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Boot up: Android's 'pileup' flaw, NFC's US struggle, mobile gaming worldwide, and more
[March 21, 2014]

Boot up: Android's 'pileup' flaw, NFC's US struggle, mobile gaming worldwide, and more


(Guardian Web Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) A burst of 9 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team Pileup flaws: vulnerabilities in Android update make 97.5% of Android devices vulnerable >> Indiana University/Microsoft A very sneaky vulnerability: We further confirmed the presence of the issues in all AOSP (Android Open Source Project) versions and 3,522 source code versions customized by Samsung, LG and HTC across the world. Those flaws affect all the Android devices worldwide, posing serious threats to billions of Android users who are actually encouraged to update their systems.



A distinctive feature of the threat is that the attack is not aimed at a vulnerability in the current system. Instead, it exploits the flaws in the updating mechanism of the "future" OS, which the current system will be upgraded to. More specifically, through the app running on a lower version Android, the adversary can strategically claim a set of carefully selected privileges or attributes only available on the higher OS version. For example, the app can define a new system permission such as android.permission.READ_PROFILE (read the user's personal profile data) on Android 2.3.6, which is to be added on 4.0.x.

So you install an app on an early version and it silently gets permission to do bad things once your phone is updated.


Google to get the brunt of dual OS tablets while Microsoft to benefit the most >> Digitimes Research Intel and Asustek Computer released dual OS tablets at CES 2014 that combine Windows and Android operating systems into one unit in an attempt to tackle a new segment in the tablet market. However, due to pressure from Google, Asustek has postponed plans to release its TD300 tablet that was presented at CES 2014. Digitimes Research believes dual system devices benefit Intel, PC vendors and Microsoft while Google will get the brunt of such developments due to a possible increase in the Windows penetration rate.

Scrappy underdog Microsoft? Pressure from Google? Isis CTO accuses retailers of turning off NFC and smartcard payment tech >> Computerworld Matt Hamblen: a powerful group of retailers including Best Buy and 7-Eleven plans to roll out mobile payments in 2014 by scanning barcodes from smartphones. That move sets up a potential battle with backers of NFC (Near Field Comunication), including a joint venture of three wireless carriers called Isis, and Google Wallet.

The merchant venture, called Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX), hasn't divulged specific plans. But in December, it announced that ExxonMobil had joined its ranks, bringing MCX membership to about 70 brands with 110,000 retail locations that process more than $1 trillion in payments a year. Other members include Walmart, Sears, Kohl's, Lowe's, Dunkin' Donuts and other national retailers.

Adding to the turf battle now building over mobile payments, a few national retailers who are MCX members have begun turning off the ability of recently-upgraded payment terminals to recognize NFC payments or read smart credit and debit cards embedded with a chip, according to several industry analysts and Isis CTO Scott Mulloy.

So there are three groups: MCX, Isis, and Google Wallet. The latter two differ on how to implement NFC payments. The first doesn't want NFC. In 2013, NFC transactions across the US totalled $188m - £114m. Recall that NFC transactions in the UK in 2013 were £618m. NFC just isn't happening in the US.

Throne of Games: Apple or Google? Depends where you live >> Bloomberg Apple is the winner in Japan, but that's not the same as a victory in China. There are 251m iOS and Android devices used for playing games in China, according to Flurry. In Japan, there are 33m. The US. is closer, at 238m, but it's not growing as fast as China.

"It's pretty clear that the age of Android global dominance is here," [Torrey] Lincoln [senior director of Flurry games business development] said. "Worldwide, the future for Android looks bright." More volume doesn't always mean more profits, and that extends to game developers. The average price of an Android app is 6 cents, Flurry said. For Apple products, it's 19 cents on the iPhone and 50 cents on the iPad.

Can we have an open phone please? The case of the Ubuntu Phone >> Privacy International [W]hen Canonical, the company that primarily funds Ubuntu GNU/Linux, announced it was entering the mobile phone market, we were among the many who hailed this development. Given the company's track record, it was believed that the open-source philosophy of Ubuntu would carry through to their mobile phone version. In light of what we now know about the fallibility of mobile phones, which can enable highly invasive and mass surveillance, the need for this kind of phone has only increased recently.

However, despite hopes of a totally open mobile handset platform, Privacy International has learned from Canonical that their new phone will suffer from the same problems as their competitors by leaving the baseband closed. While the operating system of the phone will be open, without the ability of the security community to examine the baseband software of the new Ubuntu Phone, the open-source nature of the remaining element may provide no more assurances than other open-source phone operating systems such as Android.

Reason: it's from third parties. There's no open baseband software (yet).

First annual profit drop in 14 years spurs China Mobile spending on 4G >> Reuters China Mobile executives also hinted that sales of the iPhone, which analysts had expected to reach at least 17m units in the first year after the launch, are well below expectations.

"Most of our 1.34 million 4G users are using an iPhone," said China Mobile Chairman Xi Guohua. "It's just been getting started for one or two months. So far it's hard to tell how that will affect our business," he said.

A scrappy band finds a way to make Spotify pay for its silence >> Businessweek Vulfpeck, a small-time funk band with a couple of retro-styled albums under its belt, recently released Sleepify, an album made up of nothing but silence. This isn't a completely new concept: Anyone with a pompous theory streak will insist that it's really the silence between the notes that matter—and congratulations if you're already thinking of John Cage's 4'33," a composition performed by sitting there without playing.

But Vulfpeck's latest album is a business experiment, not a musical one. The idea behind the project is for fans to stream the "songs" constantly, generating royalties for the band in their spare time.

Mapping the accessibility of London's public transit network >> Mappable Info How the London Underground network looks if you're a wheelchair user. A clever (but not perfect) visualisation - really you'd want to remove the intermediate stations altogether.

Clientcopia : Coping with stupid clients : Quotes, Comments & Remarks Nigel Moss: I was doing some temporary work in a Government Dept that will remain nameless... Department-wide they had something in the region of 80,000 employees and so their internal mail servers were often quite busy. One day an email arrived in my inbox that had been sent to everyone from someone in the IT department. The email was about how "they understood that little images and smiley faces, cartoons etc can make otherwise dull office emails seem a little more friendly, but they do add some 'weight' to the emails, which can put some strain on the Department's email servers, so please follow these guidelines when sending out global emails"...

Click through for the punchline.

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