Friday, February 21, 2014
Thursday, February 20, 2014
Finalmente wireless sin complicaciones...(BusinessWeek)
Steve Perlman's Amazing Wireless Machine Is Finally Here
It was almost three years ago that Steve Perlman began courting controversy by promising something of a wireless technology panacea. A relentless entrepreneur and inventor, he unveiled a prototype called DIDO in this magazine’s pages. The technology would do away with wireless network congestion by giving each smartphone and tablet its own super-fast connection instead of asking these devices to share bandwidth pumped out by a cell tower. The ins and outs of the technology were difficult to understand, and plenty of critics dismissed Perlman’s claims as being misguided and trumped up.
Perlman tried his very best to prove the critics wrong today by unveiling a commercialized version of his wireless innovation, now known as pCell or personal cell technology. Perlman bills the wireless system as basically the successor to LTE, the current high-speed wireless technology. In demonstrations at his laboratory, Perlman showed off iPhones, Surface tablets, and TVs streaming massive files—the 4K UltraHD version of House of Cards from Netflix, for example—via his own wireless networking equipment. The demonstration proved not only that the high-speed wireless technology worked but also that it would work with existing devices that support LTE.
“That will shock people,” Perlman said in an interview. “It means we have hundreds of millions of devices out there that are ready to go.”
The problem Perlman is trying to solve revolves around how current wireless networks are built. Companies like AT&T and Verizon will put up a cell tower that sends out a signal, which must then be shared by any people in range. The idea is to have the signals overlap at the edges of their range like a series of circles nudging up against each other. The arrangement must be done very artfully because the circles cause interference if they’re too close. As a result, there are spots in cities like New York, Chicago, and San Francisco where you often have tons of people in the same cell all placing calls and pulling down data to their devices at the same time, and their connections slow because they’re all sharing the bandwidth in that given area. The congestion issue is expected to get worse and worse as people keeping adding wireless devices and downloading larger and larger media files.
Under Perlman’s pCell system, interference from the cells is not an issue. Instead of blasting out a dumb signal across a given area, Perlman and his team of researchers have developed a smart transmission system. Their networking equipment locates a device like a smartphone and uses complex mathematical operations to create a unique signal—hence the personal cell idea—just for that device. The upshot of this is that you can place the pCell transmitters anywhere and not worry about their signals bleeding into each other. And instead of sharing a signal, each person gets to tap into close to the full capacity of the transmitter. “We believe this is the largest increase in capacity in the history of wireless technology,” says Perlman. “It’s like the wireless equivalent of fiber-optic cables.”
Artemis Networks is the company Perlman has formed to sell this technology. It’s in the process of putting pCell transmitters on about 350 rooftops in San Francisco, and Perlman is looking to work with a telco or technology company like Google(GOOG) or Microsoft (MSFT) to get a commercial service running in the fourth quarter. “We’ll do San Francisco first and then do New York, Chicago, Dallas, and other congested cities,” says Perlman.
To work properly, a company backing the pCell technology would need to build out a large data center in addition to deploying the transmitters. It’s in the data center where servers constantly crunch away on the algorithms that form the unique wireless stream aimed at each device. As people move about, the servers must keep recalculating and processing a new stream. Perlman expects that a single data center could satisfy the needs of a city like San Francisco.
Perlman has spent about 10 years working on this technology with a handful of employees. I paid a recent visit to their San Francisco laboratory and saw the technology working firsthand. Perlman had put a few of the transmitters up near the ceiling and was able to direct a wireless beam right at a device in my hand. Despite such demonstrations, Perlman has been unable to tempt venture capitalists with the technology. “They invariably bring in experts who say it doesn’t really work,” he says. “I am showing them a demo, but they remain convinced that it’s something else.”
Perlman, who made millions selling WebTV to Microsoft, has funded all of this himself, and he declines to reveal the exact amount spent so far. He will show off the pCell technology at Columbia University on Wednesday during a midday lecture.
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
El Internet de todo...
By Ashraf Eassa February 14, 2014
 |
|
Source: ARM.
|
The "Internet of
Things" - that's the new buzzword, the "next big thing" that
tech investors are talking about. Ever since Apple revolutionized the
smartphone with its iPhone and the personal computer with the iPad, the
industry has gotten the message loud and clear: make everything smart (i.e.
give it non-trivial processing power), make everything connected (think
Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, NFC, LTE, and so on), and make the world around us
"smart." However, the notion of the "Internet of things"
is, frankly, confusing to most investors. What do technologists and industry
observers really mean when they say the "Internet of Things"?
