Discover how mastering email communication can boost business efficiency, avoid common pitfalls, and ensure secure, respectful online interactions.
Turkey Revenge
The turkeys are pissed this Thanksgiving they are seeking revenge.
Germs Infest 60% of Americas Phones
60% of Americans sleep with their phones, harboring germs. Cleaning regularly with UV sanitizer or alcohol wipes can help keep your phone and bed germ-free.
Smartphone Sanitizing: A Practical Guide
Securely erase personal data from your old smartphone before recycling. Protect your identity from hackers—easy steps to follow.
Why Soft Skills Matter in Today’s Job Market
Boost your career with essential soft skills like communication, teamwork, and emotional intelligence. Learn why they’re crucial for workplace success.
Fake Fingerprints Can Open Your Phone
– Updated 03-30-2016 – The Business Insider proves that you can use Play-Doh to fool the fingerprint sensor in your Phone.
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I have pointed out a number of times that biometrics will not be the complete final solution for passwords. Biometrics is the measurement and statistical analysis of people’s physical and behavioral characteristics. The technology is mainly used for identification and access control. The basic premise of biometric authentication is that everyone is unique. An individual can be identified by his or her intrinsic physical or behavioral traits.
There is a huge issue with biometrics. You can’t change your intrinsic physical or behavioral traits if they get stolen or hacked. Well, now there is more proof that biometrics can be hacked without cutting off a finger.
Hack mobile phone authentication
Two smarty Sparty’s from Michigan State University’s biometrics group has figured out a way to hack mobile phone fingerprint authentication. According to Help Net Security, the MSU researchers can hack your secure phone by using just a scanner, a color inkjet printer, a special type of paper, and ink.
Turns out that the attack is easy to execute. The first step is to scan the target’s fingerprint image at 300 dpi or higher resolution. Then, the image is mirrored and the original or binarized fingerprint image is printed on the glossy side of an AgIC special paper. The printer uses AgIC silver conductive ink cartridges (along with normal black ink).
Magical conductive ink
CrunchBase explains that advances in material science have made it possible to manufacture almost magical conductive ink. AgIC silver conductive ink has tiny silver particles and can be purchased online. The ink is printed by standard Brother printers. The ink dries in a few seconds and conductivity emerges instantly when the traces are drawn on special photo inkjet printing paper also available online.
All in all, an attacker can have a spoofed fingerprint that would allow him to access a phone protected with fingerprint authentication in less than 15 minutes, and the cost of all the tools he needs to do this does not surpass $500.
Researchers Kai Cao and Anil Jain successfully managed to fool the fingerprint sensors on the Samsung (005930) Galaxy S6 and Huawei (002502) Hornor 7 phones.
They posted a demo of the attack on YouTube:
The attack is an improvement over Germany’s Chaos Computer Club’s attack against Apple (AAPL) Touch ID on iPhone 5S by lifting a fingerprint of the genuine user of a glass surface and then making a spoof fingerprint. More details about the Michigan State researchers’ work can be found here (PDF).
Only a matter of time
The Sparty researchers note that not all mobile phones can be hacked using this method. But their experiment is proof of the urgent need for anti-spoofing techniques for fingerprint recognition systems, especially for mobile devices which are being increasingly used as a part of two-factor authentication for site access and payment processing like Apple Pay, Google (GOOG) Pay, or Samsung Pay.
The researchers warn that it is only a matter of time before hackers develop improved hacking strategies not just for fingerprints, but other biometric traits that are being adopted for mobile phones (e.g., face, iris, and voice).
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.
Category: Uncategorized |
Tags: 2016, AAPL, Android, Apple, Apple Pay, Biometrics, Fingerprint, Galaxy, GOOG, Google Pay, Huawei, iPhone, Mobile, Samsung, Security, Touch ID, Two-factor authentication
Michigan Leader in SPAM
In a surprise finding, the New Jersey based anit-malware company Comodo’s Threat Research Labs found that Michigan is one of the leading sources of unsolicited e-mail on the Internet. Unsolicited bulk email is also known as “SPAM.” SPAM is usually considered junk e-mail. The Great Lake state ranked third behind California and New York in spewing out the most SPAM.
