Fingerprint sensor in iPhone 5s is no silver bullet, researchers say

The fingerprint sensor in Apple's new iPhone 5s has the potential to enhance the security of the device, but the devil will be in the details. Its effectiveness will depend on the strength of the implementation and whether it's used in conjunction with other security credentials, researchers said. Apple unveiled two new iPhone models Tuesday, the iPhone 5c and iPhone 5s, the latter of which has a fingerprint sensor dubbed Touch ID built into the home button. The sensor will allow users to use their fingerprints instead of a password to unlock the device and make purchases on iTunes. It's not clear if the feature will also be used in other scenarios that have yet to be revealed or if third-party applications will also be able to use it to authenticate users. In presenting the technology Tuesday, Apple said the fingerprint data is encrypted and locked in the device's new A7 chip, that it's never directly accessible to software and that it's not stored on Apple's servers or backed up to iCloud. Fingerprint scanners have historically been susceptible to errors and replay attacks that involve stealing fingerprints and using them to trick the scanners by employing a variety of techniques. According to Apple, Touch ID scans sub-epidermal skin layers, has a 500-ppi resolution and can recognize fingerprints at any rotation. But how well it will resist attempts by security researchers to bypass it remains to be seen. "Common attacks against fingerprint readers include using photos of fingers or creating fingerprint molds based on captured prints," said Dirk Sigurdson, director of engineering for the Mobilisafe mobile risk management technology at security firm Rapid7, via email. "Hopefully the iPhone sensor will have strong protections against using copied fingers." Fingerprint technology is not a high-security feature, said Marc Rogers, principal security researcher at mobile security firm Lookout. That's why most military installations, for example, use hand geometry or retina scanners instead, he said. "It is possible to copy a fingerprint and I think that as the technology sees wider usage, the techniques of copying fingerprints will only improve," the researcher said. However, a fingerprint is still better and more convenient than a four-digit PIN, he said. The best single factor of authentication is a strong password stored only in the user's brain, but it's inherently difficult for people to create and remember strong passwords, Sigurdson said. This often results in bad passwords being used, so a good fingerprint reader and matching algorithm will likely improve the security of iOS devices, he said. Many people probably don't even set a PIN because it's inconvenient to enter it every time, so a fingerprint gives them the opportunity to secure their device in a way that's better than nothing, Rogers said. Research suggests as many as half of users never set up a four-digit PIN or a more complex password to lock their devices, Apple said during its presentation. Rogers believes fingerprints could add great security if they're used in conjunction with other security credentials as part of two-factor authentication. For example, Apple could allow users to set a strong, complex password that's used to encrypt the file system and which would need to be entered only when the device is switched on. The user's fingerprint could then be used as a medium-strength access credential to unlock the device when it's on and needs to be used. This would provide both security and convenience for users, Rogers said. In addition, if Apple would allow other applications on the device to use the fingerprint sensor, it could increase the security of those applications. For example, a banking application could require users to authorize transactions by scanning their fingerprints, limiting what attackers can do if they steal those users' log-in passwords, he said. Overall, the sensor has the potential to increase the security of the device, but it depends on implementation and whether consumers will actually use it, Christopher Pogue, director of security vendor Trustwave's SpiderLabs security research team, said via email. "It is key that consumers can easily understand how to use the sensor." Like Rogers, Pogue believes that fingerprints would be most valuable if used as part of a two-factor authentication system. "Like anything else that runs on a mobile device, the scanner itself is an application that interfaces with the underlying operating system and like other applications, regardless of function, there are vulnerabilities that exist due to a multitude of factors," Pogue said. "This application will likely be no different, and exploits will certainly be forthcoming if not already here." Unlike a password, a fingerprint is not something a person can forget or share with someone else, so in that regard it provides stronger access control than a password, Pogue said. However, there has to be a failsafe mechanism to prevent the device owner from being locked out in case his fingerprint is modified as a result of an injury, for example, he said. 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Amazon redesigns Kindle app for iOS 7, adds Collections

Many new iOS app updates are being released today to work with the new iOS 7 on iPhone 4 and later, but one free update expected to draw general interest is a major update to the Amazon Kindle for iOS reader. The 4.0 Kindle update is optimized for iOS 7, and shares many of the flat design features central to Apple's latest mobile OS. Amazon's description says the design is based on "themes of deference, clarity and depth." A new Collections feature in 4.0 lets users organize books, documents and magazines more easily. Content can be added to multiple categories. For example, an Amazon spokeswoman said that "A Game of Thrones" could be categorized in both "My Favorites" and "Fantasy Epics."algebra help online vifit best essay writing service reviews borgstar custom coursework ferke assignment writing service thyouder customer writing watmi essay help online fiwar research help sforhealth

