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| September 16, 2010
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More Broadband for Michigan

More Broadband for MichiganWireless Internet service provider Air Advantage based in Frankenmuth, Michigan has been awarded $64 million. The award is a combination of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) grants and loans. The award will create a wireless broadband and fiber-optic Internet network in Michigan’s lower peninsula according to an article on MLive.com.

In addition to the federal grants and loans, Air Advantage will contribute more than $10 million toward the project. “A big part of the (federal) grant is about providing people with more options, more affordable Internet access,” Dawn Zimmer, director of sales and marketing for Air Advantage told MLive.  “Even in 2010, it’s shocking the number of people who have no or very few Internet options.”

Award

The $64.25 million award consists of $31.95 million in grants and $32.3 million in loans. The loans must be used to buy capital equipment such as installation and service trucks, computers, transmitters and receivers. The award cannot be used for salaries or for the hiring of new staff, according to David Simmet, vice president of operations at Air Advantage in the MLive article.

With this funding Air Advantage will add more than 200 signal transmitting towers to the company’s existing network of 65 towers. Many of the existing towers are installed on area water towers, grain silos and cell phone towers. The project will serve 13 counties — Saginaw, Sanilac, Bay, Genesee, Huron, Lapeer, Livingston, Macomb, Midland, Oakland, Shiawassee, Saint Claire, and Tuscola.

The Regional Educational Media Center 10 (REMC 10) will see direct benefits from the stimulus funds awarded. About $9 million of the award to Air Advantage is earmarked for constructing a fiber optic network. The 350-mile fiber-optic network will run throughout the Thumb. The partners will contract the construction to a company with expertise in fiber-optic installation. The high-speed network will connect 26 school districts, governmental facilities and Central Dispatch in Huron, Sanilac and Tuscola counties, according to Robert Frost, director of REMC-10. Frost said the network will allow for more collaboration. Partners will be able to get collaborative pricing for network devices and services like servers, content filters, firewalls, and more. It will also allow for distance learning through high-definition video conference units.

Connects existing networks in Michigan

The new network will connect to existing networks in Bay, Lapeer, St. Clair and Saginaw counties. It will allow for a direct, high-speed connection to other schools, colleges and universities throughout the state. “…they are going to … change the face of the eastern side of Michigan,” Sheila Stamiris, director of the Frankenmuth downtown development authority told MLive. “It really is incredible.”

The Air Advantage estimates it will hire for an additional 142 positions. The new employees will provide equipment installation, technical support, and billing. The firm expects to start hiring in the next few months. This would be a 600% increase in jobs since the firm started in 2002. Ms. Stamiris said this likely will put Air Advantage among the city’s 10 largest employers. “They will be doing a lot of things using Frankenmuth as a home base and we are extremely grateful to be in that position,” Ms. Stamiris told MLive.

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him at LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| September 10, 2010
Comments Off on Microsoft Founder Sues GOOG, FB and AAPL

Microsoft Founder Sues GOOG, FB and AAPL

Microsoft Founder Sues GOOG, FB and AAPL– Updated 12-13-10 – Physorg is reporting that a U.S. district judge tossed out the patent infringement lawsuit filed by Interval Licensing owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. The judge ruled that the suit failed to specify devices or products violating patents at issue in the case. A spokesman for Allen dismissed the ruling as a procedural matter and said that an amended complaint will be filed addressing the judge’s concern.

– Updated – Google responded to the suit by stating in court documents  “Interval’s complaint is so devoid of any facts to support its infringement contentions that it is impossible for Google to reasonably prepare a defense.” According to VON | xchange Apple agreed and called on judges to “insist upon some specificity” before proceeding.

The UK’s Guardian is reporting that eleven major Internet companies including AOL, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo, and YouTube are being sued by Interval Licensing. The firm, lead by ex-Microsoft founder Paul Allen is suing for alleged infringement of patents that relate to e-commerce and search. A copy of the complaint is available here (PDF). Notably absent from the list are Microsoft and Amazon.com. Amazon, the Seattle e-commerce giant just moved into a new headquarters campus developed by Allen’s Vulcan Inc. Interval is seeking damages and the end of the infringement. Among the patents being contested are:

  • 6,263,507: “Browser for use in navigating a body of information, with particular  application to browsing information represented by audio data.”
  • 6,034,652 & 6,788,314 (really the same patent, involving continuations): “Attention manager for occupying the peripheral attention of a person in the vicinity of a display device.”
  • 6,757,682: “Alerting users to items of current interest”
  • TechFlash has a deeper analysis of these patents.

