Archive for July, 2014

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Typo Keyboard Rises From The Dead

Posted in Commentary with tags on July 31, 2014 by itnerd

Frequent readers will recall that Ryan Seacrest of American Idol fame was involved with a startup called Typo which came out with the Typo Keyboard for the iPhone. They were promptly sued by BlackBerry and sales were stopped shortly thereafter.

Well, they’re back. The Typo 2 is now available from their website for $99, with the first orders shipping in mid-September. It’s been redesigned with a look that makes sure that they cannot be sued out of existence by BlackBerry. We’ll see how well that works out for them. In the meantime, if you want one you should place your order now.

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Canon Expands imagePROGRAF Lineup With Four New Models

Posted in Commentary with tags on July 31, 2014 by itnerd

Today, Canon announced the addition of four new five-colour, large-format inkjet printer models in its imagePROGRAF lineup: the 36-inch iPF785 and iPF780, and the 24-inch iPF685 and iPF680.

Compared to their predecessors, these devices offer faster printing speeds and lower operation costs in addition to upgraded software for an enhanced user experience. They are designed for a variety of industries that print maps, technical drawings, renderings, site and facilities management plans and signs and posters.

Fast facts about the new imagePROGRAF models:

  • Designed for maximum versatility and performance, ideal for businesses that need to print documents quickly while retaining high image quality
  • Canon’s Direct Print & Share 2.0 software is intuitive and allows users to view, share and print a variety of files
  • Compatible with Canon’s new imagePROGRAF Print Utility mobile app, which facilitates wireless printing from an iPad
  • Five-colour dye/pigment reactive ink system produces more vivid reds and yellows

These devices are scheduled to be available today for an estimated retail price of $6,626 (iPF785), $5,696 (iPF780), $4,239 (iPF685), and $3,309 (iPF680).

 

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CRTC Bans Exclusivity Clauses in Roaming Agreements… Rogers Targeted

Posted in Commentary with tags , , on July 31, 2014 by itnerd

The CRTC actually did something that I will praise them for. They just announced that they are going to ban exclusivity agreements between wireless providers when it comes to wholesale domestic roaming rates. What’s more, Rogers for the most part seems to the recipient of the CRTC’s ire as the CRTC accuses them of doing the following:

  • Imposing exclusivity clauses in roaming agreements that prohibited smaller service providers from using networks from any other carrier.
  • Charging some new Canadian service providers significantly higher roaming rates compared to rates for other wireless service providers.

You have to thing that this isn’t going over well over at Rogers HQ right now.

What’s more, the CRTC will be holding a public hearing will be held on September 29, 2014 to investigate the competitive sate of the wireless market. That should be fun.

Here’s why all of this is important. Domestic roaming rates are going to be a key factor in a mythical fourth wireless carrier entering the market. We’ll have to see if this development actually paves the way for that to happen. I’m personally dubious, but I’m prepared to be proven wrong.

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NRC Cyberattack Targeted System With Personal Data

Posted in Commentary with tags , on July 31, 2014 by itnerd

It’s bad enough that the National Research Council of Canada got hacked. But that hack may have become worse according to The Privacy Commissioner:

The federal privacy czar says hackers who attacked Canada’s National Research Council infiltrated a system containing personal information.

The privacy commissioner’s office says it was first informed of the breach on July 23 and further briefed on Monday — at which point the exposure of personal data was confirmed.

Lovely. Now the Canadian Government needs to come clean on what data was stolen and make sure that if the info of individual Canadians got out that they’ve been informed so that they can protect themselves. After they get done with that, they then need to tell Canadians how they will keep this from happening again. Because I am not sure that Canadians have the confidence that they need to have in the Government when it comes to cybersecuity.

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Windows Phone Users Get BBM Starting Today

Posted in Commentary with tags on July 31, 2014 by itnerd

BlackBerry today announced that Windows phone users are getting some BBM love by finally getting a version of BBM for them. If you’ve got a Windows Phone 8 or higher device, all you need to do is head to the Windows Phone Store to get your copy.

Key Features Include:

  • BBM Chats: The Chats page is your single destination for all your chats, including groups, multi-person and one-to-one. In a chat, you have lots of ways to share. You can attach a picture from your camera, add a voice note, send a contact, share a photo from your gallery or send your location. Chats also include BBM signature “D” and “R” notifications that allow users to know when messages are delivered and read.
  • BBM Groups: With BBM Groups, up to 50 people can be added to the conversation. Chat, share photos and schedules with even more friends.
  • Find Friends: Discover people you know that are also using BBM and invite them to your BBM contact list, from within the app. With the ability to easily share your PIN with your friends and family, connecting is easier than ever.
  • BBM Feeds: Feeds lets you see what’s happening with your BBM contacts. Here you will see when contacts update their status or profile photo. If you want to chat about one of their updates, just touch on their name and you’ll be taken to a chat. Here you can also quickly update your own status to share what you’re up to or what’s on your mind.
  • ‘Pin’ to Start:  Pin BBM Groups and 1:1 chats to the Start screen for easy access to your most important chats

Additional features for BBM on Windows Phone will continue to be added in future releases.

