Amazon rolls out interest-free payment plans for Kindle Fire HDX tablets
by ian paul

Amazon's Kindle Fire tablets are already some of the cheapest slates you can buy, but that's not good enough for Amazon. The online retailer wants to make it even easier on the pocketbook to pick up a Fire HDX for the holidays with new payment installment plans for both the Kindle Fire HDX and the Kindle Fire HDX 8.9.

Under the terms of the deal, prospective Kindle shoppers choose either the HDX or the HDX 8.9 and pay 25 percent of the device cost up front, plus any applicable taxes and shipping. Then Amazon ships the device to you and will charge your credit card three more times—once every 90 days—to recoup the remainder of the tablet's price.

Pricing for the Kindle Fire HDX starts at $229 and the HDX 8.9 begins at $269, meaning your four installments for the basic models (with special offers) will cost you $94.75 and $57.25 respectively. continued…

first published week of:   12/16/2013

AMD accuses former top employees of stealing over 100,000 documents
by megan geuss

AMD filed a complaint yesterday alleging that four of its former employees—one former vice-president and three former managers—transferred sensitive AMD documents before joining competing graphics chip maker Nvidia and then violated a “no-solicitation of employees” promise. The company alleges that Robert Feldstein, Manoo Desai, and Nicolas Kociuk collectively downloaded over 100,000 files onto external hard drives in the six months before leaving the company. All three and another manager, Richard Hagen, were accused of recruiting AMD employees after leaving for Nvidia.

The most senior person accused in AMD's complaint is Robert Feldstein, who was the vice president of strategic development at AMD until his departure for AMD's competitor. ZDnet notes that Feldstein "helped broker major contracts to see AMD technology launch in the next-generation range of games consoles, including the Xbox, PlayStation, and the Wii U, before he left for Nvidia.” In the complaint, AMD says that after Feldstein and Hagen left, they recruited Desai, who then recruited Kociuk “and perhaps additional AMD employees to leave AMD for competitor Nvidia.”

Details Here

first published week of:   01/21/2013

Anatomy of a hack: How crackers ransack passwords like “qeadzcwrsfxv1331”
by dan goodin

In March, readers followed along as Nate Anderson, Ars deputy editor and a self-admitted newbie to password cracking, downloaded a list of more than 16,000 cryptographically hashed passcodes. Within a few hours, he deciphered almost half of them. The moral of the story: if a reporter with zero training in the ancient art of password cracking can achieve such results, imagine what more seasoned attackers can do.

Imagine no more. We asked three cracking experts to attack the same list Anderson targeted and recount the results in all their color and technical detail Iron Chef style. The results, to say the least, were eye opening because they show how quickly even long passwords with letters, numbers, and symbols can be discovered.

The list contained 16,449 passwords converted into hashes using the MD5 cryptographic hash function. Security-conscious websites never store passwords in plaintext. Instead, they work only with these so-called one-way hashes, which are incapable of being mathematically converted back into the letters, numbers, and symbols originally chosen by the user. In the event of a security breach that exposes the password data, an attacker still must painstakingly guess the plaintext for each hash—for instance, they must guess that "5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99" and "7c6a180b36896a0a8c02787eeafb0e4c" are the MD5 hashes for "password" and "password1" respectively. (For more details on password hashing, see the earlier Ars feature "Why passwords have never been weaker—and crackers have never been stronger.")

While Anderson's 47-percent success rate is impressive, it's miniscule when compared to what real crackers can do, as Anderson himself made clear. To prove the point, we gave them the same list and watched over their shoulders as they tore it to shreds. To put it mildly, they didn't disappoint. Even the least successful cracker of our trio—who used the least amount of hardware, devoted only one hour, used a tiny word list, and conducted an interview throughout the process—was able to decipher 62 percent of the passwords. Our top cracker snagged 90 percent of them.

first published week of:   06/10/2013

Android trojan capable of launching DDoS attacks, sending SMSs
by eduard kovacs

For the time being, it’s uncertain how the Trojan is distributed, but experts believe the cyber-criminal might be disguising it as a legitimate Android application.

Once it’s installed on a smartphone, the malware creates a fake Google Play icon on the desktop. When executed, this shortcut opens the real Google Play in order to avoid raising any suspicion.

After being executed, the Trojan connects to a remote server, sends it the victim’s phone number, and waits for further SMS commands.

The masterminds of Android.DDoS.1.origin can send various SMS commands. One of them orders the infected device to start sending out packets to a certain server, basically launching a DDOS attack against it.

Details Here

first published week of:   01/07/2013

Apple “more flexible” under Tim Cook, says telecom chief
by steven musil

Apple has become easier to do business with under Tim Cook’s leadership, according to the chief at one major European wireless carrier.

“Apple has [become] more flexible, paying more attention to everyone else, probably a little less arrogant than they used to be,” France Telecom-Orange CEO Stephane Richard told reporters today in Barcelona, Spain. According to All Things D, Richard compared today’s company with the one led two years ago by Steve Jobs, saying, “I think they are probably a little more under pressure, and it is quite nice.”

Indeed, Jobs was not a big fan of wireless carriers and had looked for a way to cut them out of the picture. The late Apple co-founder spent two years leading up to the release of the first iPhone trying to figure out how to turn Wi-Fi spectrum into a network that users could make phone calls on, as opposed to relying on carriers to get the job done.

