Scary things that go bump in the night are actually happening to computer systems that matter and it’s only going to get worse. Here’s what I think will happen in 2012.

Security Prediction 2012

Malicious Android apps will increase
As a target for malicious software, Android is the Microsoft of the mobile platform. Android has more than 50 percent of the smartphone market, eclipsing all others, so it’s the most attractive platform for scammers to target. While iPhone apps get vetted by Apple, Google’s open apps store model, which lacks code signing and a review process, makes it easy to distribute malware in apps.

The numbers bear this out. In the last six months, the number of malicious Android apps has doubled to 1,000, a report from mobile security firm Lookout says. Granted the vast majority of the malware–often disguised as legitimate apps–is found on third-party sites. But some malicious apps have made it to the Android Market. Google yanked about two dozen apps containing malware in May and nearly 60 malicious apps in March. (That’s not counting the nearly 30 apps pulled in December that appeared to be designed for fraud.)

Google moves quickly when problems are reported, but removing apps after-the-fact means there may be users who have downloaded them already. To be fair, the likelihood that the average Android user will encounter malware is very, very slim because most people avoid third-party sites where they are required to allow apps from unknown sources to be downloaded, and are thus assuming the risk. The hot apps market, in general, is problematic because mobile developers typically don’t have experience creating secure software. So keep your eye on this space.

A(nother) utility will get hacked
Hacking of corporate and government networks happens all the time. Now that SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) systems used in utilities and other critical infrastructure environments are being connected to the Internet, without the built-in security that traditional information technology networks have, it should come as no surprise that hackers will make their way in to areas where they conceivably could cause real harm to the environment and people.

The first wake-up call for the industry was the Stuxnet malware that emerged last year that appeared to have been designed to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program. Then a leaked report in November appeared to be the first acknowledgement of a cyberattack on a U.S. critical infrastructure system, but the Department of Homeland Security denied that there had been an attack and ultimately it turned out to have been a false alarm.

However, an unnamed hacker claimed to have remotely breached a system at a Texas water plant, as well as systems in Europe. That investigation was pending. It’s clear hackers are targeting these sensitive and critical systems, for whatever reason. Given how easy it is to find SCADA equipment with just a Google search, all the holes the SCADA systems seem to have, and that researchers say it is relatively easy to exploit the weaknesses, you can expect more attacks on critical infrastructure systems in the coming year. Whether they will make it to the news or be kept a secret, is another thing.

E-voting machines will have security hiccups
We’re heading into an election year so that means get ready for the quadrennial voting snafus. Previous national elections have seen their share of problems with e-voting machines–votes not being recorded accurately and not allowing for adequate auditing, among other problems.

Even in the last election in 2008, a security flaw deleted votes from a computer database in one county in California, and there were reports of machine malfunctions in Pennsylvania and Virginia and mis-recorded votes in Ohio. Despite the problems , the machines may not be all that much improved by this coming election. Researchers warned in September that it is still possible for fraudsters to sneak hardware into an e-voting system that could be used to remotely change votes after they have been cast. If that fails, there’s always the Supreme Court.

People will continue over-sharing despite the privacy ramifications
This next prediction is a no-brainer, but it touches so many of our lives that to ignore it would be silly. We have become a society of sharing to the detriment of our personal privacy.

Social media provides a way for me to share every aspect of my life with people, from where I went to school to what restaurant I’m dining at tonight to who my friends are and what my pet looks like. The ego prompts us to accept all the friend requests and seek more followers, and to bombard them with more details of our lives than anyone needs to know. We also are unknowingly revealing sensitive information, such as when we post photos containing GPS coordinates without realizing that the shot of my home can easily lead strangers’ to my doorstep.

Companies like Facebook are offering increased integration so that my activities on the site and elsewhere are automatically shared with others. So now I can see what music my friends are listening to and what articles they are reading right now. But advertisers are privy to more information about us collectively, and me individually as well. Many people don’t care if they see ads targeted to their tastes and lifestyle, but I doubt most of them really want to be blasting their commuting route, work hours, and up-to-the-minute whereabouts to the world.

