Byte Into It - 05 Aug 09

Hacked Windows 7 appears on file-share sites - iTnews.com.au

The Ultimate edition of Windows 7 has already been hacked, and is widely available on the internet, according to various reports.

Windows 7 is not officially released until October, but a cracked version has appeared on file-sharing sites and other unofficial web destinations.

Microsoft has confirmed the breach in an email, and has warned customers to avoid downloading the software because of the security issues inherent in using such web sites.

"We are aware of reports of hacks that attempt to circumvent activation and validation in Windows 7, and we can assure customers that Microsoft is committed to protecting them from counterfeit and pirated software. Microsoft strongly advises customers not to download Windows 7 from unauthorised sources," reads the mail.

Woolworths launches prepaid mobile services - iTnews.com.au

Woolworths has denied aspirations to become a telco after launching a ‘talk-and-text' prepaid mobile service on the Optus 2G network.

The retail giant said today it had inked a mobile virtual network operator agreement with Optus.

Financials or targets were not disclosed, but Woolworths said it would rely on Optus' network and IT systems such as billing.

The retailer would look after the customer-facing experience, including a portal that enabled customers to manage their accounts online.

Woolworths general manager of customer engagement, Richard Umbers, said he believed the retail giant was the "first supermarket in Australia" to step into the telco space.

But Woolworths "were not trying to become a telecommunications company," he said.

He said customer profiling across Woolworths' retail banners - which include Safeway, Big W and Dick Smith - indicated a "heavy skew" to the 2G market.

Customers wanted an easy-to-understand mobile service that enabled them to call and text, he said.

IPhone 3.0.1 Update Fixes SMS Vulnerability | Lifehacker Australia

Apple today released the first update to the iPhone 3.0 software to address an SMS vulnerability that threatened the security of your iPhone. From Apple:

We appreciate the information provided to us about SMS vulnerabilities which affect several mobile phone platforms. This morning, less than 24 hours after a demonstration of this exploit, we’ve issued a free software update that eliminates the vulnerability from the iPhone. Contrary to what’s been reported, no one has been able to take control of the iPhone to gain access to personal information using this exploit.

So plug in your phone, fire up iTunes, and click Check for Update to get the latest and greatest. [via Gizmodo]

Use Wolfram Alpha As A Writing Tool | Lifehacker Australia

Wolfram Alpha, the “computational knowledge engine” that’s steadily updating, has a good but hidden use as a word and language tool for use while writing. In other words, it can be a smart and snappy thesaurus/dictionary/translator/anagram tool.

Wolfram Alpha’s own blog toots its own language skills horn a bit, but for good reason. If you’ve ever been stuck trying to fill out a trio of words ending in “ation,” looking for the transliteration of a foreign script, finding proper pronunciation or hyphenation, or other nerdy word tasks, Wolfram Alpha can often pull off the job with a few key words. Enter word before your term to get an overview of what Wolfram knows about a phrase, or words starting with or words ending with to fit a certain phrase into your text.

Shock threat to shut Skype

eBay says it may have to shut down Skype due to a licensing dispute with the founders of the internet telephony service.

The surprise admission puts a cloud over the 40 million active daily users around the world who use Skype for business or to keep in touch with friends and far-flung relatives.

A recent study by market researcher TeleGeography found Skype carried about 8 per cent of all international voice traffic, making it the world’s largest provider of cross-border voice communications.

The online auction powerhouse bought Skype from entrepreneurs Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis for $US2.6 billion in 2005, but this did not include a core piece of peer-to-peer communications technology that powers the software.

eBay has since been licensing the technology from the founders’ new company, Joltid, but the pair recently decided to revoke the licensing agreement.

The matter is now the subject of a legal battle in the English High Court of Justice, with eBay trying to force Joltid to let it continue using the technology....2.6 Billion and this did not include a "core piece" of the technology...?!?!?!?

Google targets Outlook users in major campaign - News - PC Authority

Google has done everything it can in recent months to make it easy for businesses to switch to Google Apps from Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes, launching specific tools such as Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes and Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook.

