phones

A security researcher says hundreds of millions of mobile phones could easily be hacked with nothing more than a specially crafted text message. The hacker could then intercept calls or use the compromised phone to make cash. Karsten Nohl says the ... problem is with SIM cards, which are used to tell a phone which account to use and the number on which to send and receive calls and messages. He says many SIM cards still use an outdated algorithm for encryption to stop other people accessing information about the account. (Source: srlabs.de ) Nohl says his testing found a major flaw with these SIM ... (view more)

United States customs officials have reportedly blocked shipments of two high-profile Android smartphones from entering the country. It's the result of a court injunction obtained by Apple on the basis of alleged patent violations. The affected ... phones are the One X and the EVO 4G LTE, both manufactured by HTC. It's a significant blow to the smartphone maker, as these phones were intended to be its flagship models in the fast-growing Android smartphone market. Apple, Android No Strangers to Courts Apple and various manufacturers of Android devices have been engaged in a lengthy war of ... (view more)

Microsoft has recently released the first major overhaul of its Windows Phone operating system and it's getting some generally good reviews. The revised system is powering a range of devices, including the first significant results of the ... Nokia-Microsoft partnership. Windows Phone 7, released late last year, was a much-delayed revamp of what had previously been Windows Mobile. Although the system was generally praised, it appeared to come far too late to overcome a significant loss of market share to systems such as Apple's iOS and Google's Android. Sales of the Windows Phone 7 handsets thus ... (view more)

Computer users aren't the only ones who need to worry about their privacy and security. A new report from San Francisco-based Lookout Inc., a mobile phone security firm, reveals that smart phone applications may be closely monitoring users and ... relaying that information to others. (Source: yahoo.com ) Personal Data Secretly Transmitted to Third Parties Nearly 300,000 free applications for Apple's iPhone and phones built around Google's Android software were scanned by Lookout, Inc. Results of those scans found that many of those apps were secretly pulling sensitive data off user phones and ... (view more)

In a stunning development, Microsoft is preparing to kill off its much-hyped "social-focused" mobile phone, Kin. It follows some poor decisions about how to price the phone given its audience. The Kin was in development for several years under the ... codename Project Pink. For much of this time, it was widely speculated the phone would be based around the Zune media player, acting as a direct rival to Apple's iPhone. Instead, the two handsets, Kin One and Kin Two, were based around social networking updates and the ability to share content like photographs with friends. Unlike most phones today ... (view more)

After multiple delays , the first handsets running the next Windows mobile operating system are said to emerge next month. But they won't be on sale: instead, they'll go to software developers to make it easier for them to produce high-quality apps. ... App Developers to get Real Deal So far developers have had to rely on emulators to try out their new apps for Windows Phone 7. That does the job, but doesn't really recreate how an app looks and feels when it is on a phone in your hand. It is theoretically possible for developers to run beta editions of Windows Phone 7 on existing handsets through ... (view more)

Imagine logging onto your Facebook page from a mobile phone and discovering that you have been given full access to someone else's account. That is exactly what happened to a woman from Georgia and her two daughters. For a short period of time, the ... Internet seemed to lose track of which people controlled which accounts. While details on the event remain sketchy, experts say the issue was the result of a routing problem. User Name and Password Bypassed Cadence Sawyer suspected something was wrong after she had typed Facebook.com into her Nokia smartphone. Her account seemed to open without the ... (view more)

The iPhone has been hit by a virus for the second time this month. And this time the consequences are more significant than an unwanted picture of Rick Astley . A couple of weeks ago, a worm virus left some users of the iPhone with the image of 80s ... singer Rick Astley as their wallpaper. The virus only worked on phones which had been jailbroken: that is to say, their owners had altered them so that they could run software without Apple's authorization. Unfortunately, some of those who did so left the handset prey to a major security breach if they failed to change the default password for ... (view more)

Microsoft Research Virtual Wifi Virtual WiFi helps a user connect to multiple IEEE 802.11 networks with one WiFi card. It works by exposing multiple virtual adapters, one for each wireless network to which connectivity is desired. Virtual WiFi uses ... a network hopping scheme to switch the wireless card across the desired wireless networks. http://research.microsoft.com Files To Phones Send any files from PC to a mobile phone. Files to Phones provides free transmission of any files (TXT, MP3, JPG, 3GP, MP4, vCal, vCard) to any Bluetooth devices (mobile phones, smartphones, hand-held devices, ... (view more)

According to reports, the National Security Agency (NSA) has been busted once again for illegal surveillance. Worse yet, it seems the NSA has moved beyond wiretapping land lines to the wireless phone industry, too. (Source: nytimes ) Legal experts ... suggest that collaboration between the wireless phone industry and the NSA runs far deeper than originally thought. There are over 3,000 wireless companies operating in the U.S.; furthermore, the majority of industry-aided snooping is quietly handled by companies that most consumers have never heard of. (Source: cnet.com ) Major Networks Sold Data ... (view more)