Uber: Hack us and we’ll give you up to $10,000

Today, Uber — the site with a bit of an image problem when it comes to security — opened the doors on its bug bounty program and promised payouts of up to $10,000.

The program has very specific examples of what qualifies for a reward, such as cross-site scripting (XSS), SQL injection, server-side remote code execution (RCE) and others. You can find what it it is, and isn’t, looking for here. Or, you can peruse the company’s blog post for information about specific technologies in use across several Uber Web properties, including:

• https://*.uber.com/
• https://*.dev.uber.com/
• http://petition.uber.org
• http://ubermovement.com
• iPhone Rider Application
• iPhone Partner Application
• Android Rider Application
• Android Partner Application

If you find a bug, you'll be paid $3,000 to $10,000 for issues for one of the items on its hit list, or you'll get a nice firm pat on the back if you find an issue related to fraud, as Uber isn't currently rewarding those who find fraud issues.

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Bengaluru-based hacker Anand Prakash finds bug in Facebook login system; rewarded $15000

Bengaluru-based Anand Prakash found a vulnerability on Facebook which could have been used to hack into any user account easily without any user interaction. This could give full access to view messages, credit/debit cards stored under payment section, personal photos and much more.

According to a post on Prakash’s blog, he stated that, “Whenever a user forgets his password on Facebook, he has an option to reset the password by entering his phone number/email address and Facebook will then send a 6 digit code on his phone number/email address, which can be used in order to set a new password.” He added that he tried to brute the 6 digit code on Facebook and was blocked after 10-12 invalid attempts.



Prakash looked out for the same issue on beta.facebook.com and mbasic.beta.facebook.com and found that rate limiting was missing on ‘forgot password’ endpoints. He tried to takeover his own account and was successful in setting new password for it as well. With this method, he could then use the same password to login in the account.

Facebook, on its part, acknowledged the issue promptly and fixed it. The hacker was rewarded $15,000 (approximately Rs 10 lakh) considering the severity and impact of the vulnerability.

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Want to brick your iPhone? Set the date to January 1st, 1970

If anyone asks you to set the date on your iOS device to January 1st, 1970, DON’T! A recently discovered bug in devices running the 64-bit version of iOS will render your device useless for a while.

Since the bug only seems to affect iOS devices, the most popular, and most probable, theory by far is one that suggests a bug in the UNIX core of iOS. While trying to avoid sounding too technical, the theory is that since UNIX measures time from January 1st, 1970, setting the date to that value when in a different time zone might cause the date value to go below zero. Since UNIX, and by extension, iOS, can’t read a negative date, the device will get stuck.

So far, the only reliable way to recover the device is to either go to an Apple Certified service centre and have the battery removed and reinstalled. You can try to reinstall the battery yourself, but woe be you if you damage the TouchID sensor. Another less reliable option is to turn off the device and wait for a few hours.

Every device running 64-bit iOS is affected but luckily, a simple software update should fix it. The entire list of 64-bit iOS devices comprise of the 6th gen iPod touch, every iPhone from the iPhone 5S onwards, every iPad from the iPad Air and iPad Mini 2 onwards.

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How 95% of Android Phones Can Be Hacked with a Single Text

A new Android vulnerability has the security world worried – and it leaves your Android phone extremely vulnerable. The issue comes in the form of six bugs in an innocuous Android module called StageFright, which is used for media playback.

The StageFright bugs allow a malicious MMS, sent by a hacker, to execute malicious code inside the StageFright module. From there, the code has a number of options for gaining control of the device. As of right now, something like 950 million devices are vulnerable to this exploit.
It is, simply put, the worst Android vulnerability in history.

Silent Takeover

Android users are already growing upset about the breach, and for good reason. A quick scan of Twitter shows many irate users popping up as the news permeates the web.

From what I hear, even Nexus devices haven't been given a patch for #Stagefright. Has any phone? http://t.co/bnNRW75TrD

— Thomas Fox-Brewster (@iblametom) July 27, 2015

Part of what makes this attack so scary is that there’s little users can do to protect themselves against it. Likely, they wouldn’t even know that the attack has occurred.

Normally, to attack an Android device, you need to get the user to install a malicious app. This attack is different: the attacker would simply need to know your phone number, and send a malicious multimedia message.

Depending on which messaging app you use, you might not even know that the message arrived. For example: if your MMS messages go through Andoid’s Google Hangouts, the malicious message would be able to take control and hide itself before the system even alerted the user that it had arrived. In other cases, the exploit might not kick in until the message is actually viewed, but most users would simply write it off as harmless spam text or a wrong number.

Once inside the system, code running within StageFright automatically has access to the camera and microphone, as well as bluetooth peripherals, and any data stored on the SD card. That’s bad enough, but (unfortunately) it’s just the start.



While Android Lollipop implements a number of security improvements, most Android devices are still running older versions of the OS, and are vulnerable to something called a “privilege escalation attack.” Normally, Android apps are “sandboxed“, allowing them to access only those aspects of the OS that they’ve been granted explicit permission to use. Privilege escalation attacks allow malicious code to “trick” the Android operating system into giving it more and more access to the device.
Once the malicious MMS has taken control of StageFright, it could use these attacks to take total control over older, insecure Android devices. This is a nightmare scenario for device security. The only devices totally immune to this issue are those running operating systems older than Android 2.2 (Froyo), which is the version that introduced StageFright in the first place.

