Latest news

MuscleNerd has just Tweeted that the first iPhone OS 4.0 beta jailbreak is now available, using the same pwnage2 DFU exploit that has been available since 2008.

Reads the Tweet: "1st public 4.0b1 jailbreak [ link ] ..Only JB devs til they fix their SW! iPhone3G+Mac only til more is working."

That link leads to the redsn0w 0.9.5 BETA page which now says "4.0beta1 FW only (for now)" under the supported firmwares list. On the page comes a note however: YOU SHOULD STAY CLEAR OF THIS BETA SOFTWARE IF YOU RELY ON A CARRIER UNLOCK. That's because the beta redsn0w works only if your device has already been upgraded to the stock 4.0beta1 IPSW from Apple, which contains a baseband update. If you installed that IPSW, you've already lost the carrier unlock until the next planned release of ultrasn0w and blacksn0w.

Last week, hacker iH8sn0w said that he has already jailbroken the brand new iPhone 4.0 OS beta, posting the keys and claiming that he will be releasing the jailbreak in the near future.

Intel's lack of a USB 3.0 chipset has signaled to observers that the company may be bypassing USB 3.0 in favor of optical technology. Whether that is true or not remains to be seen, but Intel has been promoting its Light Peak technology which promises transmission speeds of between 10Gbps and 100Gbps.

Light Peak technology was unveiled in 2009 and is expected to become available for manufacturers later in 2010. Devices containing the technology are expected to reach the market by early 2011.

Intel fellow Kevin Kahn discussed the technology at the Intel Developer Forum in Beijing on Wednesday, showing off a laptop with a thin Light Peak cable. Kahn's prototype had the cable running through a modified USB 3.0 port adapter. He said that the size of the port could be reduced significantly with Light Peak technology which is good news for mobile gadgets in particular.

Kahn said that Light Peak is not necessarily competitive with USB, but instead the two technologies could be complementary. USB protocols could run over a Light Peak cable.

Kahn told the crowd in attendance that Intel would like to build the "last cable you'll ever need."

After a formal request from German authorities, the Moscow offices of HP were raided yesterday and the company has since been accused of bribing the prosecutor general of the Russian Federation over $10 million USD to secure a communications product contract worth $40 million.

In response, HP said: The "conduct that occurred almost seven years ago, largely by employees no longer with HP. We are cooperating fully with the German and Russian authorities." HP will also be conducting an internal investigation into the allegations.

The Wall Street Journal takes it a step further saying that HP has created shell companies in the US, UK, Switzerland, New Zealand, the British Virgin Islands, Latvia, Austria, Lithuania that funnel payments.

The investigation includes claims of breach of trust, tax evasion, bribery and money laundering.

HP itself cannot be charged under German law, but the executives can, and HP's illegal profits can be taken.

Security researchers have put attention on archive file formats such as RAR and ZIP files because of their potential security vulnerabilities. Up until recently many antivirus programs weren't capable of detecting malicious software in commonly used archival formats, but most antivirus vendors patched their products for better detection.

Tomislav Pericin, founder of RLPack, Mario Vuksan, an independent security researcher and Brian Karney, COO of Access Data, gave a presentation at the Black Hat security conference where they demonstrated how it is possible to tamper with popular archive formats to insert malicious code such as the Conficker worm.

Malware authors had been taking advantage of how packing malicious software in compressed archive files could trick security software, but antivirus companies stepped up efforts in detection of malware hidden in such files. However, the three researchers showed that it is still possible to evade gateway products that analyze file attachments.

"The problem is the AV vendors and the archive vendors have two different solutions. If they don't work in sync, the user can extract an archive on their PC, but the AV won't be able to, and that's a problem," Pericin said.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz has reported today that the Apple iPad has been blocked from entering Israel, with customs officials confiscating all devices upon entry.

10 devices have already been seized, and tourists visiting the country only get their iPads back when they leave.

The problem seems to be with the iPad's built-in Wi-Fi, which will disrupt the signals of other devices that use different standards.

"If you operate equipment in a frequency band which is different from the others that operate on that frequency band, then there will be interference," says Nati Schubert, a senior deputy director for the Israeli Communications Ministry. "We don't care where people buy their equipment. ... But without regulation, you would have chaos."

In the U.S., devices with built-in Wi-Fi have the capability to broadcast at higher power levels than are allowed by "European standards."