Companies need to better explain the privacy implications of the new features they offer, but consumers need to be asking themselves questions before they push “post,” such as “Do I care if people I don’t know or enemies are able to see this?”

Hacktivists will form a new 99 Percent Party
There’s no doubt that 2011 can be called the Year of the Hackers. The Anonymous movement and its offshoots, notably LulzSec, gained fame and notoriety for their denial-of-service attacks and data breaches on a host of targets. From Sony and the CIA to bankers, police officers, and Fox News, the attacks were a daily occurrence for months. With the emergence of the Occupy Wall Street protests, Anonymous actions became more organized and focused on a cause–political protest of financial inequality and corporate influence–and inclusive, online and offline.

The faceless hacktivists in Anonymous joined scores of everyday people to demonstrate in squares throughout the world and put a face, many faces, on the crisis of poverty and economic injustice. The Anons, as they call themselves, have ownership in the larger political movement and could provide the technical skills and online organization needed to create a new party that appeals not just to the tech-savvy Gen Y-ers, but to their parents and grandparents who are struggling to make ends meet.

By : Elinor Mills , CNET

Granted, we may not be able to lift a spaceship out of a swamp like Yoda does in The Empire Strikes Back, but it is possible to steer a model car, drive a wheelchair and control a robotic exoskeleton with just your thoughts.

“The first thing is to clear your mind…to think of nothing,” says Ed Jellard; a young man with the quirky title of senior inventor.

We are standing in a testing room at IBM’s Emerging Technologies lab in Winchester, England.

On my head is a strange headset that looks like a black plastic squid. Its 14 tendrils, each capped with a moistened electrode, are supposed to detect specific brain signals.

In front of us is a computer screen, displaying an image of a floating cube.

As I think about pushing it, the cube responds by drifting into the distance.

Admittedly, the system needed a fair bit of pre-training to achieve this single task. But it has, nonetheless, learned to associate a specific thought pattern with a particular movement.

The headset, which was developed by Australian company Emotiv for the games industry, has been around for some time. But it is only now that companies such as IBM are beginning to harness the wealth of data that it can provide.

Using software developed in-house, researchers have linked the Emotiv to devices such as a model car, a light switch and a television.

Control signals come from two main sources; electroencephalography (EEG) measurements of brain activity, and readings of nerve impulses as they travel outwards to the muscles.

Restoring movement

New techniques for processing such information are enabling sophisticated real world applications.

Already the team has used the system to help a patient with locked-in syndrome, whose healthy, active mind became trapped in a motionless body following a stroke.

“We linked the headset to the IBM middleware, and when he pushed the cube on the screen, that behaved like a click of the mouse – so he was able to use the computer,” explained IBM’s Kevin Brown.

Many commercial mind control technologies are designed to restore physical ability to those who have lost it.

At Switzerland’s Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), researchers have applied brain-computer interface technology to create thought-controlled wheelchairs and telepresence robots.

“A disabled patient who can’t move can instead navigate such a robot around his house to participate in the social life of the family,” explains the team leader, Professor Jose del Millan.

“To do that, a helmet detects the intention of some physical movement and translates it into action.”

Japanese company Cyberdyne is helping people who cannot walk to regain mobility by dressing them in a full-body robotic suit called Hal.

Just as some of IBM’s readings come from nerve impulses, rather than brain waves, Cyberdyne uses tiny sensors on the limbs to measure the subject’s intention to move, even if the physical act is impossible.

The robot body responds by moving its arms or legs. Webcams and computer screens enabling the user to pilot their machine and communicate with friends and family through their proxy body.

Outside the healthcare field, another implementation, being developed by EPFL in partnership with car maker Nissan, is an intelligent vehicle that can use brainwave data.

Supported by numerous external sensors and cameras, brain wave sensors read what the driver is planning to do next.

Having anticipated their intentions, the car takes over, eliminating the need for tedious and time consuming physical movement.

For those who prefer pedal power, Toyota is working with Saatchi & Saatchi, Parlee Cycles and DeepLocal to develop a bicycle which can shift gear based on its rider’s thoughts.

