It sometimes feels like there’s a big data breach in the news every week—but some are far worse than others. This data visulization shows the world’s biggest data breaches to date, and how they compare over time. Read more…
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The World’s Biggest Data Breaches, Visualized
Rumors that Apple is looking to super-size its upcoming iPhone and iPad lineups are gathering steam, thanks to a recent report from the Wall Street Journal . It cited Apple’s suppliers in Asia, who said that Cupertino is testing a 13-inch iPad design and prototype iPhone screens larger than the current four inches. While Apple wouldn’t comment, of course, that jibes with an earlier Reuters report, which claimed it was considering 4.7- and 5.7-inch iPhone screens. If accurate (and that’s always a big if with such rumors), the report doesn’t necessarily mean that products with larger displays will ever come to market — Apple routinely changes specs and tests components during the development cycle. Still, it would be further evidence that the company’s willing to bend on its one-size-fits-all screen size policy, which is something that the large-handed (or weak-eyed) among us might appreciate. Filed under: Cellphones , Tablets , Apple Comments Source: WSJ
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WSJ: Apple testing larger iPhone, iPad screens with suppliers
SmartAboutThings writes “Smartphones are susceptible to malware and carriers have enabled NSA snooping, but the prevailing wisdom has it there’s still one part of your mobile phone that remains safe and un-hackable: your SIM card. Yet after three years of research, German cryptographer Karsten Nohl claims to have finally found encryption and software flaws that could affect millions of SIM cards, and open up another route on mobile phones for surveillance and fraud.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Rooting SIM Cards
Apple Since Thursday, registered Apple developers trying to download OS X 10.9, iOS 7, or any other Apple software from the company’s developer portal have been greeted with a notice that the site was down for “maintenance.” Today, the company issued a brief statement (above) blaming the extended outage on an “intruder, ” and that Apple “[has] not been able to rule out the possibility that some developers’ names, mailing addresses, and/or email addresses may have been accessed.” The notice says that “sensitive” information could not be accessed by the intruder because it was encrypted, and the company told MacWorld that the system in question is not used to store “customer information, ” application code, or data stored by applications. Anecdotal reports (including one from our own Jacqui Cheng ) point to a sudden spike in password reset requests for some Apple IDs, suggesting that email addresses have in fact been accessed and distributed but that passwords were not. In any case, we generally recommend that users change their passwords when any breach (or suspected breach) like this one occurs. “In order to prevent a security threat like this from happening again, we’re completely overhauling our developer systems, updating our server software, and rebuilding our entire database, ” the statement said. Apple has also given week-long extensions to any developers’ whose program subscriptions were scheduled to lapse during the outage, which will keep those developers’ applications from being delisted in Apple’s various App Stores. Read on Ars Technica | Comments
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Apple blames days-long Developer Center outage on “intruder”
satuon writes “The popular Ubuntu Forums site is now displaying a message saying there was a security breach. What is currently known: Unfortunately the attackers have gotten every user’s local username, password, and email address from the Ubuntu Forums database. The passwords are not stored in plain text. However, if you were using the same password as your Ubuntu Forums one on another service (such as email), you are strongly encouraged to change the password on the other service ASAP. Ubuntu One, Launchpad and other Ubuntu/Canonical services are NOT affected by the breach.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Ubuntuforums.org Hacked
An anonymous reader writes “The U.S. Dept. of Justice has announced that Panasonic and its subsidiary Sanyo have been fined $56.5 million for their roles in price fixing conspiracies involving battery cells and car parts. The fines are part of a larger investigation into the prices of auto parts. Interestingly, 12 people at various companies have been sentenced to jail time, and three more are going to prison. Since the charges are felonies, none of the sentences are shorter than a year and a day. Criminal fines targeting these companies has totaled over $874 million. ‘The conduct of Panasonic, SANYO, and LG Chem resulted in inflated production costs for notebook computers and cars purchased by U.S. consumers. These investigations illustrate our efforts to ensure market fairness for U.S. businesses by bringing corporations to justice when their commercial activity violates antitrust laws.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Jail Time For Price-Fixing Car Parts
AmiMoJo writes “A recent job posting by MI5 seeks to recruit ‘Data Exploitation Specialists.’ The core of the role is described as ‘provid[ing] tactical solutions and operational support to business users of information exploitation systems.’ In other words, industrial espionage. This open admission comes at a time when the UK and its partners are accusing China of the same thing. Pot, meet kettle?” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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MI5 Hiring Industrial Espionage IT Support Staff
Man of Steel director Zack Snyder just came out and rocked our worlds at Comic-Con. Not just announcing that Batman will be in the Superman sequel — which he did with a cool-looking metallic Superman-Batman logo that drove the crowd nuts. But that was not the biggest deal. Read more…
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They’re doing a Superman/Batman movie… but that’s not the big news
symbolset writes “Apparently Australians have come up with the brilliant idea: if you don’t want to be eaten by a shark, it’s best to not go swimming in shark-infested waters in a seal costume. ‘Scientists from the University of Western Australia, with designers Shark Attack Mitigation Systems (SAMS), have unveiled two new wetsuits that they say could save lives in the water. Based on a breakthrough discovery that sharks are colour-blind, one wetsuit, labelled the “Elude, ” is designed to camouflage a swimmer or diver in the sea. At the other extreme, the “Diverter” sports bold white and dark-blue stripes, and is intended to mirror nature’s warning signs to ward off any potential shark attack.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Rethinking the Wetsuit
We delete files all the time to free up space, or to get rid of pesky evidence, but the whole process is a lot more complicated than it seems from the outside. When you go to “delete” something, you’re just pressing the start button on a much more involved, much more random process. So what actually happens to that data? Read more…
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What Actually Happens to All Your Deleted Files?