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Columbia researchers show remote HP printer hijack [video]

Posted: November 29th, 2011, 7:24pm MST by Tim Conneally

Columbia University's Intrusion Detection Systems Lab has found a significant core vulnerability in certain networked HP printers that lets a remote system infiltrate print jobs, remotely inject malware into the printer's firmware that takes control of the machine.

The lab, headed by Professor Salvatore J. Stolfo, has been doing research on the vulnerabilities of embedded systems for the last year, identifying more than 540,000 publicly accessible embedded devices configured with factory default root passwords: this includes routers, VoIP phones, webcams, digital energy systems, and IPTV/Cable boxes.

Networked printers are a part of this environment, and researcher Ang Cui discovered certain HP LaserJet printers have a critical remote firmware update vulnerability. Stolfo and Cui show how a remote system can take complete control of these printers in the video we've embedded below. It's a definite must see.

"This work started by looking at printers as a device that could harbor malicious software that could do very bad damage…physical damage, for example. So we attempted to develop malicious software that would make the printer burn," Stolfo says in the presentation. "I can't think of a better way of demonstrating the vulnerabilities that are inherent in printers…the paper only browned rather than burned. Then, however, looking at what was achieved, it became crystal clear that the problem was far worse than burning paper or burning printers. Printers are everywhere, they're reachable through email, through thumb drives, through downloads, any perimeter defenses can be pierced because documents freely flow across perimeters, and documents that are printed to these devices can harbor firmware updates that are entirely stealthy and cannot be viewed. There's just no antivirus software to stop this type of threat."

The team released this information a little more than a week ago, and HP told MSNBC that it has to verify the vulnerability itself before any comments can be made (or security bulletins can be issued.)
What recession? Sony enjoys record holiday shopping weekend

Posted: November 29th, 2011, 6:16pm MST by Patrick Houston

Europe may be plunging the world into another recession but American shoppers apparently don't care. In yet another validation of the surge in consumer spending we witnessed during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, consumer electronics goliath Sony also enjoyed a sales spike and -- here's the kicker -- without slashing prices.

The Sony experience, along with a similar one enjoyed by Apple, must have economic forecasters scratching their heads. Jeesh, are we heading for a third Great Depression -- the second in three years? Or are the cluckers just screeching about another hunk of heaven dropping on our heads?

At least so far as Sony is concerned, we can all enjoy a little sigh of relief.

In a pre-holiday briefing for reporters in San Francisco today, Sony Electronics President and COO Phil Molyneux said that consumer electronic giant's Thanksgiving weekend store sales surged 17 percent over last year. Its online sales enjoyed a heartier 20 percent gain.

"The targets that we agreed to with major retailers, we've pretty much blown away", he says.

After seeing the deep discounting that was taking place during 2010's traditional Black-Friday-Cyber-Monday holiday shopping extravaganza, Molyneux says Sony decided to enter this year's season determined not to rely on price cuts to kick-start the Santa season.

"We didn't discount heavily yet the sales we've had were the strongest since 2008", says Molyneux, who, as head of Sony Electronics of America oversees the distribution, sales and marketing of TVs, VAIO computers, cameras, music players, and its new Sony Tablet S.

"We weren't selling TVs at a 30 percent discount -- not at all".

Molyneux, who, like Sony Corp. CEO Sir Howard Stringer, hails from United Kingdom, just concluded his first year as chief of the Sony's American arm. He previously headed its operations in Europe. During this past year, he's focused his efforts on recalibrating the way Sony engages consumers through retailers, dealers, its own Sony stores, its Web sites, call centers and other similar touch points.

For example, Sony is overhauling its SonyStyle stores. The company says the three it's already launched -- in Century City, Calif., Houston, and New York -- are killing their numbers. The revamped Roosevelt Field store in New York saw sales surpass its Thanksgiving holiday weekend targets by 265 percent.

And it's opened several specially constructed Sony-branded areas within retail partner locations such as Fry's Electronics. These stores within a store -- Sony calls them "Golden Stores" -- are outperforming its more conventional presence at retail by 40 percent.

