Tag: vanity-fair

FCC and mobile carriers commit to nationwide text-to-911 by May 2014

It seems almost stupid that it’s nearly 2013 and we’re still unable to communicate with our emergency services in any way other than picking up the phone and calling them. We can certainly imagine situations where you’d want to be able to send a quick  text message  to local police. The US is a bit behind here—British mobile phone users have had access to  EmergencySMS since 2009. For years, we’ve been covering the slow ascent of text-to-911 . But now, the Federal Communications Commission says that the nation’s Big Four mobile carriers have agreed to “accelerate” text-to-911 capabilities for debut in 2013, with a nationwide deployment by May 15, 2014. “Building on text-to-911 deployments and trials that are already underway, this agreement will accelerate progress and ensure that over 90 percent of the nation’s wireless consumers, including millions of consumers with hearing or speech disabilities, will be able to access emergency services by sending a text message to 911, where local 911 call centers (known as a Public Safety Answering Points, or PSAPs) are also prepared to receive the texts,” the FCC said in a statement Thursday. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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FCC and mobile carriers commit to nationwide text-to-911 by May 2014

AMD puts brakes on chip manufacturing as sales plummet

Windows 8 and the holidays have failed to give PC makers the usual yearly bump in sales, and now Advanced Micro Devices is paying the price. The company announced yesterday that it has reduced its chip manufacturing orders for the last three months of the company’s 2012 fiscal year by more than 75 percent, and it will pay a heavy penalty for the changes. In a new agreement signed with manufacturing partner GlobalFoundries , AMD reduced its promised silicon wafer purchases to just $115 million, down from $500 million, while agreeing to pay a $320 million penalty for the order change over the next year. AMD spun off GlobalFoundries in 2009, and in March of 2012 it  sold off its remaining stake in the company , leaving an investment arm of the government of the United Arab Emirates as the company’s sole owner. The move is part of an emergency plan to keep AMD’s cash on hand up as revenues continue to slide. On a conference call yesterday, AMD interim Chief Financial Officer Devinder Kumar said, “Liquidity and cash management remain a key focus for AMD.” The chipmaker is still looking for a permanent CFO to fill the gap left by Thomas Seifert, who bailed on the company in September “to pursue other interests.” Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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AMD puts brakes on chip manufacturing as sales plummet

How Windows tech support scammers walked right into a trap set by the feds

Aurich Lawson Three weeks ago, Jack Friedman got a call from a man with an Indian accent claiming to be from the Windows technical team at Microsoft. Friedman, a Florida resident who is my friend Elliot’s grandfather, was told by “Nathan James” from Windows that he needed to renew his software protection license to keep his computer running smoothly. “He said I had a problem with my Microsoft system,” Friedman told me. “He said they had a deal for $99, they would straighten out my computer and it will be like brand new.” Friedman’s three-year-old Windows Vista computer was running a bit slow, as many PCs do. Friedman is often suspicious of unsolicited calls, but after talking with Nathan on the phone and exchanging e-mails, he says, “I figured he was a legitimate guy.” Friedman handed over his Capital One credit card number, and the “technician” used remote PC support software to root around his computer for a while, supposedly fixing whatever was wrong with it. “I could see my arrow going all over the place and clicking different things on my computer,” Friedman said. But that $99 Capital One credit card charge turned into a $495 wire transfer. Then Bank of America’s fraud department called Friedman, and said, “somebody is trying to get into your account.” Whoever it was had entered the wrong password multiple times, and as a precaution Friedman’s checking account was shut down. Read 35 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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How Windows tech support scammers walked right into a trap set by the feds

Sophisticated botnet steals more than $47M by infecting PCs and phones

Behold—the Eurograbber, visualized. Aurich Lawson / Thinkstock A new version of the Zeus trojan—a longtime favorite of criminals conducting online financial fraud—has been used in attacks on over 30,000 electronic banking customers in Europe, infecting both their personal computers and smartphones. The sophisticated attack is designed to circumvent banks’ use of two-factor authentication for transactions by intercepting messages sent by the bank to victims’ mobile phones. The malware and botnet system, dubbed “Eurograbber” by security researchers from Check Point Software and Versafe, was first detected in Italy earlier this year. It has since spread throughout Europe. Eurograbber is responsible for more than $47 million in fraudulent transfers from victims’ bank accounts, stealing amounts from individual victims that range from 500 Euros (about $650) to 25,000 Euros (about $32,000), according to a report published Wednesday (PDF) . The malware attack begins when a victim clicks on a malicious link, possibly sent as part of a phishing attack. Clicking on the link directs them to a site that attempts to download one or more trojans: customized versions of Zeus and its SpyEye and CarBerp variants that allow attackers to record Web visits and then inject HTML and JavaScript into the victim’s browser. The next time the victim visits their bank website, the trojans capture their credentials and launch a JavaScript that spoofs a request for a “security upgrade” from the site, offering to protect their mobile device from attack. The JavaScript captures their phone number and their mobile operating system information—which are used in the second level of Eurograbber’s attack. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Sophisticated botnet steals more than $47M by infecting PCs and phones

Windows 8 takes 1 percent of Web usage as Internet Explorer gains

Enlarge Net Marketshare November saw Firefox climb back up above 20 percent, Internet Explorer grow further still, and Chrome apparently suffer a surprisingly sharp drop. Enlarge Net Marketshare Enlarge Net Marketshare Internet Explorer was up 0.63 points at 54.76 percent, its highest level since October 2011. Firefox was up 0.45 points to 20.44 percent, all but erasing the last six month’s losses. Chrome, surprisingly, was down a whopping 1.31 points to 17.24 percent, its lowest level since September 2011. We’ve asked Net Applications, the source we use for browser market share data, if it has made any change in its data collection that might account for this large Chrome drop. The company attributed this in part to the exclusion of Chrome’s pre-rendering data. It estimates that 11.1 percent of all Chrome pageviews are a result of pre-rendering (where Chrome renders pages that aren’t currently visible just in case the user wants to see them) and accordingly excluded this from its figures. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Windows 8 takes 1 percent of Web usage as Internet Explorer gains