The Comodo researchers examined all the emails Comodo filtered for customers in the second half of 2015, specifically looking at SPAM. In doing their research, they conducted an IP address analysis of the millions of pieces of email SPAM that came into the Threat Research Labs from their customers.
Through this analysis, researchers have been able to break down SPAM by state and find where it originated from. IP addresses from California (24.37%) and New York (22.36%) sent nearly half of the spam Comodo filtered, while Utah (19.42%), Michigan (10.79%), and New Jersey (3.68%) IP addresses rounded out the top five states.
Fatih Orhan, Director of Technology and lead at the Comodo Threat Research Labs said:
California and New York were not really surprising in terms of the top two states because of population and technology innovation taking place in those geographies — but finding Utah and Michigan in the top five was somewhat shocking
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I have followed the battle against SPAM since 2009. Here are some tips to help protect yourself from SPAM
- Keep your Junk E-mail Filter updated
Updates are available at Downloads on Office Online. Under Office Update, click Check for Updates.
- Block images in HTML messages that spammers use as Web beacons
By default, Outlook is set to block automatic picture downloads. To verify your settings are, on the Tools menu, click Options. Click the Security tab, and then click Change Automatic Download Settings. Verify that the Don’t download pictures or other content automatically in HTML e-mail check box is selected.
- Watch out for checkboxes that are already selected
When you buy things online, companies sometimes add a check box (already selected!) to indicate that it is fine to sell or give your e-mail address to other businesses. Clear the check box so that your e-mail address won’t be shared.
- DO NOT sign up for commercial mailing lists.
- DO NOT reply to email or unsubscribe from a mailing list that you did not explicitly sign up for.
- Configure your email client to send and receive emails in Plain Text or Rich Text Format.
For Microsoft Outlook go to: Tools > Options… and click the Mail Format Tab. Change your Message format to Text Click OK.
- Report SPAM that is fraudulent – offering products that don’t work or don’t exist, pyramid schemes, and so on – can be sent to the US Federal Trade Commission at uce@ftc.gov.
- Report SPAM that promotes stocks can be sent to the US Securities and Exchange Commission at enforcement@sec.gov.
Lest we forget, this is the same Comodo that was responsible for releasing 9 fraudulent certificates onto the Internet which, Sophos says impacted the trusted root authority on all default Windows and OS X installations, as well as high-profile websites like:
• mail.google.com
• www.google.com
• login.yahoo.com (3 certificates)
• login.skype.com
• addons.mozilla.org
Sophos states that this breach allowed an attacker to easily masquerade a malicious website as one of the above with the HTTPS authentication succeeding.
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.
Not the Windows Startup You Knew
Mental Floss brought us the work of London-based musician Daniel John Jones who has experimented with slowing down the playback of an assortment of Windows start-up sounds. As part of a project on his Soundcloud page, he has slowed down a number of Windows start-up sounds by up to 4000 percent.
In the case of Windows XP, the iconic sound takes on an eerie trance-like tone that lasts just shy of three minutes. Its build-up and dramatic payoff never seemed to make the pay-off when I started up my PC. Listen here.
The Windows 95 start-up sound, which lasts nearly 4 minutes takes on a new-agey mood with a sinister edge to it. Listen here.
The full collection of Jones’s Windows work can be found here.
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.
Tablets are Doomed
TechCrunch reports from Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that tablets are dead. Six years after the original iPad ushered in the post-pc era, there were no tablets at the premier mobile showcase. Companies and consumers have moved on.
To be fair, TechCrunch says that if you looked hard enough, you could find an Android tablet or two stashed away in a corner. And Apple (AAPL), the tablet leader, doesn’t come to MWC. They conclude that tablets are not the future for Samsung’s (005930) and LGs (LGLD) of the consumer electronics world.
In fact, the author reports that Samsung, Sony (SNE), HTC (2498) and LG didn’t have any new tablets to announce. They didn’t even mention tablets during their conferences. It’s not just that people don’t care about tablets anymore — the big electronics companies themselves aren’t even trying to release new products for this market anymore. The article lists a number of reasons why tablets have become so unpopular.
Tablets are now a commodity
First, tablets are now a commodity. You can find dozens of perfectly fine tablets for less than $200. And there’s no differentiating factor between Android tablets. As a result, companies are not making a profit from them.