Microsoft founder Paul AllenGoogle and Facebook told the Guardian they will fight the accusations by Interval. “This lawsuit against some of America’s most innovative companies reflects an unfortunate trend of people trying to compete in the courtroom instead of the marketplace,” a Google spokesperson said in an emailed statement to the Guardian. “Innovation – not litigation – is the way to bring to market the kinds of products and services that benefit  millions of people around the world.” Facebook spokesperson Andrew Noyes  said: “We believe this suit is completely without merit and we will fight it vigorously.”

The Guardian reports that these claims have led to accusations by some observers that Allen, who is worth a reported $13.5bn is acting as a “patent troll” – suing active companies via patents obtained by now-defunct or inactive companies which are not actively developing technology.  However, David Postman, an Interval official, defended the lawsuit as necessary to protect its investment in innovation.”We are not asserting patents that other companies have filed, nor are we buying patents originally assigned to someone else,” he told the Guardian. “These are patents developed by and for Interval.” Allen is not a named inventor on any of the patents according to Bloomberg.

Allen co-founded Interval Research in 1992 to develop communications and computer technology. The firm was reportedly designed to be a pure research institute “done right” which would replicate Xerox PARC, but that it would actually commercialize the amazing ideas. At its largest, it employed more than 110 scientists and engineers, and filed patents covering internet search and display innovations, according to the lawsuit. Interval Research officially closed in April 2000 when its 300+ patents were taken over by Interval Licensing.

Apparently, Allen has support from another tech founder. TechDirt reports that Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak comes out in favor of “patent trolls” and patent holders suing companies who actually innovate. Woz told Bloomberg TV that patents somehow help out the small guy (Paul Allen, the 37th-richest person in the world?):

I think this lawsuit represents the idea that hey, patents, individual inventors, they don’t have the funds to go up against big companies. So he’s sorta representing some original investors. And I’m not at all against the idea of patent trolls.

The Bloomberg interviewer points out that Paul Allen is not the inventor and there’s no sign that the inventors on these patents would actually get any of the money should Allen succeed. Woz says that Allen “represents inventors.” According to TechDirt Woz seems uninformed about the patent world today. For example, the interviewer notes that dealing with patents has become a “cost of doing business” and Woz seems to think that’s a good thing:

Every tech company is very aware that patents are really the heart of our innovation and invention system and (a) that you have to have your own patent position and you gotta be aware that there might be others. And, yes, you might be infringing. It’s very awkward, because some patents are so general. It’s hard to say how they’ll be interpreted. There’s a lot of ambiguity in the system.

Apple co-founder Steve WozniakTechDirt notes the irony that in Woz’s autobiography iWoz, he talked about how much of a success Apple was without relying on patents at the beginning.

Patents on software and business processes have become a lightning rod issue for web companies. They claim that patents act as a financial drag on innovation and that the US Patent Office (USPTO) is especially poor at examining patent claims for “prior art” which would disqualify them, or that it awards patents on needlessly wide claims which mean that it is almost impossible for companies to use accepted web technologies without accidentally infringing on them.

One of the most notable was Amazon’s 1997 patent for its “1-Click” shopping system, which was, accepted and then rejected and finally passed by the USPTO in March 2010. Amazon has licensed the technology to Apple, among others. Other infamous software patent abuses include:

  • British Telecom attempted to claim a patent on the hyperlink; its claim collapsed in 2002 on the basis that the patent referred to a “central computer” – which the internet does not have.
  • SCO sued IBM, Red Hat, Novell. AutoZone and DaimlerChrysler for claimed patents rights that would cover significant parts of the free Linux operating system.

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| September 9, 2010
Comments Off on In a 100 Acre Wood Far Far Away

In a 100 Acre Wood Far Far Away

n a 100 Acre Wood Far Far AwaySource: Bio Break

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| August 31, 2010
Comments Off on CAPTCHAs Broken

CAPTCHAs Broken

CAPTCHAs BrokenMims Bits on MIT‘s Technology Review reports that researchers at UC San Diego have figured out how spammers use low-cost workers in Russia, Southeast Asia, and China to solve millions of CAPTCHAs in near real-time. A CAPTCHA is that bit of distorted text you have to type back at a webpage when you’re trying to sign up for a new email account or leave a blog comment.

CAPTCHAIn order to prevent spammers from flooding the web with their malware researchers developed CAPTCHAs. CAPTCHAs are designed to be easy for humans to solve but challenging enough for computers to get right that automated systems would not be effective.

In what Mims calls an epic new analysis by the UC San Diego researchers, they uncovered the “seedy underbelly” of a sophisticated, highly automated, worldwide network of services that help spammers get past the CAPTCHAs. The article says that the inventors of CAPTCHA probably didn’t expect thousands of laborers working for less than $50 a month would be recruited by spammers to solve an endless stream of CAPTCHAs. Automated middlemen deliver the  CAPTCHAs to the workers and then sell the results to spammers in real-time so that their spambots can use those solutions to post to blogs and set up fraudulent email accounts according to a paper (PDF) delivered at the USENIX Security 10 Symposium.