While these efforts, along with the blemished but still strong Sony brand name, may have contributed to strong holiday shopping season start, they don't account for all of it.

For his part, Molyneaux believes "pent-up" consumer demand played a role, too.

"It's quite phenomenal," he says of the surge in consumer demand. "Everyone has been under pressure. People have said let's go and spend some money. We're fed up here. Let's go get something new to enjoy at home or on the go".

Photo Credit: Tupungato/Shutterstock

Patrick Houston is a tech veteran, having worked as an editorial director, VP, and top editor for NetShelter Technology Media, Yahoo!, CNET, and ZDNet.
FCC lets AT&T pull back from T-Mobile wireless license acquisition

Posted: November 29th, 2011, 3:46pm MST by Tim Conneally

In a press conference Tuesday afternoon, the Federal Communications Commission announced that it will grant the request for AT&T and T-Mobile to withdraw their applications to transfer control of wireless licenses in AT&T's proposed $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile.

The commission will also release a redacted version of the staff report that examines the pros and cons that would arise if AT&T acquired T-Mobile.

In the 109 page report (.PDF Here), the FCC's staff explains that AT&T failed to convey that the acquisition of T-Mobile's wireless licenses would be consistent with the public interest, and details the ways how competition, benefits to consumers, and employment opportunities would all be reduced.

AT&T will continue to pursue the acquisition through a Department of Justice trial in February, and is likely to reopen its application with the FCC to transfer control of T-Mobile's wireless spectrum to AT&T at a later date.

The FCC said today that this acquisition would by far be the biggest exchange of mobile wireless licenses, and the closest one in terms of size would be the merger of AT&T Wireless, Cingular, and BellSouth more than five years ago.
Small businesses embrace Microsoft's cloud, while enterprises wait and see

Posted: November 29th, 2011, 3:18pm MST by Joe Wilcox
If you live in Seattle, it's hard not to think about clouds. The mean number of cloudy days a year is 255.5, with another 81.6 partly cloudy. That's a whole lot of overcastness (go ahead, tell me that's no word). Perhaps the skies above remind Microsoft employees below about the importance of "the cloud" to the company's future. Today, Microsoft reminded everyone with some stats on its cloud computing progress and updates to Office 365 and SkyDrive. However, beneath today's announcements there are signs of drought, with only a small number of enterprises embracing Microsoft's cloud.

The Redmond, Wash.-based company is enhancing both services and has broadened availability, 22 more countries -- including Argentina, Iceland, Indonesia, South Africa and Taiwan -- for Office 365. SkyDrive gets a modern makeover, including HTML5 enhancements that are in line with broader Microsoft development objectives for Internet Explorer 10 and Windows 8.

But Microsoft isn't a cloud company like Google, which profits from what it and third-parties sell around services like search. Microsoft sells software. Think of Microsoft's cloud quite literally -- rain falling to the earth and evaporating into the sky. Office 365 and SkyDrive depend at least in some way on desktop software, which utility they extend to the cloud and return to users.

App-Centric Cloud

Some SkyDrive improvements make the point. "We rebuilt fundamental pieces of SkyDrive to simplify sharing and make it more app-centric, particularly for Office", says Omar Shahine, group program manager. Meanwhile, Microsoft strips away some of the legacy desktop concepts. "Now you can share from within the app and complete your task, without having to think about the structure of folders or subfolders" he explains. "This is possible since SkyDrive now lets you share or permission individual files within a folder. This works for Office documents, photos, or any other type of file".

I don't much use Google Docs (or Microsoft Office, for that matter), so not all features are familiar to me. But doesn't Docs work this way today, providing granular control over sharing files rather than setting them by folders? That's a question for anyone who knows enough to comment.

