| Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2014 00:24:59 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestsubmissions.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Apple Says It Will Add New iCloud Security Measures After Celebrity Hack
Message-ID: <p06240806d0303cec9207@[10.0.1.7]>
Apple Says It Will Add New iCloud Security Measures After Celebrity Hack
By BRIAN X. CHEN
SEPTEMBER 4, 2014
Apple said on Thursday that it would strengthen its security measures
after a recent episode where hackers broke into the Apple accounts of
a number of celebrities, stole their nude photos and leaked them on
the Internet.
The company said it would add alerts to tell people about activities
that could be signs of a break-in.
Customers will receive emails and alerts called push notifications,
which are messages that show up prominently on iPhones and iPads,
when someone tries to change the password for their iCloud account,
upload their backed-up account data to a new device or log into their
accounts for the first time from an unknown device, the company said.
The notifications will be added in two weeks.
...
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/04/apple-says-it-will-add-new-security-measures-after-celebrity-hack/
***** Moderator's Note *****
I get an email notification whenever I change a password on Google, or
when I fat-finger a login attempt. It's routine, and has been for over
a decade. If Apple wasn't doing it, that's a serious lapse.
Now, the spin-doctors promise another magic ingredient: "push"
notifications that do what every other cloud storage provider does
routinely. Gag me with a Silicon Valley Spoon!
Bill Horne
Moderator
|
| Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2014 10:15:32 -0400
From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: telecomdigestsubmissions.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Apple Says It Will Add New iCloud Security Measures
Message-ID: <20140906141531.GD5615@telecom.csail.mit.edu>
On Sat, Sep 06, 2014 at 12:24:59AM -0400, Monty Solomon wrote:
> Apple Says It Will Add New iCloud Security Measures After Celebrity Hack
>
> By BRIAN X. CHEN
> SEPTEMBER 4, 2014
>
> Apple said on Thursday that it would strengthen its security measures
> after a recent episode where hackers broke into the Apple accounts of
> a number of celebrities, stole their nude photos and leaked them on
> the Internet.
I'm tempted to use this episode as a reason to denounce Hollywood as a
modern-day Gomorrah, but, at least in this case, that's not justified.
Actors must allow casting and costume directors, and other decision-
makers to see nude photographs of their bodies during the "treatment"
phase of a movie. It's nothing salacious: there are millions of
dollars at stake, and the time and professional liberty of world-class
experts, so investors are reluctant to let any unknowns go unchecked
before they "green light" a process which would reveal every defect,
blemish, stretch mark, tatoo, or scar anyway.
Of course, I don't expect actors to be security experts. However, the
Screen Actors Guild could easily hire them, and make their expertise
available to all members. This stuff isn't rocket science.
Bill
--
Bill Horne
(Remove QRM from my email address to write to me directly)
|
| Date: Sat, 06 Sep 2014 11:58:25 -0400
From: Gary <not-valid@telecom-digest.org>
To: telecomdigestsubmissions.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Chicago Magazine Article on Motorola
Message-ID: <lufb07$82g$1@dont-email.me>
On 9/6/2014 7:57 AM, Paul W.Schleck wrote:
> What Happened to Motorola
>
> How a culture shift nearly doomed an iconic local company that once
> dominated the telecom industry.
>
> By Ted C. Fishman
>
>
> http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/September-2014/What-Happened-to-Motorola/
>
I started working at Motorola in 1989 as an engineer developing digital
hardware. I work for Freescale now, having spun out of Motorola in
2004. I work in sales and support. My official record has me down for
25 years of service.
For many years I worked in the Cellular Infrastructure Group (CIG)
before I switched to what was then the Semiconductor Products Sector
("SPS"). I can say that the author of this article hit the big points
that I believe led to Motorola's downfall but he missed a lot of big
details.
The big problems the author hit were the failure to move from the
"warring tribes" culture to a more collaborative one in the 90's and the
lack of visionary leadership that could led the engineering centric
culture to drive markets rather than follow them. Certainly not easy
tasks and if I'd known how to do that I'd be a very wealthy man.
This article highlights one of my major frustrations from my time
wearing a Motorola badge: Cellphones captured all the attention. While
certainly a big part of Motorola's business, SPS and CIG contributed
significant revenue to the company. Many other sectors were important
as well, such as Motorola Computer Group, the Government Radio Group and
a group that made routers and network equipment whose name I forget.
There were many others as well.
