TechEye |  |
- DoD wants tech start-ups hooked on its cash
- FireEye tried to cover up patched vulnerabilities
- Facebook needs to purge hate posts
- Windows 10 downloaded just in case
- Seagate to cut 1,050 jobs
- Lenovo to enter OEM mobile business
- Thin clients get thinner on the ground
- Mobile security risks increase
- The cloud is elementary, my dear Watson
| DoD wants tech start-ups hooked on its cash Posted: 11 Sep 2015 12:33 AM PDT
The cunning plan involves giving rapid seed funding to private companies as a way to encourage more work on technology projects with the commercial sector. It sounds harmless enough, but it effectively means that tech startups who take the money will be forever beholding to the DoD. Imagine what would have happened if the DoD had done that for Microsoft, Google or Apple. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter said that the push for greater cooperation with tech companies has been a big theme for the DOD in the last year as it faces a growing and unprecedented threat from private and state actors on the Internet and beyond. Carter said that the DOD has to tap into all the streams of innovation and emerging technology and it has to do so much more quickly, Carter said. He added that that Russia and China were modernising their militaries to try and close the gap and erode US superiority in every domain: air, land, sea, space and cyberspace “And at the same time our reliance on satellites and the Internet has led to real vulnerabilities that out adversaries are eager to exploit. So to stay ahead of those challenges and stay the best, we're investing aggressively in innovation,” he said. He apparently was cheered when he said all this from the start-ups he had helped. However, this is a complete turnaround from when President Obama convened a cyber security summit at Stanford University to call on business and tech leaders to work more closely with the government to identify security weaknesses and combat cybercrime. That meeting was boycotted by CEOs from Google, Yahoo and Facebook. Most of the older companies do not want to work with the government over fears of spying. About the only one that is keen is Apple Tim Cook spoke at the Stanford event, and the company is one of a handful that just announced participation in the DOD’s Flexible Hybrid Electronic Institute in Silicon Valley. However, it seems that the DoD thinks that working with start-ups is a lot easier than trying to interest bigger stable companies and the lure of cash would be irresistible to them.
|
| FireEye tried to cover up patched vulnerabilities Posted: 11 Sep 2015 12:32 AM PDT
The patched flaws included the default use of the 'root' account on a significant number of the Apache servers providing services to FireEye's clients. An attacker able to compromise the server would face no further permissions barriers in obtaining any data and starting or manipulating any connections or file/database operations of which the server is capable. On 13 August, FireEye got an injunction in a German District Court, to prevent the security researcher who found the vulnerabilities from discussing it in a keynote speech at the conference. However it was not served until the 2 September which meant that he could not contest the gagging order in time. Felix Wilhelm, a security researcher for ERNW GmBH, made FireEye aware of the vulnerabilities five months ago, and worked with the company to fix it. However, FireEye decided that no disclosure of the vulnerabilities should be allowed to take place. Presumably because it was worried that its high profile customers might be a little worried. Security software is supposed to stop hacks not enable them. When questioned about the injunction by the Stack FireEye said that all it wanted was for the researchers not to reveal the companies IP address. "No company in the world would want their IP revealed. We did that to protect our customers. We openly worked with them to fix the vulnerabilities, and patches have been available for months now. “Our customers are protected. This was not about stopping them from issuing a report neither the vulnerabilities, it was about protecting intellectual property that they didn't have a legal right to publish," a spokesFireEye said. |
| Facebook needs to purge hate posts Posted: 11 Sep 2015 12:31 AM PDT
German politicians and celebrities fear a rise of xenophobic comments on Facebook and other social media platforms because of the refugee crisis. Merkel told regional newspaper Rheinische Post that when people stir up sedition on social networks using their real name, it’s not only the state that has to act, but also Facebook as a company should do something. Facebook already had the necessary code of conduct, but there was a lack of control and enforcement. Last month, Justice Minister Heiko Maas accused Facebook of doing too little to thwart racist and hate posts. Maas sent a letter to Facebook public policy director Richard Allan in Dublin saying he received many complaints from users that their protests on racist posts have been ignored. A shill for Facebook has said the company took Maas’s concerns seriously and the company was interested in meeting the justice minister. So far, though, no meeting appears to be organised. |
