabled user account, and the disk is unlocked and can be erased. Erasing a FileVault-encrypted volume discards the key that’s associated with it, turning a disk into a nearly perfect cacophony of irrecoverable randomness. Without the key, which is uncrackable in any realistic period of time by any current technology, the erased data is as good as gone as if it had been written over millions of times. You can then install OS X on that partition, either from the recovery system or via an external drive<http://www.macworld.com/article/2690806/how-to-install-mac-os-x-yosemite.ht…>. A few other recovery and FileVault issues Reader Peter wondered how FileVault figures in to cloning a disk. Because FileVault encrypts an entire drive and only decrypts files when you’re logged in, it has no effect on how or whether you make a clone, use Migration Assistant, or copy files. However, if you’re planning on using FileVault on the new computer, I would heavily suggest enabling FileVault on the new machine before moving any files to it. This will speed up the operation by encrypting the new computer’s fewer files first. When FileVault has finished and your new Mac has rebooted and you’ve logged in, then start the migration process, and all new files are encrypted on the fly. Andrew Robertson writes that when he upgraded to Yosemite, his recovery drive remained out of date with 10.9 Mavericks. Then, when trying to set up FileVault and enable iCloud-based recovery of his key, he doesn’t see an option to do so when booting into OS X Recovery. Fortunately, there are answers for both: * You can reinstall 10.10 on the startup disk without damaging the rest of your setup, though make a backup first. This should upgrade the recovery partition. (Carbon Copy Cloner<https://bombich.com/kb/ccc4/frequently-asked-questions-about-cloning-apples…> can clone a recovery partition from one drive to another, but it can’t create one from an installer or from scratch.) * The reset password option isn’t available with FileVault 2, but you can store a copy of your recovery key with Apple. To recover a key<https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202274>, first start up OS X normally, and enter the wrong password three times. (This is also how to use iCloud password recovery on non-FileVault systems.) You’re then presented with the option to contact Apple, which requires speaking to a representative, and answering multiple questions exactly as you entered them when setting up the recovery option. If correct, Apple’s customer service gains access to the stored key, which they provide to you. Ask Mac 911 We’re always looking for problems to solve! Email us at mac911(a)macworld.com<mailto:mac911@macworld.com>, tweet them at me (if brief) @glennf<https://twitter.com/glennf>, or call 206-337-5833 and leave a voicemail message. (We’ll be experimenting with some audio in the future, and may put your question “on the air.”) Mac 911 can’t provide direct email responses or answers for every question. For that, turn to AppleCare, an Apple Store Genius Bar, or the Apple Support Communities<https://discussions.apple.com/welcome>.

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FYI: suspect AppleID account email and phishing@apple.com
by Wayne Billing 03 Apr '15

03 Apr '15

There seems to have been a rise in bad email specifically targeting AppleID accounts. Usually the email is attempting to get you to enter your AppleID and password. I've seen 3 of these in the past two weeks and others are reporting similar concerns. Generally the email takes one of two formats: - something is wrong with your AppleID account - just log in to fix it - something "odd" has been purchased on your AppleID - just log in to verify the purchase For example, one email indicated that "your AppleID has been used to purchase 'Game of Thrones' from an unusual location". Whatever the format or claim, following the suggested links and entering your AppleID and password to verify or correct the information can lead to unintended exposure of your account information. There are some things you can do to verify that the email is not a valid AppleInc. notification, to slightly reduce your overall exposure, and to report the problem to Apple. 1) reporting the problem to allow Apple Inc. so they can take some action is quite simple by forwarding the message to an appropriate Apple email address: a) open the original email message in MAIL b) select VIEW > MESSAGE > RAW SOURCE c) select all and copy the entire RAW SOURCE of the message d) FILE > NEW MESSAGE addressed to phishing(a)apple.com<mailto:phishing@apple.com> e) Write a brief subject indicating a PHISHING attempt and describing how you received the original message f) paste in the RAW SOURCE you'd copied earlier and hit SEND - this RAW SOURCE allows Apple to examine all of the email server paths and "hidden" links that the original message may have contained 2) verifying original message is not legitimate: examine the RAW SOURCE you'd selected earlier. Within it you will probably find many legitimate Apple links such as "http://euro.apple.com" or "http://iforgot.apple.com". You will probably also see a few very odd links which have nothing to do with AppleInc. These could be any domains such as: http://elmnitasdevigo http://fsioterapiasantarita ....just odd (perhaps already compromised) web addresses which seem to have no connection to "apple.com<http://apple.com>". One sure indicator that something phishi is happening is the presence of non-Apple links in a message supposedly originating at Apple. Apple rarely if ever does that. 3) reducing potential of exposure: one simple step you can take to help reduce your exposure profile through email is to deselect "Load remote content in messages" [cid:6346619A-5084-4345-98E3-2108DE5CE532] a) MAIL > PREFERENCES > VIEWING b) uncheck/deselect LOAD REMOTE CONTENT IN MESSAGES if it is checked - if this option is checked and the sender includes a graphic in the email message, when you open the message in MAIL, this can be an automatic indication to the sender that your email address is "alive"/someone is actually using the address. Just the fact that your mail package requested the graphic can trigger a confirmation to the sender. If you deselect this option, graphics are not loaded automatically but can be loaded manually within the email message as you read it. You'll see a "LOAD REMOTE CONTENT" button in the top-right of your email message. Deselecting this option gives you an opportunity to scan your email message first before loading the graphics allowing you to screen out any suspect email messages. This is not a guarantee that your email address will be 100% safe. It does, however, reduce the chances of an accidental confirmation/exposure relating to your email account via this "load a graphic" mechanism. I hope you find this information to be useful. Please feel free to email questions or concerns you may have. Thanks, Wayne Billing Classroom Technology Support Audio Visual and Classroom Technology Support Computer and Network Support 130 Machray Hall Building 204-474-6649 204-807-3153 (cell) 204-474-7625 (fax) Wayne_Billing(a)umanitoba.ca<mailto:Wayne_Billing@umanitoba.ca>

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INTEREST: Half of Android devices may be vulnerable to surreptitious install exploits
by Wayne Billing 28 Mar '15

28 Mar '15

...from: http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/03/android-hijacking-bug-may-allow-att… Android hijacking bug may allow attackers to install password-stealers Half of Android devices may be vulnerable to surreptitious install exploits. by Dan Goodin<http://arstechnica.com/author/dan-goodin/> - Mar 25, 2015 2:40pm CDT Roughly half of all Android handsets are vulnerable to a newly discovered hack that in some cases allows attackers to surreptitiously modify or replace seemingly benign apps with malicious ones that steal passwords and other sensitive data. The "Android installer hijacking" vulnerability, as it has been dubbed by researchers from Palo Alto Networks, works only when apps are being downloaded from third-party app stores or when a user clicks on an app promotion advertisement hosted by a mobile advertisement library. Technically, it's based on what's known as a Time-of-check to time-of-use vulnerability<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_of_check_to_time_of_use>. Affected devices fail to verify that the app being installed at the time of use was the one the end user approved during the time of check, which occurs when a user approves app permissions such as network access or access to the contacts database. The bug involves the way the system application called PackageInstaller installs app files known as APKs. "A vulnerability exists in this process because while the user is reviewing this information, the attacker can modify or replace the package in the background," Palo Alto Networks researcher Zhi Xu wrote in a blog post published Tuesday<http://researchcenter.paloaltonetworks.com/2015/03/android-installer-hijack…>. "Verified with Android OS source code posted in AOSP [Android Open Source Project], it shows that the PackageInstaller on affected versions does not verify the APK file at the 'time of use.' Thus, in the "time of use' (i.e., after clicking the 'install button), the PackageInstaller can actually install a different app with an entirely different set of permissions." One scenario for exploiting the vulnerability involves an attacker using a benign-looking app to install malware in the future. A second scenario uses the same weakness to mask the true permissions an app requires. In both cases, targeted users can end up installing apps that are vastly different from the ones they approved during the permissions process. The vulnerability has been patched in Android version 4.3_r0.9 and later, but Xu warned that some Android 4.3 devices remain vulnerable. By Google estimates<https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html>, that accounts for 49.9 percent of the handsets the company monitors. Palo Alto Networks has released a scanner app<http://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.paloaltonetworks.ctd.ihsca…> that will indicate if a given device is vulnerable. People using vulnerable devices should steer clear of third-party app stores and use Google Play as their sole source of apps.

