Tuesday, September 22, 2015

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Apple’s iOS 9 breaks VPNs

Posted: 22 Sep 2015 12:49 AM PDT

destroyedserverAny hopes that the fruity cargo cult Apple might make its way onto corporate systems have been dashed by the fact that its latest iOS9 breaks  Virtual Private Network (VPN) connections.

The bug was first detected in the iOS 9 beta, and Apple ignored it when it released the OS.  It then ignored it again in the current iOS 9.1 beta.  The reason might be that knowledge of the bug might prevent corporates from investing a fortune in expensive Apple gear.  Jobs' Mob has been signing all sorts of agreements to enter the corporate market. If the IT managers find out that the OS is insecure they will not buy it.

However the outfit has not managed to keep the lid on the flaw. Cisco reported the bug on social media, claiming that they had noticed "a couple of OS regressions between iOS 8.4.1 and iOS 9 […]

“Most notable is that when doing split tunneling, the Tunnel All DNS option no longer functions as expected. This was reported to Apple under Radar # 22558059. This is not resolved in the iOS 9 release."

Because of this incompatibility, DNS resolution will not work on their network setup. Some corporate servers will no longer be available to users, even after successful login.

The Tame Apple Press points out that the iOS 9 bug harms only VPN access. In addition to the popular Cisco AnyConnect service, reports suggest other VPN providers are also affected.

The only work around is to roll back all devices on the network to iOS 8.4.1, restoring the device backup from iTunes – and not from iCloud.  iOS backups are automatically cleared out by Apple, so .ipsw backup files may no longer be available.

The Tame Apple Press also claims that Jobs Mob need not worry as VPN's are ready to ban their use anyway. Russia has taken an aggressive stance against its use, suggesting that restricting anonymising networks will "increase opportunities to counter the commercial distribution of malware" and help to reduce access to "forbidden" information online.

Of course, no one at a corporate level would believe that sort of approach to security is a good idea and the question becomes, if the software stuffs up VPNs what else will it break, they would probably wonder.

 

 

France says Google must remember to forget

Posted: 22 Sep 2015 12:48 AM PDT

google-logo-art-image-hdThe French government has rejected Google's request that it surrender and forget about a ruling extending the "right to be forgotten" to all Google's websites.

The French has demanded that Google  close a loophole that let searchers  defeat a judgment by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) last year.

CJEU has recognised the right to be forgotten in May 2014, allowing people to ask search engines to not display certain links resulting from a search on their name.

The CJEU case was triggered by a Spanish lawyer asking that Google no longer respond to a search on his name with links to a years old administrative announcement in a local newspaper concerning the court-ordered auction of his property to pay debts.

The right to be forgotten isn't about erasing such traces just making them harder to find.

There's also a public interest exception so newspaper reporters, and ordinary citizens for that matter, won't have to spend weeks combing paper archives for evidence of politicians' past misdeeds.

Google removed certain results on request from searches performed on google.fr, google.co.uk and its other European sites, and even providing an online tool to make it easier for people to request removal of links to information about them.

But the disputed links continues to be displayed on google.com, giving anyone who wanted uncensored search results an easy way around the court ruling.

That annoyed the French National Commission on Computing and Liberty (CNIL), the country's privacy watchdog, which in May this year ordered Google to conceal disputed search results across all its sites.

Google filed an informal appeal against that order in July, arguing that the order amounted to censorship, would restrict the public's right to information, and sought to extend French law outside French borders.

However now CNIL turned down Google's request, saying it considered Google's various domain names merely as different paths to the same processing operation; limiting the right to be forgotten only to some domains would make it easy to circumvent.

CNIL also rejected Google's accusation that it was going beyond its jurisdiction, saying that it just wants non-European companies to respect European laws when offering their services in Europe.

 

Red Hat outlook improves thanks to cloud

Posted: 22 Sep 2015 12:47 AM PDT

Cumulus clouds - Wikimedia CommonsLinux outfit Red Hat  reported a 13 percent rise in quarterly revenue, helped by higher demand for open-source software and cloud offerings.

The company’s net income rose to $51.4 million, or 28 cents per share, in the second quarter ended August 31, from $46.8 million, or 25 cents per share, a year earlier.

Revenue rose to $504.1 million from $445.9 million.

Jim Whitehurst, President and Chief Executive Officer of Red Hat said that he was pleased with the progress of the cloud deployments.

“In this quarter, we achieved a public cloud milestone in our Certified Cloud and Service Provider program of an annualised run-rate of $100 million. We are also thrilled to be the first open source company to achieve an annualised run-rate of $2 billion in revenue this quarter. In addition, we believe Red Hat is well-positioned for the second half of the fiscal year as we continue to benefit from delivering innovation to our customers," said Red Hat’s top banana.

For the third quarter, Red Hat's outlook is for revenue of $519 million to $523 million, Whitehurst said.

 

Apple car to arrive by 2019

Posted: 22 Sep 2015 12:46 AM PDT

accidentcarinwashingtondcFruity cargo cult Apple is speeding up its efforts to build an electric car, as interest in its overpriced consumer cash cow contemplates a future trip to the meat-works.

Sources in the Inner Sanctum of the cult have called it a "committed project" and set  a target ship date for 2019.

Jobs’ Mob has spent more than a year investigating the feasibility of an Apple-branded car, including meetings with two groups of government officials in California. Leaders of the project, code-named Titan, have been given permission to triple the 600 person team.

Apple has hired experts in driverless cars, but the people familiar with Apple's plans said its first electric vehicle will not be fully autonomous. Apple wants that to be part of the product's long term plans, but admits that will take a bit longer.

Apple's commitment is a sign that the company sees an opportunity to become a player in the automotive industry just as the money made in gadgets dries up.  Apparently cars are similar technology in that they need batteries, sensors and hardware-software integration and manic fans who will buy anything.

So far the fruity cargo cult has not said anything, but that means we can expect about four years of hype from the Tame Apple Press.  The timing is interesting as that is the period we think that iPhones have lost market share significantly.

 

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