Many other SkyDrive enhancements bring more of the desktop experience to the cloud. Among them:
- More right-click context menus and options for documents and photos.
- Improved -- acceptable really, when not as much previously -- viewing of PDF files.
- Improved photo slideshows, giving an experience more like Windows Live Photo Gallery and playing catch up to Google+.
- Support for photo RAW, something extended from Microsoft Camera Codec Pack for Windows Vista and 7.
Also worth noting:
- The photo gallery is touch-enabled, so users can swipe to advance on IE10 and Mobile Safari.
- HTML5 support improves the file uploading and management experience from modern browsers -- there's CSS3 support, too. They're yet more signs Silverlight's days are numbered.
Office rises Higher

Microsoft separates Office 365 updates into two categories: Enterprises and professionals and small businesses.

Among new capabilities in this update:
- Mac OS X 10.7 "Lion" is now supported.
- SharePoint Online now supports Windows 7.5 handsets.
- Office 365 administrators can now block access by IP address.
- Administrators can now self-reset passwords using text messages or alternative email address.
- Improved SharePoint support, such as sub-site restoration and enhanced Windows Live ID trust.
- Office 365 administrators can now "deactivate and reactivate dirsync to switch between managing their users' master source of information on-premises or in the cloud".
Microsoft launched Office 365 in June, to 40 countries, less than two months following public beta. Today's service release update is a little odd -- more akin to a Windows service pack and showing Microsoft's desktop mentality rising to the cloud. One of cloud computing benefits is seamless updating. Providers issue them, they're immediately available to all customers and their release causes minimal to no problems with personal computing devices or IT infrastructure. Amazon and Salesforce.com issue updates to their cloud services, as does Google to Chrome and Chrome OS, without them being events. Why all the fanfare? This isn't even the first update but the third.

It's all about relevance, and Microsoft maintaining that it has any in the post-PC era. Today's announcements -- complete with coordinated blogs, customer testimonials, photos, press releases and videos -- reminds everyone that Microsoft has cloud services, too, and that they're important. Yesterday, BetaNews reader Robert Johnson recounted three experiences on Thanksgiving Day that spotlight Microsoft's perception problems -- that its products are no longer relevant or are losing relevance before others. Microsoft needs to occasionally be the peacock, strut its feathers, and updates to Office 365 and SkyDrive make good opportunity in the cloud.

But there's something more. Today, Microsoft made a big deal about early adopters. Kurt DelBene, president of the Office division, says that Microsoft sees "great traction with small businesses, with more than 90 percent of our early Office 365 customers coming from small businesses". From one perspective, that's a helluva statistic and market segment Microsoft should want to reach. But the cloud suite is also about extending enterprises' Office experience. If 90 percent of customers are small businesses -- with fewer than 50 employees -- than only 1 in 10 is a mid-size or large business, which represent the core Office market.

So while DelBene praises small business adoption, Microsoft also presents showcase enterprise customers, such as Campbell Soup Company and Groupe Marie-Claire. The announcement's timing and tone suggest that enterprise adoption isn't yet strong, and that undermines Microsoft's broader strategy, of extending its legacy Office-Windows-Windows Server app stack to the cloud.

Is it raining today in Seattle? Perhaps it should be.
Windows 8 tablets: dead on arrival, too late to market

Posted: November 29th, 2011, 11:51am MST by Ed Oswald

Microsoft's window of opportunity when it comes to tablets is closing. Release of Windows 8 is expected well into 2012, and businesses and consumers pine for tablets running the next-generation software - or they did. That is longer the case, Forrester analysts JP Gownder and Sarah Rotman Epps claim: Microsoft is too late to the party.

Windows 8 tablets will come in fifth after a host of other platforms, including the iPad and Android tablets, the struggling RIM PlayBook, and now defunct WebOS. Gownder and Epps say the tablet market is not forgiving to latecomers, which equals bad news for Microsoft.

Gownder argues that for a product to stand a chance of being successful, it needs to be a "fast follower". This means a competing product must come out quickly following its competitor to be able to have a good chance of toppling the incumbent.