You already have a tablet
Second, chances are you already have a tablet at home and it’s working fine. So the author reports that there’s no reason why you should upgrade it — it probably runs Netflix, Facebook (FB) and the Kindle app. It has a browser and your emails. Long replacement cycles mean you don’t need to pay attention to the new and shiny tablets. The Business Insider also observes tablets are more like PCs — you buy a new one only when the old one is worn out or doesn’t run the software you need.
Phones are getting bigger
Third, phones are getting bigger. The LG G5 (5.3-inch display) and Samsung Galaxy S7 (5.1-inch display) are the two most interesting flagship phones that were announced at MWC. The first Samsung Galaxy Note had a 5.3-inch display, which could be called a phablet. Today, it would be an average phone. According to TechCrunch, big phones are the new normal, and everybody uses their phones constantly to interact with other people and do everything they’d do on a tablet.
BI explains the phenomenon of phones replacing tablets includes Apple. Apple started making larger phones, the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus, a year ago, which eliminates some of the justification for a bigger touch screen device. Also, consumers upgrade their phones every two or three years, since the carriers subsidize some of that up-front cost (plus, it’s just cool to have a new phone, which you carry with you everywhere in public).
For those who need a snapshot of the decline of the tablet, Business Insider presented a chart from Statista based on numbers from IDC. In the last four quarters, tablet sales have been down from the previous year’s quarter. Overall, shipments in the first three quarters of 2015 are down 9% from the same time a year ago.
TechCruch takes a pretty hardcore position on tablets. Tablets had a good run, but won’t be around for much longer. They argue that the iPad is a better tablet than any Android tablet because there aren’t many tablet-optimized apps on the Play Store. This is key to understanding the iPad’s appeal.
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I have covered the issues around tablets since 2011 including the first signs of a decline in Apple’s iPad Teflon armor in 2014. TC says tablets can still make a comeback. They need to become something else. But something needs to change and soon. Current tablets prove that you should never bet against the smartphone.
Related articles
- Microsoft Surface Pro 4 Wins Best Mobile Tablet Award At MWC 2016 (mspoweruser.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.
Trivial Taxes for Tech Titans
Just in time for the start of the U.S. tax season, reports have surfaced that should piss off most tax-paying Americans. The Business Insider is reporting that most of the American tech giants, like Apple, Google and Microsoft are not paying their share of taxes.
The U.S. corporate tax rate is about 35%, but according to an analysis by financial research website WalletHub and charted by Statista, the effective tax rate paid by U.S. tech companies, like Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT), and Google (GOOG), was well below the 28.6% average rate paid by the 100 biggest S&P companies.
Facebook (FB) was the exception with an effective tax rate of 41%, but the social networking company has paid a higher rate in past years and recouped some of the money in tax deductions, according to Quartz.
One way these tech giants are lowering their tax bills is by stashing most of their profits overseas, where lower international tax rates apply. Despite claims by Apple CEO Tim Cook, that Apple pays all of its taxes, Apple, for example, keeps most of its cash offshore, and openly says it’s keeping it overseas to avoid their U.S. corporate tax bills.
The New York Times recently reported that Apple made a deal with Italian tax authorities over a dispute about how much tax the iPad maker should have paid Italy. A spokesman for Italy’s tax authority declined to comment to the NYT on the amount of owed taxes but the BBC reports that the figure is €318m ($348m).
The investigation found that since 2013, Apple had moved roughly $1.1 billion in revenue from its Italian operations through an Irish subsidiary to lower the taxes that the company was obliged to pay under the 27.5% corporate income tax rate in Italy.
The NYT says Ireland’s corporate tax rate, at 12.5%, is one of the lowest in the Western world, compared with 35%, before deductions, in the United States. Of course, Irish officials deny that the low-tax structure represents unfair competition.
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The Tech Titans have long lusted after a tax cut. I cover the 2011 meeting where Tech giants Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, Apple, Steve Jobs, Yahoo, Cisco (CSCO), Twitter (TWTR), Oracle (ORCL), Netflix, Google, and venture capitalists lobbied Obama for a tax cut on $1 trillion of profits they’ve stashed overseas.
Related articles
- How Microsoft moves profits offshore to cut its tax bill (seattletimes.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.