BlackBerry also posted a video that shows BBM for Windows Phone in action:

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Private Data Often Caught Up In Canadian Intelligence Sweeps: Globe & Mail

Posted in Commentary with tags , , on July 31, 2014 by itnerd

The Globe And Mail is reporting today that when the Communications Security Establishment Canada goes looking for hackers and other cyber criminals, the private info of Canadians who have nothing to do with said evil doers often gets caught up in the sweep:

A 22-page “Operational Procedures for Cyber Defence” document obtained by The Globe speaks to just how Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) can log, store and study volumes of electronic communications that touch government computer networks – including the “private communications” of Canadians not themselves thought to be hackers.

Full details about the tradeoffs involved in CSEC’s operations are known only to one outsider – Minster of National Defence Rob Nicholson, the official who approves such surveillance, and who is provided with statistics about its risks.

That’s not good. I’m all for making sure that Canada is safe from cyber threats. But when it affects the personal info of Canadians, I think that’s when you have to start looking closer at this to see if that can be avoided:

“We need to start asking a lot of questions about how the cybersecurity part of the CSEC mandate is being carried out,” said Tamir Israel, a lawyer at an Internet-policy think tank in Ottawa.

Thus, I think this needs to be discussed in the open in a robust manner as I believe that the privacy of Canadians cannot be sacrificed just to get the bad guys.

Agree? Disagree? Please leave a comment and share your thoughts.

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Canadian Government Warned About Vulnerability To Hackers: Toronto Star

Posted in Commentary with tags , on July 31, 2014 by itnerd

This year, the Government Of Canada has had to deal with a hack from Chinese hackers, and the heartbleed nightmare which forced them to shut down the website that allowed Canadians to file their taxes online. In the wake of those incidents, The Toronto Star is reporting that they were warned that “some departments and agencies lack sufficient network security and that Ottawa needs a more coherent plan to address large-scale cyber attacks”:

The documents — part of a presentation to the chief information officer on Monday — state control of the government’s IT “incident management plan” was too complex, with overlapping roles and unclear “accountabilities.”

The plan is not aligned with the larger Federal Emergency Response Plan, which co-ordinates response efforts between different levels of government and does not include a consideration of “wide-spread government cyber (incidents).”

The documents also suggest a number of departments and agencies are not using the government’s secure network, but are using “unauthorized” Internet connections to conduct their business. It’s not clear how many government institutions are using unauthorized connections.

“In order to maximize protection of (government) systems and information, all corporate Internet access points . . . should be migrated to (the secured network) by end of fiscal year,” the presentation reads, underlining the proposed timeline for emphasis.

The rest of the article is very eye opening and scary at the same time. Seeing as the Government Of Canada has all sorts of info at its fingertips that hackers of all sorts would want, you’d think that they’d take cyber security far more seriously. But clearly that is in question. What’s also scary is that this is not the first time the Government has been told about this:

“Either this is an almost unsolvable problem, or the government has a pretty blasé approach to it,” Liberal deputy leader Ralph Goodale said Wednesday.

“(Prime Minister Stephen) Harper has constantly said don’t worry, Canadians are safe. That’s been his line . . . . This rhetoric is one thing, about getting tough and doing everything they can and protecting Canadians against cyber threats and so forth, but they don’t seem to quite get around to it.”

Goodale pointed to the 2012 report from the auditor general, which found that despite the “lessons learned” exercises in the wake of January 2011 hacks to government systems — also allegedly connected to China — federal systems remained vulnerable.

The fact that the Auditor General raised this as an issue two years ago and we’re still here talking about it is not good. I think it’s time that the Government start giving Canadians answers about why cyber threats aren’t being taken seriously by them.

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Linksys Introduces High Performance Managed Network Switches

Posted in Commentary with tags on July 30, 2014 by itnerd

Linksys announced its first managed switches in the Linksys Business product line-up to complement its portfolio of business networking products. With these switches, the Linksys Business product lineup now includes a full range of cost-effective routing, switching, VPN, wireless and IP surveillance solutions. The new managed switches are available in a 28- and 52-port rack-mountable chassis, with and without Power over Ethernet Plus. Managed switches offer more advanced security and bandwidth control, compared to smart and unmanaged switches, for IT administrators to ensure stability of the business network.