Fully loaded new 27-inch iMac will cost over $4,200—before tax

Apple’s newer, thinner iMacs are due to be released  tomorrow , with the 21-inch models showing up in stores and shipping immediately, and 27-inch models shipping some time in December. While base model pricing and configuration options have been  known  ever since the new models were announced in October, Apple has not yet officially announced the pricing of any of the add-on options like video cards and extra storage, so potential purchasers haven’t yet been able to nail down their total pocketbook impact. Enlarge / Base pricing for the new iMacs. Image from store.apple.com However, earlier this week MacRumors  posted  news from an Apple reseller named  Expercom , which reportedly contains the entire set of iMac build-to-order upgrade prices. According to that list, a fully loaded 27-inch iMac will cost an eye-watering $4,249, before tax: Base price, 27-inch iMac, 3.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i5, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 675MX video card, 1TB HDD, 8GB RAM:  $1,999 Upgrade to 3.5GHz Intel Core i7:  $200 Upgrade to NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX video card:  $150 Upgrade to 768GB SSD:  $1,300 Upgrade to 32GB of RAM:  $600 Tossing in 6 percent for a guess at sales tax (obviously, this varies by state and even city) yields a grand total of  $4,503.94  for an iMac with every single upgrade box checked. Hope you brought a second pair of underwear… preferably one stuffed with $100 bills. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Fully loaded new 27-inch iMac will cost over $4,200—before tax

Pro-Iranian hackers stole data from UN atomic agency’s server

The United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency has admitted that data from a retired server at its Vienna headquarters was stolen and posted to a hacker website. A group calling itself Parastoo allegedly stole the data in an effort to draw attention to Israel’s nuclear weapons program and as a protest against attacks on Iran’s nuclear efforts—including the use of the Stuxnet worm and assassinations of Iranian nuclear researchers. A Pastebin posting on November 25 by someone purporting to represent the group (which takes its name from the Farsi name for the swallow) listed the e-mail addresses of physicists and other experts that had consulted with the IAEA. The message urged the people whose addresses were listed to petition the IAEA to investigate “activities at Dimona”—the site of Israel’s Negev Nuclear Research Center, which is widely believed to be the center of Israel’s nuclear weapons production efforts. “We would like to assert that we have evidences [sic] showing there are beyond-harmful operations taking place at this site and the above list who technically help IAEA could be considered a partner in crime should an accident happen there,” the statement read. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Pro-Iranian hackers stole data from UN atomic agency’s server

Homeland Security spent $430M on radios its employees don’t know how to use

Nick Getting the agencies responsible for national security to communicate better was one of the main reasons the Department of Homeland Security was created after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. But according to a recent report from the department’s inspector general, one aspect of this mission remains far from accomplished. DHS has spent $430 million over the past nine years to provide radios tuned to a common, secure channel to 123,000 employees across the country. Problem is, no one seems to know how to use them. Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Homeland Security spent $430M on radios its employees don’t know how to use

Romney campaign got its IT from Best Buy, Staples, and friends

http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulhami/ Imagine you’re launching a company and only have six months to deliver a product. You face a competitor that has been in your industry four years longer than you with twice your staff and twice the budget. If you don’t make your deadline, you’re out of business. That, in a nutshell, was the situation facing the technology team for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. The Obama for America (OFA) organization had the advantage: it didn’t have to wade through the primary season first, allowing OFA’s technology team to focus on building an infrastructure. Based on an Ars analysis of the Romney campaign’s financial reports, Romney’s team had less to work with and passed the lion’s share of technology-focused spending directly to advertising companies and telemarketers. This left Team Romney’s tech squad with only a fraction of the budget for consulting, services, and infrastructure. So, the campaign did what a lot of small businesses would do: they went to Best Buy. Or more accurately, they went to Best Buy’s subsidiary, MindShift Technologies, a managed service provider that specializes in small and medium business consulting. And when they were in a pinch for tech help, they called Staples’ subsidiary ThriveNetworks and a collection of small consulting firms with links to Romney and the Republican Party. Read 14 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Romney campaign got its IT from Best Buy, Staples, and friends

Internet Explorer 10 finally comes to Windows 7

The tenth major version of Internet Explorer has been available to users of Windows 8 for months , in both the operating system’s pre-release days and since it hit retail on October 26. But while Microsoft declared IE10 ready to go for Windows 8, users of Windows 7 could not download the browser—until today. Even now, Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 7 is only available in a ” Release Preview .” It’s the first preview of IE10 to be usable on Windows 7 since last year’s Platform Preview . But what’s available today is a version of IE10 that is presumably ready for daily use, as installing it replaces the user’s previous version of Internet Explorer. IE10 is only for Windows 7 and Windows 8. The reason for the staggered releases hasn’t been confirmed, but as we noted in an article last month , “The extra time required for Windows 7 may be due to underlying platform differences—Windows 8 supports Direct3D 11.1, compared to 11.0 on Windows 7, for example. So if Internet Explorer 10 depends on Direct3D 11.1 features, either that dependence has to be removed, or Direct3D 11.1 has to be ported to Windows 7.” Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Internet Explorer 10 finally comes to Windows 7