The UC San Diego researchers analyzed where the workers involved in this scheme were located and found that they are based in India, Russia, Southeast Asia, and China. The system is so efficient at delivering CAPTCHAs to workers in these remote locales that the average time for delivery of a solution hovers around 20 seconds. ImageToText, one of the CAPTCHA services the researchers experimented with was able to deliver correct results in “a remarkable range of languages,” including Dutch, Korean, Vietnamese, Greek, and Arabic.

Klingon,Even setting the sample CAPTCHAs to Klingon, as a control in their experiment, could not stop ImageToText, according to Technology Review. The workers managed to solve a handful of the Klingon CAPTCHAs despite odds of less than one in one thousand of their randomly getting the right answer.

The results of this landmark study, says Mims, show that a number of sites, including those run by Microsoft (MSFT), AOL, Google (GOOG), and the widely used reCAPTCHA, are regularly compromised by spammers employing these services. The researchers conclude that their investigation with an anonymous “Mr. E” who actually runs one of these services, proves that for advanced spammers, CAPTCHAs aren’t so much a barrier as a cost of doing business.

DarkReading has a report that independent security researcher Chad Houck recently demonstrated his work on solving Google’s reCAPTCHA. reCAPTCHA was designed to stop software bots attempts to create free accounts on the Google services for their malware ways.  Despite recent enhancements made by Google, DarkReading says Houck came up with algorithms that could beat reCAPTCHA 30 percent of the time.

Google logoA 30% success rate means that automated software using Mr. Houck’s algorithm will be able to create one Google account out of just three attempts. Multiply those odds by the endless attempts by tens of thousands of zombies in a typical botnet, reCAPTCHA is broken.

In the DarkReading article, Houck notes that “[ReCAPTCHA] has never been wholly secure. There are always ways to crack it.” The researcher has since published a white paper on it, and has also released his algorithms online. For now, at least, a Google spokesperson says there has not been any sign of this particular attack being actively used.

Related articles

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| August 28, 2010
Comments Off on New School Year Same Security Threats

New School Year Same Security Threats

New School Year Same Security Threats Another school year is starting up and security firm WatchGuard has a list of the top threat to school IT systems as classes start up again. Eric Aarrestad, Vice President at privately held WatchGuard Technologies says, “With so much at risk and so much to gain by cybercriminals, today’s campus is one of the most dangerous IT environments around.” He continues, “Unlike enterprise organizations that can throw substantial resources towards network and data protection, schools and universities are more constrained, yet they face some of the most demanding security challenges due to the dynamic interaction between students and their school’s IT resources.”

Top threats at school

WatchGuard’s top at school threats include:

watchguard_logoSocial Networks The security firm calls social networks, the number one threat to school and university networks is social networks, such as Facebook and MySpace. Unfortunately, social networks act as an ideal platform to launch a myriad of attacks against students and departments, including spam, viruses, malware, phishing, and more. Adding to this, socially engineered attacks are often extremely successful due to the “trusted” environment that social networks create.

Malware As students and teachers use the web for educational purposes, the Seattle-based firm company says many unwittingly expose themselves to drive-by downloads or corrupted websites, which inject malicious forms of software on their computers. Once infected, they risk becoming victims of identity theft or loss of personal information via spyware and keyloggers.

Viruses Today, email remains one of the primary ways of delivering viruses. According to the release, recent surveys suggest that 27 percent of users fail to keep their antivirus signatures which may, in any case, be unable to up stop the new generation of viruses with polymorphic properties.

Botnets The privately held security firm estimates that 15 to 20 percent of all school and university computers connected to the Internet are part of a botnet. As part of a botnet, school and university systems can be used in a variety of unknown exploits, including spam delivery, denial of service attacks, click-fraud, identity theft, and more.

Phishing scams continue to get more advanced and selective, with students being specifically targeted. WatchGuard claims that phishing attacks via social networks achieve a success rate of over 70 percent.

Hacking In a recent survey of education IT professionals, 23 percent ranked student hackers as one of their greatest threats to network security.

Access Control Usage of mobile devices and wireless access to education IT resources continues to plague network administrators. As the use of mobile devices escalates, schools will face increasing challenges in managing authorized network access according to the security vendor.

WatchGuard Technologies provides a variety of Internet security software and hardware products, including firewalls, virtual private network (VPN) appliances, and anti-virus applications under the XTM, XCS, and e-Series brands.

Related articles
  • The Science of Cyber Security (usnews.com)

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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