Let's ask ARM Holdings!
There is no company better positioned to really take advantage of everything
becoming "smart" than ARM Holdings, the vendor of low-power CPU IP
for a variety of uses, from the lowest power micro-controllers to the highest
performing smartphones and tablets. Indeed, the company recently gave a very
comprehensive presentation outlining the opportunities that lie ahead in this
bold, new Internet-of-things world.
To begin, let's take a look
at the "fundamental ingredients" of the Internet of Things:
 |
|
Source: Gartner (2013), ARM
Estimates.
|
So, what do these devices
need? Well, they'll need a very low-power processor to make them
"smart." ARM, for example, believes that its Cortex-M0
microcontroller is a solid choice for this kind of application. The performance
isn't anything close to what you'll find in a smartphone, but it's enough to
add some brains to these devices. Imagination Technologies, ARM's primary IP
competitor, is happy to license low-power MIPS cores to do the job, and even
Intel is offering "Quark" - a tiny, low-power X86 solution.
But it's not just about
"smart" - it's about "connected" and "aware"
If you'll look at the fundamental hardware that ARM believes is necessary for
an Internet of Things device, it's clear that it's about much more than just
making things "smart" - it's about giving them the ability to connect
and the ability to sense. For example, how useful would your iPhone really be
if it didn't have Wi-Fi in order to download all of those large games? Or what
if it couldn't make phone calls via its cellular connection? Oh, and without
built-in GPS, the phone would hardly be as useful as it is today in directing its
user to near-by locations. In short, while the "compute" part is
important, the ability to "sense" and "connect" is also
equally important. Of course, all of this does need to come cheaply.
Okay, so what kinds of applications are we talking about?
The possibilities are
limitless...
The possibilities for the Internet of Things are seemingly endless and
represent a massive opportunity for device vendors, chip vendors, security
software vendors, and providers of embedded operating systems. However, it's
important to actually get a sense of what kinds of applications we're talking
about. Here's a list of some of the things that can be made "smart":
— Home appliances
(toasters, refrigerators, microwaves, dishwashers, washing/drying machines)
— Traffic lights
— Watches
— Glasses
— Baby monitors
— Health/fitness monitors
— A lot more...
Thanks to the low hardware
costs that ARM mentioned in its previous slide, these sorts of things can be
made a reality with fairly minimal silicon dollar content. Of course, adding
the non-silicon hardware to make things "smart" (for example,
displays on a pair of "smart glasses") could be rather high, leading
to initially prohibitive costs, but w! ith scale/time the costs come down and
the additional cost of making things "smart" will be far outweighed
by the increased utility of these devices compared to their "dumb"
counterparts.
Keep an eye out for
compelling investment opportunities
As with every new "revolution" in computing/technology, there will be
secular megatrends worth playing (for example, ARM is likely to benefit as its
low-power cores are likely to be licensed for use in many of these devices),
and there will be specific companies that actually make the end-user products
that will see "glory" if they come up with the right product (i.e.
there may be the next "Apple" in the making, such as Google via Nest
- or it could be Apple itself that drives this next revolution)!
There will also be
component vendors from chips to displays to technologies that we don't even yet
know about that will benefit handsomely from these trends and, perhaps, from
being in the right designs at the right time. Unfortunately, there will also be
a good deal of "false starts" that could lead investors to chase a
pot of fool's (lowercase 'f') gold at the end of the rainbow, so to speak.
Hearts will necessarily be broken along the way - but so is the nature of
investing in "disruptive" technologies. No guts, no glory!
Looking To Invest In
"The Internet of Things" Right Now?
Well here's the kicker: companies
like Apple and Google AREN'T your best bet - not by a long shot. When it comes
to investing in this hyper-growth market, the real trick is to find a small-cap "pure-play"...
and then watch as it grows in EXPLOSIVE lock-step with its industry. Our expert
team of equity analysts has identified 1
stock that's poised to produce rocket-ship returns with "The Internet of
Things". Click
here to get the full story in this eye-opening report.
Ashraf Eassa owns shares of Intel and Imagination Technologies.
The Motley Fool recommends Apple, Google, and Intel. The Motley Fool owns
shares of Apple, Google, Imagination Technologies, and Intel. The Motley Fool
has a disclosure
policy.