"While Windows’ product strategists can learn from these products, other players have come a long way in executing and refining their products -- Apple, Samsung, and others have already launched second-generation products and will likely be into their third generation by the time Windows 8 launches", he says.

There's also other issues for Microsoft. Amazon and Barnes & Noble, which have combined the features of tablets with traditional e-readers, are examples. This muddies what is considered a tablet, while also putting significant price pressure on the entire industry.

All these factors contribute to a drop in consumer interest in Windows-based tablets. While some 46 percent were interested in such a device in the first quarter of 2011, that has since fallen to 25 percent. Gownder argues that Microsoft has missed the peak for consumer desire for its not-even-released product.

"For product strategists, Windows 8 tablets provide a cautionary tale: To be a fast-follower, you must amp up the experience -- and do so quickly, before the market changes beyond recognition", he says.

Photo Credit: forestpath/Shutterstock
Got iPhone and administer a network? You need iPRTG 3

Posted: November 29th, 2011, 11:26am MST by Mark Wilson

If you maintain a server or network, you understand the importance of being able to monitor it around the clock. There are a number of tools available that can be used to keep an eye on your network whilst on that network, but there will be numerous occasions when you are away from the office but still need to check that things are running smoothly. PRTG Network Monitor is one such network monitoring tool, but for when you are out and about you can turn to iPRTG 3 to use your iPhone or iPad to remotely monitor your network.

iPRTG enables you to view information about the state of your network and while the interface has been optimized for viewing on the screen of iOS devices, iPad users undoubtedly get a better deal, with the larger screen making it far easier to work with data. Depending on the size of your network you may choose to navigate through the app in different ways. It is possible to use network sensors as jump points, so you can, for example, quickly navigate to the device with the lowest uptime or the most free disk space.

It is something of a shame that iPRTG is focused almost entirely on network monitoring, and that there is so little scope for interacting with your network. As the app has clearly been designed to help on those occasions when you are out so you can monitor what is going on, it is rather unfortunate that it is not possible to respond to any alarms that may be raised by the network.

Relatedly, it is also a shame that iPRTG is not able to deliver push notifications about network events -- you are able to view alarms and alerts in the app, but only by manually checking them. The app can also be used to access the PRTG web interface which provides access to additional reporting and analysis options.

You can find out more by paying a visit to the iPRTG review page.
See where, when your ancestors lived with RootsMagic 5

Posted: November 29th, 2011, 11:13am MST by Nick Peers

RootsMagic has updated its popular family history software to version 5.0. RootsMagic 5, which can be road-tested as a cut-down Essentials version, adds a number of new features for those who purchase the full version. These include media tagging, a research manager and timeline view.

The software also benefits from around 80 non-specified improvements, a selection of which apply to RootsMagic Essentials 5 package too.

All of the new features are restricted to the full version of RootsMagic 5 only, which can be unlocked by purchasing a registration code and inputting it into RootsMagic Essentials. These include a new Timeline View, which allows individual lives to be seen in the context of their family members. CountyCheck is a new feature designed to help establish whether states, counties or even countries were in existence, and what their geographical boundaries were, when a selected ancestor was alive.

RootsMagic 5 also supports media tagging for the first time, allowing you to tag a single photo or document with multiple people, families, sources or places. There’s a Research Manager designed to help focus the user’s mind on specific tasks that need completing, and an “On This Day” list, which provides historical context for selected dates in history.

Also added to the full version is a database management tool, capable of testing the research file’s integrity as well as providing index rebuilding features and the ability to strip out deleted records to compress the file.

RootsMagic 5 also benefits from 80 other enhancements and features. Again, many are restricted to the full version of the program, but there are several notable improvements that work in RootsMagic 5 Essentials too.

These include a streamlined Edit Person window, which makes it easier to review and edit a person’s details in a single window. The ability to add unlimited facts, notes, sources, people and more has also been implemented in version 5 while both Places List and Descendant List views have also been improved, along with the process of adding source documentation to individuals, families or places.