Apples 64-bit A7 chip is a marketing gimmick

Apple's 64-bit A7 processor in the iPhone 5s is more a marketing stunt than a technical enhancement and though it will not deliver any immediate benefits to smartphone users, there are other reasons to move to 64-bit, a Qualcomm executive said on Tuesday. "I know there's a lot of noise because Apple did [64-bit] on their A7," said Anand Chandrasekher, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at Qualcomm, in an interview. "I think they are doing a marketing gimmick. There's zero benefit a consumer gets from that." A benefit of 64-bit is more memory addressability, but that is not relevant in today's smartphones or tablets, Chandrasekher said. The iPhone 5s has only 1GB of DRAM. "Predominantly... you need it for memory addressability beyond 4GB. That's it. You don't really need it for performance, and the kinds of applications that 64-bit get used in mostly are large, server-class applications," said Chandrasekher, who previously ran Intel's mobile platforms group. The 5s is the first smartphone with a 64-bit chip, and almost a year ahead of its Android smartphone rivals. So far, 64-bit chips have largely been relegated to PCs and servers, but the technology's merits in smaller mobile devices has been questioned. Apple claims the iPhone 5s is two times faster than its predecessor, and that the A7 brings desktop-style computing to the smartphone. But benchmark tets have raised questions about how much of the performance gains can be credited purely to 64-bit capabilities. Qualcomm is the one of the world's top suppliers of chips for smartphones and tablets, and its Snapdragon chips are used in Android and Windows Phone smartphones. The chip maker ultimately will deliver a 64-bit mobile chip, but sees the move as more beneficial from engineering, chip design and OSes standpoints. "From an engineering efficiency standpoint it just makes sense to go do that. Particularly the OS guys will want it at some point in time," said Chandrasekher, who declined to say when the its 64-bit chip would be introduced. Consumers and tablet and smartphone makers won't drive the demand for 64-bit chips, Chandrasekher said. Chip makers are upgrading to 64-bit in order to keep up with the latest chip designs and to reduce manufacturing costs. Qualcomm designs chips based on architecture from ARM Holdings, which in 2011 introduced its first 64-bit architecture and subsequently announced 64-bit processor designs. Top ARM-based chip makers like Samsung and Nvidia have already announced that they would make 64-bit ARM-based processors. But outside the iPhone 5s, the first 64-bit ARM-based chips are expected to appear in servers like Hewlett-Packard's Moonshot. Companies like AppliedMicro, Advanced Micro Devices and Calxeda are expected to ship 64-bit ARM-based server chips starting next year.temple run pc softonic find codec gom player gezginler northern rail driver asus p4p800e drivers microstar mid2020 drivers drivers canon 3110 3228 cheat money in plants vs zombies cheat engine viber for blackberry curve 9320 flash player 6 myegy ok netgear print router

China Mobile-Apple iPhone pact 'very big deal'