Features of the new Linksys Managed Switches

  • Layer 3 static routing
  • 24  or 48  Gigabit Ethernet ports
  • Two combo mini-GBIC (SFP) ports
  • Two 10-Gigabit uplink Ethernet SFP+ ports (LGS552P and LGS552)
  • Integrated Power over Ethernet Plus (PoE+) (LGS528P and  LGS552P)
  • Energy Efficient Ethernet Technology (802.3az)
  • Port and Tag based VLAN support for up to 1024 VLANs (802.1Q)
  • Automatic Voice VLAN, Guest VLAN and Dynamic VLAN assignment
  • Tagged or Port based QoS support (802.1P)
  • Storm Control – Broadcast, Multicast, and Unknown Unicast
  • IGMP Snooping, Rapid Spanning Tree- RSTP,  BPDU flooding/filtering
  • Advanced Quality of Service (QoS) support with layer 2/3/4 Traffic Prioritization – Voice, Video, and Data
  • Advanced Network Security support 802.1X Port Security and  DHCP Snooping
  • Web-based and SNMP Management Interface

Pricing

Linksys 28-Port Managed Gigabit Switch (LGS528): $549.99

Linksys 52-Port Managed Gigabit Switch (LGS552): $949.99

Linksys 28-Port Managed PoE+ Gigabit Switch (LGS528P): $849.99

Linksys 52-Port Managed PoE+ Gigabit Switch (LGS552P): $1299.99

 

The Linksys Managed Gigabit Switches are available now through major Distributors and Resellers.

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Apple Under Pressure In China And Russia Over Security Issues

Posted in Commentary with tags , , , on July 30, 2014 by itnerd

I’m betting that this isn’t going over very well at 1 Infinite Loop at the moment.

Russian officials are calling out Apple over their security issues. A Reuters report says that the Russian Government wants Apple along with SAP to hand over source code so that they can prove that they have no security issues:

The Russian proposal was voiced last week when Communications Minister Nikolai Nikiforov met Apple’s general manager in Russia, Peter Engrob Nielsen, and SAP’s Russian managing director, Vyacheslav Orekhov, the Communications Ministry said in a statement.

It said the proposal was designed to ensure the rights of consumers and corporate users to the privacy of their personal data, as well as for state security interests.

While couched in the language of protecting privacy, any Russian move to force these companies to divulge the inner workings of their software could pose a major threat to their viability if they were to lose control of the source code.

Given the current climate of relations between Russia and the west, this has got to be a ploy. At least one would hope so. And you can bet that there’s zero chance that this would ever happen. Though they did invoke the name of Edward Snowden to further force the issue:

“Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013 and U.S. intelligence services’ public statements about the strengthening of surveillance of Russia in 2014 have raised a serious question of trust in foreign software and hardware,” Nikiforov said in the statement released late on Tuesday.

That’s not good. Neither is increasing pressure from China. Fang Xingdong who is the founder of Blogchina and web research consultancy Chinalabs as well as being the director of the Center for Internet and Society at Zhejiang University of Media and Communications is saying that Chinese officials should be banned from using the iPhone. Here’s a Google translated document (original version can be found here) that spells out his concerns:

Internet Lab founder Fang Xingdong told reporters that for the Apple exposed “reserved port” for a long time, consumers did not know, so there is a certain risk. He stressed that as a technical support side, Apple could get some of the data used for the sale, but this exposes data acquisition significantly exceeded the limits of technical support.

What he’s referring to is the infamous iOS backdoor gong show that blew up last week. I’m pretty sure that this is the last thing that Apple needs in a market it wants to make inroads into.

Clearly, Tim Cook and company have some work to do to put these fires out.

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BlackBerry Isn’t Sweating Loss Of Ford…. At Least Not Publicly

Posted in Commentary with tags , on July 30, 2014 by itnerd

Yesterday, Ford Motor Company announced that they were ditching BlackBerry for iOS devices. That’s not a minor switch as it covers thousands of devices. The one thing that I didn’t have was BlackBerry’s side of the story. The Wall Street Journal got an answer of sorts:

BlackBerry played down the significance of Ford’s decision.

“While we can’t comment on this customer, we understand that there is diversity and choice in the market. Whether customers choose iOS, Android, Windows or BlackBerry devices, BlackBerry has the mobility management software to securely manage any device,” a BlackBerry spokeswoman said in an email.

Okay. We really didn’t learn much there. But it’s a pretty safe bet that a defection that is this large isn’t going over well in Waterloo. It’s also a safe bet that efforts are being made to make sure that there are no further defections like this.

 

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