RootsMagic 5 Essentials is a free download for PCs running Windows 2000 or later. The full version of RootsMagic 5 can be unlocked from within RootsMagic Essentials for $29.95 ($19.95 if upgrading from an earlier version), and includes many other additional features to those added in version 5.

Photo Credit: Dirk Ercken/Shutterstock
RIM begins smartphone exit with cross-platform device management software

Posted: November 29th, 2011, 10:35am MST by Ed Oswald

Research in Motion is accepting to the realities of the smartphone industry, saying Tuesday its new Mobile Fusion device management software will work with iOS and Android devices in addition to BlackBerry smartphones. The announcement suggests RIM might be ready to concede the market to its bigger rivals.

The Canadian phone manufacturer has watched its share of smartphones plummet from a third of the market this time last year to 18 percent in the most recent quarter, due to the lack of any blockbuster device release. Most of these users shifted to Android, which has more than doubled its market share over the same period.

Mobile Fusion allows IT administrators to manage a company's smartphone deployment. Security and configuration can be set across multiple devices, and the administrator can remotely lock or wipe devices in the event of loss or theft.

"BlackBerry Mobile Fusion brings together our industry-leading BlackBerry Enterprise Server technology for BlackBerry devices with mobile device management capabilities for iOS and Android devices, all managed from one web-based console", enterprise product chief Alan Panezic says.

RIM declined to offer pricing specifics but has said it will be competitive with similar solutions from its competitors. Mobile Fusion is currently in limited testing, and the company will begin accepting applications for a closed beta to begin in January. A general release is expected in March.

The company's newfound love for its competitors stems from its acquisition of Ubitexx in May. The German company already had a multi-platform device management solution, and RIM folded Ubitexx's technologies into Mobile Fusion.

Whether or not it's a solution that will stop the bleeding is uncertain. It may be too little, too late -- RIM enters a crowded market with nothing but its name to sell itself to potential customers.

Photo Credit: sgm/Shutterstock
Futuremark to bring 3D benchmarking tools to Android

Posted: November 29th, 2011, 9:52am MST by Tim Conneally

PC benchmarking software company Futuremark announced on Tuesday that it has begun developing a version of its 3DMark software for Android tablets which it expects to have ready in 2012.

"In 2012 we will bring 3DMark to the Android platform with a professional grade benchmark that can be trusted by manufacturers, suppliers and vendors to provide the definitive measure of gaming performance on Android while showcasing the very best in real-time graphics and effects," said Jukka Mäkinen, CEO of Futuremark in a statement on Tuesday.

With the upcoming release of devices powered by the Nvidia Tegra 3 such as the Asus Transformer Prime, Android tablets are about to experience a major boost in graphics capabilities. Therefore, it's a pretty good time to get into GPU benchmarking.

Futuremark says the app will measure gaming performance using rendering, CPU and physics tests, will include an online service to compare results between devices, and will give results that will be comparable to 3DMark for Windows 8, when it is released.
Server shipments rise globally, collapse in Europe

Posted: November 29th, 2011, 9:27am MST by Joe Wilcox

PC shipments may have been tepid during third quarter, but servers are up year over year despite the economy -- or perhaps because of it. Shipments grew 7.2 percent, according to Gartner, while revenue rose 5.2 percent. That's not exactly gangbusters growth and might have been greater if not for the drag in Europe, where server shipments declined by 4.9 percent.

"Asia/Pacific grew the most significantly in shipments with a 23.9 percent increase", Jeffrey Hewitt, Gartner research vice president, says. "Eastern Europe posted the highest vendor revenue growth at 27.4 percent for the period". Globally, vendors shipped 2.37 million servers, generating $12.97 billion revenue.

HP led the quarter in shipments, but IBM generated more revenue -- and from a significantly smaller base. HP shipped 693,265 servers for 29.2 percent market share -- IBM 287,507 servers for 12.1 percent share. However, IBM revenue nudged ahead of HP --$3.846 billion to $3.082 percent, respectively, in a dead heat of 29.7 percent to 29.3 percent revenue share. There's something to be said for big iron. HP revenue fell by 3.6 percent, while IBM's rose by 3.5 percent. Dell posted strongest revenue growth -- 6.3 percent.

