Blackberry: 2 Recent Outages, What does this mean for RIM?

From a Wall Street Journal posting.

DECEMBER 23, 2009, 7:29 P.M. ET

BlackBerry Maker Is Strained by Growth

By ROGER CHENG And PHRED DVORAK

The second BlackBerry outage in a week shows how Research In Motion Ltd., the maker of the popular smart phone, is feeling the strain of a ballooning customer base and intensifying competition.

Associated Press

BlackBerry devices throughout the Americas suffered service interruptions from Tuesday afternoon through early Wednesday, telecommunications carriers said. RIM issued an apology and attributed the interruption to a flaw in recent versions of its instant-messaging program... continue to complete posting.

Google's Nexus One - iPhone, Droid killer?

Looks like it's coming to T-Mobile!
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From AppleInsider.

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Google's Nexus One compared to Apple's iPhone, Motorola Droid

By Katie Marsal

Published: 10:05 AM EST

New photos and a hands-on description have compared Google's custom-built Nexus One handset, rumored to be for sale to the public next month, with Apple's iPhone [updated with hardware specs].

Jason Chen of Gizmodo received some hands-on time with the hardware thanks to an anonymous source. He called the long-rumored, supposed Google Phone a "Droid killer" -- ironic, because Motorola attempted to position its Droid, which launched in November, as an "iPhone killer."

Chen said the Nexus one is slightly thinner and lighter than the iPhone 3GS. The back is somewhat rubbery, and feels less "cheap," he said, than the iPhone's plastic back.

Entire posting.

Most Viewed Articles from Technical Section of Washington Post

Interesting, but not surprising, that 3 of the top 10 most viewed articles in the Washington Post Technology section in this afternoon's Washington Post, are security related items.

1) Twitter Hack: Part Of Broader Iranian Strategy

Late last night the popular micro-messaging service Twitter was attacked and had its website defaced by a group calling itself the Iranian Cyber Army. The Twitter homepage and the main application service page were replaced with a bold pro-Iranian and anti-American message. The message was loud, and...

2) Holiday wishes aren't in the cards: Mailed greetings decline

It's the middle of December, and Peg Willingham wants to know: Where are all the Christmas cards?

3) Google Starts Pushing Chrome To All Mac Users On Its Homepage

As we all know by now, Google Chrome for Mac and Linux are now here , and despite the Mac version missing a few features at the moment, both are earning rave reviews around the web. Meanwhile,? a report a couple days ago from Net Applications suggested that the Mac and Linux builds helped push...

4) Etsy Buys Retail Product Ad Platform Adtuitive, Gains Five New Programmers

Handmade item marketplace and community website operator Etsy , which is backed by $31.6 million in venture capital funding, has acquired New York-based advertising startup Adtuitive for an undisclosed sum.

5) Intel sued by U.S. on antitrust grounds

The Obama administration sued chip giant Intel on Wednesday over a decade-long run of actions allegedly designed to stifle competition, opening a new front in the battle that big technology firms have been waging for years against antitrust challenges in Asia and Europe.

6) Rdio Launches iPhone App That You Can't Use Yet (Updated)

Rdio , the upcoming music streaming and download service backed by the founders of Skype, Kazaa and Joost, may not be taking public beta registrations just yet, but it already has a free iPhone application live on the App Store that you can download right now ( iTunes link ).

7) FCC proposes tapping phone subsidy to bring broadband to all

The Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday unveiled a laundry list of proposals to meet a congressional mandate to give every U.S. home access to high-speed Internet service.

8) Google In Discussions To Acquire Yelp For A Half Billion Dollars Or More

Google and Yelp are in advanced acquisition negotiations, we've confirmed from multiple sources. And while the deal isn't done, we've heard that it's very likely to close. The price is supposedly at least $500 million.

9) Hackers steal SKorean-US military secrets

SEOUL, South Korea -- South Korea's military said Friday it was investigating a hacking attack that netted secret defense plans with the United States and may have been carried out by North Korea.