SPS in particular is a big miss by this author. Founded in the 50's,
Motorola chips were (and are) a big part of the global semiconductor
industry which started in the United States. Motorola was one of the
early leaders in this industry. As Freescale, we are doing well and in
many ways are better off without the connection to Motorola and the
cellphone centric view investors took of that company.
Things I've seen in my time at Motorola:
o) I was working on Digital Cellular base stations when we were testing
them with competitors phones. We had zero discussions with the
Subscriber (cell phones) business. I spent more time talking to
Qualcomm folks that people outside of CIG.
o) Motorola's purchase of General Instruments for $17B in 2000 was a
visionary move that could have created a "Seamless" media experience
across broadband and cellular. It never happened because the culture at
GI was just as much a "warring tribe" as the rest of Motorola. Efforts
to glue cellular and broadband together failed in part because the
Motorola divisions didn't play together, the intrenched interests in the
markets didn't want it, and there was no visionary strong enough to push
through these barriers. "GI" was sold to Arris for $2.35B in 2012,
quite a discount.
o) Semiconductor was treated as a completely separate business. SPS had
to compete for business in the other sectors just like any other
supplier. Sure, NDAs weren't needed and everyone wore the same badge,
but at the end of the day no financial advantage was gained by having
SPS in the same company. Meanwhile, competitors to Motorola's business
wanted nothing to do with Motorola Semiconductors.
o) SPS's spinoff to Freescale Semiconductor in 2004 has turned out
rather well. The biggest positive was the simple fact that investors
viewed Motorola as a cell phone handset business first and foremost.
Cell phones and chips are very different business that just couldn't be
reconciled by the investment community. A separate company made it easy
for investors to view the business properly. Another positive has been
the fact that business that compete with Motorola no longer view
Freescale as a competitor. For example, Scientific Atlanta wanted
nothing to do with Motorola chips after the GI purchase.
Anyway, that's a few comments from my 25 years with this (these?)
company. Get a beer or two in me and I'll tell you more!
-Gary
|
| Date: Sat, 06 Sep 2014 13:31:49 -0400
From: Fred Goldstein <fg_es@ionaryQRM.com>
To: telecomdigestsubmissions.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Ready for IPv6? No, not really.
Message-ID: <lufgdv$mn2$1@dont-email.me>
On 9/5/2014 10:13 PM, Garrett Wollman wrote:
> In article <lubote$qvn$1@kzdoos.xs4all.nl>,
> Koos van den Hout <koos+newsposting@kzdoos.xs4all.nl> wrote:
>
>> koos@kzdoos.xs4all.nl IPv6: Think ::/0, act ::1.
>>
>> http://idefix.net/
>> Are you ready to start supporting IPv6?
>
> This .signature hit a bit of a raw nerve today. I thought I was ready
> to support IPv6 years ago. Then along came "privacy" addresses and
> threw all of that right out the window. I don't want to repeat my
> rant here, so please see my blog post about why IPv6 as currently
> specified and implemented is unsuitable for use on anything but small
> or very tightly controlled networks:
>
> http://blog.bimajority.org/2014/09/05/the-network-nightmare-that-ate-my-week/
>
>
> Everything I write about could be fixed -- indeed, could have been
> prevented -- but the software vendors who decided that turning on
> "privacy" addresses would make it seem as if they were doing a good
> thing should have talked with the network hardware vendors (who would
> have told them that this was insane). We'll probably end up using
> DHCPv6 (and turning on DHCP snooping to block clients that don't
> use a DHCP-assigned IPv6 address) but we don't yet have the ability to
> do that.
>
> A reasonable alternative to "privacy" addresses -- depending on the
> threat model -- would be either Cryptographically Generated Addresses
> or generating the interface ID as a 62-bit truncated hash of (prefix,
> MAC-48) rather than a random number, so that it would at least be
> stable and traceable within the domain of a single network operator.
Hilarious in its own way, and extremely informative. Garrett facing
IPv6 is a classic case of a smart customer meeting a stupid product. He
not only senses that something's wrong, he gets the implications that
the designers obviously didn't.
I call IPv6 "CCP", the Children's Crusade Protocol. Like the Children's
Crusade, it was stupid, destined to fail, harmful for all involved, and
existed largely to demonstrate obeisance to an "authority" that did not
deserve any respect. Yet the children, and the techies, simply assume
that their leaders were right, and ignore the obvious warning signs. If
one knew the history of IPv6, it would be obvious.