China Mobile, the world's largest mobile carrier, has finally inked a deal with Apple to sell the iPhone, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. On Wednesday, the newspaper (subscription required) cited anonymous sources who said China Mobile, which boasts an estimated 740 million subscribers, will announce iPhone availability later this month, most likely at China Mobile's conference, which begins Dec. 18. China Mobile is one of the world's few major mobile carriers that has not sold the iPhone. Investors have been waiting years for the China Mobile deal, believing it would significantly increase iPhone sales in the country and boost Apple's stock price. In early trading Thursday, Apple was up 1.4% to $572.67. The Wall Street Journal's report follows news yesterday that the Chinese government had issued 4G licenses to China Mobile and other carriers, including China Unicom and China Telecom, both which sell the iPhone. Previously, China Mobile had said it would deal the iPhone only when it could offer it on the faster network. Earlier this year, Apple's iPhone was granted a license from government authorities to operate on the 4G network protocol China Mobile will use. "This is a very big deal," said Ben Thompson, an independent analyst based in Taiwan who covers technology on his Stratechery website. "The two pertinent facts about China are that there is tremendous income disparity, and there are a ton of people. So while many Western markets may have a greater percentage of the population that can afford an iPhone, the absolute number of Chinese who are potential customers is very high as well." In the third quarter, the most recently reported by Apple, China was the firm's third-largest market, after the Americas and Europe, with $5.7 billion in revenue, up 6% year-over-year. For the 2013 fiscal year, which ended in September, the Greater China region -- China, Hong Kong and Taiwan -- generated $25.4 billion in revenue, up 13% from the year before and representing 15% of the company's worldwide total. But while a China Mobile deal has huge potential for Apple, its iPhone currently has a much smaller share there than just a few years ago, as cheaper Android phones, most of them made by in-country firms, have captured the bulk of the market. The iPhone 5C, a less-expensive sibling to the flagship iPhone 5S, was expected by some analysts to come in price points competitive with Chinese-made Android smartphones. Instead, Apple stuck to its premium-brand strategy. Even so, researchers believe that Apple will boost market share and rake in revenue from an expansion in the country. "Thanks to its cooperation with China Mobile and the launch of low-cost iPhone, iOS will see a rapid growth in 2014, and ... its market share [in China will] double that of 2013," market research firm IDC forecast in September. Apple has paid more attention to China this year, launching the new iPhones in that market in its initial wave for the first time. According to researcher Canalys, the move paid off, as Apple returned to the top-five smartphone maker list in the third quarter. But when the iPhone debuts on China Mobile, it's inevitable that questions will remain about Apple's ability to grow its share, whether there or globally, said Thompson. "For several years now any questions about Apple's growth prospects have had a simple answer: just wait until they add NTT Docomo and especially China Mobile," Thompson wrote. "Well, they now have, and the only way forward for significant iPhone growth is the long slog of winning new customers. I certainly think Apple is up to it, but there are no more home runs."addons counter strike source portuguese crunchsms for blackberry 8520 Crypted txt drivers wlan usb 2 0 us54gz brazilian kob p4m266a ndmx driver v stream tv card drivers scribblenauts unlimited pc utorrent wake me up when september ends green day alfa network awus036h driver gauntlet dark legacy para pc

Yahoo to encrypt webmail sessions by default starting in January

Yahoo will start encrypting the webmail sessions of its users in early 2014 by making HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) standard for all Yahoo Mail connections. Security experts, privacy advocates and users have asked Yahoo for this feature for a long time. Other major webmail providers already offer it. In November 2012, the Electronic Frontier Foundation with other privacy, security and human rights organizations, sent a letter to Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer asking the company to add HTTPS support to its communication services, including email and instant messaging. HTTPS, which combines the HTTP Web communications protocol with the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption protocol, is widely used to secure connections between Web users and websites, and prevents sensitive data from being intercepted and read by unauthorized parties while in transit. Yahoo started rolling out a new Web interface for Yahoo Mail late last year that provided support for full-session HTTPS, but only as an option. In order to enable the feature, users can go in their email account settings and check the "Use SSL" box in the "Security" section. "Starting January 8, 2014, we will make encrypted https connections standard for all Yahoo Mail users," Jeffrey Bonforte, Yahoo's senior vice president of communication products, said Monday in a blog post. "Our teams are working hard to make the necessary changes to default https connections on Yahoo Mail, and we look forward to providing this extra layer of security for all our users." The move comes at a time when there is increased discussion about privacy and security online following revelations that the U.S. National Security Agency and the intelligence agencies of other countries are running extensive electronic surveillance programs. Some of the NSA programs revealed by documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden involve the upstream interception of Internet traffic as it passes through global networks, as well as data collection from online services providers including Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Facebook, AOL and others. The Washington Post reported Tuesday that the NSA collected online address books in bulk from Yahoo, Hotmail, Facebook, Gmail and other email and chat programs at Internet access points controlled by foreign telecommunications companies and allied intelligence services. This type of upstream data collection is something that HTTPS can potentially prevent, as long as the implementation is strong enough. The service provider might be later compelled to hand over the decrypted data at its end, but at least in that case the interception would be done with its knowledge. In addition to preventing bulk data collection by government agencies, HTTPS can also prevent hacker attacks, like the theft of authentication cookies over insecure wireless networks or through cross-site scripting attacks. dark colony completo windows 7 safe disk 4 hide resident evil 5 christine unlocker creation pcut 630 driver asus pvr 416 tvfm tuner drivers audible manager for ipad ymf754 r driver itunes helper windows 7 gates of hades drg free graboid video v3 58