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
Infecciones a través de LINKS de periódicos
Washington Post, Guardian links used to infect The Mask malware victims
Summary: Kaspersky's security research team today revealed "one of the most advanced" cyber-espionage malware threats "The Mask" (aka Careto). Victims including government institutions, private equity firms and high-profile activists are exploited.
PUNTA CANA, Dominican Republic — Kaspersky Lab security research team just released details about "The Mask" (aka Careto) cyber-espionage malware, calling it "one of the most advanced threats at the moment" at the 2014 Kaspersky Security Analyst Summit.
Researchers told attendees The Mask is an extremely sophisticated nation-state spying tool and believe it to have been in operation since 2007.
IOC information has been included in Kaspersky's detailed technical research paper.
Like Flame, another Kaspersky discovery, Careto is a uniquely powerful and refined cyber-espionage operation comprised of modular tools.
The malware's primary targets are government institutions, diplomatic offices and embassies, energy, oil and gas companies, research institutions, private equity firms and high-profile activists.
Its victims are exploited by phishing emails linking to tainted subdomains simulating subsections of the Washington Post, Guardian, and YouTube, among others.
The Mask collects a large list of documents from the infected system, including encryption keys, VPN configurations, SSH keys and RDP files.
There are also several unknown extensions being monitored that Kaspersky has not been able to identify and said "could be related to custom military/government-level encryption tools."
In their explosive presentation "A Glimpse Behind The Mask" Kaspersky Lab's Russian researchers Costin Raiu, Vitaly Kamluk and Igor Soumenkov explained that the complexity and universality of the toolset used by the attackers behind "The Mask" earns the malware a place in history.
Malicious "Guardian" and "Washington Post" links target governments and activists
According to Kaspersky Lab’s analysis report, The Mask campaign relies on email links to a malicious website, which in turn hosts a number of exploits designed to infect the visitor, depending on system configuration.
Upon successful infection the malicious website redirects the user to the benign website referenced in the e-mail, which Kaspersky has observed to typically be a YouTube movie or a news portal.
Sometimes, the attackers use subdomains on the exploit websites to make them seem more real — these subdomains simulate subsections of the main newspapers in Spain plus some international ones.
The researchers specifically named The Mask's phishing bait as "The Guardian" and "Washington Post".
Victims of this targeted attack have been found in 31 countries around the world spanning the Middle East, the UK, Europe (including Germany and Belgium), as well as Africa and the United States.
Kaspersky notes that the exploit websites do not automatically infect visitors; instead, the attackers host the exploits at specific folders on the website, which are not directly referenced anywhere except in The Mask's malicious emails.
The researchers said, "At the moment, all known Careto command and control servers are offline. The campaign was active [from 2007] until January 2014, but during our investigations the C&C servers were shut down."
The attackers began taking them offline in January 2014. We were also able to sinkhole several C&C servers, which allowed us to gather statistics on the operation.
They added, "We cannot discard that the attackers may decide to bring the campaign back again in the future."
The Mask uses a customized attack against older Kaspersky Lab products in order to hide in the system. In addition, it includes a rootkit, a bootkit, Linux/Mac versions and possibly a version for Apple iOS.This is putting them above Duqu in terms of sophistication, making it one of the most advanced APTs at the moment.
Careto infection is "disastrous" Careto intercepts all communication channels and collects the most vital information from the victim’s machine.
Detection is extremely difficult because of stealth rootkit capabilities, built-in functionalities and additional cyber-espionage modules.
According to the researchers, Careto is a highly modular system; it supports plugins and configuration files, which allow it to perform a large number of functions.
In addition to built-in functionalities, the operators of Careto could upload additional modules that could perform any malicious task.
At least one Adobe Flash Player exploit (CVE-2012-0773) was used among The Mask's attack vectors. (This exploit was originally discovered by VUPEN and was used in 2012 to escape the Google Chrome sandbox to win the CanSecWest Pwn2Own contest.)
The Windows backdoor is extremely sophisticated, and the attackers used a number of techniques in order to try to make the attack stealthier.These include injection into system libraries and attempting to exploit older of Kaspersky Lab’s products to avoid detection.Also the communication between different exploit shellcode modules is done through cookies, which is quite an unusual technique.
Culprits with "a very high degree of professionalism" Kaspersky's researchers believe this could be a nation-state sponsored operation — and that these might be new players on the global nation-state cyber-espionage stage.
