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Google and Samsung are doing something very interesting in regards to the ban that Jude Lucy Koh imposed at the request of Apple. As I am sure you all know Apple is claiming that Google and Samsung are violating their patent on universal search and are requesting that the phone be removed from stores in the US to prevent Apple from being irrevocably harmed (which is a very dubious claim). Originally Judge Koh had denied the request, but then did a complete 180 after an appeals court asked her to review the case again.

When this one first hit we did not jump into the mix with the rest of the sites pushing a statement that Apple’s servers were corrupting new versions of apps pushed up to the iTunes App Store. Now, things are a little different as Apple has acknowledged the issue and is working on a fix. The issue seems to revolve around an update to Apple’s DRM software Fairplay.

Hearing about a flaw in one product from a competitor in a product is sort of like asking your dog what food he likes best. You know you are not going to get a good answer and, of course, the dog is only going to stare at you and eat pretty much anything (including a bug…). So when we heard that a Microsoft Anti-Spam Engineer was reporting a new Android based email spam botnet we took it with a grain of salt (remember Microsoft has a new Phone OS coming out soon).

Last week we published an article that highlighted the work of a group of students at the University of Texas led by Professor Todd Humphreys. During an impressive demonstration they were able to bring a commercial drone (the same type is also used by Law Enforcement) down by spoofing the GPS data sent to it during navigation. The flaw was found in just about any Drone that uses the civil GPS system (which also could apply to many other devices) and does not include encrypted GPS applications yet although the research did show that with the right equipment even encrypted GPS systems could be vulnerable.