One might assume that IPv6 was designed by the best and brightest
engineers who took everything into account. But that's not the IETF
way. It is the IEEE way -- the 802-series standards are almost always
well engineered -- but IETF is a parody of a standards body, and IPv6 is
a parody of a standard, developed by the "B team" in the early 1990s
after the IPNG "A team" essentially walked. The "privacy" issue is just
one of is flaws.
IP itself began over 40 years ago; it was a component of the
Transmission Control Program that Cerf and others (Metcalfe and others
were on the committee; Cerf wrote up the report) developed. IP became a
separate entity as of TCP version 4 in 1978, hence IPv4 being the first
stand-alone IP. Funny how something this old is the "new thing" that
the FCC wants to migrate everything to...
Ethernet (which Metcalfe co-invented in 1973) was catching on in the
early 1980s. It uses 48-bit vendor-based MAC addresses, built into the
hardware to ensure uniqueness. DEC was big on Ethernet and added it to
DECnet Phase 4, released around 1983. DEC's initial method was to
change the MAC address to include the 16-bit DECnet address as the low
order bits. (Ethernet NICs thus have the ability to override the
built-in MAC address via software.) Clever but not ideal. So for Phase
V, which was aligned with a profile of OSI CLNP (IS 8473) and meant to
ship by 1986 (not that it ever shipped much at all, but that's a
different tale), they took the opposite approach. They kept the MAC
address and made it part of the DECnet address. (DEC did not seem to
like the ARP approach.)
Now by the time 1990 rolled around, OSI and DECnet/OSI Phase V were
going nowhere; there was little free code, and lots of free TCP/IP. Plus
the government-subsidized Internet made TCP/IP more useful, if you could
get onto it. But the 32-bit IPv4 address space was seen as a limit.
The IAB (which theoretically oversees IETF) first decided to adopt a
profile of CLNP as the new IP ("TUBA", TCP and UDP with Bigger
Addresses). All of the major routers of the day already had it, after
all, due to the big, albeit failed, OSI push. But the rank and file
kiddies at IETF saw OSI as the enemy, regardless of reality, and
protested vociferously (another story...). So IAB restarted the
process, which is how IPv6 got started.
Before any of that happened, DEC and others had figured out that
promoting MAC addresses into CLNP was a mistake; it exposed the identity
of the specific piece of hardware, including is maker, to the world (a
privacy issue). So DEC would have backed off, had the whole shebang not
gone west. But the OSI-hating IPv6 crew (B team) took this old,
discredited idea and assumed that it was groovy, and adopted it. And
then they built work-around atop work-around, not thinking out the
consequences very well at all, as Garrett's blog duly notes. Heck, there
are more "oops" moments in IPv6 than in a Britney Spears concert.
The best answer is to totally ignore IPv6. Don't use it. Don't support
it. Use more NAT and private addressing to keep IPv4 alive for now, and
wait for RINA to mature. (The initial academic implementation is well
underway at irati.eu.) IPv6 was not built by the best and brightest at
all, and pretending that it is the way forward can only result in more
unpleasant surprises.
***** Moderator's Note *****
It's Saturday, and I'm disposed to allow a little leeway on the
non-telecom components of this thread. If nothing else, it's a
reminder that standards are developed by imperfect people who have
limited time, and sometimes their work takes on importance far beyond
the original intent.
The original version of IPv6 is a "solution" to the "problem" of
address exhaustion in the IPv4 Internet. It is also a Chekist's dream,
since it includes enough extra space to fit a MAC address in every
packet, thus allowing us to be tracked into, out of, and through every
router, gateway, and NSA node in the universe. Not only is a MAC
address associated with a specific computer, but since it's now rare
for users to share computers, it's therefore associated with a
specific person.
You should think abou that. If IPv6, or any substitute or successor,
is allowed to contain such tracking info, your children and
grandchildren will be contributing to a world-wide-demon-in-waiting,
which will hold the records of every youthful indiscretion, every
visit to al jazeera, every glimpse at a site giving information about
homosexuality, and every single attempt to read any document that has
a version of truth not approved by the ruling class. That archive will
be used to make decisions about which of them will be admitted to the
military academies, or will have access to credit, or will be
considered conventional and/or promising enough to have police look
the other way when they are found to be "breaking" the "law" that
others must obey.
Bill Horne
Moderator
|