Graph Search for powerful data mining

When a high-profile public figure living in Hong Kong hired the security company Trustwave to test if its experts could get his passwords, they turned to Facebook. While the dangers of sharing too much data on Facebook are well-known, it is surprising how little data can give hackers a foothold. The man gave Trustwave's team no-holds barred permission to try and snatch his data, a so-called "Red Team" test. "We found out through Facebook who his wife was," said Jonathan Werrett, a managing consultant for Trustwave's SpiderLabs in Hong Kong. "We found out through her likes -- her public likes -- that she ran a pilates studio. We could then send a phishing email to her based around the fact that she ran a pilates studio that was hiring." The man's wife opened an email with a video demonstration of the bogus job candidate conducting a class. The malicious attachment infected her computer with malware, which gave Trustwave's analysts access, known as a spear-phishing attack. The computer she was using was a hand-me-down from her husband. The passwords he wanted to protect were in the Apple computer's keychain, so the hacking exercise "turned out to be a lot easier than we otherwise expected," Werrett said. Mining small details from Facebook has become even easier with Graph Search, the site's new search engine that returns personalized results from natural-language queries. Graph Search granularly mines Facebook's vast user data: where people have visited, what they like and if they share those same preferences with their friends. Graph Search immediately prompted warnings from security experts, who said its powerful data aggregation abilities could make people uncomfortable even though the exposed data is public. For penetration testers as well as bad guy hackers, Facebook is invaluable for spear-phising attacks. But Werrett and his colleague, SpiderLabs security analyst Keith Lee in Singapore, wanted an automated way to quickly amass information using Graph Search. So Lee wrote "FBStalker," a Python script he and Werrett debuted Thursday at the Hack in the Box security conference in Kuala Lumpur. In its current form, FBStalker runs in the Chrome browser on OS X, entering queries into Facebook's Graph Search and pulling data. They used FBStalker in the attack against the man in Hong Kong. Even if a person's profile is locked down to strangers, their friends' open profiles can be examined, giving an indication, for example, who the person may be close with. FBStalker uses Graph Search to find photos in which two people are tagged in, comments on profiles and more. An analyst could do that by manually using Graph Search, but it would require going through hundreds of pages of comments, Timelines and photos, Werrett said.realtek hd audio driver win xp asus a8v vm motherboard driver averatec 3280 series drivers skype for sony ericsson k770i xh1154 modem driver minecraft cracked version 1 8 1 of uc web browser for mobile tango for macbook air ecs a929 audio drivers pa3416u 1mpc drivers

Google closes in on mastering mobile

Google may be the Internet company getting closest to figuring out mobile -- with a slew of mobile YouTube users and increasing smartphone ad clicks -- but it still hasn't quite mastered it yet. On Thursday, during the search company's quarterly earnings call , the company said mobile advertising is on the rise, with 33% of clicks on Google ads coming from smartphones and tablets. Smartphone click traffic jumped 105% year over year, but tablet click traffic jumped even more -- a whopping 339% increase over the previous year over year, the company said. On top of that, Google CEO Larry Page reported that more than 40% of YouTube's traffic comes from mobile users. In 2011, the figure was just 6%. "We are closing in on our goal of a beautiful, simple and intuitive experience regardless of your device," Page said in a statement on Google's third-quarter earnings. With its highly popular Android mobile platform, where Google search is the standard, Google has a distinct advantage in the mobile world, where every Internet company is laser focused these days. With an increasing number of social networking users accessing their favorite sites from smartphones and tablets, companies need to figure out how to generate revenue from users on the go. Basic advertising tends to look clunky on smaller devices, taking up too much space and frustrating users. That's left social networks looking for other ways to pull in mobile revenue. Facebook, for instance, listed mobility as one of its primary risks in documents the company filed with the Securities and Exchange COmmission before its initial public offering in 2012. More than a year later, CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg calls Facebook a mobile company, citing mobile growth as a major contributor to its increase in sales and profits earlier this year. Facebook's advances in the mobile market also have helped push the company's stock price up to its $38 IPO price for the first time since the company went public in May 2012. However, industry analysts have said Facebook has made big advances in tackling mobile but the company hasn't conquered it. Neither has rival Google, although it is getting closer. "I don't think anyone has mastered mobile yet. It's mostly voodoo and smoke and mirrors," said Rob Enderle, an analyst with the Enderle Group. "Google is doing better than anyone else really but that's largely because they have a lock on advertising. They control most Internet ad models, which allows them to capture a disproportionately large share of every medium, including mobile." Patrick Moorhead, an analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy, noted that Google's quarterly mobile numbers look impressive, but the company was starting from a small base so the growth seems extra impressive. tachyon the fringe full version pitch perfect guitar tuner v 1 20 ms 6533e video driver dx ball 2 game minitool partition wizard home edition 7 install flash player exe firefox omnipage pro 12 0 globe trotter hsdpa driver diamond dt 588 drivers expedia streets 98