Slow Response

The StageFright vulnerability was originally uncovered in April by Zimperium zLabs, a group of security researchers. The researchers reported the issue to Google. Google quickly released a patch to manufacturers – however, very few device makers have actually pushed the patch to their devices. The researcher who discovered the bug, Joshua Drake, believes that about 950 million of the estimated one billion android devices in circulation are vulnerable to some form of the attack.

Yay! @BlackHatEvents graciously accepted my submission to speak about my research on @Android's StageFright! https://t.co/9BW4z6Afmg

— Joshua J. Drake (@jduck) May 20, 2015

Google’s own devices like the Nexus 6 have been partially patched according to Drake, although some vulnerabilities remain. In an email to FORBES on the subject, Google reassured users that,

“Most Android devices, including all newer devices, have multiple technologies that are designed to make exploitation more difficult. Android devices also include an application sandbox designed to protect user data and other applications on the device,”

However, this isn’t much comfort. Until Android Jellybean, the sandboxing in Android has been relatively weak, and there are several known exploits that can be used to get around it. It’s really crucial that manufacturers roll out a proper patch for this issue.

What Can You Do?

Unfortunately, hardware makers can be extremely slow to roll out these sorts of critical security patches. It’s certainly worth contacting your device manufacturer’s customer support department and asking for an estimate on when patches will be available. Public pressure will probably help speed things along.
For Drake’s part, he plans to reveal the full extent of his findings at DEFCON, an international security conference that takes place in early August. Hopefully, the added publicity will spur device manufacturers to release updates quickly, now that the attack is common knowledge.
On a broader note, this is a good example of why Android fragmentation is such a security nightmare.

Again it's a disaster that #Android updates are in the hands of the hardware manufacturers. Should harm Android seriously. #Stagefright

— Mike (@mipesom) July 27, 2015

On a locked-down ecosystem like iOS, a patch for this could be rushed out in hours. On Android, it may take months or years to get every device up to speed due to the enormous level of fragmentation. I’m interested to see what solutions Google comes up in the coming years to start to bring these security-vital updates out of device-makers’ hands.

Are you an Android user affected by this issue? Concerned about your privacy? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!

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Neither hacking nor cyber crimes, Pew study points to another bigger threat on the net

Those championing for free Internet will be glad to know that the new Pew study appears to be quite positive. However, the study also highlights some threats that could get worse by 2025.

In a study conducted by Pew, it asked around 1,400 technology experts about the biggest Internet threats in the next 20 years. These experts were academics, theorists and some industry experts in the tech space.

Pew asked a simple question to these experts and they had to answer either a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. It asked, ‘By 2025 will there be significant changes for the worse and hindrances to the ways in which people get and share content online compared with the way globally networked people can operate online today?” And out of the respondents, 35 percent said yes and 65 percent said no.

This was followed by another question, irrespective of the respondents said yes or no. It asked them what they believed to be the biggest threat that the Internet will face by 2015. The experts canvassed by Pew believe that the government and big online corporations are the biggest threat to the Internet, and not hacking or some other form of cyber war.

“We call this research study a canvassing because it is not a representative, randomized survey. Its findings emerge from an “opt in” invitation to thousands of experts who have been identified by researching those who are widely quoted as technology builders and analysts and those who have made insightful predictions to our previous queries about the future of the Internet,” Pew adds in the summary of the report.

Dave Burstein, editor of Fast Net News, responded, “Governments worldwide are looking for more power over the Net, especially within their own countries. Britain, for example, has just determined that ISPs block sites the government considers ‘terrorist’ or otherwise dangerous. This will grow. There will usually be ways to circumvent the obstruction but most people won’t bother.”

Several experts expressed concern that the Internet will be most affected by government policies like the ones limiting to the Web, filtering content and so on, as we have seen in the past. Citing examples of Internet censorship in Syria, China’s ‘Great Firewall’ and so on, the concerns were mostly about how there could be an increase in ‘blocking, filtering, segmentation and balkanization’ of the Internet.

Paul Saffo, managing director at Discern Analytics and consulting associate professor at Stanford University, said, “The pressures to balkanize the global Internet will continue and create new uncertainties. Governments will become more skilled at blocking access to unwelcome sites.”

Pointing at the recent incidents involving whistle blower Edward Snowden and snooping NSA, the report also highlights it could get difficult to trust big companies and the web.

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Java Code Review Checklist

Clean Code

Checklist Item	Category
Use Intention-Revealing Names	Meaningful Names
Pick one word per concept	Meaningful Names
Use Solution/Problem Domain Names	Meaningful Names
Classes should be small!	Classes
Functions should be small!	Functions
Do one Thing	Functions
Don't Repeat Yourself (Avoid Duplication)	Functions
Explain yourself in code	Comments
Make sure the code formatting is applied	Formatting
Use Exceptions rather than Return codes	Exceptions
Don't return Null	Exceptions