While consumers and tourists alike have complained about the ban, some developers were able to get the device imported before the ban and will use it to develop apps.

Google Inc, YouTube and Yahoo! have filed counterclaims against Xerox Corp in response to a lawsuit accusing the companies of patent infringement. Xerox claims that the accused infringed several of its patents relating to Internet search functions.

The defendants are now seeking declarations that they did not infringe on the patents at issue or that the patents are invalid. The counterclaims were filed in a Delaware federal court on Thursday. Xerox claims that Google services such as Google Maps and YouTube, and also Yahoo Shopping, infringed patents it has held.

The patents date back as far as 2001. Xerox contends that the patents cover technology such as a system for generating queries for information relating to a document. It is seeking compensations for all past infringements and a ban on the use of the technology by the defendants.

The video game industry has experienced a small sales jump in March after declining for two straight months. Industry tracker NPD said that sales of video game products in the U.S. jumped 6 percent, to $1.52 billion, in March, even though hardware sales did still decline.

Hardware sales during the month were down 4 percent, to $440.5 million. Nintendo's Wii console topped the monthly charts (home consoles) with 557,500 units sold. Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360 console came in second place with a sales tally of 338,400 units, just pushing Sony's PlayStation 3 (PS3) console to third place with 313,900 units sold. The older PS2 title reached 118,300 sales.

In sales of handheld consoles, Nintendo's DS handhelds sold 700,800 units, following by Sony's PlayStation Portable (PSP) with a total of 119,900 units.

Software sales were up 10 percent to $795 million, with God of War III for PS3 topping the charts with 1.1 million units sold. If you combine the sales of titles across platforms, then you would out Final Fantasy XIII at #1 with 1.322 million units sold, 828,200 copies on the PS3 and 493,900 on the Xbox 360.

During Google's earnings call earlier today, the search giant showed off strong earnings (20 percent year-on-year revenue growth and 30 percent net income growth) and additionally gave some interesting news on their latest venture, Android.

The Android Market has now hit 38,000 apps, very strong growth considering Google said one month ago that the market had 30,000 apps.

The market hit 10,000 apps in September of last year, and doubled by January.

Secondly, Google stated that the Nexus One 'superphone' is already profitable, despite numerous reports that have called the phone's launch a "failure."

Google added that they are "driving the business to be a profitable business from the get go," and are very satisfied with the sales of the phone.

Opera has a right to be very happy with the immediate results of its browser software for the iPhone becoming available. After being approved by Apple Inc. for the iPhone, the Opera browser went on to be downloaded over one million times by iPhone users on its first day of availability.

Apple's approval of the Opera browser for iPhone on April 13 opened a new market that Apple had safely guarded up until this point. "Apple said 'Yes', and iPhone users around the world said, 'Yes, please'," the Norwegian firm said in a statement.

Opera's browsers claims to have some advantages over Apple's own loaded browser. For one thing, it claims it can deliver downloads six time faster than Apple's own browser, and that it could cut data traffic by up to 90 percent, an area where the iPhone has come to attention.

Some mobile phone networks have experienced problems from the heavy data traffic demands from iPhone users.

Ahead of the May 21 release of "Shrek Forever After", Dreamworks Animation has confirmed that it is planning to convert the older Shrek titles to 3D for release on Blu-ray. "Our movies exist in digital files to begin with. To go back and rebuild to a quality 3D experience is not inexpensive, but we are about to achieve a pretty high quality result," company CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg said Wednesday.

Speaking at the National Association of Broadcasters convention, he was optimistic about the rate of innovation in 3D filmmaking. "We are just beginning to see big capital investments made into the area of post 2D-to-3D conversion. Right now it's at the most rudimentary," he said.

The recent release of "Clash of the Titans" has received much scrutiny, prompting some concerns within the industry that poor 3D releases will threaten the rollout of the "format". Concerns aside, Katzenberg feels comfortable enough with 3D to be optimistic about its potential with older titles.

DigiProtect, which works with ACS:Law in the UK to send thousands of threatening letters to alleged Internet pirates, has defended its work from growing criticism. UK consumer magazine Which? received complaints from people saying they were wrongly accused of copyright infringement crimes.

The letters sent to Internet users orders them to either pay a fine or face going to court. However, the firm told the BBC that it is just acting to protect its rights-holders, whom it declined to mention by name but described as "musicians or producers."