Details Here

first published week of:   03/04/2013

Apple ends Coca-Cola's reign as the world's most valuable brand
by john ribeiro, idg newsservice

Apple has emerged as the most valuable brand in the world, passing Coca-Cola which held the top position for 13 years, according to a report released by brand consultancy Interbrand.

The maker of high-profile products like the iPad and iPhone, which was ranked second last year, saw its brand value grow 28 percent this year to $98.3 billion. Other tech companies that figured in the top five rankings for 2013 were Google at number two and IBM and Microsoft at fourth and fifth place, respectively. Google was number four in 2012, while IBM was third and Microsoft held the fifth position last year.

"Few brands have enabled so many people to do so much so easily, which is why Apple has legions of adoring fans," Interbrand said in the report released Monday. Apple has set a high bar for aesthetics, simplicity and ease of use that other tech brands have to match, and Apple itself will have to continually exceed, the report said. continued…

first published week of:   09/30/2013

Apple expands flash storage options across iMac line
by marco tabini

If you’re in the market for a new iMac, you may be happy to hear that Apple has added a few more options to its line of desktop computers, allowing customers to opt for pure flash storage in addition to conventional hard drives or its hybrid, Fusion Drive.

As first reported by Ars Technica, the base 21-inch models come, like before, with a 1TB Serial-ATA drive, with an optional upgrade to a Fusion Drive, which will cost you an extra $250. However, you can now choose to go with pure flash storage instead: 256GB and 512GB drives will set you back $300 and $600, respectively, over the base model price.

If you’re pining for a larger screen, there are even more opportunities for customization on the 27-inch versions of the popular desktop machine: As before, the base model includes a 1TB Serial-ATA drive, with a 3TB upgrade available for $150 extra, or you can switch to a 1TB ($250) or 3TB ($400) Fusion Drive if you so choose. But the flash storage options on the larger iMac have also expanded, with 256GB ($300) and 512GB ($600) drives joining the existing 768GB option, which has in turn dropped from its previous $1300 price to $900.  continued…

first published week of:   05/06/2013

Apple Looks to Improve Siri’s Script
by tom simonite

Apple’s virtual assistant Siri may have its roots in a Pentagon-funded artificial intelligence research project, but algorithms aren’t everything and the Cupertino company is now turning to writers to make Siri smarter. A job ad posted by Apple on LinkedIn appeals for:

[S]omeone who combines a love for language, wordplay, and conversation with demonstrated experience in bringing creative content to life within an intense technical environment.”

They’ll need “experience in writing character-driven dialog“, a good vocabulary, and ideally knowledge of more than one language. The end result, says the ad, will “evolve and enrich Siri…known for ‘her’ wit, cultural knowledge, and zeal to explain things in engaging, funny, and practical ways.”

Many of the changes Apple made to Siri when it bought the technology from the startup of the same name were in a similar vein. As my colleague Will Knight wrote in an in depth look at how Siri is designed: “Siri may not be the smartest AI in the world but it’s the most socially adept.” Giving the system a style that suggests tact, charm, and even wit makes its limitations and errors easier to bear (see “Social Intelligence”).

Details Here

first published week of:   01/21/2013

Are Businesses Rushing to BYOD Too Quickly?
by tom kaneshige

A survey of IT executives and IT pros paints a disturbing picture of BYOD. That picture includes a lack of confidence in compliance with federally mandated regulations, a fear that sensitive data is at risk and uncertainty about the overall effectiveness of BYOD.

Are you breaking the law with your BYOD policy?

In a TEKsystems June survey of 3,500 tech professionals, 35 percent of IT leaders (such as CIOs, IT vice presidents and directors) and 25 percent of IT professionals (such as developers, network admins and architects) are not confident that their organization's BYOD policy is compliant with data and privacy protection acts, HIPAA, Dodd-Frank or other government-mandated regulations.

Half of the respondents also believe that 25 percent or more of sensitive data is at risk due to end users accessing this information over personal devices.

These and other alarming findings paint a disturbing picture: The race to embrace BYOD might be outpacing sound business practices. continued…

first published week of:   08/05/2013

Big-Data & Cloud Make Unlikely Partners
by mitch wagner

This week I learned that big-data and the cloud go together like Chicago and deep-dish pizza.

It seemed weird to co-locate conferences about big-data and the cloud. The two didn't seem to have anything to do with each other.

But I learned otherwise, talking to the organizers of Cloud Connect and the Big Data Conference, running together in Chicago next week. Both conferences are produced by UBM Tech, which publishes Internet Evolution.

"Cloud computing has been a key enabler of the big-data market," Steve Wylie, general manager of Cloud Connect and the Big Data Conference, told me. "The unlimited resources of the cloud coupled with the resources of big-data are creating vast opportunities."

Cloud and big-data are both about separating the business value of technology from the fundamental details of making it work, said Johna Johnson, president and founder of Nemertes Research and co-chair of content for the Big Data Conference.

"Cloud is about getting the benefits of the datacenter without having to operate one," Johnson told me. "Big-data is about getting away from the mechanics of data structure and finding out what it means." continued…

first published week of:   10/21/2013