Security

Checklist Item	Category
Make class final if not being used for inheritance	Fundamentals
Avoid duplication of code	Fundamentals
Restrict privileges: Application to run with the least privilege mode required for functioning	Fundamentals
Minimize the accessibility of classes and members	Fundamentals
Document security related information	Fundamentals
Input into a system should be checked for valid data size and range	Denial of Service
Avoid excessive logs for unusual behavior	Denial of Service
Release resources (Streams, Connections, etc) in all cases	Denial of Service
Purge sensitive information from exceptions (exposing file path, internals of the system, configuration)	Confidential Information
Do not log highly sensitive information	Confidential Information
Consider purging highly sensitive from memory after use	Confidential Information
Avoid dynamic SQL, use prepared statement	Injection Inclusion
Limit the accessibility of packages,classes, interfaces, methods, and fields	Accessibility Extensibility
Limit the extensibility of classes and methods (by making it final)	Accessibility Extensibility
Validate inputs (for valid data, size, range, boundary conditions, etc)	Input Validation
Validate output from untrusted objects as input	Input Validation
Define wrappers around native methods (not declare a native method public)	Input Validation
Treat output from untrusted object as input	Mutability
Make public static fields final (to avoid caller changing the value)	Mutability
Avoid exposing constructors of sensitive classes	Object Construction
Avoid serialization for security-sensitive classes	Serialization Deserialization
Guard sensitive data during serialization	Serialization Deserialization
Be careful caching results of potentially privileged operations	Serialization Deserialization
Only use JNI when necessary	Access Control

Performance

Checklist Item	Category
Avoid excessive synchronization	Concurrency
Keep Synchronized Sections Small	Concurrency
Beware the performance of string concatenation	General Programming
Avoid creating unnecessary objects	Creating and Destroying Objects

General

Category	Checklist Item
Use checked exceptions for recoverable conditions and runtime exceptions for programming errors	Exceptions
Favor the use of standard exceptions	Exceptions
Don't ignore exceptions	Exceptions
Check parameters for validity	Methods
Return empty arrays or collections, not nulls	Methods
Minimize the accessibility of classes and members	Classes and Interfaces
In public classes, use accessor methods, not public fields	Classes and Interfaces
Minimize the scope of local variables	General Programming
Refer to objects by their interfaces	General Programming
Adhere to generally accepted naming conventions	General Programming
Avoid finalizers	Creating and Destroying Objects
Always override hashCode when you override equals	General Programming
Always override toString	General Programming
Use enums instead of int constants	Enums and Annotations
Use marker interfaces to define types	Enums and Annotations
Synchronize access to shared mutable data	Concurrency
Prefer executors to tasks and threads	Concurrency
Document thread safety	Concurrency
Valid JUnit / JBehave test cases exist	Testing

Static Code Analysis

Category	Checklist Item
Check static code analyzer report for the classes added/modified	Static Code Analysis

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Five Labs analyzes your Facebook posts to supposedly reveal your personality

A lot of people addicted to social media judge people on the basis of the posts and photos they upload, or the comments they like. There are certain posts and comments that are taken far too seriously, but what if these were indicators of how the person is in real life?

A company called Five Labs has created a tool that claims to reveal an individual’s personality via their social media uploads. This tool analyses the News Feed of your Facebook account and gives a thorough analysis of your personality. The tool is based on a study conducted in the University of Pennsylvania that looks at the five biggest personality traits that can be used to narrow down the actual personality of the person. These are include extroversion, openness, neuroticism, conscientiousness and agreeableness.

As the tool is free, anyone can give it a try. We think the results should not be taken at face value since many of our posts and shares may have nothing to do with us or our opinions. They could be favours for friends, for example, but there’s no way the tool would know that, if your interaction with that person is not limited to just that one post.

On conducting the analysis of the app I found it quite hard to believe that I scored the highest in neuroticism with 53 percent. I scored 49 percent for openness, 13 percent for extroversion, 34 percent for agreeableness and 24 percent for conscientiousness. While I don’t quite agree with the neuroticism score, every other score seems fair.

The tool also allowed me to compare my scores with famous public figures and my Facebook friends. On comparision with Bill Gates scores I found out that 51 percent of our personality traits are similar through our Facebook posts. Unfortunately, that’s the only things in common between us.

There’s just one hitch that we just haven’t been able to understand, the tool lets you compare your score to Mahatma Gandhi as well. We are pretty sure the great man is not a part of Facebook. We’ve reached out to Five Labs for a clarification.

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Zero-interaction authentication: A new system that could end passwords

Researchers, led by an Indian-origin scientist, are developing an easy-to-use, secure login protection that eliminates the need to use a password.

Researchers from the University of Alabama at Birmingham are working on a secure login protection known as zero-interaction authentication. Zero-interaction authentication enables a user to access a terminal, such as a laptop or a car, without interacting with the device.

Access is granted when the verifying system can detect the user’s security token — such as a mobile phone or a car key — using an authentication protocol over a short-range, wireless communication channel, such as Bluetooth.

It eliminates the need for a password and diminishes the security risks that accompany them. A common example of such authentication is a keyless entry and start system that unlocks a car door or starts the car engine based on the token’s proximity to the car.

However, existing zero-interaction authentication schemes are vulnerable to relay attacks, commonly referred to as ghost-and-leech attacks, in which a hacker, or ghost, succeeds in authenticating to the terminal on behalf of the user by colluding with another hacker, or leech, who is close to the user at another location.

“The goal of our research is to examine the existing security measures that zero—interaction authentication systems employ and improve them,” said Nitesh Saxena, associate professor in the Department of Computer and Information Sciences and co—leader of the Center for Information Assurance and Joint Forensics Research.

“We want to identify a mechanism that will provide increased security against relay attacks and maintain the ease of use,” said Saxena, who led the research.

The researchers examined two types of sensor modalities that could protect zero-interaction systems against relay attacks without affecting usability.

First, they examined four sensor modalities that are commonly present on devices: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and audio. Second, they looked at the capabilities of using ambient physical sensors as a proximity-detection mechanism and focused on four: ambient temperature, precision gas, humidity and altitude.

Each of these modalities helps the authentication system verify that the two devices attempting to connect to each other are in the same location and thwart a ghost-and-leech attack.

