No shooting at protest? Police may block mobile devices via Apple

Apple has patented a piece of technology which would allow government and police to block transmission of information, including video and photographs, from any public gathering or venue they deem “sensitive”, and “protected from externalities.”

In other words, these powers will have control over what can and cannot be documented on wireless devices during any public event.

And while the company says the affected sites are to be mostly cinemas, theaters, concert grounds and similar locations, Apple Inc. also says “covert police or government operations may require complete ‘blackout’ conditions.”

“Additionally,” Apple says,” the wireless transmission of sensitive information to a remote source is one example of a threat to security. This sensitive information could be anything from classified government information to questions or answers to an examination administered in an academic setting.”

http://rt.com/news/apple-patent-transmission-block-408/

A wiggly approach to smartphone keylogging

Two researchers from the University of California Davis, Hao Chen and Lian Cai, have successfully divined the keystrokes on an Android on-screen keyboard by measuring the wiggles, jiggles, and vibrations picked up by the device’s accelerometer. This is significant because the data from accelerometers is not thought of as a potential attack vector, and is thus freely available to any application on any smartphone or tablet.

Logging the keystrokes on a Windows or Mac desktop or laptop is incredibly easy: just install a piece of software (or get infected by a Trojan), configure where it should save or send the stolen keystrokes to, and that’s it. When it comes to smartphones, however, complex permission systems make this approach all but impossible — unless you use what’s known as a “side channel.” Strictly speaking, a side channel is an insecure source of information that helps a cracker break a cryptographic system. Broadly speaking, a side channel could be a blinking light on a router that mimics the binary data passing through it or the clackity-clack sounds of a physical keyboard. In other words, side channels are the characteristics of a system that have had their potential risks overlooked.

via extremetech.com