Suits and microchips

Headsets and helmets offer cheap, easy-to-use ways of tapping into the mind. But there are other, more invasive techniques being developed.

At Brown Institute for Brain Science in the US, scientists are busy inserting chips right into the human brain.

The technology, dubbed BrainGate, sends mental commands directly to a PC.

Subjects still have to be physically “plugged” into a computer via cables coming out of their heads, in a setup reminiscent of the film The Matrix. However, the team is now working on miniaturising the chips and making them wireless.

BrainGate is developing ways of using the output to control a computer cursor, on-screen keyboard, and even manipulate robotic arms.

After testing it on monkeys, the scientists have now started human trials. Lead researcher Prof John Donoghue hopes that one day, his groundbreaking research will help people with spinal cord injuries or locked-in syndrome to walk again just by thinking of moving their limbs.

Robot warriors?

But extracting information from the brain, be it by internal or external sensors, is only part of the story.

Much of the current research effort is looking at how to efficiently process and utilise the vast streams of data that the brain produces.

Turning analogue thoughts into digital information links human beings directly to electronic information networks, such as the internet. The brain becomes yet another sensor to be analysed and interrogated.

And as techniques for crunching that output get more sophisticated, the technology it drives will move beyond simple device control.

“People like data,” said IBM’s Ed Jellard. “So if you can see patterns of data, the geekier people will be very interested to see what is going on in their brain and how it is changing over time.

“I would be interest to know if my brain is getting stronger and if I have more intense thoughts. Things like that could be useful.”

While it is possible to translate brain waves into machine processable data, there remains something unique and special about those signals that rocket around inside our skulls.

They are not the same as lasers in a fibre optic cable or electrons in a microprocessor, and tapping the mind will raise philosophical and ethical questions, according to Prof Noel Sharkey.

“Once the military get a hold of it, they will push it very hard,” he explains.

“At the moment they are filling the airspace in Afghanistan with drones that only one person can control – but if they get the helmets well enough developed, they’ll be able to control a number of planes or robot warriors directly with their thoughts.”

There are also questions about what form cyber crime would take in the age of the wired mind?

“Imagine some kind of a wireless computer device in your head that you’ll use for mind control – what if people hacked into that, what could they do to you and your property?,” continues Prof Sharkey.

“And what if you are forced to wear a device and someone controls you with his thoughts, making you do things?…”

The possibilities, both positive and negative, are literally mind boggling.

*) By Katia Moskvitch : Technology reporter, BBC News

Kabel Bawah Laut

Mungkin belum banyak yang mengetahui bahwa di dasar lautan Indonesia terbentang koneksi dengan kapasitas 40 Gbps. Koneksi itu tersedia di kabel laut sepanjang 354 kilometer milik PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia (Telkom) yang baru di-upgrade oleh Nokia Siemens Network.

Kapasitas bandwidth kabel laut itu, disebutkan dalam keterangan pers dari NSN, adalah sebesar 40 gigabit per detik (40 Gbps) per kanal. Jalur ini tersedia sebagai bagian dari kabel bawah laut Jasuka (Jawa-Sumatera-Kalimantan) antara Dumai dan Dangas.

NSN mengklaim jaringan optik itu merupakan koneksi 40G tanpa amplifier terpanjang di dunia yang saat ini beroperasi. Kapasitas 40G ini merupakan peningkatan sekitar 16 kali lipat dari kapasitas sebelumnya di jalur yang sama.

Sebelum merasa bakal memiliki koneksi yang “superlega”, pengguna perlu tahu bahwa jalur itu tidak hanya dipakai untuk data, tetapi juga untuk trafik suara, baik tetap maupun bergerak.

Tak hanya dari PT Telkom. Jalur itu juga digunakan oleh operator-operator utama lain di Indonesia.

David Bangun, Executive General Manager Telecommunication Infrastructure Division PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia, mengatakan, ini adalah bagian dari visi jangka panjang Nusantara Super Highway.

Visi itu, ujar David, bermaksud menghadirkan koneksi “broadband sungguhan” ke 90 persen ibu kota kabupaten di Indonesia pada 2015.