The research, done in collaboration with the University of Helsinki and Aalto University in Finland, showed that sensor modalities, used in combination, provide added security.

“Users will be able to use an app on their phones to lock and unlock their laptops, desktops or even their cars, without passwords and without having to worry about relay attacks,” said Babins Shrestha, a UAB doctoral student and co-author on the study.

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Turkey lifts block on access to YouTube

Turkey’s telecoms regulator removed an official order blocking access to YouTube from its website on Tuesday after the country’s top court ruled last week that the ban was a breach of human rights.

The video-sharing website will be accessible in Turkey later on Tuesday, an official at Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s office told Reuters. “As the Constitutional Court verdict was received today, YouTube will be open to access later today.”

Blocks on access to YouTube and Twitter (TWTR.N) were imposed after illict audio recordings, purportedly revealing corruption in Erdogan’s inner circle, were leaked on the sites. The block on access to Twitter was lifted in April.

The ban on YouTube was imposed on March 27 in the build-up to local elections after a tape of top security officials discussing possible military intervention in Syria was leaked.

Erdogan condemned the tape recording, which followed a series of other leaked wiretaps, as an act of treason. He subsequently emerged from local elections on March 30 with his popularity largely intact.

Turkey’s highest court, deliberating appeals submitted by individuals challenging the ban, last week ruled that the block was a violation of the right to freedom of speech.

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Apple tries to kill passwords with TouchID access to third-party apps in iOS 8

After Apple launched TouchID last year, the logical conclusion was that it would one day replace passwords. That day is here. Well, almost.

Apple launched TouchID to get people used to the idea of using fingerprints to sign in. It made things a lot simpler, but it was limited. Rightfully so, with privacy concerns coming right off the bat. So now a year down the road, Apple seems to have worked out the chinks in TouchID’s armour, before opening it up to third-party apps in iOS 8.

The Verge says Apple Engineering SVP Craig Federighi announced on stage that third-party apps will be able to use Touch ID to authenticate users with the new iOS on iPhones and iPads. This also indicates that the next-gen iPads will have TouchID sensors. At the moment, it looks like you can’t entirely ditch your passwords, but can certainly use your fingerprint as an extra level of security, sort of like a second step in authentication.It’s not the whole hog, but a step forward.

Apple said that developers of the apps won’t have direct access to any fingerprint or biometric data even if they have signed up for TouchID. won’t get direct access to your fingerprint data even if their apps utilize Touch ID.

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Iranian hackers use fake Facebook accounts to spy on US and other countries

In an unprecedented, three-year cyber espionage campaign, Iranian hackers created false social networking accounts and a fake news website to spy on military and political leaders in the United States, Israel and other countries, a cyber intelligence firm said on Thursday.

ISight Partners, which uncovered the operation, said the hackers’ targets include a four-star U.S. Navy admiral, U.S. lawmakers and ambassadors, members of the U.S.-Israeli lobby, and personnel from Britain, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The firm declined to identify the victims and said it could not say what data had been stolen by the hackers, who were seeking credentials to access government and corporate networks, as well as infect machines with malicious software.

“If it’s been going on for so long, clearly they have had success,” iSight Executive Vice President Tiffany Jones told Reuters. The privately held company is based in Dallas, Texas and provides intelligence on cyber threats.

ISight dubbed the operation “Newscaster” because it said the Iranian hackers created six “personas” who appeared to work for a fake news site, NewsOnAir.org, which used content from the Associated Press, BBC, Reuters and other media outlets. The hackers created another eight personas who purported to work for defense contractors and other organizations, iSight said.

The hackers set up false accounts on Facebook and other online social networks for these 14 personas, populated their profiles with fictitious personal content, and then tried to befriend target victims, according to iSight.

The operation has been active since at least 2011, iSight said, noting that it was the most elaborate cyber espionage campaign using “social engineering” that has been uncovered to date from any nation.

To build credibility, the hackers would approach high-value targets by first establishing ties with the victims’ friends, classmates, colleagues, relatives and other connections over social networks run by Facebook, Google and its YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter.

The hackers would initially send the targets content that was not malicious, such as links to news articles on NewsOnAir.org, in a bid to establish trust. Then they would send links that infected PCs with malicious software, or direct targets to web portals that ask for network log-in credentials, iSight said.

The hackers used the 14 personas to make connections with more than 2,000 people, the firm said, adding that it believed the group ultimately targeted several hundred individuals.

“This campaign is not loud. It is low and slow,” said Jones. “They want to be stealth. They want to be under the radar.”

ISight said it had alerted some victims and social networking sites as well as the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and overseas authorities. An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment.

Facebook spokesman Jay Nancarrow said his company had discovered the hacking group while investigating suspicious friend requests and other activity on its website.

“We removed all of the offending profiles we found to be associated with the fake NewsOnAir organization and we have used this case to further refine our systems that catch fake accounts at various points of interaction on the site and block malware from spreading,” Nancarrow said.

LinkedIn spokesman Doug Madey said the site was investigating the report, though none of the 14 fake profiles uncovered by iSight were currently active.

Twitter declined to comment and Google could not immediately be reached for comment.

POST-STUXNET ERA

ISight disclosed its findings as evidence emerges that Iranian hacking groups are becoming increasingly aggressive.

Cybersecurity company FireEye reported earlier this month that a group known as the Ajax Security Team has become the first Iranian hacking group to use custom-built malicious software for espionage.