Now, a new campaign on the Google Apps homepage calls on businesses to "Join the movement. Spread the word. Go Google."

The company claims that over 1.75 million businesses have "gone Google" so far, and the page lists a large number of case studies of customers using Google Apps, which includes Gmail, Calendar, Docs and Talk.

"Want your company to go Google as well? Contact your IT administrator, share this page with your co-workers and the world, and get others to go Google," reads the web page.

A link on the Apps homepage takes interested parties to an email template they can fill in and send to their IT team to encourage them to switch the business to Google Apps, as well as ideas on how to market Google internally.

"Proud to use Apps? Let others know by posting a Gone Google poster at your desk or around the office," it says.

The Go Google campaign closely follows the Micro soft and Yahoo partnership announced at the end of last week, which will see Yahoo search powered by Microsoft's Bing, while Yahoo will use its solid relationship with advertisers to become the salesforce for both companies' search advertisers.

Did AT&T Play a Part in Apple's Google Voice Drama? - PC World

Did Apple act alone, or in consultation with AT&T, in deciding to reject the Google Voice application and related applications? If the latter, please describe the communications between Apple and AT&T in connection with the decision to reject Google Voice. Are there any contractual conditions or non-contractual understandings with AT&T that affected Apple's decision in this matter?

Does AT&T have any role in the approval of iPhone applications generally (or in certain cases)? If so, under what circumstances, and what
1 See, e.g., Jenna Wortham, "Even Google is Blocked With Apps for iPhone," New York Times, July 28, 2009.
role does it play? What roles are specified in the contractual provisions between Apple and AT&T (or any non-contractual understandings) regarding the consideration of particular iPhone applications?

It is interesting that AT&T would try to distance itself from the decision to cut Google Apps because they haven't tried to hide their meddeling in the App store decision-making process in the past.

For instance, they took full credit for making Sling a Wifi-only app:

"Slingbox, which would use large amounts of wireless network capacity, could create congestion and potentially prevent other customers from using the network. The application does not run on our 3G wireless network. Applications like this, which redirect a TV signal to a personal computer, are specifically prohibited under our terms of service. We consider smartphones like the iPhone to be personal computers in that they have the same hardware and software attributes as PCs.

That said, we don't restrict users from going to a Web site that lets them view videos. But what our terms and conditions prohibit is the transferring, or slinging, of a TV signal to their personal computer or smartphone.

The Slingbox application for the iPhone runs on WiFi. That's good news for AT&T's iPhone 3G customers, who get free WiFi access at our 20,000 owned and operated hot spots in the U.S., including Starbucks, McDonalds, Barnes & Noble, hotels, and airports. AT&T is the industry leader in WiFi."

Steve Jobs also noted in a post show Q&A that making VoIP applications like Skype Wifi-only was at the behest of the carriers. This is another example of AT&T telling Apple what it can and cannot do in the App Store -- this time in the voice communications space.

The VoIP issue is exactly what the FCC intends to investigate as it relates to competition in the market. AT&T brushing off their role isn't fooling anyone.

intitle:"all site content" password - Google Search

Quoth Gina Trapani: " Holy Cow! http://is.gd/21a3u - a little google hacking shows how superior box.net is to sharepoint"

DPI vendor says 90% of ISP customers engage in traffic discrimination - Ars Technica

In our globalized, post-industrial world, a single Canadian company can shape the Internet experience for 20 percent of the world's wireline broadband users. Sandvine makes deep packet inspection hardware that can identify and then block, shape, degrade, fold, spindle, or mutilate user traffic coming from particular applications such as Skype or BitTorrent clients. The 160 worldwide ISPs who use the company's products love this particular capability so much that a full 90 percent of them employ it to "manage" their networks in a discriminatory way.

According to the company, these 160 ISPs serve 20 percent of the world's wireline broadband connections. If 90 percent of the ISPs shape traffic by application, Sandvine equipment alone may be responsible for the application-specific discrimination that 18 percent of world wireline broadband users face—and that figure says nothing about all the other ISPs who use similar products from other vendors. If you thought that network neutrality was some kind of default position for the worldwide Internet, think again.