“Kabel bawah laut Jasuka sangat penting bagi konektivitas internasional dan kami merasa sudah waktunya untuk meningkatkan kapasitas juga,” kata David.

Salman Zafar, Head of PT Telkom Customer Team Nokia Siemens Networks, mengatakan, kebutuhan Indonesia untuk broadband makin tinggi. Jalur ini bisa menjadi salah satu cara Telkom memenuhinya.

Dalam hal ini, NSN menyediakan solusi dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM), yang terdiri atas platform jaringan optikal hiT 7300, yang merupakan bagian dari arsitektur Liquid Transport.

Sumber

Maybe he’s listening, because Kojima plans to go in a new direction with his next big project.

“The kind of game I’m making is some game that has a very wide entrance, a very open entrance,” Kojima said through a translator in a phone interview with CNN last week. “Rather than making something very cinematic, [I plan to] make something very free.”

"Metal Gear" creator Hideo Kojima posted this picture to Twitter of a game project in development.

Among gamers worldwide, and especially in Japan where Kojima Productions and publisher Konami are based, Kojima is treated like a rock star. Often dressed in a slick leather jacket, he gets swarmed by fans at conventions, and people pick apart his every word and tweet for clues about the next secret-agent action game in the “Metal Gear” series.

One such Twitter frenzy broke out a few days ago when Kojima posted pictures from a mysterious war game to his 131,000 followers. He wrote that the images demonstrate some of the advancements made in game-development software, made by his team, that allow for translucent clothing, realistic dust particles and other fancy effects.

The pictures are set in a sandy, mountainous region, perhaps somewhere in the Middle East, with soldiers and tanks. They do not look quite like a “Metal Gear” game, which have led many fans to speculate that this is the first peek at Kojima’s next big thing.

Kojima has called his upcoming game Project Ogre. In the interview, he described it as being set in a very open world where players can wander around and explore freely. Players should still be able to find new sights and worthwhile adventures after having played the game for as many as 100 hours, he said.

By contrast, recent “Metal Gear” games have followed very linear paths, going back to the original on the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1987.

For example, “Metal Gear Solid 4″ for the PlayStation 3 takes players from Afghanistan to Alaska in a lengthy, action-packed, professionally narrated story, but there is little room to stray from the trail. People do not quite know what to expect from “Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance,” next year’s game, which was developed by an outside studio with less direction from Kojima.

In a recent interview with the UK’s Official PlayStation Magazine, Kojima described Project Ogre’s tone as “subdued,” and the experience as similar on the surface but essentially different from his past projects. Project Ogre will not be completed for some time, and Kojima will continue to produce other games, he said.

Source

Mobile phone on airplane

Electronics in flight? Absolutely.

It may no longer be necessary to turn off your electronic gadgets while flying, a new study suggests. in fact, electronic gizmos, from smartphones to iPads, are an increasingly crucial part of how modern pilots fly the friendly skies.

Ernesto Martinez has been a pilot for 7 years; he told Fox40.com that thanks to maps, airplane and airport information, approach planes, and sectionals, no tool has made flying easier than his iPad.

“All that information is pre-loaded into the iPad so there is no communicating through Wi-Fi or the cellphone network — so it’s really not sending any cellphone signal,” he said.

Martinez isn’t alone: Both American and United Airlines pilots use iPads in the cockpit, Fox40.com reported, which raises questions as to why passengers can’t use them.

And passengers — including “Words With Friends” fan Alec Baldwin — have recognized that fact. And they’ve been using electronics in droves.

A new investigation by USA Today found that a large percentage of people don’t follow the rules and leave their electronic devices on during take off, flight and landing. FOX40 found people even willing to admit to it.

“Everyone kind of disobeys it. I’ve even heard from flight attendants that it doesn’t do anything,” said one passenger.

But Martinez says otherwise.

“If you have a large aircraft and there are many people on their phones, it can get into the cockpit,” said Martinez.

The study looks at hundreds of documents that found electronic devices give off electromagnetic interference, but that the amount is small.

Source

Tests showed small microcapsules filled with liquid metal healed fractures in a gold circuit restoring conductivity

The group has created a circuit that heals itself when cracked thanks to the release of liquid metal which restores conductivity.

The process takes less than an eye blink to bring the circuit back to use.

The researchers said that their work could eventually lead to longer-lasting gadgets as well as solving one of the big problems of interplanetary travel.

The work was carried out by a team of scientists and engineers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is published in the journal Advanced Materials.

The process works by exploiting the stress that causes the initial damage in the chips to break open tiny reservoirs of a healing material that fills in the resulting gaps, restoring electrical flow.

Cracked circuits

To test their theory the team patterned lines of gold onto glass to form a circuit.

They then either placed microcapsules 0.01mm wide directly onto the lines or added a thin laminate into which they embedded larger 0.2mm microcapsules.

In both cases the microcapsules contained eutectic gallium-indium – a metallic material chosen for its high conductivity and low melting point.

This device was then sandwiched between another layer of glass and acrylic and connected to electricity.

The researchers then bent the circuit until it cracked causing the monitored voltage to fall to zero.

They said the ruptured microcapsules then healed most of the test circuits within one millisecond and restored nearly all of the measured voltage.

The smaller capsules healed the device every time but were a little less conductive than the larger ones which had a slightly lower success rate. The team suggested that a mix of differently sized capsules would therefore give the best result.

The devices were then monitored for four months during which time the researchers said there was no loss of conductivity.

Safe space travel

The leader of the group said the theory could prove a boon to the space industry.

“The only avenue one has right now is to simply remove that circuitry when it fails and replace it- there is no way to manually go in and fix something like this,” aerospace engineering professor Scott White told the BBC.

The research team hope to adapt the process to create longer lasting rechargeable batteries

“I think the real application area that you’ll see for something like this is in electronics which are incredibly difficult to repair or replace – think about satellites or interplanetary travel where it’s physically impossible to swap out something.”

The research is an offshoot of the university’s research into extending the lifetime of rechargeable batteries.

The reason current systems fail after repeated use is often because microdamage inside the devices has disrupted the conductive flow of electrons from one end of the batteries to the other.

The team said that if they could solve the problem electric car batteries might last years longer than they do at present, making the vehicles much cheaper to maintain.

Greener gadgets

The group also claimed that the technique had the potential to offer more sustainable consumer electronic devices.

Professor White gave the example of mobile phone buttons that stopped working if repeated use had caused cracks in the circuitry below. He said self-healing systems would extend handsets’ lifespans.

When asked whether profit-driven electronics makers would want this he replied: “I believe any company would want to provide their customer with the best performing product and if they don’t, then other companies will step into the market to provide it.

“Basically what you see is that electronics are cycled now to give you added functionality.

“Maybe the way to do this is not to physically build new circuits and packages every time, but let’s have longer lasting ones.

“Then the redesigns can be more software based or functionality driven, saving us from using up our precious resources by building millions of cellphones every year.”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16291943

VIVAnews – Lawatan Wakil Presiden China, Xi Jinping, ke Hanoi, Vietnam, pada Rabu lalu diwarnai sedikit insiden. Sebabnya, anak-anak kecil yang menyambut kedatangan Xi di istana kepresidenan mengibarkan bendera China yang jumlah bintangnya salah.

Bendera China seharusnya memiliki lima bintang berwarna kuning, dengan rincian satu bintang besar dikelilingi empat bintang kecil. Namun seperti dilansir kantor berita BBC Kamis, 22 Desember 2011, anak-anak Vietnam di istana mengibarkan bendera China dengan bintang berlebih, yaitu enam bintang.

Peristiwa ini tak pelak memicu kehebohan di kalangan masyarakat Vietnam, terutama para pengguna internet. Salah satu blogger menyebut peristiwa ini sebagai kesalahan diplomatik berat, sementara yang lainnya bertanya-tanya mengapa China tidak mempermasalahkan bendera yang salah itu.

Tujuan kedatangan Xi ke Hanoi saat itu adalah untuk mempererat hubungan diplomatik kedua negara. Pihak berwenang Vietnam hingga saat ini belum memberikan komentar atas insiden tersebut.