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INTEREST: smartphone + dongle = test for Detecting HIV And Syphilis
by Wayne Billing 24 Mar '15

24 Mar '15

...from: http://www.forbes.com/sites/judystone/2015/02/04/a-dongle-for-detecting-hiv… A Dongle For Detecting HIV And Syphilis Rapid, inexpensive, easy to use point-of-care (POC) diagnostic tests are critically important in stemming infectious diseases, particularly in developing countries. Researchers at Dr. Sam Sia’s Columbia University<http://orion.bme.columbia.edu/~sia/> lab have invented a promising device that can detect both HIV and syphilis and have successfully piloted it in Rwanda. The Columbia device pairs a microfluidic cassette dongle with a smartphone. Test reagents are preloaded into the cassette. A “one-push” vacuum, like a bulb on an old-fashioned blood pressure cuff, is used to fill the chamber of the cassette with a blood sample, and reduce the need for electricity. Further, the audio jack on a smartphone is used to power the dongle and for data transmission. [cid:E558023E-BC12-4249-AA10-838DA368784E]Step-by-step illustration of dongle testing. [Credit: Tassaneewan Laksanasopin] .....from: http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/7/273/273re1 A smartphone dongle for diagnosis of infectious diseases at the point of care 1. • Tassaneewan Laksanasopin1,*, • Tiffany W. Guo1,*, • Samiksha Nayak1, • Archana A. Sridhara1, • Shi Xie1, • Owolabi O. Olowookere1, • Paolo Cadinu1, • Fanxing Meng1, • Natalie H. Chee1, • Jiyoon Kim1, • Curtis D. Chin1, • Elisaphane Munyazesa2, • Placidie Mugwaneza3, • Alex J. Rai4, • Veronicah Mugisha2, • Arnold R. Castro5, • David Steinmiller6, • Vincent Linder6, • Jessica E. Justman7, • Sabin Nsanzimana3 and • Samuel K. Sia1,† • ↵†Corresponding author. E-mail: ss2735(a)columbia.edu<mailto:ss2735@columbia.edu> Abstract This work demonstrates that a full laboratory-quality immunoassay can be run on a smartphone accessory. This low-cost dongle replicates all mechanical, optical, and electronic functions of a laboratory-based enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) without requiring any stored energy; all necessary power is drawn from a smartphone. Rwandan health care workers used the dongle to test whole blood obtained via fingerprick from 96 patients enrolling into care at prevention of mother-to-child transmission clinics or voluntary counseling and testing centers. The dongle performed a triplexed immunoassay not currently available in a single test format: HIV antibody, treponemal-specific antibody for syphilis, and nontreponemal antibody for active syphilis infection. In a blinded experiment, health care workers obtained diagnostic results in 15 min from our triplex test that rivaled the gold standard of laboratory-based HIV ELISA and rapid plasma reagin (a screening test for syphilis), with sensitivity of 92 to 100% and specificity of 79 to 100%, consistent with needs of current clinical algorithms. Patient preference for the dongle was 97% compared to laboratory-based tests, with most pointing to the convenience of obtaining quick results with a single fingerprick. This work suggests that coupling microfluidics with recent advances in consumer electronics can make certain laboratory-based diagnostics accessible to almost any population with access to smartphones.

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FYI: Apple: more security updates; iPhoto compatibility
by Wayne Billing 20 Mar '15

20 Mar '15

There have been a few security concerns washing through the Internet the past few weeks. Fixes and patches have been coming from various quarters as they have been readied. Today saw Apple's most recent security patch for OS X (following closely on the heals of the Safari patch earlier this week). In addtion, there is an iPhoto update to improve transition to the upcoming Photos app that will replace it later this year. Just launch the APP STORE and check the UPDATES section to begin the installation of these.

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INTEREST: Apple improves deal for shuttle bus workers following earlier deal for security guards
by Wayne Billing 14 Mar '15

14 Mar '15

...from: http://9to5mac.com/2015/03/09/apple-shuttle-bus-workers/ http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_27673431/exclusive-apple-gives-shutt… Apple improves deal for shuttle bus workers following earlier deal for security guards<http://9to5mac.com/2015/03/09/apple-shuttle-bus-workers/> [Shuttle-Bus] Apple is ensuring that its sub-contracted shuttle bus workers get a better deal, directly funding a 25% bump in their pay and requiring contractors to pay a higher hourly rate for split shifts–where drivers work both mornings and evenings but are kept hanging around without pay between the two … Apple is also requiring bus companies to improve rest areas, reports the Mercury News<http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_27673431/exclusive-apple-gives-shutt…>: “Over 5,000 Apple employees in the Bay Area take advantage of our commute alternatives program every day,” said Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet. “We’re working with the bus companies to help make a number of changes for the more than 150 drivers of our commute shuttles, including funding a 25 percent increase in hourly wages, premium pay for coach and shuttle drivers who work split shifts and improving the driver break and rest areas.” One of Apple’s shuttle contractors, Royal Coach Tours, said the pay rise would make the drivers among the highest paid in Silicon Valley. Contract drivers for Apple and other tech companies voted to unionize<http://9to5mac.com/2015/01/13/apple-drivers-unionize/> back in January. Jesse Jackson wrote to Tim Cook last November, urging Apple to take a lead in creating “world-class working conditions” for low-paid contractors like security guards and shuttle drivers. The two met<http://9to5mac.com/2015/03/09/apple-shuttle-bus-workers/world-class%20worki…> to discuss the issue in December, and Apple last week announced<http://9to5mac.com/2015/03/03/apple-security-contractors-staff/> that it would be taking on the majority of its security guards as direct employees, ensuring that they would receive health insurance and retirement benefits.

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FYI: Apple MB Pro Repair: a small percentage of MacBook Pro systems (sold between February 2011 and December 2013) may exhibit distorted video, no video, or unexpected system restarts
by Wayne Billing 21 Feb '15

21 Feb '15

...from: http://www.apple.com/support/macbookpro-videoissues/ MacBook Pro Repair Extension Program for Video Issues Apple has determined that a small percentage of MacBook Pro systems may exhibit distorted video, no video, or unexpected system restarts. These MacBook Pro systems were sold between February 2011 and December 2013. Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider will repair affected MacBook Pro systems, free of charge. See below for details on affected models and service options. As of February 20, 2015, the repair process will be available in the U.S. and Canada. In other countries, it will be available as of February 27, 2015. Symptoms An affected MacBook Pro may display one or more of the following symptoms: * Distorted or scrambled video on the computer screen * No video on the computer screen (or external display) even though the computer is on * Computer restarts unexpectedly Products affected * 15-inch and 17-inch MacBook Pro models manufactured in 2011 * 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina models manufactured from Mid 2012 to Early 2013 Identify your model Use the "Check your Coverage<https://selfsolve.apple.com/agreementWarrantyDynamic.do>" tool on the Apple Support site to determine if your MacBook Pro model matches the list of affected products below. Sample results: [Check your coverage] Affected Models * MacBook Pro (15-inch Early 2011) * MacBook Pro (15-inch, Late 2011) * MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2012) * MacBook Pro (17-inch Early 2011) * MacBook Pro (17-inch Late 2011) * MacBook Pro (Retina, 15 inch, Early 2013) Note: If your MacBook Pro is not experiencing any of these symptoms and is not one of the products affected, you do not need to contact Apple. Repair Process Please choose one of the options below for service. Your MacBook Pro will be examined prior to any service to verify that it is eligible for this program and is otherwise in working order. Note: If your MacBook Pro has any damage, which prevents the repair, such as a cracked screen, that issue will need to be resolved during service. You will be notified about any additional repair charges that are required. Please back up your data before your MacBook Pro is serviced. Learn more about backup options.<http://www.apple.com/support/backup/> * Carry-in * Bring your MacBook Pro to a participating provider<https://locate.apple.com/> - Apple Retail Store or Apple Authorized Service Provider. * A technician will run a diagnostic test on the MacBook Pro to verify eligibility. * Repair turn around time will vary based upon parts and technician availability. * You will be notified when your MacBook Pro is ready for pickup. * Mail-in * Call Apple and request a postage paid box to send your MacBook Pro to the local Apple Repair Center. * A technician will run a diagnostic test on your MacBook Pro to verify eligibility. * The repair process takes approximately 5-7 days from the time your MacBook Pro is received at the repair center until it is returned to you. * After it has been serviced, your MacBook Pro will be returned to you by mail. Additional Information Apple is contacting customers who paid for a repair either though Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider to arrange reimbursement. If you have not been contacted, but paid for a repair that you think was due to this issue, please contact Apple. This worldwide Apple program does not extend the standard warranty coverage of the MacBook Pro. The program covers affected MacBook Pro models until February 27, 2016 or three years from its original date of sale, whichever provides longer coverage for you. Information as of 2015-02-19

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INTEREST: Obama: “Everybody’s online and everybody’s vulnerable”
by Wayne Billing 16 Feb '15

16 Feb '15

...from: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/02/obama-everybodys-online-and-ever… Obama: “Everybody’s online and everybody’s vulnerable” [cid:35FD4F1C-650E-476F-8800-26270944CC66] White House<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlTo9hFAFXs&spfreload=10> President Barack Obama signed an executive order<http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/02/12/fact-sheet-executive-…> on Friday that encourages more cybersecurity threat-related data sharing between the private sector and the government. Speaking at Stanford University in California, where many tech leaders and other government officials also assembled, the president acknowledged that federal authorities are in a bind. “I have to tell you that grappling with how government protects the American people from adverse events while at the same time making sure that government itself is not abusing its capabilities is hard,” he said. “This cyber world is the Wild Wild West, and to some degree we’re asked to be the sheriff. When something like Sony happens<http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/12/sony-pictures-hack-gets-uglier-nort…>, people want to know what government can do about it. The technology so often outstrips whatever rules and structures and standards have been put in place.” “Everybody’s online and everybody’s vulnerable,” he added. In an online statement<http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/02/13/fact-sheet-white-hous…>, the White House added: "We must have new technologies that combine greater security and convenience. This technology moves beyond usernames and passwords to employ multiple security steps to better ensure a person is who they say they are." The Obama administration has been actively working<http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/02/13/fact-sheet-white-hous…> on this issue since 2013, when a previous executive order on Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity was signed. That, in turn, led to something called the “Cybersecurity Framework,” or a sort of blueprint that some Silicon Valley and other major firms have adopted, including Bank of America, Apple, and others. Last month, Obama announced<http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/01/obama-calls-for-new-consumer-stu…> new legislation aiming to protect consumer privacy and student privacy and offer enhanced protection of home energy usage data, among other things. (Some of the new suggested policies were first put forth in 2012<http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/02/white-house-announces-new-privac…>.) Some tech companies have butted heads with Washington and are dismayed that National Security Agency and other digital surveillance reforms have stalled. While Apple CEO Tim Cook did speak, executives from Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and Twitter were not in attendance. According to Reuters<http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/12/us-usa-cybersecurity-exclusive-id…>, copies of the executive order’s text have not been made available to top tech executives. A copy of the executive order has yet to be published on the White House website.

