For all of you that care, or have/getting an iPhone - iPhone Jailbreak Now Quickpwned: No Need for iTunes-Based Restore

News is just out of a new way to jailbreak your iPhone, and this time the tool is specifically designed to work “quickly and easily, without requiring a full restore.” Quickpwn has been released as a beta, intended to complement the main PwnageTool. It works with iPhones and iPod’s running 2.0.1 firmware, and operates very quickly without needing iTunes to rebuild/restore your device afterwards. This beta version is basically feature-complete, but lacks a “funky UI” (they’re adding that soon) and is currently windows only (other OS’s are “coming soon”). It’s available here. Keep your eyes open for a complete version (though remember that even though it’s development software, it’s apparently “impossible for this to permanently damage your device”).

Link to Windows Version of Pwnage Tool: Rapidshare

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The demands of the digital nomad are expected to drive laptop sales to over one billion in the next five years. The prediction by Dell came as it unveiled 10 new laptop models aimed at this emerging working class. The new Latitude line boasts as much as 19 hours of battery life for the always connected 21st century worker. At a press launch in San Francisco, Jeff Clarke, senior vice president of Dell’s business group, showed off the new line to reporters and analysts. The laptops include seven Latitude business laptops and three Dell Precision workstation laptops which Mr Clarke described as “performance leaders and something the tech community will absolutely die for”.

What Dell hopes will be particularly appealing to travelers is the 12.1-inch Latitude E4200, which starts at 2.2 pounds; and the 13.3-inch E4300, which starts at 3.3 pounds. For companies looking for a basic business notebook to reduce costs, Dell unveiled the 14.1-inch E5400, which starts at $839, and the 15.4-inch E5500, which starts at $869. The systems were available Tuesday. For mainstream desktop replacements, often found in docking stations in corporate cubicles, Dell introduced the 14.1-inch E6400 and the 15.4-inch E6500, which start at $1,139 and $1,169, respectively. Both were also available as of Tuesday. The computers have just under 10 hours of battery life which can be extended with a so called “battery slice” to total 19 hours. The machines also have a fingerprint reader and a “control vault” processor that stores an owner’s identity and credentials on protected hardware.

Source: BBC 

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Attacks by Russian hackers against Georgian Web sites, including one hosted in the United States, continued Tuesday even as Russian President Dmitri Medvedev ordered a halt to hostilities against Georgia. Tom Burling, acting chief executive of Atlanta-based Web-hosting firm Tulip Systems Inc., said the Web site of the president of Georgia was the target of a flood of traffic from Russia aiming to overwhelm the site. Burling said bogus traffic outnumbered legitimate traffic 5000 to 1 at president.gov.ge. “Literally, our people aren’t getting any sleep,” Burling said. Tulip’s firewall was blocking most of the malicious traffic. The site has been periodically inaccessible, though it was working midday Tuesday. Burling said the attacks have been reported to the FBI.

The site was transferred from servers in Georgia, the small nation south of Russia, on Saturday. Georgian-born Nino Doijashvili, Tulip’s chief executive and founder, happened to be in the country on vacation when fighting broke out Thursday. Doijashvili offered help to the government when it became apparent that Russian hackers were getting the upper hand, shutting down several government and news sites. The U.S.-based Shadowserver Foundation, which tracks Internet attacks, said they had noticed commands to attack Georgian sites being issued over the weekend to “botnets.” The computers are used to send bogus traffic to targeted sites, slowing them or in some cases bringing them down. The same botnets are also targeting Russian news sites and the Web site of Garry Kasparov, the Russian chess player and political activist, according to Steven Adair at Shadowserver. On Monday, hackers took over the Web site of Georgia’s parliament and replaced it with an image that drew parallels between Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili and Adolf Hitler, Adair said.

Source: AP

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The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority has obtained a temporary restraining order barring three Massachusetts Institute of Technology students from showing what they claim is a way to get “free subway rides for life. ”The 10-day injunction, ordered by U.S. District Court Judge Douglas Woodlock, prohibited Zack Anderson, R.J. Ryan and Allessandro Chiesa from revealing what they claim are the vulnerabilities of the MBTA’s fare card. The students claimed they had hacked the security features of the computerized “Charlie Card” and were scheduled to present their findings Sunday in Las Vegas at computer hacking conference.