Iranian hackers stepped up their activity in the wake of the Stuxnet attack on Tehran’s nuclear program in 2010. The Stuxnet computer virus is widely believed to have been launched by the United States and Israel.

ISight said it could not ascertain whether the hackers were tied to the government in Tehran, though it believed they were supported by a nation state because of the complexity of the operation.

The firm said NewsOnAir.org was registered in Tehran and likely hosted by an Iranian provider. The Persian term “Parastoo” was used as a password for malware associated with the group, which appeared to work during business hours in Tehran, according to iSight.

Among the 14 false personas were reporters for NewsOnAir, including one with the same name as a Reuters journalist in Washington; six employees who purportedly worked for defense contractors; a systems administrator with the U.S. Navy; and an accountant working for a payment processor.

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Why You Should Consider Using A Custom Android Kernel(How to customize Android according to our need)

Do you want the best performance out of your Android device? Or maybe you want the best battery life? If you’ve already rooted your device or even installed a custom ROM onto it, it may be a good idea to check out the realm of custom kernels.

If you haven’t yet tried a custom ROM but are interested, you should check out this general guideline to the process.

Here I’ll show you why you might want to use a custom kernel, as well as where to find them.

About the Kernel

The kernel is the piece of software that bridges the gap between the operating system (and installed apps) and the hardware in the device. Everything you do on your device involves the kernel. Increasing the volume while playing a video? Android doesn’t directly tell the speakers to increase output. Instead, it tells the kernel that it wants to increase the volume, and the kernel talks to the speaker to increase its output.

But why the middle man? In very simple terms, it makes Android a lot more flexible. Google can worry about creating all of the functionality in Android, but not have to worry about how that is exactly executed on each device. Since there are so many devices that have all sorts of hardware, Google can’t worry about providing compatibility and drivers with each device. It’s the manufacturer’s job to create the kernel that has all the drivers necessary to make everything work on the device.

Customization

The kernel, in this regard, is extremely customizable. Not only does the manufacturer have to plug in the necessary drivers to get all of the hardware to work correctly, but there are a lot of variables that they need to set. They can mess with all sorts of things, such as:

• the minimum and maximum frequencies that the CPU can scale up or down to
• how busy the CPU should be before it enables extra cores that it normally has disabled to save battery
• the frequency the CPU should boost to whenever it detects touch input (to ensure a smoother wake up)
• the CPU governor (which determines how quickly it tends to ramp up the frequency or not) that should be used
• change the voltage of the CPU during all possible frequencies
• the maximum frequency of the GPU
• enable USB fast charge (for USB 3.0 ports)
• configure the I/O scheduler that is used

How A Replacement Kernel Benefits You

That’s great and all, but what can a custom kernel do for you? There are many different custom kernels for virtually every Android device in existence, so you’ll have a lot of options to choose from. Depending on your needs, you can pick kernels that are optimized for performance, or ones that are optimized for power savings. Others have a good balance of both.

There are some developers who switch out some drivers with others (for varying reasons), or develop their own patches for problems they identify. A lot of developers also try to include upstream Linux kernel patches, or use their own toolkits for compilation. For example, for my Nexus 5, there’s one developer who uses his own toolkit, which includes the latest version of GCC, a Linaro toolchain with optimizations specifically for the CPU architecture used, and maximum optimization flags for the compiler.

Developers can even add some additional features from other kernels that don’t officially exist for your device. For example, there are some kernels for the Nexus 5 that include the “double tap to wake” feature that first appeared on the LG G2.

Most of all, a handful of kernels allow you to access the configurable variables yourself, so that you can use the code that the kernel developers release but tweak it to adjust its behavior to your liking. However, you’ll want to research some of the options available before you actually start to change values for them. In other words, a custom kernel can provide improvements, extra features, specialization, and extreme configurability.

Where To Find Android Kernels

It’s rather easy to find a kernel for your device. Assuming that you have your device rooted and a custom recovery installed, you can browse through the XDA-Developers forum, look in the subforum for your specific device, search through the threads for any that have a [KERNEL] tag in the thread’s title, download one that you like, and flash the .zip file via your custom recovery.

There may also be a sticky thread that may contain a list of popular kernels available for easy searching. Once you’ve decided on a kernel you’d like to use, just download it (it should be in a .zip file) and flash it using the custom recovery. Be sure to adhere to all instructions that the kernel developer may provide, and any of their instructions would override any of my advice.

Conclusion

Custom kernels can make your device that much better. If you happen to choose a kernel that isn’t right for you, you can always find another one and flash it to replace the currently-installed one. Once you’ve found one that’s right for you, congratulations! You’ve just made your device that much better for you.

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Apple sued for faulty iMessage: SMS flaw affects users who’ve switched to Android

With smartphones becoming the primary connected devices for many people around the world, the real battle among the various platforms is how to lock in users to their ecosystem. Which is what Microsoft is aiming to do with the Nokia X platform, asking users to shed their Google ties and get on board with Microsoft services.

But as one can imagine, this means that cross-platform support is woeful and often overlooked, such as in the case of Google ignoring Microsoft’s request for an official YouTube app on Windows Phone. This eventually hampers user experience, especially if the app is crucial, such as a messaging or email app.

And that’s exactly what’s happened to Apple with its iMessage app. iPhone owners are reportedly finding that they no longer receive text messages (SMS) after switching to an Android or other device. This is due to an old bug in Apple’s iMessage service. The problem is caused by the way Apple’s iMessage has been developed. It’s a separate messaging system unlike any other SMS app and Apple uses end-to-end encryption, which means it’s totally secure. When a user signs up for iMessage, their number is stored in a separate database that’s accessed when another iDevice wants to ping them with a message. So your contact’s device knows the other person is using iMessage and doesn’t send an SMS but an iMessage IM. For numbers not in the database, an SMS is sent, which would entail carrier charges.