Insiden bendera China yang salah di Vietnam bukan sekali ini terjadi. Oktober lalu, stasiun televisi Vietnam, VTV1, pernah menyiarkan bendera China dengan jumlah bintang yang salah.

Selain itu, insiden serupa juga pernah terjadi pada upacara penyambutan delegasi China di Delhi, India, pada 2006. Jumlah bintang yang ada di bendera juga berjumlah enam, bukannya lima.

http://dunia.vivanews.com/news/read/274504-vietnam-salah-desain-bendera-china

The security advisory that comes with the release of the latest version of the popular web browser, Firefox 9, reveals that a number of four critical, a high and a moderate impact security vulnerabilities were fixed.

A critical one refers to the fact that the application crashes when a video is scaled to extreme sizes. Other flaws were caused by miscellaneous memory safety hazards, a potentially exploitable crash in the YARR regular expression library, and a nsSVGValue out-of-bounds access.

All these security holes could have allowed an attacker to execute arbitrary code and install software without the user ever noticing.

The high risk vulnerabilities, that may have been utilized to gather sensitive data from sites or inject data or code into those sites, were caused by a crash that occurred when a plug-in removed itself on Mac OS X.

The moderate flaw, which may have very well been a high or a critical flaw if it didn’t require too much user interaction or non-default configurations, referred to a key detection without JavaScript via and SVG animation.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Firefox-9-Comes-with-Four-Critical-Vulnerability-Fixes-242100.shtml

Greg Kroah-Hartman proudly announced a few hours ago, December 21st, that another maintenance version of the stable Linux kernel 3.1 is available for download and all users should upgrade to it.

Linux kernel 3.1.6 incorporates various DRM drivers, ALSA sound drivers, lots of ARM and USB improvements, as well as EXT4 and CIFS fixes.

“I’m announcing the release of the 3.1.6 kernel. All users of the 3.1 kernel series must upgrade. The updated 3.1.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-3.1.y and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser: http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git;a=summary” – said Greg KH in the email.

Just in time for Christmas, Linux kernel 3.1.6 is a must-grab upgrade for all users of the Linux 3.1 kernel stable series!

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Linux-kernel-3-1-6-Is-Available-for-Download-242401.shtml

Taiwan

CEO HTC Peter Chou mengemukakan hal ini kepada media di kantor pusat HTC di Taiwan. Namun dia menolak menjelaskan lebih lanjut mengenai detail smartphone terbaru HTC tersebut.

Ditemani Senior Vice President Mobile Google Andy Rubin yang kebetulan sedang menghadiri pertemuan di kantor HTC, Chou mengatakan perusahaannya akan bekerja sama dengan Google untuk melindungi diri dari ‘serangan’ yang mencegah inovasi.

“Industri ini tidak akan membiarkan satu perusahaan menggunakan kekuasaannya untuk menghentikan yang lain dalam berinovasi, ini tidak adil,” kata Chou seperti dikutip detikINET, Rabu (21/12/2011).

Seperti diketahui, pekan ini Apple memenangkan sebagian sengketa hak patennya dengan HTC di Amerika Serikat (AS). Dengan kemenangan ini, handset Android HTC yang dianggap melanggar paten Apple dilarang diimpor ke negeri Paman Sam.

Meski demikian, HTC tampaknya tidak keberatan bahkan menganggap keputusan ini juga sebagai kemenangan bagi mereka. HTC berjanji segera menghilangkan elemen yang melanggar paten Apple dari produknya dan menggantinya dengan menjual produk yang sudah tidak terdapat elemen tersebut.

Respons HTC yang kalem ini pun berbuah manis dengan naiknya harga saham mereka di bursa saham Taiwan beberapa saat setelah putusan dijatuhkan. Saham HTC naik 6,93 persen di angka 509 dolar Taiwan, titik tertinggi di sesi perdagangan tersebut, setelah sebelumnya juga mengalami kenaikan pada sesi perdagangan saham Selasa.

Sumber : http://de.tk/qJik1