Archive for July 21, 2014

Apple Denies Claims Of Secret Backdoor In iOS

Posted in Commentary with tags , on July 21, 2014 by itnerd

Well, that only took all day. Apple moments ago just released a statement denying that they have backdoors in iOS. This is a statement sent to journalist Tim Bradshaw:

https://twitter.com/tim/status/491370587554471936

Okay. Plausible. I did some googling and found this document that details SOME of what was discussed in the original story that I posted. But their statement doesn’t exactly give me the warm fuzzies. Nor does it seem to reassure others who are aware of this issue. I really think that Apple needs to be completely transparent here as I suspect that this is not going to go away anytime soon.

 

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Rogers Cuts “Several Hundred” Jobs

Posted in Commentary with tags on July 21, 2014 by itnerd

You might recall the Rogers 3.0 plan that I wrote about a while back. The Toronto Star is reporting that as part of the Rogers 3.0 plan, “several hundred” people are no longer employed by Rogers:

Rogers Communications Inc. has quietly cut “several hundred” middle management positions across the country and 15 per cent of executives at the vice-president level and above, the company confirmed Monday.

And more change is coming.

The restructuring is aimed at delivering on a plan the company announced in May to “overhaul the customer experience and re-accelerate our growth relative to our peers,” Rogers spokesperson Patricia Trott wrote in an email to The Star.

Well, Guy Laurence who is the CEO of Rogers clearly doesn’t mess around. But to be fair, this was coming as it was detailed in the Rogers 3.0 plan. Still it’s never good when people lose their jobs and I hope they land on their feet quickly.

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Does iOS Have A Deliberate Backdoor?

Posted in Commentary with tags , on July 21, 2014 by itnerd

That’s an interesting question that is circulating around the Internet today because of a presentation by forensic scientist and iPhone jailbreak expert Jonathan Zdziarski. He claims that several backdoor security mechanisms are secretly included in iOS by Apple. And these backdoors  make covert data collection easier for Apple and governments. This despite the fact that Apple has claimed to be not working with any government to collect data on their behalf. Zdziarski claims to be attempting to draw attention to these backdoors and to get answers as to why they exist. Having said that, he’s posted the slides from his presentation and his  journal paper on the subject is available for sale which is interesting.  For anyone interested in the security mechanisms found in iOS, the presentation slides are very technical, but nonetheless they make an interesting read.

It will be interesting to see if Apple comments on this as I believe they at least have to say something, if not disprove everything that Zdziarski has said as they love to tout how secure iOS is versus Android.

 

 

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