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FYI: iCloud beta now lets anyone create an Apple ID and use Pages, Numbers, and Keynote for free | iMore
by Doug Hamilton 13 Feb '15

13 Feb '15

http://www.imore.com/icloud-beta-now-lets-anyone-create-apple-id-and-use-pa… iCloud beta now lets anyone create an Apple ID and use Pages, Numbers, and Keynote for free Good news for people wanting to use Apple's productivity software: starting tonight, anyone, with or without a Mac or iOS device, will be able to create an Apple ID and sign in to the iCloud beta website to start using Pages, Numbers, and Keynote for free. When users visit beta.icloud.com, they will be presented with a banner at the top of the page prompting them to create an Apple ID. Afterwards, in addition to gaining access to Pages, Numbers, and Keynote, the free accounts will also grant 1GB of free cloud storage to users. This is a great way for Apple to extend its services beyond its own devices, as now even PC users can start using the company's productivity suite. It is important to note, however, that this currently only works from the beta version of the iCloud website. If you'd like to give it a shot, hit up that source link below to get started. Source: iCloud Beta Have something to say about this story? Share your comments below! Need help with something else? Submit your question!

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INTEREST: Busy week for Apple: conflict-free audit, new record market-cap, solar farm to offset electricity use; LOCK reducing iPhone theft
by Wayne Billing 13 Feb '15

13 Feb '15

...from: http://9to5mac.com/2015/02/12/apple-conflict-minerals/ Apple dropping four smelters from supply chain after they refused conflict-free audit<http://9to5mac.com/2015/02/12/apple-conflict-minerals/> Apple has revealed in its annual Supplier Responsibility Progress Report<http://images.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/pdf/Apple_Progress_Report_2…> that it has informed four smelters–who provide metals used in the production of the company’s devices–that they will be dropped from the supply chain after refusing to submit to “conflict mineral” audits … The audits are designed to ensure that the extraction of the minerals used does not finance armed groups associated with human rights violations: “Tantalum, tin, tungsten, and gold are called conflict minerals because, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and adjoining regions, their extraction may finance or benefit armed groups associated with human rights violations. Apple is dedicated to using only conflict-free minerals in our products […] Unfortunately, even after extensive encouragement, there were four smelters that were unwilling to commit to be audited by a third party, so Apple put these smelters on notice that they will be removed from our supply chain.” [...] ...from: http://9to5mac.com/2015/02/10/apple-becomes-1st-company-ever-to-close-at-ma… Apple becomes 1st company ever to close at market cap of over $700B (AAPL)<http://9to5mac.com/2015/02/10/apple-becomes-1st-company-ever-to-close-at-ma…> Update 2/11: After passing $700 billion in market capitalization yesterday, Apple has been trading up<http://finance.yahoo.com/q?d=t&s=AAPL> as high as $124.43 a share raising market cap over $720 billion. Apple’s stock price closed <https://www.google.com/search?q=TSLA&oq=TSLA&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.957j0j4&…> up 2.3 points today [...] ..from: http://9to5mac.com/2015/02/10/apple-announces-850m-solar-farm-in-monterey-t… Apple announces $850m, 1600-acre solar farm in Monterey to offset all its CA operations incl. Campus 2<http://9to5mac.com/2015/02/10/apple-announces-850m-solar-farm-in-monterey-t…> [apple-Solar-reno] During Tim Cook’s talk at the Goldman Sachs Tech Conference 2015<http://9to5mac.com/2015/02/10/live-blog-tim-cook-goldman-sachs-conference/> today, the Apple CEO announced a new initiative that will see the company build a solar farm in Monterey County, California that Cook called Apple’s “biggest, boldest and most ambitious” energy project yet. “We know at Apple that climate change is real… our view is the time for talk is past and the time for action is now… we’re now running all of our data centres… off renewable energy.. Just today we’re announcing our biggest, boldest and most ambitious project ever…building a solar farm in Monterey County…” Apple says the new solar farm will offset all of its California operations including 55 retail stores, its entire under construction Campus 2,<http://9to5mac.com/tag/apple-campus-2/> its other offices in California, and at least one of its data centers. Apple’s new Campus 2 alone is scheduled to house approximately 16,000 of its employees in 2.8m square feet once complete. ...from: http://9to5mac.com/2015/02/11/iphone-thefts/ Activation Lock has reduced iPhone theft by 25% in NY, 40% in SF, 50% in London<http://9to5mac.com/2015/02/11/iphone-thefts/> [activation-lock-02] Officials in three major cities have reported dramatic reductions in iPhone thefts since Apple introduced Activation Lock<http://9to5mac.com/tag/activation-lock/> as part of iOS 7, preventing devices being re-activated without the original owner’s iCloud login. Reuters<http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/11/us-usa-smartphone-killswitch-idUS…> reports that the number of reported iPhone thefts has fallen year-on-year by 25% in New York, 40% in San Francisco and 50% in London … Activation Lock was originally announced<http://9to5mac.com/2013/06/10/apple-announces-activation-lock-theft-deterre…> in June 2013 as part of iOS 7, resulting in theft reductions<http://9to5mac.com/2014/06/18/police-ios-7s-activation-lock-has-helped-redu…>in the three cities of 19%, 24% and 38% respectively. Switching on Activation Lock by default in iOS 8<http://9to5mac.com/2014/09/17/apple-turns-activation-lock-on-by-default-in-…> has further boosted these numbers as thieves are discovering that stolen iPhones are little more than pretty-looking bricks.

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FYI: Smithsonian allows viewing of 40, 000 pieces of asian art online (Freer|Sackler)
by Wayne Billing 05 Jan '15

05 Jan '15

http://www.asia.si.edu/collections/edan/default.cfm Open F|S (Freer|Sackler) [homepage banner] Welcome to Phase 1 of Open F|S, the complete digitized collections of the Freer and Sackler Galleries and the Freer Study Collection. With more than 40,000 works being made available for high-resolution download—expanding regularly with our new acquisitions<http://www.asia.si.edu/collections/new-acquisitions/default.asp>—you can explore the Smithsonian's museums of Asian art from anywhere in the world, whenever you like. Images can be used for all non-commercial purposes<http://www.asia.si.edu/collections/usage/>, from desktop wallpapers<http://www.asia.si.edu/collections/wallpaper/> to artistic gifts for family and friends. Send us your creations and your feedback about this beta version at openfs(a)si.edu<mailto:openfs@si.edu?subject=WEB:%20Collection%20Creations>! For permission to use high-resolution images commercially, contact Rights and Reproduction<http://www.asia.si.edu/research/imagePermissions.asp>.

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FYI: NTP Security Update
by Wayne Billing 23 Dec '14

23 Dec '14

Apple has just published a security update which you can get from the OS X App Store > Updates: [cid:3F1AD6AC-1B39-4A8E-A061-55C450EE50C9@cc.umanitoba.ca] This update addresses a critical security issue with the software that provides the Network Time Protocol service on OS X, and is recommended for all users. Wayne Billing Classroom Technology Support Audio Visual and Classroom Technology Support Computer and Network Support 130 Machray Hall Building 204-474-6649 204-807-3153 (cell) 204-474-7625 (fax) Wayne_Billing(a)umanitoba.ca<mailto:Wayne_Billing@umanitoba.ca>

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INTEREST: (Very Long) Marissa Mayer and the future of YAHOO(Alibaba)
by Wayne Billing 22 Dec '14