| Windows 10 downloaded just in case Posted: 11 Sep 2015 12:30 AM PDT
The spare copy has been downloaded onto a spare folder onto user's drives. It registers on the WU history as failed ‘Upgrade to Windows 10′ in the WU update history and a huge 3.5GB to 6GB hidden folder labelled ‘$Windows.~BT’. This causes a few people who have low data caps and slow I\internet connections a bit of bother. Microsoft has confirmed that individuals who have chosen to receive automatic updates through Windows Update, have been downloading the files they will need if they decide to upgrade. It might explain why Microsoft has had such a high rate of downloads for Windows 10. After all people are technically downloading the software whether they use it or not. If you have already downloaded the update you can get rid of it by opening the command prompt as admin and running: WUSA /UNINSTALL /KB:3035583. You also have to block updates and install them manually until Microsoft sees common sense. |
| Posted: 10 Sep 2015 06:43 AM PDT
The company will axe 1,050 peoples' jobs worldwide, representing two percent of its headcount. The restructuring will occur in a pre-tax charge of $53 million and these are mainly employee termination costs. It will save $113 million from the restructuring. Seagate, like other component suppliers, have suffered from the drop in PC shipments this year, which has prompted PC manufacturers to cut their stocks of hard drive. Over the last two financial quarters Seagate has reported a drop in sales. At the same time, there's a lot of notebook inventory sloshing around in the channel worldwide while the effects of the strong US dollar have reduced sales and demand too. |
| Lenovo to enter OEM mobile business Posted: 10 Sep 2015 06:34 AM PDT
A report from Digitimes, citing "industry sources" is integral to the restructuring of its smartphone business. Lenovo is facing stiff competition from companies including Xiaomi and Huawei, the report said. But the entry of Lenovo into manufacturing is likely to affect Taiwanese OEMs it had used before, including giant manufacturer Compal. Most analysts believe that the smartphone market is pretty well saturated and faced with stiff competition from Chinese manufacturers, giants like Samsung and big outfits like HTC have felt the pain. But if the reports are correct, it's hard to see how Lenovo will turn the market round, particularly as manufacturing is rather top heavy at the moment. |
| Thin clients get thinner on the ground Posted: 10 Sep 2015 06:26 AM PDT
That's the conclusion of a report from IDC which said that in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), shipments fell by 17.7 percent year on year, amounting to 385,000 units. IDC said the fal in the Western European thin client market was greater than during the credit crunch and dropped 19.2 percent in the second quarter of this year, compared to the same quarter last year. The fragility of economic growth in the Eurozone meant there was little or no incentive for organisations to buy new kit or to upgrade their hardware. The strength of the US dollar also affected this market. IDC predicts that in the last quarter of this year, growth in Western EUrope will drop to the single digit level. |
| Mobile security risks increase Posted: 10 Sep 2015 06:18 AM PDT
Dionisio Zumerle, a research director at Gartner, said that smartphones now hold much more sensitive data than before. Doctors are increasingly using tablets to process patient records and finance brokers exchange sensitive information. "A device that falls in the wrong hands and does not have adequate protection can be the source of a major data breach," he said. Apps are also invasive and often ask permission to use peoples' contact list and location while in enterprises many use file sharing apps with corporate data and don't offer "enterprise grade security". He said that mobile devices are now subject to many malware attacks, including those that can spread across the enterprise. IT chiefs need to implement enterprise security policies to the use of smartphones in an organisation. |
| The cloud is elementary, my dear Watson Posted: 10 Sep 2015 06:09 AM PDT
Deborah DiSanzo will run the business for Big Blue and has been given the task of expanding the business globally and look after a number of customers and partners including Johnson & Johnson, Apple, Medtronic, Epic and CVS Health. IBM said it has expanded its portfolio with Watson Health Cloud for Life Sciences Compliance and Watson Care Manager. The first of these is aimed biomedical companies to bring medical inventions to market more efficiently using a Cloud compliant infrastructure and applications. Watson Care Manager integrates capabilities from Watson Health, Apple's Healthkit and ResearchKit letting researchers use iPhones for a range of purposes. IBM claimed that Watson has made significant inroads into the market since its introduction five months ago. |
| You are subscribed to email updates from TechEye. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States | |
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.