SocialSafe: Get Your Facebook Data Out of Facebook

Quick Pitch: SocialSafe is an effective, fun new application enabling Facebook users to manage their Facebook data offline on their home computer.

Genius Idea: Who owns your Facebook data? It’s a question that seems to make its way around the blogosphere every time Facebook changes their Terms of Service or someone’s account is deleted (with or without cause).

Regardless of who owns it (Facebook says you do), from a user experience, it’s almost impossible to get everything you put in to Facebook back out. SocialSafe, however, is a utility that helps you back up your Facebook account on your computer, keeping your data in your hands at all times.

FTC still probing Google and Apple after Schmidt resignation - Ars Technica

Google CEO Eric Schmidt may have left Apple's Board of Directors, but the Federal Trade Commission ain't letting up on its investigation into the two companies. The FTC told Reuters today that the investigation into possible anticompetitive behavior was still on, though the Commission praised the companies for recognizing that there could have been a conflict of interest.

The FTC first launched its probe into Google and Apple in May because the two companies shared two board members: Schmidt and Genentech CEO Arthur Levinson. The Clayton Antitrust Act bars individuals from sitting on the boards of two competing companies if it might reduce competition between them, and the FTC recognized that Apple and Google are increasingly offering products in the same space: iPhone OS versus Android, Safari versus Chrome, etc. There have also been questions about how involved (or not) Google has been in Apple's acceptance or rejection of its offerings in the App Store. In July, Schmidt admitted that he would "talk to Apple" about the issue, which resulted in his resignation from Apple's board announced earlier today.

"We will continue to investigate remaining interlocking directorates between the companies," FTC bureau of competition head Richard Feinstein told Reuters. That remaining interlocking directorate is, of course, Levinson, who remained conspicuously absent from Apple's announcement this morning.

Tenenbaum ordered to pay $675,000 - News - PC Authority

A Boston jury has ordered Joel Tenenbaum to pay a total of US$675,000 for willfully infringing 30 songs by downloading and distributing them over the KaZaA peer-to-peer (P2P) filesharing network.

The figure of US$22,500 per song is closer to the US$222,000 award in the first Jammie Thomas-Rasset trial than the US$1.92 million figure from her second trial, but of course they're all ridiculously high penalities.

The defendant's case was hamstrung from the start by the judge having ruled out the Fair Use defence to the RIAA firms' claims of copyright infringement and later having directed the jury that it could only return a guilty verdict because the defendant admitted liablity on the witness stand.

After three hours of deliberations the jury came up with the stonking fine, which was actually smaller than many had predicted might have been assessed.

Tenenbaum's attorney and Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson told Ars Technica, "it's a bankrupting award." He also said things might have gone differently at trial had the defence been allowed to argue Fair Use.

Apple's Snow Leopard top of the software charts - V3.co.uk - formerly vnunet.com

mazon has started accepting pre-orders for Apple's forthcoming OSX 10.6, code-named Snow Leopard, and demand is so high the operating system has claimed the top two spots in its software sales charts.

The single user version of Snow Leopard, priced at $29, is top of the charts with the second place taken by the family version, for five users, costing $49. The price is considerably lower than previous versions, which are traditionally priced at around $129.

iTWire - OpenAustralia volunteers drive Gov2.0 access

The Australian Parliament’s register of interests, where senators and House members declare gifts and shareholdings, is now published online. But don’t try to find the documents on the parliamentary website.

iweb analytics
It took the volunteer efforts of an open source development team with an interest in making the public record more accessible to the public to get the hardcopy documents out of a registrar’s office and onto the internet.

Before OpenAustralia.org began publishing the register of interests for every senator and every member of the House of Representatives earlier this year, the only way to access the information was to present your self in person at the registrar’s office in Parliament House and make the request.

And even then, the register was not allowed to be removed from the office.

OpenAustralia.org is to the Australian democratic process what open source software is to the tech sector. It takes publicly available information – Hansard transcripts primarily – and publishes it in a searchable, easily accessible form.