22 Dec '14

...from: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/magazine/what-happened-when-marissa-mayer… What Happened When Marissa Mayer Tried to Be Steve Jobs [cid:1FF4F8EC-B7DB-48EB-AF2B-33F7F1AFCC9C@cc.umanitoba.ca] Credit Illustration by Matt Dorfman. Photographs by Getty Images. Eric Jackson was sitting in his hotel room on Sea Island, Ga., watching his kids splash around in the pool, when he clicked “publish” on his latest blog post for Forbes.com<http://Forbes.com>. Jackson, an influential hedge-fund manager, had become fixated on Yahoo and the efforts of its chief executive, Marissa Mayer, to turn around the enormous yet floundering Internet company. It was July 21, 2014, almost exactly two years to the day since Mayer took over, arriving at Yahoo’s headquarters to an unfurled purple carpet and Shepard Fairey-style “HOPE” posters bearing her face. During those 24 months, Mayer eliminated dozens of products and rebooted others. She acquired 41 start-ups and even hired Katie Couric. But just one week earlier, Mayer announced the company’s lowest quarterly earnings in a decade. Jackson argued in his post that Yahoo no longer made sense as an independent entity. Instead, it might be a nice takeover target for one of the tech industry’s Big Four: Apple, Facebook, Amazon or Google. Jackson’s conclusion wasn’t based simply on a discouraging quarter. It was a result of an eye-opening calculation he had performed — what’s known on Wall Street as a sum-of-the-parts valuation. Yahoo had a market value of $33 billion at the time, but that figure owed largely to its stake in Alibaba, the Chinese Internet conglomerate. According to Jackson’s valuation, Yahoo’s stake in Alibaba was worth roughly $37 billion. But if you subtracted that position, the entirety of Yahoo’s core business, all its web products and content sites, actually had a market valuation of negative $4 billion. A conquering company could theoretically buy Yahoo, sell off its Asian assets and absorb its business units free. This sort of sale would make a lot of money for Yahoo’s shareholders, Jackson wrote, even if it meant gutting the company and losing Mayer as C.E.O. after only two years. A day after his post, Jackson received an unusual email. A major Yahoo shareholder had written to explain that he and many other investors, along with numerous employees and advertisers, had themselves become extremely frustrated with Mayer. Her turnaround plan, he said, had failed. The start-ups she acquired (most notably the social blogging platform Tumblr, which Yahoo bought for $1.1 billion in 2013) had failed to revive the company’s flat revenues of roughly $5 billion per year. Nor had Mayer succeeded, despite her track record overseeing Google’s search engine, in turning any of Yahoo’s many products into an industry leader. There were also a number of embarrassing management setbacks. The best outcome for Yahoo, the shareholder said, might be to sell the company. One day later, on July 23, Jackson published a subsequent Forbes column that outlined parts of the shareholder’s argument. It went viral within the investment community, and in the following days, Jackson fielded several calls from other significant Yahoo investors, including managers of large mutual funds and hedge funds, who encouraged him to continue his campaign. Jackson’s own fund didn’t have the capital to mount an offensive, which would require buying a large stake in Yahoo and using it as leverage to effect changes within management. But he knew someone who might. Jeffrey Smith, who ran an activist fund called Starboard Value, had recently led such a campaign against AOL, leading the company to eliminate its money-losing local news network, Patch. While still on vacation, Jackson looked up Smith’s email on his Bloomberg terminal. Within hours, the two men were on the phone with a handful of associates from Starboard. Jackson’s dire calculation of Yahoo’s value would soon be reinforced in the markets. On Sept. 19, Alibaba went public on the New York Stock Exchange, closing at $93.89 per share. But as Alibaba’s stock soared, Yahoo’s dropped, an indication that the market seemed to concur with Jackson’s analysis: Yahoo’s core business was worth less than zero dollars. A week later, Smith published an open letter calling for Yahoo to divest itself of its Alibaba assets, return the money to its shareholders and then merge with AOL. Redundancies could be eliminated, thousands of people could be fired and two former Internet superpowers would be downsized into a single and steady (if uninspiring) entity that sold ads against its collective online properties — news, blogs and Web products like email, maps and weather. “We trust the board and management will do the right thing for shareholders, even if this may mean accepting AOL as the surviving entity,” Smith wrote. Dynamic and wildly profitable Internet companies like Facebook and Google may get most of the attention, but Silicon Valley is littered with firms that just get by doing roughly the same thing year after year — has-beens like Ask.com<http://Ask.com>, a search engine that no longer innovates but happily takes in $400 million in annual revenue, turning a profit in the process. Mayer, who is 39, was hired to keep Yahoo from suffering this sort of fate. She believed it could again become a top-tier tech firm that enjoyed enormous growth and competed for top talent. And two years in, Mayer, who has a tendency to compare herself with Steve Jobs, wasn’t about to abandon her turnaround plan. On the afternoon of Oct. 21, she entered a web TV studio on Yahoo’s garrisonlike campus to present the company’s latest quarterly results. But the presentation effectively became a response to Starboard’s campaign. Even though Yahoo’s revenue had decreased in five of the past six quarters, Mayer attested that she had “great confidence in the strength of our business.” Mayer’s resolve was consistent with other remarks she had made at the time, in both public and private. She highlighted various signs of promise. Yahoo’s mobile revenues, while still small, had doubled from the previous year. Display advertising revenue was down 6 percent, but the number of ads sold had actually increased by 24 percent. Yahoo was engaging more mobile users than ever before. Mayer didn’t bother talking about a potential AOL takeover. Her goal was nothing less than to return her company to the level of the Big Four. “We believe deeply in the future potential of Yahoo,” she said into the camera, “and the transformation we are pursuing to bring an iconic company back to greatness.” Generally speaking, there are only a few ways to make money on the Internet. There are e-commerce companies and marketplaces — think Amazon, eBay and Uber — that profit from transactions occurring on their platforms. Hardware companies, like Apple or Fitbit, profit from gadgets. For everyone else, though, it more or less comes down to advertising. Social-media companies, like Facebook or Twitter, may make cool products that connect their users, but they earn revenue by selling ads against the content those users create. Innovative media companies, like Vox or Hulu, make money in much the same way, except that they’re selling ads against content created by professionals. Google, which has basically devoured the search business, still makes a vast majority of its fortune by selling ads against our queries. Yahoo essentially invented the online-advertising business. In 1994, two graduate students at Stanford, Jerry Yang and David Filo, dreamed up a way to help early users navigate the web. They picked URLs that they each liked — beginning with around 100 links, including one for Nerf toys and one dedicated to armadillos — and listed them on a page called “Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web.” Within a year, their guide had to be divided into 19 categories (art, business, etc.) and was generating one million clicks a day. In 1995, the year Yahoo started selling ads, a former company executive estimated that the entire market was about $20 million. By 1997, Yahoo’s ad revenues alone were $70.4 million. The next year, they were $203 million. To keep up with the growth, Yahoo quickly expanded beyond its directory to create a multitude of ad-supported products. The company aimed to be all things to all web users, and for most of a decade, it was a wildly successful strategy. In 1997, Yahoo added chat rooms, classified ads and an email service. In 1998, it introduced sports, games, movies, real estate, a calendar, file sharing, auctions, shopping and an address book. Even during the crash of the Internet bubble, a profusion of more traditional advertisers began to migrate from print to digital. The search business, in particular, was growing enormously. In 2002, Yahoo’s first full year monetizing search results with attendant ads, its revenues reached $953 million. In 2003, they eclipsed $1.6 billion. In 2004, they grew again to $3.5 billion. At its peak, Yahoo’s market capitalization reached $128 billion. It was $20 billion larger than Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett’s holding company. But this growth obscured a looming problem. While Yahoo was busy enlarging its portfolio, a new generation of start-ups was focusing on perfecting one single product. Soon enough, Yahoo was losing out to eBay in auctions, Google in search and Craigslist in classifieds. Then Facebook came along, replacing Yahoo as the home page for millions of people. The advertising dollars soon followed, and Yahoo’s revenue flattened. Between 2007 and 2012, the company churned through four C.E.O.s. The last of them, Scott Thompson, resigned in disgrace after five months when a large activist shareholder, Dan Loeb, published an open letter accusing him of fabricating a computer-science degree. After Thompson’s resignation, in May 2012, Yahoo was worth less than $20 billion on the public markets. As an ad-supported business, Yahoo had only two ways to increase its revenue. It could display more ads by attracting more people to its products — a plan that would require inventing (or acquiring) new products, improving old products or some combination. Alternately, it could elevate ad prices by upgrading its content. In the opinion of Thompson’s interim successor, Ross Levinsohn, Yahoo would be best positioned as such a “premium” content company. In Levinsohn’s vision, Yahoo had fallen so far behind its competitors in building successful back-end technology, like real-time advertising auctions and search, that it should cede most of those businesses altogether. In the process, the company could also shed more than half of its 15,000 employees, and home in on its best asset: reach. Some 700 million people still visited Yahoo’s home page every month, making it almost seven times as large as the combined online audiences of The New York Times, The Daily Mail and The Washington Post. Levinsohn believed that offering this audience better content could raise Yahoo’s earnings by up to $2 billion in two years. But in Silicon Valley, the big money, and most of the prestige, is in making cool products. This is partly because product businesses, based on technology, are easier to scale than content ones, which require more human labor. It also reflects a cultural bias. The Valley’s greatest companies, from Hewlett-Packard onward, have been built around technological ingenuity. Tech executives know how to hire engineers and designers; they’re less adroit at recruiting editors or producers. When Loeb joined the Yahoo board, he recruited Michael J. Wolf, the former president of MTV, and the two consulted the noted venture capitalist Marc Andreessen about who should become the next C.E.O. of Yahoo. Andreessen made the case for a product executive. Loeb’s decision was facilitated by another factor too. At the time, Google was valued at $250 billion; Facebook was worth $100 billion. Loeb opted to refashion Yahoo in their image. And so, in the spring of 2012, Loeb and Wolf began coveting a product C.E.O. The two board members asked the executive recruiter Jim Citrin of Spencer Stuart to approach Marissa Mayer, the wunderkind engineer who oversaw the user interface of Google’s search engine. Citrin cautioned that Mayer, who was among the first 25 people to join Google back in 1999, appeared to be a lifer. She had already earned hundreds of millions of dollars following Google’s 2004 I.P.O. and presumably had her pick of job opportunities. Still, he said he’d reach out to her. Unknown to Citrin, however, Mayer was interested in pursuing her own turnaround of sorts. A couple of years earlier, she lost a turf battle to a powerful engineer within Google and was quietly reassigned to oversee Google Maps and other so-called local products. Mayer tried to spin the move positively, but that became harder after Larry Page, one of the company’s founders, regained the role of C.E.O. and removed Mayer from the group of executives reporting to him. According to one friend, Mayer had been observing the Yahoo vacancy for months. After Citrin called her cellphone, she told him she was interested. The challenge of redirecting Yahoo was immense, but the next C.E.O. would have one tremendous advantage. In 2005, Yahoo invested $1 billion for a 40 percent stake in a little-known company called Alibaba. It turned out to be a remarkably prescient bet. Alibaba is commonly referred to as the Google of China, but it’s something more akin to the country’s version of Google, eBay and Amazon all in one — a web portal that provides e-commerce and business to business services. Weeks before Mayer was hired in July 2012, Yahoo sold half its 40 percent stake back to Alibaba for $7.1 billion. As a part of that deal, Alibaba agreed to hold an initial public offering sometime before the end of 2014. Suddenly the easiest way for Wall Street to make a bet on Alibaba — a hot start-up in a hot market, guaranteed an I.P.O. — was through an investment in Yahoo. The arrangement ensured that Yahoo’s stock, for the