We observed a very high degree of professionalism in the operational procedures of the group behind this attack, including monitoring of their infrastructure, shutdown of the operation, avoiding curious eyes through access rules, using wiping instead of deletion for log files, etc.This level of operational security is not normal for cyber-criminal groups.
In 2012 Kaspersky Labs uncovered Flame, a massive cyber-espionage operation infiltrating computers in the Middle East, and its research indicated a connection with the well-known Stuxnet cyber-weapon, designed to sabotage the Iranian nuclear program.
The authors appear to be native in the Spanish language which has been observed very rarely in APT (Advanced Persistent Threat) attacks, leading Kaspersky to conclude the threat actors are Spanish.
Yet Kaspersky also notes that Careto operates with an extremely sophisticated level of OPSEC (operational security), so the choice of language may simply be another layer of obfuscation.
"Some clues such as the use of the Spanish language are weak, as it is spoken in many countries, including Latin America, Mexico or United States (for instance in Miami, where a strong Spanish-speaking community exists).
We should also keep in mind the possibility of false flag attacks before making any solid assumption on the identity of who is responsible without very solid proof."
Kaspersky researchers counted over 380 unique victims among 1,000 IPs.
Kaspersky Lab’s most current products detect and remove all known versions of The Mask/Careto malware.
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Sony también hace dinero en otros rubros...(BusinessWeek)
Sony Makes Big Profits, Just Not on Electronics
Not all companies with Sony (SNE) in the name are toxic. Take Sony Financial, the insurer in which Sony owns a 60 percent stake. While the parent company said last week that it expects to lose $1.1 billion for the 2013-14 fiscal year, Sony Financial is doing just fine, thanks.
The insurer expects net income of ¥40 billion for the current fiscal year, better than its earlier target of ¥37 billion. The updated profit forecast slightly exceeded the ¥39.7 billion yen consensus of 15 analysts. Sony Financial also increased its forecast of revenue by 6.7 percent, and revenue for the first three quarters of the current fiscal year have increased 20.2 percent. The strong results are thanks in part to growth in Sony Financial’s life insurance and auto insurance premiums.
Unfortunately for Sony, the parent company doesn’t stick to selling insurance policies. It sells TVs, too, even though it can’t manage to do so profitably. Chief Executive Officer Kazuo Hirai said the company will lose money on its television business for the 10th year in a row, with the red ink for TVs this time amounting to ¥25 billion yen. “Investors don’t have much faith in Hirai,” Mitsushige Akino, chief fund manager at Ichiyoshi Asset Management in Tokyo, told Bloomberg News. “There’s no growth strategy.”
That’s not totally fair. Hirai is taking some steps to get Sony out of crummy businesses. Witness his decision to give up on PCs. For now, however, he seems unwilling to jettison TVs, a business with a No. 3 market share worldwide that’s nonetheless dragging down the company. “My responsibility is to turn around the electronics operation,” Hirai said. “I’d like to say this time’s reform is final, but amid intensifying competition, reform may be needed going forward.”
With competition from the Koreans and the Chinese putting pressure on Sony, the company isn’t going to solve any problems by stubbornly sticking with TVs. “You hear about losses from this company year after year after year,” Atul Goyal, a Jefferies analyst in Singapore, told Bloomberg Television. For Sony, he added, the goal should be to use the PC selloff as the first step of a broader retreat: “Salvation is an exit from electronics.”
One promising sign: Hirai is creating a separate subsidiary for Sony’s TV business. Down the road, that might make an exit easier. For now, though, there’s no salvation in sight.
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
Biotecnología...(BusinessWeek)
Biotechnology
China Creates Monkeys With Custom Gene Mutations
Scientists in China have created two monkeys with customized gene mutations. The successful births of the twin macaques, named Ningning and Mingming, may bring researchers closer to being able to recreate such human diseases as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s in primates. This would allow scientists to use primates, rather than rodents, as more realistic models of human illness.
To engineer the monkeys, researchers at Nanjing University and Yunnan Key Laboratory of Primate Biomedical Research in Kunming, China, used a new “gene-editing” technology called Crispr, which allows scientists to insert, delete, or rewrite a specific gene sequence. The technique, which may help usher in a new era of genetic medicine, has previously been used to manipulate the genomes of rats, mice, and zebrafish. But this is reportedly the first time it has been used successfully in primates.