However, the problem arises when switching to another device. When your contacts with iMessage send you a message, it keeps looking for your Apple device ID, as it had been registered in the past. So it keeps trying to send you an iMessage IM instead of an SMS. The SMS is never delivered and naturally, the iMessage isn’t either. As this post by Adam Pash says, after switching from iPhone, iMessage becomes a purgatory for all your incoming messages.

This has led to a new class action lawsuit in Federal District initiated by Adrienne Moore who switched from an iPhone to a new Samsung Galaxy S5. Moore’s suit sought class action status for all users who may be in a similar situation, which could end up running into thousands of potential ‘victims’. It asks for Apple to fix iMessage so that users can exit the ecosystem without any issues and has asked for punitive damages to the affected class members.

Official Apple support says the only effective way to fix this bug is have all your contacts who might send you text messages from an iPhone or iDevice, to delete and re-add your name to their contacts. Naturally, this is a ridiculous solution that poses more problems than it solves. Other home-brewed solutions exist, but they may or may not work, since the system takes a while to delete your number from the database. In a typical case, Apple advises you wait for 45 days, which is another preposterous suggestion.

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IDFA and how to avoid getting your app rejected by iTunes

With a strong emphasis on user privacy, the mobile app ecosystem has gone through several changes over time (such as deprecation of UDID, MAC address and so on). Recently, Apple introduced certain updates to their app submission guidelines wherein each developer must declare their intended usage of the Identifier for Advertising (IDFA) and respect Apple’s Limit Ad Tracking requirement. InMobi respects user privacy and its SDK is in compliance with all of Apple’s policies.

What is IDFA?

The Advertising Identifier (IDFA) is a unique ID for each iOS device that mobile ad networks typically use to serve targeted ads. Users can choose to limit ad tracking by turning off this setting on their devices. Apart from serving targeted ads that result in better monetization for developers, ad networks also use this ID for conversion matching (attributing app installs to the source), frequency capping, estimating unique users, security and fraud detection, and for re-engagement/retargeting campaigns.

Brief History on Apple’s IDFA-related Policies

In February, Apple started enforcing a clause that affected apps that were retrieving the IDFA but were not showing ads. This resulted in several app developers facing app store rejections, followed by an outcry from several ad networks and analytics companies that purely relied on IDFA to attribute app installs back to the source.

However in April, Apple updated its stance on IDFA by allowing it to be used for attributing installs and post-install actions, which was a welcome change by the entire mobile app ecosystem. This policy update allowed IDFA usage in three scenarios - (i) to serve ads within the app (ii) to attribute this app installation to a previously served ad and (iii) to attribute an action taken within this app to a previously served ad. Developers submitting their apps to the App Store now have to mandatorily declare their intended usage of the IDFA.

Recent Changes

Apple has further updated its IDFA-related policies to ensure that any apps using IDFA comply with the “Limit Ad Tracking” requirement. Hence, to avoid app store rejections, please ensure that you select the appropriate IDFA usage check-boxes for your app and honor Apple’s “Limit Ad Tracking” requirement. InMobi has been completely in-line with the Apple IDFA policies and honors the Limit Ad tracking option since the launch of iOS 6.0, ensuring that a user’s preference to opt out of any interest-based advertising is respected.

Next Steps

To help you in the app store submission process, follow this link for detailed instructions on submitting your app to the iOS app store.

Note: If you are integrated with an SDK version older than 4.3.x, we strongly recommend that you follow this link to upgrade to the latest SDK for better performance and monetization.

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Everything You Need To Know About Unlocking iPhones

If you bought your iPhone direct from Apple, you’ve got an unlocked phone that’s good for use with any carrier. But what if you bought it second-hand, through a network provider or on a contract?
There’s a good chance your carrier wants to limit what you can do with the hardware they have supplied you, and that means keeping you as a customer by simply denying access to other networks. Don’t stand for this telco nonsense – take the power back.

iPhones & Unlocking

Back in the good old days, mobile phones were pretty easy to unlock. All you needed was the right unlock code to be entered in some strange cryptographic-esque sequence, or a slightly riskier (but reliable nonetheless) firmware flash. These methods involved either a quick web search or visiting a shady guy in the market, and the process took a matter of minutes. Unfortunately; iPhones aren’t that simple and we no longer live in the good old days.

The smartphone age has brought with it advancements in mobile security, particularly from manufacturers like Apple who are keen on maintaining a tight grip on the ecosystem. It’s not within Apple’s interests to restrict which network your phone can access, but when such technology is so closely tied to the phone’s firmware, unlocking your phone becomes quite difficult.

What that means for you and me is that the carrier must authorise the unlock, which prompts Apple to then add the IMEI number to the official unlocked iPhone database. The difficulty in getting your iPhone unlocked differs massively depending on where you live, and who your carrier is. Providers like O2 and Orange in the UK are notorious for creating their own unlock policies, and making it as difficult as possible for users to unlock their iPhones.

Conversely some carriers will sell you a locked phone (like Vodafone Australia), but you can unlock it yourself when you get home without even having to contact them. The only way to know for sure is to research your carrier’s policies.