next two years, would be tied to the performance of Alibaba rather than that of its own core business. This was a tremendous benefit to an incoming C.E.O., essentially offering a two-year air cover. Without having to manage the company’s stock price, inevitably one of a chief executive’s most distracting tasks, Mayer could focus on acquiring start-ups, jump-starting products and making strategic changes. Moreover, in two years she would be able to use the Alibaba cash to reinvest in her putative growth. When Citrin offered the job, she accepted. Turning around a technology company has been historically rare. Tech companies invent new ways of doing things, but as they expand, often metastatically, they tend to shift their focus toward protecting their booming business rather than investing in new disruptive ones. Inevitably some newer company, usually financed by a wealthy venture-capital firm, beats them to it. It’s a cycle that happens in all industries, but everything moves faster in technology — too fast, usually, to allow for turnarounds. Steve Jobs may have resurrected Apple, and IBM was able to reinvent itself from a P.C. company into a business-services firm. But the next best example is probably Jeffery Boyd’s deliverance of Priceline — not exactly a titan of the industry. And his plan was almost a total restart, including dialing down the “name your price” pitch line and switching the company’s strategy from air travel to hotel bookings. In order to revive Yahoo as a product company, Mayer would try to treat it as a giant start-up itself. Hours after entering Yahoo’s complex on the morning of July 17, 2012, she set up her computer to log into the company’s code base so she could personally make changes, much like the founder of a tiny tech firm might do. During her second week, she devised a weekly all-staff update, called “F.Y.I.,” that she would host at URL’s, a cafeteria on the Yahoo campus. (Employees pronounce it “Earl’s.”) She also tried to make the company a more desirable place to work. Yahoo employees, until then confined largely to BlackBerrys, were given iPhones or Samsungs as their company phones. All meals at URL’s would henceforth be free. For years, the partitions between the bathroom stalls didn’t go all the way to the wall. People hung toilet paper to try to fill the gaps. Soon after Mayer’s arrival, new partitions were installed. Mayer saw her plan as a return, in a sense, to Yahoo’s original mission. Yahoo grew in popularity and value during the late 1990s, when it was the most user-friendly way to peruse the World Wide Web. Now, Mayer believed, it could ride the shift from P.C.s to smartphones and make the mobile web-browsing experience more user-friendly too. Yahoo, in other words, would need to become a really great apps company. Mayer wanted to narrow its product portfolio down to approximately a dozen from more than 100. She and her C.M.O., Kathy Savitt, did some market research and found a list of common user activities on mobile devices. She called this list the “Daily Habits,” and they included news-reading, checking weather, reading email and photo-sharing. Mayer was determined to ensure that Yahoo had the best mobile app for each. This was going to be difficult. Previous Yahoo C.E.O.s had underinvested in mobile-app development, plowing money into advertising technology and web tools instead. A couple of days into the job, Mayer was having lunch at URL’s when an employee walked up to her and introduced himself as Tony. “I’m a mobile engineer,” Tony said. “I’m on the mobile team.” Mayer responded to Tony, “Great, how big is our mobile team?” After some back and forth, Tony replied that there were “maybe 60” engineers. Mayer was dumbfounded. Facebook, for instance, had a couple of thousand people working on mobile. When she queried the engineering management department, it responded that Yahoo had roughly 100. “Like an actual hundred,” Mayer responded, “or like 60 rounded up to 100 to make me feel better?” The department responded that it was more like 60. Companies like Facebook and Google are known for their fast-paced product updates. Yahoo, by contrast, was sluggish. Yahoo Mail, with its 30 billion emails a day, was arguably the company’s most important product. But despite the decline in desktop email use, Yahoo hadn’t built mail apps for smartphones. It had simply made the Yahoo Mail website usable on smaller mobile screens. Now an app was going to be designed for four separate platforms, including both Apple’s and Google’s mobile operating systems. During her first meeting with the executive in charge of Mail and Messenger, Vivek Sharma, Mayer said that she wanted it done by December. (Mayer declined to comment for this article.) Mayer subsequently immersed herself in the redesign. Months into her tenure, she was meeting with Sharma’s team regularly in a conference room that started to look more like a design studio: projectors hung from the ceiling, rendering screens displayed on the wall. All around, dozens of foam core boards were pinned with ideas. Mayer would regularly interrogate designers about the minutest details of display and user experience. By early December, one day before Yahoo Mail was set to release, she convened a meeting at Phish Food, a conference room in the executive building of Yahoo’s campus, to talk about the product’s color. For months, the team had settled on blue and gray. If users were going to read emails on their phones all day long, the thinking went, it was best to choose the most subtly contrasting hues. But now, Mayer explained, she wanted to change the colors to various shades of purple, which she believed better suited Yahoo’s brand. Some around the table were encouraged that their C.E.O. refused to release a product that she was less than fully satisfied with. If changing a few pixels led to an increase of 0.01 percent more users, that could translate to millions of dollars in ad revenue. Others, however, were visibly furious. According to one senior executive, Sharma’s body language changed the moment Mayer issued her request. He looked deflated. Altering the color of such an intricate product would require that members of his team spend all night adjusting colors in thousands of places. He slumped off and prepared to tell his staff the bad news. In reality, Yahoo needed to move fast. And Mayer, who had begun her tenure while six months pregnant, tried to lead by example; she often slept only four hours a night and thrived on the breakneck pace. In her first months on the job, she unveiled a new version of Flickr, Yahoo’s photo-sharing social network, and a new Yahoo home page. Then Mayer overhauled the same products again, even as the company released new apps like Yahoo Weather and Yahoo News Digest. She outbid Facebook by a couple hundred million dollars to buy Tumblr. In the three quarters before Mayer’s arrival, Yahoo’s home-page team tested five new looks. In Mayer’s first two months, she prototyped 37. Mayer also announced that she wanted to repair Yahoo’s search engine, her specialty at Google. “I don’t see a reason why our search share should fall below 15 percent, which is where it roughly is today,” she told employees at an F.Y.I. “I also don’t see a reason why it can’t climb back up to the 20 percent that we had.” According to one executive, she told a group of six vice presidents that she wanted a redesigned search product unveiled by the end of the year. “Tell me if you can do it,” she instructed the group. “Otherwise, I’ll find people who can.” Largely owing to Mayer’s age and Google pedigree, her hiring had initially brought her overwhelmingly positive press during her first months at Yahoo. An article by Dan Frommer, an influential beat reporter for the industry news site ReadWrite, summed up a popular view: “This is a great move for Yahoo, which has stewed in mediocrity for years.” And by the beginning of 2013, just six months into the job, Mayer’s turnaround seemed to be ahead of schedule. In March, Yahoo’s stock rose to $22 per share, and Mayer added a tool to the company’s internal network that allowed employees to view their stock compensation. At a board meeting in April, Mayer admitted that she had not yet identified a “breakthrough product,” but she reminded those in attendance that Steve Jobs didn’t come up with the iPod until five years into his second tenure at Apple. At an F.Y.I. around that time, she read a speech that Jobs gave to Apple employees at the beginning of his turnaround. Afterward, channeling Jobs, Mayer told hundreds of employees sitting at URL’s, “Our purpose is to inspire and delight our users, to build beautiful services, things that people love to use and enjoy using every day, and that’s our opportunity.” She continued: “We are the world’s largest start-up. We have $5 billion in revenue, but it can and will go in the blink of an eye if we don’t do our jobs.” At Google, Mayer made her name as the executive who helped determine how products would look and work. She was less sure, however, about how to monetize them. At Yahoo, her most important hire was supposed to be someone who could figure all that out for her while also running Yahoo’s 1,000-plus-person sales force. Mayer did not have to search far. Within weeks of becoming C.E.O., she received an email from Henrique de Castro, the fashionable Portuguese president of Google’s media, mobile and platforms businesses. De Castro asked if she was available for a dinner and suggested a place. Mayer countered with a quieter venue and even arranged to get a table in the back. Over dinner, de Castro impressed Mayer with his knowledge of Yahoo’s business and his specific proposals for building it. For several mornings in a row, the two exchanged emails to negotiate de Castro’s salary. Every night, Mayer would make an offer, only to wake up to a reply with a list of more conditions. Eventually de Castro negotiated himself a contract worth around $60 million, depending on the value of Yahoo stock. The Yahoo board was aghast, but Mayer argued that de Castro had to be compensated for the unvested Google stock he was abandoning. Anyway, she said, his talent ensured that Yahoo would reap many multiples of his salary in return. Henrique de Castro would pay for himself. Mayer’s turnaround plan may have been predicated on building irresistible products to sell ads against. But hundreds of employees at Yahoo already worked on a side of the business that generated advertising revenues the more traditional way — by creating or licensing content, from beauty tips and Kardashian stories to daily videos on the financial markets and scripted comedies. For most of her first year at Yahoo, Mayer hardly paid any attention to this group, which generated $1.5 billion in annual revenue. This began to change in the spring of 2013, however, when Mayer attended the NewFronts, the annual event in New York where digital-content businesses display their coming programming for ad-agency buyers. Mayer kicked off the show by reading a corporate script from a prompter in an office-casual cardigan. Her talk felt woefully out-of-place at a splashy event whose other attendees included Ed Helms, the actor, and the Lumineers, the popular rock group. Still, the glamour of the event seemed to ignite Mayer’s interest in content, and within a month she asked that all programming decisions be run by her. While some at the company favored upgrading Yahoo’s content, there was a fear that Mayer, who preferred to read Town and Country and wear Oscar de la Renta couture, might undermine the company’s middle-American brand. To some, she also seemed to lack the instincts of a media executive. During a breakfast with Anna Wintour, the editor in chief of Vogue, Mayer asked if there might be any partnership opportunities between the magazine and Shine, Yahoo’s site for women. According to Mayer’s own telling of the story to top Yahoo executives, Wintour looked appalled. Shine, with its 500 million monthly page views, appealed to a mass audience, not a narrow and affluent one. Nevertheless, Mayer quickly became infatuated with the idea that Yahoo could attract more sophisticated consumers. She began pushing for deputies to commission high-quality shows, the way Netflix was doing with “House of Cards” and “Orange Is the New Black.” One Yahoo executive was forced to explain that only a company that sold subscriptions to consumers could expect to make money off such expensive productions. Reared in Google’s data-obsessed culture, Mayer tended to require countless tests about user preferences before making an important product decision. But when it came to media strategy, she seemed perfectly comfortable going with her gut. As a teenager in Wisconsin, she grew up sneaking into the living room to watch “Saturday Night Live” and occasionally recited sketches during meetings; in April 2013, Yahoo paid an estimated $10 million per year for the “S.N.L.” archives. Even though the actress Gwyneth Paltrow had created a best-selling cookbook and popular lifestyle blog, Mayer, who habitually asked deputies where they attended college, balked at hiring her as a contributing editor for Yahoo Food. According to one executive, Mayer disapproved of the fact that Paltrow did not graduate college. Over the summer, Mayer greenlighted a plan to hire Katie Couric, the former anchor of “CBS Evening News” and former co-host of the “Today” show. As was the case with de Castro, Couric put the idea in Mayer’s head herself after the two shared a stage at an advertising event in the Turks and Caicos. Couric, who was then hosting a failing daytime talk show on ABC, told Mayer she wanted to do something big for Yahoo. Couric had previously worked with the company to produce a video series, “Katie’s Take,” in which she interviewed experts on topics like health and parenting. Despite Couric’s star power, users didn’t click on her videos, no matter how prominently editors positioned them on the page. Mayer ignored those metrics, and in mid-2013, she named Couric Yahoo’s “global