DigiProtect identifies when a client's content is being shared illegally on a network and attempts to acquire the IP address of the sharer. With this information, its lawyers can get a court order enabling the retrieval of the physical address of the user associated with the Internet connection account.

Users receive letters telling them to pay around £700 per infringement or face court action. Service provider O2 has not been impressed with the targeting of its customers, condemning attempts to "bully or threaten" them.

ACS:Law and DigiProtect deny that they bully O2 customers. "The approach we use is the only proven effective proceeding," DigiProtect told the BBC. "With the infinite number of products offered on file-sharing networks, no other process would even be possible, this is just another example of the astronomical dimensions that file-sharing has taken on."

Toshiba Corp. got a boost from surging PC sales in the United States in the first quarter of the year, jumping 50 percent compared to the same period of 2009. Jeff Barney, general manager of digital products for Toshiba America, said the company sold 1.5 million PC units in the January - March period in the United States thanks to growing consumer demand.

Barney revealed that average selling prices leveled during the quarter after falling for some time. He said he expected 35 percent growth in the U.S. consumer PC market in the coming six months along with single-digit growth from enterprise customers. Toshiba is the fourth largest PC vendor in the United States and the fifth largest globally.

The company is also planning to roll out tablet-style computing devices similar to the iPad later in the year. Barney said the plan was to launch "slate" PCs this year running either Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system, or Google's mobile Android OS.

"We definitely see a place for the slate, we see there's a market there. It'll be expansive like netbooks, it won't be cannibalistic," he said. He added that a Windows version of the tablet would be priced higher than Android, but that Android users could tap thousands of programs available in the Android Market.

New attention has been given to a BitTorrent exploit that surfaced in November last year following the passing of the Digital Economy Bill in the UK. The widespread belief - or hope - appears to be that this 86 lines of C# can actually make BitTorrent downloading untraceable.

The code, named SeedFuc*er (though not censored), can be used by a BitTorrent user to fake the IP address of a source where a file could be downloaded, or it could be used to flood a BitTorrent with dozens of fake peers.

The truth is this probably wouldn't help a user to escape identification at all, although it could be used as an annoyance for investigators by flooding them with fake peers and fake data. Tracking companies confirm what material is being shared and from where, so there is no reason to believe the 86 lines of code will make the slightest bit of a difference to a user.

However, changes in legislation or the outcomes of civil cases have had an effect on how some users share files. Napster's downfall was largely the centralized nature of its network and was then replaced with decentralized networks. Warnings and other threats prompted users to stop using public BitTorrent trackers and opt for private trackers instead.

The FCC will, for the first time ever, be collecting data about the performance of consumer broadband internet connections across the US.

In the past data has been provided by ISPs, and FCC officials have admitted it was worthless while still releasing reports based on it.

In order to get some real world data the FCC has contracted with SamKnows, a company who has worked with UK telecom regulators at Ofcom for similar purposes. Their most recent work showed that users of the most popular UK broadband services were only getting about half the speed advertised.

After soliciting volunteers who have broadband internet service from across the US, SamKnows will be providing specially modified routers which will analyze various aspects of each user's connection. In addition to providing the data and analysis to the FCC, SamKnows will allow participants to view data about their individual connections.

Details on the methodology to be used for the study will be released by the FCC within the next few days.

According to SamKnows' website they will begin taking applications from the public to participate in the study "in the next couple of weeks."

The House of Representatives has just passed a new legislation that will ban all forms of malicious Caller ID "spoofing," the art of using a fake caller ID to trick victims into revealing personal information.

The bill, which passed with a "voice vote," is intended to stop spoofing before it gets more prominent. Proponents of the bill say new technology is making spoofing much easier, and the technology is cheap or even free.

Rep. Eliot Engel, a Democrat in N.Y. who is also the chief sponsor of the bill, cited one case where the police busted an identify theft ring which had stolen over $15 million from 6000 victims using different spoofing scams including pretending to be banks.

The bill, H.R. 1258, will completely outlaw spoofing technology if it used for deceiving or harmful intent. Legitimate uses, such as spoofing to protect identities of certain users or companies, will still be allowed. Those found to be abusing the technology can be fined and even spend time in jail.

The legislation still requires Senate approval.