“The Anatomy of a Subway Hack,” is the description of their presentation on the DEFCON 16 conference Web site.“In this talk we go over weaknesses in common subway fare collection systems. We focus on the Boston T subway, and we present several attacks to completely break the Charlie Card,” the listing read. The DEFCON 16 conference annually brings thousands of sophisticated hackers and technology security experts together. “If what the MIT undergrads claim in their public announcements is true, public disclosure of the security flaws - before the MBTA and its system vendors have an opportunity to correct the flaws - will cause significant damage to the MBTA’s transit system,” MBTA attorneys wrote in their motion for the restraining order. Anderson said the students never planned to show the public how to hack into the MBTA fare system.

Source: Boston Channel 

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Electronic Arts is once again hoping to profit from Mario Puzo’s mafioso drama with a sequel to their surprisingly competent Godfather game, cleverly dubbed Godfather 2. The new entry in the series, scheduled for release on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC platforms in February of 2009, sees the story expand to include criminal operations in Cuba, Florida and Godfather mainstay New York City.

Key to this new crime empire is the customized crew system. “Each family member specializes in a specific field such as demolitions, arson, engineering, first-aid and more. As The Don you control the family, sending some of your men on missions while heading off into action with others,” the official press release explains. Players will once again roam open-world environments as the newly appointed Don of New York. In keeping with the new position of leadership, players will handle strategic organizational aspects of the mob, like establishing and maintaining criminal endeavors and creating a stable of Made Men.

Source: Wired, Gamespot

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Good news for Google, Yahoo, MSN, and maybe even Cuil – search engine use is on the rise, according to a report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. While it may seem like everyone has Googled themselves, Twittered some inane tidbit about their day, or shared a little too much via Facebook status updates, some people apparently only use the Internet to send useless forwards and check the weather. The ranks of the Internet illiterate are dwindling, however. The number of people who regularly use online search engines is up 69 percent from January 2002, the report said. E-mail use increased about 15 percent in the same time period, but e-mail has always been the most popular app on the Internet, wrote report author Deborah Fallows.

Among daily Internet activities, 60 percent use e-mail, 49 percent use online search, 39 percent check news, 30 percent check weather, 29 percent research a hobby, 28 percent surf the Web for fun, and 13 percent use social networking sites. This is the second time Pew has seen a jump in search engine use – the first being a 10 percent increase in late 2005 when there was a lot of media buzz around search engines, including the Google IPO. What accounts for the jump this time around? Fallows suggested that at this point, Internet users can find a high-performing, site-specific search engine on any Web site “that is worth its salt.” Increased access to broadband and the quality of search returns has also contributed to the rise in use, she wrote.

Source: PC Magazine

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It looks like Apple is keeping a closer hold on the iPhone’s apron strings than anyone thought, if information uncovered by Jonathan Zdziarski is to be believed. Speaking on iPhone Atlas on Wednesday, Zdziarski – author of a book on iPhone application development – explained that he was performing “forensic examination of an iPhone 3G” when he discovered a suspicious configuration file in the CoreLocation section of the memory. Upon investigating, he discovered a link to a page on Apple’s website which appears to contain the skeleton for a future application blacklist. The page, called ‘unauthorizedApps’, seems to exist so the iPhone can occasionally download a copy and check the signatures of banned applications against installed applications – if a match is found, the app is disabled immediately. Zdziarski believes that this functionality exists “to disable applications that the user has already downloaded and paid for, if Apple so chooses to shut them down.”

Clearly, there are legitimate reasons why such functionality should exist – although slightly fewer for why it’s undocumented and downright concealed – including the possibility that Apple can update iPhones with a sort of anti-malware by listing known ‘bricking’ programs in the blacklist. However, it demonstrates that even a ‘jailbroken’ iPhone might not escape Apple’s clutches for long – and how sure can you be that Installer.App or your favourite non-Apple approved software won’t hit the blacklist once it’s activated? Anyone here worried about the possibilities of a hidden remote app killer developed by Apple, or does the Cupertino company just have your best interests at heart?

Source: Bit-tech

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