anchor” in a deal worth more than $5 million a year. Yahoo also lured a slate of expensive journalists to helm a series of new “digital magazines.” Mayer hired David Pogue, The New York Times’s gadget columnist, to be the editor of Yahoo Tech. She personally recruited Joe Zee, the creative director of Elle, telling him to consider Yahoo his “playground.” Mayer’s team asked the former Page Six editor Paula Froelich to run Yahoo Travel; the makeup star Bobbi Brown would oversee Yahoo Beauty. And Yahoo Shine, with its $45 million in yearly revenue, was shot down. For the NewFronts event in June 2014, Mayer wore a designer dress and introduced a slate of buzzy new shows that she personally approved. Behind the scenes, though, her hands-on strategy was backfiring. “I just think it is a strategic mistake to take on big media where they are strongest,” Jonah Peretti, the C.E.O. of Buzzfeed, wrote me in an email earlier this year, referring to her focus on stars, scripted shows and glossy content. “Especially when there is a huge open space at the intersection of media and tech where it is hard for other big companies to compete.” Couric, meanwhile, had done several interviews with high-profile figures, including former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, but Yahoo’s users weren’t clicking on the videos. In May, Yahoo Tech had just nine million visitors, placing it in seventh place among competitors, far behind rivals like CNET and Gizmodo. Yahoo Tech would sometimes go weeks without running a single ad. Yahoo Food was 12th in its market. Yahoo’s display advertising revenues dipped 7 percent during the second quarter of 2014. One of the Yahoo board’s hesitations upon hiring Mayer was her relative lack of experience as a manager. While running search at Google, she oversaw 250 people. Mayer liked to spin her demotion by saying that it left her in charge of more than 1,000 staff members, but a majority of them were contractors. Either way, in her haste to turn around Yahoo, this relative inexperience began to surface. Some on the board had hoped that Ross Levinsohn would stay on as C.O.O., but any hope was jettisoned when Mayer asked him to fly from L.A. for a meeting and then stood him up. Mayer’s refusal to delegate became a sticking point, too. She insisted on personally approving every hire. One executive complained to a friend that Mayer spent as much time deliberating Yahoo’s parking policies as she did strategizing over the sale of its Alibaba stock. Mayer also had a habit of operating on her own time. Every Monday at 3 p.m. Pacific, she asked her direct reports to gather for a three-hour meeting. Mayer demanded all of her staff across the world join the call, so executives from New York, where it was 6 p.m., and Europe, where it was 11 p.m. or later, would dial in, too. Invariably, Mayer herself would be at least 45 minutes late; some calls were so delayed that Yahoo executives in Europe couldn’t hang up till after 3 a.m. In theory, Mayer kept up with her direct reports through weekly individual meetings. In practice, she often went weeks without seeing them. This delinquency eventually became a problem outside Yahoo. At a major advertising event in the South of France, Mayer sat for an interview with Martin Sorrell, the C.E.O. of WPP, one of the world’s largest agencies. In front of a filled auditorium, Sorrell asked Mayer why she did not return his emails. Sheryl Sandberg, he said, always got back to him. Later, Mayer was scheduled for dinner with executives from the ad agency IPG. The 8:30 p.m. meal was inconvenient for the firm’s C.E.O., Michael Roth, but he shuffled his calendar so he could accommodate it. Mayer didn’t show up until 10. At F.Y.I.s, Mayer liked to tell employees that she believed in taking risks and that she was unafraid to admit failure. This philosophy worked well for web products but not for strategic hires. Despite the board’s urging, Mayer opted against vetting Henrique de Castro. As a result, she was unaware that de Castro had a poor reputation among his colleagues in Google’s advertising business. Many had derisively called him the Most Interesting Man in the World, in reference to the satirically fatuous spokesman for Dos Equis beer. De Castro had a tendency to make grand, awkwardly worded pronouncements. He was the inspiration for the Twitter handle @HdCYouKnowMe, which posted tweets that straddled the line between reality and parody: “To incentivize the sales force, you need to hit them with the carrot” and “Product is like snakes . . . slippery — we need someone with a big hammer.” De Castro’s new Yahoo colleagues got a full dose of his strange locution at the company’s annual sales meeting, in early 2013, when he berated his sales force with a rangy, pedantic speech. (De Castro did not respond to requests for comment.) De Castro’s plan for growing Yahoo revenues focused on user-generated content, like the videos available on YouTube or Instagram. The only problem was that Yahoo did not have access to enough user-generated content to support this plan. (Its attempt to acquire Daily Motion, a YouTube clone, had fallen apart.) As Yahoo’s ad revenues continued to decline, de Castro began to alienate his staff and fellow executives. After one of his direct reports gave a presentation about Yahoo’s business in front of some 40 senior executives, de Castro humiliated the person, saying: “I think your strategy’s more of a fantasy. You make it up. You just make it up.” More important, advertising revenue declined in every quarter since he was hired. Within a year, Mayer had personally taken control of Yahoo’s ad team. De Castro would leave the company in January 2014. For about 15 months of work, he would be paid $109 million. Mayer’s largest management problem, however, related to the start-up culture she had tried to instill. Early on, she banned working from home. This policy affected only 164 employees, but it was initiated months after she constructed an elaborate nursery in her office suite so that her son, Macallister, and his nanny could accompany her to work each day. Mayer also favored a system of quarterly performance reviews, or Q.P.R.s, that required every Yahoo employee, on every team, be ranked from 1 to 5. The system was meant to encourage hard work and weed out underperformers, but it soon produced the exact opposite. Because only so many 4s and 5s could be allotted, talented people no longer wanted to work together; strategic goals were sacrificed, as employees did not want to change projects and leave themselves open to a lower score. One of the uglier parts of the process was a series of quarterly “calibration meetings,” in which managers would gather with their bosses and review all the employees under their supervision. In practice, the managers would use these meetings to conjure reasons that certain staff members should get negative reviews. Sometimes the reason would be political or superficial. Mayer herself attended calibration meetings where these kinds of arbitrary judgments occurred. The senior executives who reported to Mayer would join her in a meeting at Phish Food and hold up spreadsheets of names and ratings. During the revamping of Yahoo Mail, for instance, Kathy Savitt, the C.M.O., noted that Vivek Sharma was bothering her. “He just annoys me,” she said during the meeting. “I don’t want to be around him.” Sharma’s rating was reduced. Shortly after Yahoo Mail went live, he departed for Disney. (Savitt disputes this account.) As concerns with Q.P.R.s escalated, employees asked if an entire F.Y.I. could be devoted to anonymous questions on the topic. One November afternoon, Mayer took the stage at URL’s as hundreds of Yahoo employees packed the cafeteria. Mayer explained that she had sifted through the various questions on the internal network, but she wanted to begin instead with something else. Mayer composed herself and began reading from a book, “Bobbie Had a Nickel,” about a little boy who gets a nickel and considers all the ways he can spend it. “Bobbie had a nickel all his very own,” Mayer read. “Should he buy some candy or an ice cream cone?” Mayer paused to show everyone the illustrations of a little boy in red hair and blue shorts choosing between ice cream and candy. “Should he buy a bubble pipe?” she continued. “Or a boat of wood?” At the end of the book, Bobby decides to spend his nickel on a carousel ride. Mayer would later explain that the book symbolized how much she valued her roving experiences thus far at Yahoo. But few in the room seemed to understand the connection. By the time she closed the book, URL’s had gone completely silent. Mayer’s plan to restore Yahoo to the ranks of the tech giants had been premised on producing apps that hundreds of millions of people wanted to use. But as the Alibaba I.P.O. approached this fall, Yahoo’s new and updated apps weren’t getting enough traction. The digital-magazine strategy had not taken off, either; few of the strategic acquisitions seemed poised to break out; and Yahoo’s search business, which Mayer hoped to grow to a 20 percent market share, had dropped to around 10 percent. Mayer’s plan to sell a new kind of advertising in apps had been undermined by her trouble building relationships with clients, like Sorrell and Roth. Despite her efforts, Yahoo was still not growing. On July 15, the company reported dismal second-quarter revenues. Weeks later, Alibaba went public, and Jeff Smith pounced. Since Starboard began its campaign to force an AOL merger, Mayer has been meeting with shareholders to reassure them about her strategy. Many public-company C.E.O.s become belligerent when activist investors come charging, but Mayer appears to be open to a compromise. Most Yahoo observers expect that, in the coming weeks, she will announce a plan to transfer almost all of the company’s Alibaba gains to shareholders while simultaneously resisting any merger with AOL. Mayer often compares her situation with the one Jobs inherited, and many expect her to insist that she needs at least the five years he received before his turnaround began to succeed with the release of the iPod. But Mayer may not be able to buy herself the time. Major Yahoo shareholders have recently begun collaborating on a series of spreadsheets that calculate that AOL and Yahoo are worth between 70 and 80 percent more when combined than they are apart. Some investors are further attracted to the merger because it will bring AOL’s chief executive, Tim Armstrong, into Yahoo. Like Mayer, Armstrong made his career as an early Google employee — but he was in charge of its sales force. After a rough start, Armstrong has managed to get AOL’s stock going again, not by inventing some new consumer product but by optimizing its ad and media assets. Armstrong, who has seen a version of this analysis, appears willing to consider a deal. Doing so, of course, would provide enormous personal benefit; Armstrong, who owns 5 percent of AOL, could stand to gain tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars. For Mayer, the calculus is less enticing. It’s unlikely that her personal turnaround plan included shrinking a $30 billion company into a $5 billion one, all to combine it with a $3 billion company and realize $1 billion in cost-savings. But it’s also unclear what, if any, other options she has. Turning Yahoo into a growing products company and appeasing its activist shareholders are now almost mutually exclusive tasks. If Yahoo were to sell off its stake in Alibaba, it would become an entirely different sort of entity. Its market capitalization could drop to $5 billion from $50 billion. Efficiencies that once seemed small would become, in the language of investors, “material.” Starboard might pressure Mayer to sell Yahoo’s real estate or to lay off 10,000 employees. Acquisitions would get harder, as smaller bets would become much bigger relative to Yahoo’s market capitalization. Aswath Damodaran, a professor at N.Y.U.'s Stern School of Business, has long argued about the danger of companies that try to return to the growth stage of their life cycle. These technology companies, he said, are run by people afflicted with something he calls the Steve Jobs syndrome. “We have created an incentive structure where C.E.O.s want to be stars,” Damodaran explained. “To be a star, you’ve got to be the next Steve Jobs — somebody who has actually grown a company to be a massive, large-market cap company.” But, he went on, “it’s extremely dangerous at companies when you focus on the exception rather than the rule.” He pointed out that “for every Apple, there are a hundred companies that tried to do what Apple did and fell flat on their faces.” In many ways, Yahoo’s decline from a $128 billion company to one worth virtually nothing is entirely natural. Yahoo grew into a colossus by solving a problem that no longer exists. And while Yahoo’s products have undeniably improved, and its culture has become more innovative, it’s unlikely that Mayer can reverse an inevitability unless she creates the next iPod. All breakthrough companies, after all, will eventually plateau and then decline. U.S. Steel was the first billion-dollar company in 1901, but it was worth about the same in 1991. Kodak, which once employed nearly 80,000 people, now has a market value below $1 billion. Packard and Hudson ruled the roads for more than 40 years before disappearing. These companies matured and receded over the course of generations, in some cases even a century. Yahoo went through the process in 20 years. In the technology industry, things move fast. “Sometimes,” Damodaran told me, “companies have to act their age.” For Yahoo, embracing its maturity means settling for a business that earns close to $1 billion in profit every year. It has outlasted other formerly iconic Internet portals, from AltaVista to Excite, and even dwarfs more recent web sensations like Myspace and Ask.com<http://Ask.com>. For a company that started out as “Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web,” that’s not a bad way to grow old.

