Hasta La Gadget!

Sony has finally delivered on its Mofiria promise with what it claims is the world’s smallest and lightest finger vein reader. That assertion may be challenged by Hitachi, whose 3mm-thick scanner promises to be even smaller, but the critical difference here is that the FVA-U1 is about to go on sale in Japan come December 18, whereas Hitachi’s hardware is nowhere to be found. The Sony scanner weighs a measly 33 grams, hooks up via USB, and adds an extra layer of biometric protection for your most precious data. Whether carrying around an extra dongle just to protect some Excel spreadsheets and your Outlook account is worth it, we leave up to you.

Sony’s FVA-U1 reads veins, coming to Japan this month originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Akihabara News  | Email this | Comments

While it hasn’t exactly been a detriment to their widespread adoption, RFID tags have proven to be relatively easy to exploit in a number of cases. Some researchers at the University of Arkansas say they’ve now found a novel way to change that, however, with a new method that effectively amounts to a “fingerprint” for RFID tags. The short of it is that they discovered that each RFID tag has unique minimum power response at multiple radio frequencies, and that power responses across tags were significantly different, even for tags of the same model. That, along with several other unique, unspecified physical characteristics allowed them to create an electronic fingerprint that’s tied to each RFID tag, but doesn’t actually depend on any modifications or encryption on the tag itself — which almost incidentally means it can be implemented with relative ease and at no added cost.

Researchers say RFID ‘fingerprint’ could prevent counterfeiting originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Physorg  |  University of Arkansas  | Email this | Comments

A hacker has made good on Apple’s warnings about security issues on jailbroken iPhones: Owners of infected handsets are greeted by a new wallpaper featuring the image of 80s pop star Rick Astley and the message, “ikee is never gonna give you up.” iPhone owners, you’ve just been Rickrolled.

The worm reportedly doesn’t do anything malicious–well, nothing more malicious than resurrecting an old 4chan prank. Of course, this may well just be a proof of concept hack from its programmer; the door to more malicious attacks, it seems, is now wide open.

Windows 7 is a valuable upgrade delivering an awesome new user interface, but don’t expect any major improvements in security.

Anti-virus software vendor Sophos tested Windows 7’s built-in anti-virus capabilities by feeding a clean system 10 pieces of the newest malware. Eight out of the 10 samples ran successfully, claims Sophos.

“Unfortunately, despite Microsoft’s claims, Windows 7 disappointed just like earlier versions of Windows,” says Chester Wisniewski, a senior security advisor at Sophos, in a blog post. “The good news is that, of the freshest 10 samples that arrived, 2 would not operate correctly under Windows 7.”

Sophos’ findings aren’t surprising: Windows 7 promises backward compatibility with most software that works on older operating systems, such as Windows XP. It would be reasonable to infer most malware compatible with Windows XP or Windows Vista is likely going to harm Windows 7.

Also, prior to the release of Windows 7, Microsoft did not promise that the OS would be safer against viruses. Security enhancements that Microsoft highlighted were automatic data encryption for thumb drives, a feature for IT administrators to control which applications can run on a corporate network, and a malware filter in Internet Explorer 8 — nothing promising to prevent malware from working at all.

In fact, Microsoft has steadfastly insisted that Windows 7 users continue to run anti-virus software and regular system updates to stay safe.

“Security in Windows 7 is very multi-faceted and we have never advised customers to rely on just one specific feature in the OS,” a Microsoft spokeswoman said in a statement. “We recommend that customers configure their computer to download and install updates automatically, and install all security updates and service packs when available to ensure the highest level of protection against malware and other vulnerabilities.”

Many security researchers agree that Windows operating systems will always be more vulnerable to malware. That’s because the vast majority of PC owners are Windows users, and that gives “the bad guys” greater economic incentive to attack Windows systems.

Thus, even though Windows 7 ships with more built-in security features than Apple’s Mac OS X, the Mac is still safer because fewer malicious hackers are targeting the less-popular platform.

“If you’re a bad guy and you’re doing this to make money … you don’t want to spend 90 percent of your time on Windows and 10 percent on Mac,” said Charlie Miller, a security researcher and author of the The Mac Hacker’s Handbook, in a September interview with Wired.com. “You’re going to want to spend 100 percent of your time on Windows.”

Sophos says the “lesson learned” from its malware test is you still need to run anti-virus on Windows 7. That hardly seems to be a new lesson, since Microsoft never told anyone to stop running anti-virus in the first place.

So why is Sophos so “disappointed” with Windows 7? Clearly, the company is sensationalizing its findings in order to sell more anti-virus software. All of this should have already been obvious, though numbers do help confirm previous assumptions.

All you should gain from the Sophos report is reaffirmation of something you already knew: So long as you’re running Windows, you need anti-virus software. So keep running it.

See Also:

• Microsoft Windows 7
• 7 Good Reasons to Switch to Windows 7
• 7 Reasons to Avoid Windows 7
• Apple’s Snow Leopard Is Less Secure Than Windows, But Safer …

IronKey has never been one to shy away from sensational claims, but for whatever reason, it’s announcing its newest secure drive in a rather low-key fashion. Or, somewhat so. The D200 range of USB flash drives are said to be more manageable and secure than ever, offering up the peace of mind necessary in government and enterprise scenarios. The new devices include policy enforcement, usability and field-maintenance capabilities, a dual-channel architecture for rapid transfers, the ability to double as an authentication token and a self-defense mechanism designed to resist “physical, malware and password attacks.” It’s available in 1/2/4/8/16GB capacities and should withstand most encounters with water and shock, though it’s on you to dig up the presumably lofty MSRPs.

Filed under: Storage

IronKey ships uber-secure D200 USB flash drives originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 04 Nov 2009 04:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments