Aleks Grynis

Kaspersky co-founder Eugene Kaspersky, has launched a bizarre attack on Apple over its ban on iOS antivirus app, predicting that it will ultimately “mean disaster” for the company as malware developers target the mobile operating system.

Speaking with The Register in Sydney, Kaspersky described his disappointment that Apple wouldn’t let the company develop software for iOS smartphones and tablets, to develop a “true endpoint security” for the operating system.

Then things get curious.

Kaspersky states that iOS infections won’t be introduced via iOS (which “by design is more secure”) but instead it will force developers to develop malware that uses vulnerabilities, with the only way to infect devices by ’inject[ing] it into the source code of legal software.”

He adds: “It will take place in a marketplace and then there will be millions or tens of millions of devices.”

How Apple planned it.

Well, not exactly. No company wants people to attack its operating systems. However, Apple has systems in place to attempt to deal with such an attack vector.

Kaspersky says malware writers and ‘criminals’ have not chosen such a route previously because it’s “more complicated” than other attacks. By default, Apple places each app (including its preferences and data) in a sandbox when it is installed. This only permits the app to access files, preferences, resources and hardware that are permitted by the OS.

Not to mention the ASLR, DEP and code signing features that Apple uses to protect its operating system and user data.

Malware writers have to circumvent these in-built protections to access the more important parts of the filesystem and kernel, proving more difficult for would-be attackers.

No security measure, no matter how many you employ, is 100% secure but Kaspersky’s comments stating that attackers will resort to introducing new vulnerabilities appears to be nothing more than scaremongering — Apple’s protections are probed and attacked each and every day (take the Jailbreaking scene as one example).

By not allowing Kaspersky to release an antivirus app, its co-founder believes that device owners will be left with no protection, resulting in (wait for it) a boost for Android, a platform that he recognises is less secure but allows his company to provide security software for.

The Register writes:

A severe attack, Kaspersky argues, therefore has the potential to highlight the problems of a closed ecosystem and damage Apple permanently.

Apple has bargained on attackers trying to side-load malware via an approved App Store app. The company has end-to-end security that can remotely remove installed applications, it can send over-the-air updates to fix vulnerabilities and the company also employs its own App Store approval teams to vet submissions to its marketplace.

Thom Shannon, app developer with Glow New Media, told The Next Web:

Apple has gone back to basics in iOS and built an operating system from the ground up to be secure. There isn’t much a third-party antivirus program could add to it. The only areas for improvement would possibly be anti-phishing measures built into Mail or Safari.

It must also be noted that antivirus apps utilise a lot of resources on a mobile OS and various reports have confirmed that existing Android security apps fail to detect some of the most common forms of malware (although Kaspersky does rank higher than most in the test).

In April, Kaspersky ruffled feathers when he made the comment that Apple is “ten years behind Microsoft in terms of security.”

He added:

For many years I’ve been saying that from a security point of view there is no big difference between Mac and Windows. It’s always been possible to develop Mac malware, but this one was a bit different. For example it was asking questions about being installed on the system and, using vulnerabilities, it was able to get to the user mode without any alarms.

Mac security was recently thrust into the public discourse as security issues turned into real stories. The Flashback malware hit a huge number of machines, with some 650,000 Mac machines still running the affected code.

At last year’s MWC, Eugene Kaspersky predicted Android will end up with an 80 percent share of the smartphone market in 2015, with Apple’s iPhone and RIM’s BlackBerry splitting the resulting share with 10 percent each.

Gartner’s most recent research report suggests Google’s mobile OS holds 56% of the smartphone market in the first quarter of this year, more than double Apple’s 23% share.

Kaspersky believes that this will only rise, helped by Apple’s lack of focus on antivirus solutions. Android will almost certainly continue to thrive, thanks to its heavy backing from Samsung, HTC and other vendors, but security oversights on Apple’s part are highly unlikely to play a part in the growth of its rival ecosystem.

At its Cloudforce event in London, enterprise cloud computing company Salesforce today announced that it will add 750 new jobs to its European organization over the next few years.

The company, which offers enterprise solutions based on social, mobile and open cloud technologies, says it is gaining traction in these parts.

Products include Chatter, Rypple, Heroku, Force.com, Do.com, Desk.com and Database.com (yes, they sure appreciate a good dotcom domain name).

Salesforce claims it has grown its customer base in Europe by 32 percent compared to last year, to reach a total of 20,000 customers (about a fifth of its number of clients worldwide).

European clients include Burberry, BMW, O2, Thomson Reuters and Vodafone.

Salesforce says it is hiring across the board and looking for of all experience levels in sales, marketing, IT and support functions continent-wide.

Horribly named yuilop has secured 4.5 million euros (roughly $5.75 million) in Series A funding for its social communication apps for Android and iOS.

Hamburg, Germany-based Shortcut led the round alongside Russian VC Bright Capital (part of RU.COM) and private telecom investor Bruno Ducharme.

Nauta Capital, the Spanish investment firm that pumped 1 million euros in seed capital into the company earlier, also participated.

Yuilop builds mobile apps that enable users to message each other for free. The company will soon add support for free voice calls to boost its competitiveness with regards to other apps like Viber, Voxtrot, Tango and fring.

What makes yuilop stand out is that it offers full-fledged SMS support completely free of charge, by employing a mix of advertising and gamification that lets users earn ‘credits’ the more they use the app.

The service is currently live in Germany and Spain.

Founded in late 2010, the startup is headquartered in Barcelona with a development center in the south of Spain, where, according to yuilop CEO (and ex-KPN Spain founder) Jochen Doppelhammer, “the beaches are even better”. Olé!

Private rocket company SpaceX is sending a craft – more specifically, the Dragon capsule – to the International Space Station (ISS) after fixing a Falcon 9 rocket engine glitch that grounded an earlier attempt.

It’s a rather historical event as Dragon’s inaugural trip to ISS will be the first visit there of a non-governmental vehicle. Watch the launch live here!

Live Video app for Facebook by Ustream

Liftoff! #DragonLaunch twitter.com/NASA/status/20…

— NASA (@NASA) May 22, 2012

AlertMe, the smart home tech company has sealed a deal with British Gas to provide a personalised energy efficiency advice service to UK customers with smart meters. So, The Jetsons‘ home of the future is not so far away after all.

Smart meters are a replacement for traditional gas meters in the home which have a display that shows customers how much energy they are using. The AlertMe service breaks down the information for comparison with similar households, actionable recommendations (like getting insulation or double glazing to help keep in heat) and generally suggest ways in which customers can save money and not waste so much energy.

The free service is being trialled with up to 10,000 homes during the summer and rolled out widely from the autumn. Smart meters from British Gas will be rolled out to all homes in the UK over the next seven years. Interestingly, the Alertme system can also be added to older gas meters so you don’t have to miss out while waiting for the arrival of the new.

British Gas is the largest supplier of domestic energy and it serving 10 million homes and 15.0 million energy accounts so the deal for AlertMe is a pretty solid one with that many possible customers hoping to monitor their usage and learn more about their own habits.

AlertMe CEO Mary Turner took on the lead role with the company following a successful run with Tiscali until after its sale to Carphone Warehouse.

In her time with Tiscali she grew sales from less than half a million dial-up customers to being the third largest DSL provider in the UK. She now hopes to bring AlertMe to a similar level of ubiquity and sees similarities between the growth of the two markets.

“This is a big movement, way beyond just a single individual,” says Turner. “Part of the reason I joined AlertMe was that I could see this sector ready for transformation. In the last ten years the whole telecommunications industry has transformed. I’m really excited becuse I see this as the beginning of huge amounts of services that come into the home.”

AlertMe looks to be the tip of the iceberg when it comes to living in the retro-futurist ‘home of the future’. The infrastructure for people to interact with their immediate surroundings is already consolidating and Turner believes that it will not be long until we are all accustomed to conversing with the places in which we live.

“People are so connected; to each other, to banks and shops but the one area that they have very little information and insight is in the home. We are at the beginning stages of the quantified home. I believe that in the next few years there will be an acceleration,” says Turner. “The way that people use their mobile phones is already there and the way people connect to the home is just a whisker away for convenience and where the internet of things will the next big consumer technology wave.”

If there was any question about Turner’s dedication to the internet of things, then have a think about the way her own home runs. Not only is she having it fitted out with AlertMe meters, the arrival of her son coming home from school sends her an alert at work and when he gets there, the heating is adjusted to suit his preference.

AlertMe was founded in 2006 to provide home energy management and connected services to consumers and through partners such as energy utilities, telecommunications companies and retailers. The service rests on a single cloud-based platform and an AlertMe hub in the home.

The company is venture-backed by Good Energies, Index Ventures, Chrysalix SET Venture Partners and VantagePoint Capital Partners.

Originally the company’s pitch seemed a tough one to get these items into the homes of a wider consumer market rather than just early adopters or people who like to tinker with gadgets.

The agreement with British Gas could prove to be the tipping point that gets us more familiar with running our homes from a computer or mobile device. In which case, the delivery of hover boards is not too far away, right?

Network solutions company Juniper Networks is the latest to join the relatively long list of investors supporting HD video conferencing and collaboration software company Vidyo. Through its Junos Innovation Fund, the company has participated in Vidyo’s recently announced $22.5 million Series D round of funding.

Terms of the financing round were not disclosed, but Vidyo says it has secured $97 million to date, from investment firms like Menlo Ventures, QuestMark Partners, Rho Ventures, Star Ventures and Four Rivers Group.

The deal will also see Vidyo integrate its video conferencing products with Juniper’s offerings.

Vidyo offers video conferencing software that enables enterprise users to conduct multi-point videoconferences on tablets, smartphones, PCs, Macs and more.

Founded in 2005, Vidyo currently has 225 employees across 13 global offices.

Rivals include Cisco, Salesforce’s DimDim, Polycom, ooVoo and Microsoft / Skype.

Technology companies dominate the world’s most valuable brands, according to the 2012 Brandz Top 100 report, which saw iPhone and iPad maker Apple hold off IBM and Google to top the pile again.

The Cupertino-based firm saw its brand value increase by 19 percent on last year’s study, which it also lead, to reach $183 billion. That figure puts it ahead of IBM ($116 million), Google ($108 million), McDonalds ($95 million) and Microsoft ($77 million).

Millward Brown — the WPP-owned firm behind the report — calculates the brand value figure that ranks the firms by combining the financial valuation of each company with the appeal and loyalty that they inspire in consumers.

A large number of technology firms hold high positions within the rankings, and it is notable that McDonalds, Coca Cola and Marlborough are the sole non-tech representatives within the top ten.

Nick Cooper, MD of WPP-owned Millward Brown, told Reuters that the technology era has arrived and is playing a hugely significant role and appealing to consumers across the planet:

When cars first appeared or when air travel first appeared, they became liberating. It’s the turn of the technology sector at the moment.

Digital, the Internet and technology are key features of the 2012 ranking, and the report finds technology to be at the center of the conversation across many categories and relevant to brands within the study.

This is best illustrated by the progress of Facebook.

With an increase of 74 percent, the social network saw the largest rise in brand value. That change took the newly listed firm up 16 places to number 19, where it sits just behind ecommerce giants Walmart and Amazon.

Given its rollercoaster last week, which saw the firm list on the Nasdaq, it is likely to continue to see its brand value rank higher, particularly as it chases down, and breaks, one billion registered users.

While Apple ranks first by some way, it remains under threat from Samsung, which saw its brand value rise to $14.1 billion, thanks to the success of its Galaxy smartphone series – the latest of which is the much-anticipated much anticipated Galaxy S III.

Operators score highly in the report and tenth placed China Mobile is also the top brand in the Chinese study. It’s 650 million plus subscribers give it a brand value of $53.6 billion, however that figure slipped 18 percent on last year, when it ranked ninth globally.

Despite heralding the growth of digital worldwide, four banks completed China’s top five brands, showing the continued influence of the old establishment in the country.

There’s plenty more data and insight into the rankings at the Brandz website for that are interesting in mining the depths of the report.

➤ Brandz Top 100 2012

Google chief executive Larry Page has revealed that the search giant is still waiting for Facebook to get in touch to allow users to share data between the two companies’ services.

Google and Facebook have long had a frosty relationship, which was particularly spiked when an adjustment of Google’s terms of service preventing Facebook users importing data from the search giant.

Speaking to US talk show host Charlie Rose, as VentureBeat reports, Page explained that Facebook needs to open its data in order to allow users to share information — such as contacts — between the two services, which, he says, would provide significant benefits.

“I think it’s been unfortunate that Facebook has been pretty closed with their data,” Page said.

The Google API requires services to reciprocate the data share and, since Facebook does not, a disconnect between two of the world’s most influential sites — which know more about Web users than almost any others — developed.

Page further added:

From a user’s perspective, you say… I’m joining Facebook.  I want my contacts.  In Google, we said, fine. You can get them from Google. And the issue we had is that then Facebook said, no, Google, you can’t do the reverse. And so we just said, well, users don’t understand what they’re doing. They’re putting data in, and they don’t understand they can’t take it out. So we said, well, we’ll only participate with people who have reciprocity. And we’re still waiting.

Google enjoys reciprocation with other services, which Page says is important because “you don’t want to be holding your users hostage.”

The launch of Google+ last year may have clouded the issue somewhat, give the potential threat that the service has to Facebook.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg left no doubt of his thoughts on the new Google site when last November, he said that the company was “building its own little Facebook”. Google+ chief Bradley Horowitz fired back, saying the company has “happy to be underestimated” by its rival, but, in truth, there remains a significant gulf between the two.

Zuckerberg’s creation now has more than 900 million users, putting it well ahead of the 170 million Google+ users claimed by Google when the service underwent its first major redesign in April.

Facebook is one of the Web’s most influential sites yet, in contrast, Google+ has struggled to gain serious traction, with comScore reporting that users averaged just 3.3 minutes on it during January 2012.

Hacking group Anonymous has claimed it has grabbed 1.7 GB of data belonging to the US Justice Department, although the US organisation has played down the sensitivity of the haul that was taken from one of its websites.

In the latest move against the DoJ, the hacktivist collective says that the information in its control includes “internals emails” and “the entire database dump” from the website, which the it says the DoJ subsequently took offline.

The leak was announced alongside a torrent with the data and a statement, which included:

Today we are releaseing [sic] 1.7GB of data that used to belong to the United States Bureau of Justice, until now. Within the booty you may find lots of shiny things such as internal emails, and the entire database dump. We Lulzed as they took the website down after being owned, clearly showing they were scared of what inevitably happened.

It is not entirely clear what prompted the latest action against the DoJ, but Anonymous says it is releasing the data to “spread information, to allow the people to be heard and to know the corruption in their government.”

A DoJ spokesperson played down the claims, telling ZDNet that a website with public information had been accessed, and confirming that it is looking into the matter in more depth:

The department is looking into the unauthorized access of a website server operated by the Bureau of Justice Statistics that contained data from their public website. The Bureau of Justice Statistics website has remained operational throughout this time. The department’s main website, justice.gov, was not affected.

The announcement is an interesting one, as you would expect Anonymous to pick out specific details within the data if it were significant. The fact that it has dumped it all in a torrent and played on the significance of the size of the information — 1.7GB — rather than the content, suggests that there is nothing hugely controversial contained within.

Anonymous first targeted the DoJ in January after US authorites made moves to takedown file-sharing site Megaupload.

A series of initiatives against US authorities, largely in response to the Megaupload case, has seen attacks made on websites belonging to the FTC and the CIA.

We’ve reached out to the DoJ to see if it has any further update on the situation, and will update the post with any new details that we are given.