News

For home theater enthusiasts there is some good news today as we have found out that XBMC is working on a Media Center for use with the Android operating system. Many sites are reporting this as a “leak”, but as the information comes straight from XBMC’s own page we are going to call it a sneak peak. Ever since the first few Android based media players popped up on the market we have noted a rather large gap in what they offer. While most of them do have access to a limited form of the internet and you can access pictures and other items from your own network, the UI is clunky and not really suited for a home theater environment.

One of the biggest items we have talked about is the mentality of companies when it comes to protecting their customers. Sure, they will spend a little money to offer some rudimentary protection, but in the end if they can get away with not spending money to keep things safe, well they will. This pattern has been shown time and time again with multiple services online, at banks (think ATM hacks) and pretty much anywhere there is a way to talk to the computer systems in question. Now, a pair of researchers has found that Time Warner, Comcast, Cox and probably many more are barely providing security for their customers who use their recommended hardware.

The big news story today is of the purchase of social news sharing site Digg to Betaworks for the small sum of $500,000. The world was shocked at this number considering the massive impact that Digg once had. When they first launched they were THE way to share your content on the internet.  Unfortunately Digg has had a series of bad management decisions as well as facing serious competition from rivals like Reddit, Stumbleupon and others. However, the story behind the $500k price tag might not be complete as new information has come to light about the way the company was sold in parts to different buyers.

As we have told all of you before no system is secure. We have watched now as Android malware writers are using social engineering to mass-market spam and now we are seeing the first proof of concept of a method to “hack” Apple’s In-App purchase feature. We mentioned in our recent coverage of the Anrdoid.Dialup malware that this feature was not only vulnerable, but also could be used as a vector for attack and the installation of other malware.