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FYI: Security updates: iOS 8.1.2 for 4s->, iPad2->, touch(5th)
by Wayne Billing 11 Dec '14

11 Dec '14

...from: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT6590 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT6590 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT1222 Security updates Name and information link Available for Release date iOS 8.1.2<http://support.apple.com/kb/HT6598> iPhone 4s and later, iPod touch (5th generation) and later, iPad 2 and later 9 Dec 2014 On Dec 10, 2014, at 14:00 , security-announce-request(a)lists.apple.com<mailto:security-announce-request@lists.apple.com> wrote: -------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Tue, 09 Dec 2014 16:28:58 -0800 From: Apple Product Security <product-security-noreply(a)lists.apple.com<mailto:product-security-noreply@lists.apple.com>> To: security-announce(a)lists.apple.com<mailto:security-announce@lists.apple.com> Subject: APPLE-SA-2014-12-9-1 iOS 8.1.2 Message-ID: <FF18CF09-18C3-4C87-96C8-70E8F76A3C05(a)lists.apple.com<mailto:FF18CF09-18C3-4C87-96C8-70E8F76A3C05@lists.apple.com>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 APPLE-SA-2014-12-9-1 iOS 8.1.2 iOS 8.1.2 is now available and includes the security content of iOS 8.1.1: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT6590 Installation note: This update is available through iTunes and Software Update on your iOS device, and will not appear in your computer's Software Update application, or in the Apple Downloads site. Make sure you have an Internet connection and have installed the latest version of iTunes from www.apple.com/itunes/<http://www.apple.com/itunes/> iTunes and Software Update on the device will automatically check Apple's update server on its weekly schedule. When an update is detected, it is downloaded and the option to be installed is presented to the user when the iOS device is docked. We recommend applying the update immediately if possible. Selecting Don't Install will present the option the next time you connect your iOS device. The automatic update process may take up to a week depending on the day that iTunes or the device checks for updates. You may manually obtain the update via the Check for Updates button within iTunes, or the Software Update on your device. To check that the iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad has been updated: * Navigate to Settings * Select General * Select About. The version after applying this update will be "8.1.2". Information will also be posted to the Apple Security Updates web site: https://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222 This message is signed with Apple's Product Security PGP key, and details are available at: https://www.apple.com/support/security/pgp/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG/MacGPG2 v2.0.22 (Darwin) Comment: GPGTools - http://gpgtools.org<http://gpgtools.org/> iQIcBAEBAgAGBQJUh5NeAAoJEBcWfLTuOo7tU1wP/2nkHWHE6tMk3MliuGTWPgOQ bBTUTn71tc46iniZYosRTSKVY8b23jED57OhubCy4jS9Nw3gXOpguGMhNp9+9yWh 3F5fDnkmEjUwX8DTEya/XH+E+89CGUB7ysqDgy2pdkAsHPS8NHDeapRgXWFEK/F6 l5xvWGYTpqKE9JlEZisBKOox9Bm5C2i0/0oNtPIIB9mqPbFgrX4bZe5dP53RBABE 8JVPSI0uRRqNJHc0Q4wg2Re5e4MmT6n9apcHDr9A7d7XL4d9nf1erEdSiItk5ov5 reI4yRxJ6j/yE3FZQL7dikcKjEOXcKlujWkTfZUT3W0sBVcz4bua6pbQbfjgQJTv z0d7/gg9ftOOqdjjJ7chKzr6NRsc1VDUpY56nQwNSG88sssAsSKi3iOngAxpDCEi nzbk2MDaQ0XrCjF1ViZe0mCysqhcQ26MgYb2eIb2HWzHu4fajNZjaIJnz5OUtpD3 gafTgwmsVYAEuzdpWsyAHuP8GzbN76ckYowZUzc265wY3WMKJ2qEtJxDqJDX3c7Y gERP8NpDomVImrAJzLaBc+EDudWuZ7pVWNtoALgPoudyJJQkUAaFnapA1tr2BBFF Q83czo7WK91L0SWPlrCLPWoSMqGrENsR9NC39YaPPMJr/LTV3IuH+51erbFT/7tR 6zaepHK412hfvYrFbSXD =aVu1 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Security-announce mailing list Security-announce(a)lists.apple.com<mailto:Security-announce@lists.apple.com> https://lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/security-announce End of Security-announce Digest, Vol 11, Issue 30 *************************************************