Google Quietly Quadruples Its Newspaper Archives

A short post on the Google News blog today revealed a big number: Google recently quadrupled the number of newspaper articles in its News Archive Search. You may recall that at TechCrunch50 last year, Google’s Marissa Mayer demoed this powerful news tool that can search the text of publications far back in time — some over 200 years old.

The recent update saw Google add a bunch of new publications, including some from different parts of the world. And it even has a newspaper in the archives from 1753 now. The fact that it’s searchable is fairly insane.

Exploit allows Apple keyboard ownage through firmware - Ars Technica

One of the Apple-related talks given at this year's Black Hat security conference dealt with keyboard firmware. Given by "KChen," the talk discussed "Reversing and Exploiting an Apple Firmware Update." While it may not seem like much on the surface, the truth quickly becomes apparent: if someone gains access to your keyboard's firmware, there are a multitude of ways in which they can further compromise your machine.

There are two ways in which this exploit can be perpetrated. The first is if someone has physical access to your computer and your administrative password, and the second is if someone has already gained access to a machine remotely through a rootkit hack. Why would an attacker want anything to do with a keyboard when he already has free reign on a system? The answer, as KChen pointed out, is that an affected user can patch the rootkit exploit and even reformat the drive, but the attacker could still have access to the keyboard.

Chen showed during his session (downloadable in .pdf format) how he reverse engineered Apple's firmware packages and created his own. He even demonstrated how to alter a system so that it thinks its keyboard firmware isn't up to date. His presentation slides are quite technical, but the majority of the information is phrased in a way that most people can understand, minus the code examples.

Further, if the attacker wishes, he can do things like disable certain keys and even destroy a keyboard with no possibility of reflashing. This applies to Apple's desktop keyboards as well as its laptop keyboards. Chen also pointed out that, in combination with an unpatched machine, an attacker could use a Safari zero-day exploit to destroy Apple keyboards.

As is the case with most Black Hat speakers, Chen's intentions aren't malicious. Many speakers at the conference do IT security research or work in the field and are genuinely concerned about the security of the things we all use and love.

Melbourne film festival site crashed by Chinese protesters | Film | guardian.co.uk

Hackers based in China crashed the website of Australia's biggest film festival at the weekend in protest at organisers' decision to feature a documentary about the exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer.

Filmgoers trying to buy tickets for the Melbourne film festival on Saturday were informed that the event was sold out after protestors exploited a loophole to make phony ticket purchases. A Chinese website titled A Call to Action to All Chinese People had explained how to set up a fake profile to buy tickets, with the aim of crashing the festival's site.

Some people in China are angry that the festival is screening Ten Conditions of Love, a documentary about Kadeer, who is accused by Chinese authorities of stirring up the ethnic violence in Xinjiang province which left at least 197 people dead and 1,600 injured. Last month, organisers were phoned by an official from the Chinese consulate demanding that Ten Conditions of Love be removed from the festival programme, and since then three Chinese films have been withdrawn by their directors. A week ago, hackers based in China succeeded in replacing programme information on the festival site with the Chinese flag and anti-Kadeer slogans.

Festival spokesman Asha Holmes told AFP: "It's a very pointed attempt to shut down the system, which has been quite effective. We have had to shut down our online site and ask everyone to book at the physical box office or on the phone.

"Really, we imagine that until we withdraw the film [about Kadeer], which we are not going to do, this kind of activity will continue."

What the F**k Is Social Media? Here’s an Answer

what do you say to someone who doesn’t get it? Maybe you have a boss who thinks social branding a waste of time or chatted with a friend who doesn’t believe that Twitter can help land her a great job. Maybe they have no clue what social media even is.

Last year, marketing director Marta Kagan helped solve this problem with her presentation What the F**k is Social Media?. It was quickly a social media hit for its wit and its very convincing case for the raw power of social media.

With the tremendous growth of Twitter (Twitter), Facebook (Facebook), and blogging in the last year though, Ms. Kagan thought it was time for a sequel. We couldn’t agree more. The stats she cites and the savvy she employs in What the F**k is Social Media: One Year Later makes it a worthy successor.

The next time you need to explain the benefits of social media to someone, just send them this post and make sure they flip through the entire presentation.