The Chinese researchers altered genes in several fertilized monkey eggs before implanting them in surrogate mothers. (Several surrogates miscarried and some pregnancies are reportedly ongoing.) Newborn Ningning and Mingming have three modified genes: “one that regulates metabolism, another that regulates immune cell development, and a third that regulates stem cells and sex determination,”according to the MIT Technology Review.
The infant monkeys are too young for researchers to determine the physiological and behavioral effects of their mutations, but scientists worldwide are already looking to create their own Crispr-modified monkeys. “Although mice are giving us tremendous insight into basic brain biology and the biology of the disease, there’s still a big gap in between the mouse brain and the monkey brain,” Robert Desimone, director of MIT’s McGovern Brain Institute for Brain Research, told theMIT Technology Review. Not to mention that several drugs that work in mice don’t work in humans.
Researchers also hope that the possibility of using genetically-modified monkeys will encourage more companies to boost spending on drugs to treat neurological disorders, reversing a recent trend of large pharmaceutical companies pulling back from such risky research. They also say Crispr may eventually be used for human gene therapy to treat inherited diseases such as cystic fibrosis and sickle-cell anemia. The ability to alter DNA is also being investigated as a way to make people resistant to HIV.
China’s mutant-monkey breakthrough is controversial among animal rights activists. According to PETA, more than 125,000 primates are kept in U.S. laboratories and used for experiments every year.
Monday, February 3, 2014
Canadá recibe los datos de la NSA
Surveillance
NSA Spying Sends Data to Canada
In Kamloops, B.C., cool overnight temperatures in summer mean Telus (TU) needs to run its air conditioning for only about 40 hours a year to keep its computer servers from overheating. Lower cooling costs are part of the Canadian telecommunications company’s sales pitch to businesses looking to store troves of digital information cheaply. Telus also promotes Canada’s inexpensive hydroelectric power, low seismic activity—and, now, lower risk of government snooping. “There is a structural advantage in Canada in that the data is here and the privacy protection is more stringent,” says Lloyd Switzer, who runs Telus’s 10 data centers.
With revelations about surveillance by the U.S. National Security Agency stoking public outrage, companies such as Vancouver-based Telus and Rogers Communications (RCI) in Toronto see opportunity in telling customers about Canada’s privacy protections. Its Privacy Act, which took effect in July 1983, limits the amount of personal information the government can collect, use, and disclose. Canada’s Communications Security Establishment (CSE)—the agency responsible for gathering foreign intelligence—is forbidden by law from monitoring domestic communications. Surveillance of e-mail exchanges or phone calls may be authorized if one of the parties is outside the country.
Telus and Rogers expect data storage sales in Canada to increase 20 percent this year. U.S. cloud computing businesses may lose as much as $35 billion through 2016, according to the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, a policy research group in Washington whose board includes representatives of IBM (IBM)and Intel (INTC).
In the past year, Rogers has fielded more inquiries about its data storage services from companies outside North America than in the previous 10 years combined, says AJ Byers, president of Rogers Data Centres. Canada provides international businesses with the North American access they want, Byers says. “We see a lot of European and Asian companies talking to us,” he says. Mike Broadfoot, chief executive officer of Solium Capital (SIUMF) in Calgary, calls Canada’s privacy laws the “gold standard.” His company, which develops software to help global clients manage stock options programs, stores its data in Telus’s Calgary center.
Canada is hardly a surveillance-free zone, says Ron Deibert, director of Citizen Lab, an Internet security research center at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs. He says companies making such claims are glossing over a history of intelligence sharing with the U.S. “Anyone who would look to Canada as a safe haven would be fooling themselves,” he says. “We have a long-standing relationship with the NSA” dating back decades. In 1948, Canada signed on to an intelligence-sharing agreement first struck by the U.S. and the U.K. in 1946.
The alliance still governs information sharing between the U.S. and Canada, allowing its partners to exchange data gathered from surveillance, says Christopher Parsons, a postdoctoral fellow at the Citizen Lab. On its home page, the CSE says it engages in “incidental collection” of data on Canadians as part of its foreign intelligence gathering. “We always work with the appropriate authorities to ensure we follow all regulations regarding access to information and customer privacy,” Rogers’s Byers says of the privacy risks posed by intelligence sharing.
The notion that Canada offers greater privacy protections than the U.S. is overly simplistic, Parsons says. “The difference doesn’t necessarily mean it’s more powerful or less powerful, it’s just different,” he says. “It can actually become a bit of a tricky question, and one that is probably used more often for rhetoric than anything else.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)