Methods of Unlocking

You’ll know your iPhone is locked to a different carrier if you insert another SIM and get a message telling you something along the lines of “The SIM card inserted in this iPhone does not appear to be supported” – or more obvious still, you’ll get no usable signal save for some SOS Only access. At this stage you might want to do a little research.

You can check Apple’s official carrier unlock checklist under your country to see whether they offer the service. If they do, you’re in luck – chances are you either simply need to contact them to authorise the unlock; or better still run a web search to see if they have the topic covered in help documentation. AT&T have an online guide, Vodafone Australia produced a video and the UK’s Everything Everywhere are just plain difficult.

It really depends on the laws and policies set by carriers in your region. The process can take some time, may require an additional fee (usually no more than $30) and in many cases you might find small clauses that make it difficult, or impossible. In this case you do have another option – services that charge a premium.

MakeUseOf has no affiliation with an of these companies, nor do we necessarily recommend you use them – but they do exist, and many claim they work just fine. Services like ChronicUnlocks and Official iPhone Unlock (two I randomly plucked from a Google search) seem legitimate, but their methods of operation are still enough to warrant some “buyer beware” discretion before going down this route. They also charge a considerable fee for unlocking, in some cases nearly 50% of the phone’s value – which is nothing near what your carrier will ask for.

The Process

Once you have either been granted an unlock from your carrier, or taken your chances and brute forced it through an unlock vendor, you should attempt to replace the SIM card with one from another network and see what happens. You may be prompted to complete a setup, or your device may still appear locked. In this case:

1. Connect your iPhone to your Mac or PC via USB cable and launch iTunes.
2. Select your phone under the Devices menu, click the Summary tab and choose Backup. iTunes may warn you that you have apps that aren’t backed up, so back these up too if offered.
3. Once the backup has completed, click Restore.
4. Input your Apple ID password (if prompted), read the warning about all data being deleted then click Restore one last time.
5. Wait for the process to complete, then when your phone reboots follow the on-screen prompts to restore the backup you just made.

Once complete, your unlock should hopefully have been applied. If it still isn’t working, then your mobile carrier or the unlock vendor you have used has yet to apply the unlock and you should contact them for further assistance.

What About Jailbreaking?

Personally I’d never recommend someone jailbreak their iPhone for the sole purpose of unlocking. There are so many factors that can affect whether the device can be jailbroken in the first place, let alone being unlocked thereafter. The main problem with this method is that the unlock will only last for as long as the jailbreak lasts – so if you update or have to restore your iPhone, you will lose both your jailbreak and your unlock. At this point, your phone useless on the cellular network.

It’s also a bad idea to keep outdated software on your device for the sole purpose of maintaining your jailbreak – you’re leaving yourself vulnerable to security threats (like the recent TLS vulnerability addressed in iOS 7.1.1). Major software updates (like the upcoming leap from iOS 7 to iOS 8) won’t be jailbroken for weeks, usually months. Even if you do update and manage to downgrade successfully, permanent baseband upgrades applied with every iOS update mean you won’t be able to unlock thereafter anyway.

At present the only unlock that works with iOS 7 (up to 7.0.6) is available via evasi0n, though there’s little information online (anywhere, and I’ve looked) about whether there’s a working unlock yet. According to unloc.kr – there’s not, but there’s no evidence as to how often that website is updated. This is how it goes in the jailbreak world – things move and change so quickly that one set of instructions quickly becomes redundant in the constant game of cat and mouse.

Have you unlocked your iPhone? How did you do it? Do you play the jailbreaking game? Let us know in the comments.

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Right to be forgotten: How EU court’s ruling could affect your Google search experience

In a ruling that could have far-reaching effects on how online search business is conducted in Europe, EU’s top court, the European Court of Justice, has said that individual users have the right to be forgotten by Google, which runs the world’s most used Internet search engine.

Google typically stores data from individual users for purposes of selling it to advertisers for targetted and tailored campaigns. However, the ECJ has ruled that individuals have a right “to be forgotten,” under certain circumstances. For example, when personal data becomes outdated or inaccurate, the court said, users have the right to ask the search giant to forget their data.

This could also be applicable when data is deemed to be inadequate, or excessive in relation to the purpose for which it was processed. Though there’s no word on how this inadequacy or excesses will be decided. The court also said that users have the right for their data to be erased after a certain time period has elapsed and made it irrelevant or outdated.

In making the ruling, the judges at the Luxembourg-based ECJ said the rights of people whose privacy has possibly been infringed outweighed public interest in seeing that information released. The ECJ said an Internet search engine operator is responsible for the processing of personal data and such data must carry statutory limitations.

Google has lobbied against such a plan, worried about the extra costs, ever since it was floated back in 2012. Google said the ruling was a disappointment. “We are very surprised that it differs so dramatically from the advocate general’s opinion and the warnings and consequences that he spelled out. We now need to take time to analyse the implications,” it added.

However, all is not set in stone yet. Reuters reports that the ruling still needs the blessing of the 28 EU governments before it can become law.

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Teenagers less likely to trust information seen in tweets

Are you among those who love tweeting but somewhat wary of information via tweets from others? Join the ‘Millennial Generation’ that has a “healthy mistrust” of the information they read on Twitter.

“Nearly anyone can start a Twitter account and post 140 characters of information at a time, bogus or not, a fact participants seemed to grasp,” Kimberly Fenn, an assistant professor of psychology at Michigan State University, was quoted as saying.

During the study, researchers showed 74 undergraduates in their 20s a series of images on a computer that depicted a story of a man robbing a car. False information about the story was then presented in a scrolling text feed resembling Twitter feed.