10) House takes steps to boost cybersecurity

House leaders have asked the chamber's security officials to implement a new cybersecurity training regimen for aides and take additional measures to protect sensitive information from potential hackers.

Trend Micro 2010 Future Threat Report

Trend Micro 2010 Future Threat Report: Virtualization, Cloud-Computing and a Shifting Internet Infrastructure Will Widen the Scope of Cybercrime

CUPERTINO, Calif., Dec. 9, 2009 -- Using news headlines and the latest technological trends, cybercriminals are brilliantly agile at exploiting whatever is trendy for cash and profit. Now, the growing popularity of cloud computing and virtualization among companies is likely to catch the attention of criminals scheming for the next hot cyber-swindle.

According to the Trend Micro 2010 Future Threat Report, cloud computing and virtualization -- while offering significant benefits and cost-savings -- move servers outside the traditional security perimeter and expand the playing field for cybercriminals. The industry already witnessed Danger/Sidekick's cloud-based server failure that caused major data outages in November 2009, highlighting cloud-computing risks that cybercriminals will likely abuse. Trend Micro believes cybercriminals will either be manipulating the connection to the cloud, or attacking the data center and cloud itself.

The Internet infrastructure is changing, opening more opportunities for cybercrime
The "next-generation" protocol designed by the Internet Engineering Task Force, Internet Protocol v. 6, is still in the experimentation stages of replacing the current IPv4, now 20 years old. As users start to explore IPv6, so will cybercriminals, and we can expect to see proof-of-concept elements in IPv6 start to materialize in the upcoming new year. Possible avenues for abuse include new covert channels or C&C. But don't expect active targeting of IPv6 address space--at least not in the very immediate future.

Contineu to the complete posting and .pdf report.

Amazon EC2 cloud service hit by botnet, outage

December 11, 2009 2:07 PM PST
Amazon EC2 cloud service hit by botnet, outage
by Lance Whitney

The folks who run Amazon's EC2 cloud service must be happy the week is nearly over.

The cloud-based EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) was kept jumping this past week by two incidents: a compromised internal service that triggered a botnet, and a data center power failure in Virginia.

On Wednesday, security researchers for CA found that a variant of the infamous password-stealing Zeus banking Trojan had infected client computers after hackers were able to compromise a site on EC2 and use it as their own C&C (command and control) operation.
Don DeBolt, Director of Threat Research for CA Internet Security Business Unit, told CNET that the botnet first came to light while his firm was reviewing spam and found one with a URL for a piece of malware called xmas2.exe, described in a blog. After examining the file, DeBolt discovered it was a variant of the Zeus bot that was calling home to a computer inside Amazon Web Services, which houses EC2.

As a keylogger, Zeus is known to specifically capture bank account information, noted DeBolt, and was trying to perform the same crime in this case. The bot was also attempting to report the IP addresses of any clients that were infected via spam. The cybercrooks reportedly snuck their way into EC2 by gaining access through a site hosted on Amazon's service.

Entire posting.

What is 64-bit processing and what do I need to know?

OK, you go to Best Buy or some other consumer store to purchase a new computer for home... and you keep seeing Windows 7 Home Premium edition 64-bit.

What is 64-bit???

Here's a quick simply worded article from Microsoft 7 about 64-bit.

...and a helpful FAQ on 32-bit and 64-bit.

And, finally, from Gizmodo "Why You Should 64-bit with Windows 7 ?"

"64-bit support
If you’ve gone PC shopping lately, you’ve probably noticed more computers with 64-bit processors, and you may have wondered what advantages they offer.

Put simply, a 64-bit PC can handle larger amounts of information than a 32-bit system. Since it can use more RAM—4 GB and up—a 64-bit computer can be more responsive when you're running lots of programs at once.

Whichever system you choose, Windows 7 is ready. All packaged retail editions of Windows 7 (except for Home Basic) include both 32- and 64-bit software.

Wondering whether a program or device works with your 64-bit PC? Look for products that carry the "Compatible with Windows 7" logo, which means they were tested on both 32- and 64-bit versions of Windows 7. Or visit the Windows 7 Compatibility Center to search a regularly updated list of programs and devices.