Lenovo is the up-and-comer to watch, posting 77 percent year-over-year shipment growth. HP led, but while shipping fewer units -- down 3.1 percent year over year, mostly from sluggish ProLiant server sales. Dell shipments rose by 3.2 percent while IBM's were flat.

Good news for Microsoft software license sales: "x86 servers forged ahead and grew 7.6 percent in units and 9.3 percent in revenue", Hewitt says. "RISC/Itanium Worldwide Unix server shipments declined 6.8 percent, but vendor revenue increased 3.5 percent compared to the same quarter last year. The 'other' CPU category, which is primarily mainframes, showed a decline of 6.9 percent".

Blade server shipments rose by 3.3 percent but more than double in revenue -- 7.6 percent. Rack-mounted servers rose 8.2 percent in shipments and 6.3 percent by revenue.

Servers are undergoing a kind of tug and pull as IT organizations re-evaluate strategies. Virtualization saps some sales, while private and public cloud adoption drives them. There is the push to increase server density to support businesses' rapidly changing needs, whether server consolidation or expansion to support cloud efforts. For example, datacenter hardware spending will reach $98.9 billion this year -- that's up 12 percent from 2010, Gartner predicts. The analyst firm forecasts datacenter hardware spending to reach $106.4 billion next year and $126.2 billion in 2015.

More immediately, the Euro's future as a currency weighs heavily on IT purchases in the region, and collapse could ripple to the United States. Declining server shipments may be the canary in the coalmine that IT spending is retracting across the Euro zone. Another indicator: PC shipments declined 11.4 percent year over year in the region, during Q3, according to Gartner.

Photo Credit: gualtiero boffi/Shutterstock
Monitor the Windows Registry changes in real time

Posted: November 29th, 2011, 8:11am MST by Mike Williams

Observing Registry activity on your PC can be very useful when you’re troubleshooting odd problems. There are some great tools around to help. Sysinternals Process Monitor is probably the best: set it running and it’ll record exactly which Registry keys your processes are reading and writing (amongst other details), and browsing the report later will usually give you a much better idea of what’s going on.

Of course this approach really only works when you have some specific event you’d like to monitor, such as the launch of an application. If you’re experiencing some intermittent problem then what might be more useful is a program that tells you which Registry keys have changed in the last 5 minutes, say. And that’s where NirSoft’s RegScanner comes in.

If you’d like to find out more about recent Registry activity, then launch the program, and choose the areas of the Registry you’d like to be checked in the “Scan the following base keys” box.

Or, better still, clear that checkbox and select a base key closest to the one you’d like to monitor from the list at the top of the RegScanner window. If you’re just hoping to see general application-inspired Registry changes, for instance, HKCU\Software is a good place to start.

Next, ensure “Display only keys that their modified time is within the following range” is checked. By default this will look for Registry keys which have changed in the last hour, but that could produce a lengthy report, so it’s best to minimise this if you can. If your intermittent problem only happened five minutes ago, say, set the “From” time to perhaps ten minutes ago and that should be fine.

Now choose “Registry item contains any value” in the “Matching” box, to ensure that RegScanner displays everything it finds.

Finally, click OK, and RegScanner will examine your specified area of the Registry, checking each key in turn, and displaying any of those that have changed recently.

The final report can’t compete with the level of detail you’ll get from Process Monitor. You’re only seeing keys that have been altered, not accessed; you can’t tell which processes have altered them; and so there’s no way to see what a specific application has done.

Still, clicking the “Key Modified Time” column header will sort your keys in the order they were modified, which can help you figure out the sequence of events. And if you’re only interested in the changes made to a particular application’s Registry settings, say, they’ll be very obvious and you’ll immediately see what’s happened. On balance, then, RegScanner more than deserves its place in your troubleshooting toolkit: go download your copy immediately.