The test was to see if students integrated the bogus information into their minds – called “false memory”.

The results showed that when the participants read the ‘Twitter’ feed, they were much less likely to form false memories about the story.

It suggests that young people are somewhat wary of information that comes from Twitter, Fenn added.

The researchers advise teenagers to take into account the medium of the message when integrating information into memory, said the study that appeared in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin.

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WhatsApp experiencing service issues; down for some users

One of the world’s most popular messaging apps, WhatsApp is experiencing some service issues and seems to be down for some users.

We can confirm that message sending is delayed more than usual even with Wi-Fi connectivity. In addition, some messages are shown as sent but never reach the recipient. Other users are not able to send messages at all.

On Twitter, the company’s service status account has not tweeted about any service disruption and the official Twitter account is also mum on the issue. However users have taken to the micro-blogging service to express their disappointment.

As of now, there’s no word on whether this is a widespread issue or isolated to certain regions, due to server issues. As you can see on this map from Down Detector, Central Europe is experiencing the most issues. The website says the more than 80 percent of the reported complaints have been regarding loss of connectivity.

We will be keeping an eye on the status of the service and will be updating this article accordingly. Do check back to see any official statements or fixes for this issue.

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Apple iPhone lockscreen bypassed, with a little help from Siri

Siri is amazing. Apple’s voice assistant makes a lot of smartphone actions easier, and is funny to boot, chiming in with the occasional joke, when asked the right question. But we are sure Apple didn’t design Siri to be so polite and helpful that ‘she’ would let just about anyone in to the phone.

But it looks like the iOS 7.1.1 update does just that. Earlier we had seen the iPhone’s lockscreen being bypassed using the emergency call button and a combination of other presses. Now the new trick allows anyone to browse all contacts stored on the phone and make a call to any one of them.

What makes the iPhone vulnerable is Siri on the lockscreen. Even when the phone is locked, Siri can help you out with a few tasks including showing your contacts and sending messages. However, if you ask Siri to show you the contacts, you would need to unlock the phone first. That’s not necessary if you ask Siri to make a call.



Sherif Hashim who discovered the flaw, says the only way to keep this vulnerability at bay is to stop the use of Siri on the lockscreen, till Apple delivers a fix. Apple is yet to respond to the latest flaw, though in the past, the company has rolled out fixes for each of the lockscreen bypass tricks.

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After Heartbleed, major Covert Redirect flaw threatens OAuth, OpenID and the Internet

The dust over the Heartbleed flaw has barely settled and there’s more bad news for those using open-source security software to power websites.

This time around the vulnerability affects login using OAuth and OpenID. These standards are used by websites such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and LinkedIn, among others to authenticate users.

Discovered by the Wang Jing, a Ph.D student at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, the serious vulnerability has been named Covert Redirect. It can pose as a login popup based on an affected site’s domain.

For example, you get a seemingly safe which when clicked pops up a Facebook window asking users to authorize the new app using their Facebook credentials. Till here the technique is similar to phishing, but what really makes this a very serious flaw is that instead of using a fake domain name Covert Redirect uses the real site address and information for authentication, but bypasses the server and grabs all the data in the middle.

The information could be accessed by miscreants in such a way includes email addresses, birth dates, contact lists and even credentials to access the entire account. In fact Covert Redirect keeps sending the victim back to compromised links even after the initial request (in this case Facebook authorisation) is performed. This opens them up to more attacks.

Wang says he has already informed Facebook about the flaw, and the company said that it “understood the risks associated with OAuth 2.0,” and that fixing this bug would not be accomplished in the short term. According to Wang, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Yahoo, Microsoft, PayPal, QQ, Weibo, Taobao, VK.com, Mail.Ru, GitHub are the sites affected so far. The student also reported the flaw to Google, LinkedIn and Microsoft.

Google said that the problem was being tracked, LinkedIn is preparing an announcement to deal with this bud. Microsoft has already investigated the bug and has decided that the vulnerability existed on the domain of a third-party, and not on Microsoft sites.

“Patching this vulnerability is easier said than done. If all the third-party applications strictly adhere to using a whitelist, then there would be no room for attacks,” Wang writes in a blog post, explaining the attack in greater details. “However, in the real world, a large number of third-party applications do not do this due to various reasons. This makes the systems based on OAuth 2.0 or OpenID highly vulnerable.”

All you can do to avoid this attack is to be careful about the links they clink on and especially those links which redirect you to Google or Facebook, even though it didn’t specify such a redirect. Closing the tab immediately without signing in should prevent any redirection attacks.

Reporting on the vulnerability, CNET spoke to Jeremiah Grossman, founder and CEO at WhiteHat Security, who told the website, “While I can’t be 100 percent certain, I could have sworn I’ve seen a report of a very similar if not identical vulnerability in OAuth. It would appear this issue is essentially a known WONTFIX,” Grossman said, adding that any remedies, even though they are hard to come by, will break user experience heavily. “Just another example that Web security is fundamentally broken and the powers that be have little incentive to address the inherent flaws.”

Chris Wysopal, CTO at programming code verification firm Veracode further told CNET, “Given the trust users put in Facebook and other major OAuth providers I think it will be easy for attackers to trick people into giving some access to their personal information stored on those service,” he said.

Wang says users are in a catch-22 situation, since neither the host company nor the provider is willing to take responsibility in such an attack. Cost is a major factor, as well, since all providers will have to create a whitelist and it will no doubt consume a lot of time.

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