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INTEREST: SONY: security analysts talk about recent security breaches
by Wayne Billing 10 Dec '14

10 Dec '14

...from: http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/12/unprecedented-cyberattack-no-excuse… “Unprecedented” cyberattack no excuse for Sony breach, pros say If the security industry can’t save you, it will apologize for you. by Robert Lemos<http://arstechnica.com/author/roblemos/> - Dec 9 2014, 4:30pm CST * Share<https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Farstechnica.com%2Fsecuri…> * Tweet<https://twitter.com/share?text=%E2%80%9CUnprecedented%E2%80%9D+cyberattack+…> 1<http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/12/unprecedented-cyberattack-no-excuse…> The security company investigating the attack against Sony Pictures Entertainment has reportedly penned a letter that seemingly holds the entertainment firm blameless for the breach of its systems—a move that has opened up the investigating firm to criticism by security professionals. The letter—to SPE’s CEO Michael Lynton from Kevin Mandia, the head of FireEye’s Mandiant, the incident response service the company hired to investigate the attack and restore its network—calls the attack “unprecedented in nature.” Mandia states that the attack would not have been detected by antivirus programs, and the attackers used non-standard strategies to cause damage to the company. “In fact, the scope of this attack differs from any we have responded to in the past, as its purpose was to both destroy property and release confidential information to the public,” Mandia states in the letter, which was leaked to media outlets<http://recode.net/2014/12/07/sony-describes-hack-attack-as-unprecedented/>. “The bottom line is that this was an unparalleled and well planned crime, carried out by an organized group, for which neither SPE nor other companies could have been fully prepared.” Yet, security professionals aren’t buying it. Within 24 hours, several security experts had criticized the statements and refuted Mandia’s characterization of the attacks. “We have tremendous respect for Kevin Mandia and the team he’s assembled at FireEye’s Mandiant, but we completely disagree with the statement he made over the weekend,” Ken Levine, president and CEO of security service provider Digital Guardian, said in an e-mail sent to Ars. “He is clearly offering Sony the opportunity to hide behind the veil of advanced persistent threats.” Another outspoken security researcher, known online as “the grugq,” likened the letter to the Catholic Church selling forgiveness to sinners in the Middle Ages. “TIL [today I learned] Mandiant sells indulgences,” he tweeted on Monday<https://twitter.com/thegrugq/status/541989738580688896>. In some ways, Mandia’s argument reflects the current wisdom in the security industry that, “There are two types of companies: Those that have been breached, and those that don’t know yet that they’ve been breached.” Yet, even for security professionals that accept that mantra, it does not mean that a successful compromise needs to lead to a significant breach, Levine told Ars. “There is a lot of post-breach thinking,” he said. “What we are saying is, not that all breaches are preventable, but what the bad guys get from the breach is absolutely preventable.” In the case of Sony Pictures, the attackers got quite a bit. The entertainment company has reportedly lost control of more than 100 terabytes of data [including unreleased movies, correspondence, contract, and other proprietary supplier, partner, and other industry-related information] without the company, or its security measures, detecting the breach. SPE’s security teams’ inability to catch the attackers in the act of stealing so much data is a direct result of its lack of focus on security, according to a paper by security-services firm Thinkst<http://blog.thinkst.com/2014/12/yabotsb-yet-another-blog-on-sony-breach.html>, outlining the lessons learned from the attack. Thinkst points to a previous statement in 2007<http://www.cio.com/article/2439324/risk-management/your-guide-to-good-enoug…> by Sony’s executive director of information security that it had to focus on making cost-effective security decisions. While the executive, Jason Spaltro, maintained that the company had gone beyond requirements in many places, Thinkst characterized that mindset as focused on “minimum compliance.” “That minimum compliance is the goal speaks volumes  about Sony Pictures’ attitude towards the security of their  data,” the company stated in its analysis. “Sony subsidiaries have fallen victim to tens of successful attacks in recent years, leading us to question the importance of security in the broader conglomerate.” The company has invested mostly in a top-heavy security team, according to other analyses, which—along with the success of so many attacks—suggests that it is not adequately focused on security, according to Thinkst. “What is abundantly clear from the attack is that Sony’s detection and response capabilities were about as poor as possible,” the company stated. “The public timeline of events implies that the intrusion was only discovered when the attackers moved from theft to destruction, announcing their presence bombastically with the altered desktop.” Sony and FireEye declined to comment on the letter or any criticism of the letter. When the details finally become clear, Levine believes that the overall picture will be of a familiar attack. “The truth is, there is nothing new about what these attackers are doing,” he said. “They are using the same tactics they’ve used before to get inside these organizations—someone clicks on an attachment with malware and the malware sits and waits—and FireEye and/or other security products could have, should have caught this, especially given the volume of data that was stolen.”

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INTEREST: Firefox coming to iOS because "that’s where our users are"
by Wayne Billing 06 Dec '14

06 Dec '14

...from: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/12/firefox-coming-to-ios-because-thats-… https://twitter.com/lsblakk/status/539843892300898304 https://blog.mozilla.org/press/2014/12/designing-a-firefox-experience-for-i… Lukas Blakk ‏@lsblakk We need to be where our users are so we're going to get Firefox on iOS #mozlandia Firefox coming to iOS because that’s where the users are New iOS behavior makes this a little more palatable than before. by Peter Bright<http://arstechnica.com/author/peter-bright/> - Dec 3 2014, 1:17pm CST * Share<https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Farstechnica.com%2Fgadget…> * Tweet<https://twitter.com/share?text=Firefox+coming+to+iOS+because+that%E2%80%99s…> 68<http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/12/firefox-coming-to-ios-because-thats-…> Saying that Firefox "need[s] to be where [its] users are," it appears that Mozilla is going to produce a version of Firefox for iOS. Mozilla is having a large, week-long working and meeting event in Portland, and TechCrunch<http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/02/firefox-could-soon-come-to-ios/> spotted a couple of tweets coming from Mozilla employees talking about bringing Firefox to iOS. Mozilla Release Manager Lukas Blakk tweeted<https://twitter.com/lsblakk/status/539843892300898304> that Mozilla was going to get Firefox on iOS because that's where its users are. Manager of Data Science Matthew Ruttley tweeted<https://twitter.com/matt_ruttley/status/539844872522301440>, "Firefox for iOS!! Let's do this!!!" (exclamation points all his), and he accompanied the tweet with a photo of a presentation that included a picture of an iPhone. In a brief statement confirming the tweets, Mozilla has announced that it is experimenting<https://blog.mozilla.org/press/2014/12/designing-a-firefox-experience-for-i…> with "something that allows iOS users to be able to choose a Firefox experience." As recently as March 2013<http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/03/firefox-is-out-of-the-ios-game-until-a…>, Mozilla ruled out bringing Firefox to iOS due to the technical restrictions that Apple imposes on its platform. Then, as now, Apple effectively prohibits the creation of high-performance browser engines on its smartphone operating system through a number of technical restrictions. The only option browser developers have had is to embed Apple's own WebKit and provide a custom user interface around that. Prior to the release of iOS 8, even this option was unappealing, as the embedded WebKit did not have access to the high-performance JavaScript engine that the built-in Safari includes. While the former restriction hasn't been lifted, iOS 8 allows the embedded WebKit to use the full-power JavaScript engine, and as such, it means that third-party browser front-ends no longer operate at a performance disadvantage relative to Safari. Using Apple's WebKit—as Google has done with its Chrome for iOS—still allows Mozilla to plumb in its own interface, password and bookmark syncing, and other features. This will give Firefox users the same kind of cross-platform experience that users of some other browsers enjoy. Mozilla Press Center Mozilla News, Announcements, and More Mozilla Designing a Firefox Experience for iOS DEC 2 2014 At Mozilla, we put our users first and want to provide an independent choice for them on any platform. We are in the early stages of experimenting with something that allows iOS users to be able to choose a Firefox experience. We work in the open at Mozilla and are just starting to experiment with a couple of different concepts, so we’ll update you when we have more to share. ......seems things have changed at Mozillia since 20 September 2013, at 08:07 https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/Platforms iPhone/iPad/iPod We have no plans to release the full Firefox browser for iOS. The iOS SDK agreement requires apps to use Apple's own JavaScript engine (or none at all, like Opera Mini which downloads pre-rendered pages from Opera's servers and cannot run JavaScript code in the client). Because of this, we have no supported way to distribute Firefox's rendering and JavaScript engine to iPhone users.

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