Recent Mobile Security Improvements

Apple recently released its iOS 6 mobile device operating system, bringing some small features and performance tweaks to the platform for the iPhone 5 and some existing devices. With the new phone and operating system, more businesses are looking to adopt Apple smartphones or incorporate those personal devices into their own network environment. Historically Apple & Android smartphones have very weak native security controls. A new type of solution to manage these devices outside the trusted network has arisen in what’s called Mobile Device Management, or MDM. A few major contenders in this space are AirWatch and GoodLink. Both AirWatch and GoodLink incorporate a rather intrusive solution that allows administrators to remotely wipe your device should it be lost or unaccounted for. While this supports good security, it also places your personal device at risk for data loss. The individual is usually the one to make that decision.

Should the corporation wish to provide their own Apple products for employees to use, iOS 6 has incorporated some new security features to restrict access and configuration. Guided Access, primarily an iPad feature, has been added to iPhone and iPods as well. This allows administrators to define boundaries for a user inside the iOS environment. This is particular useful in setting up iPad’s as kiosks or workstations where users are defined to a single app or area.

Apple has also introduced Supervised Mode with remote manageability in iOS6. With the free Apple’s Configurator app, administrators can generate profiles that restrict access to almost every element inside iOS6, improving the deployment capabilities of Apple hardware amongst the workforce.

 

Gallgher, S. (2012, September 21). Locking up, locking down: Hands-on with iOS 6 enterprise management. Retrieved from ArsTechnica: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/09/locking-up-locking-down-hands-on-with-ios-6-enterprise-management/

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Exit Personal Computer, Enter Hybrid Monster

According to All Things D, the Personal Computing Age is over. No longer are personal computers the Apple of everyone's eye, the height of computing technology, or even the most widely used devices in today's marketplace. New market data has revealed that PC’s no longer account for the largest market share of consumer memory chips, which are finding themselves in more smartphones, tablets, ultrabooks, and other amorphous computational devices. The definition of a computer has never been more blurry, as anyone can observe from watching five minutes of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Vegas. Computers are now becoming devices with any combination of keyboards, screens, touch-sensitive displays, and strange form factors. Is the Age of the Personal Computer truly over?

While more and more devices emerge from the dark secret labs of Samsung, Apple, Intel, and other personal electronics makers, there is still one king of the hill. IPads and tablets are great and fun toys, but they are far from being a viable replacement for a full laptop computer. Some editors have gone so far as to claim the iPad is a step backwards in innovation, citing the whole point of a keyboard and screen is to move the hands out of the workspace. While extended battery life and the ability to interact with programs using your hands is an interesting development in the computing space, I have yet to encounter any user interface where I feel more in control or productive on a tablet or smartphone. They are excellent form factors for portability, but they cannot achieve the level of interaction and capability a personal computer can.

So I can’t help but shake my head at these ridiculous claims and buzzword articles. The Age of Personal Computing will be around for as long as I still have to carry around a laptop to get any real work done.

 

Hesseldahl, A. (2012, September 15). It’s Official: The Era of the Personal Computer Is Over. Retrieved from All Things D: http://allthingsd.com/20120915/its-official-the-era-of-the-personal-computer-is-over/

Open Wifi. Free game?

 An Illinois Judge recently ruled that accessing and sniffing traffic over an open wifi network is not illegal. (Lee, 2012) While this was a preliminary judgment, and in direct contradiction with one made in 2011 against Google, who was accused of sniffing traffic from open networks around its Street View vehicles, this could open the door to abuse of open wireless networks in places such as restaurants, cafés, and public areas around the nation.

Sniffing is a term used by security professionals to describe the process of copying or analyzing data that is being transmitted over a network. Traditionally, an intruder would require physical access to network equipment to be able to sniff data, but with the advent of 802.11 wireless networking equipment, it is a trivial matter to crack the encryption code and gain access to a wireless network. Open Wifi networks do not even have encryption enabled, making it extremely easy to take advantage of other clients on the network.

But wait! Don’t most website use their own SSL encryption now? Unfortunately, several attacks can be used against local clients on the network such as ARP cache poisoning, sslstrip, and other man-in-the-middle attacks (MITM) enabling an intruder to intercept your data, decrypt it, and gain access to whatever you are sending over the internet (including passwords).

By now it should be obvious that this ruling is a mistake. Not every wireless implementation can use encryption to protect accessibility, as the goal is to make the network accessible to everyone. While users should practice good security while they are on insecure wireless networks, the law shouldn’t give  a green light to malicious users looking to spy on others.

 

Lee, T. B. (2012, September 7 2012). Sniffing open Wifi networks is not wiretapping, judge says. Retrieved from Ars Technica: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/09/sniffing-open-wifi-networks-is-not-wiretapping-judge-says/

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DPI, NSA, and Your Privacy

Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technology has emerged as key feature and innovative advancement in firewall technology. Firewalls in the past have only been able to monitor and control traffic based on the destination, source, and state information that packets contain. More modern firewalls are implementing DPI as a base feature, allowing network administrators to take an extremely close look at the data segments of IP packets and perform complex analysis on what exactly is traversing across their networks. (Porter, 2010) While this feature evolved as a way to combat malware, it is quickly turning into a surveillance tool, which if abused, can have significant negative impacts on our privacy.

                A perfect example of this abuse can be found in tumultuous Libya. The infamous dictator Muammar Gaddafi implemented technology supplied by French firm Bull to track internet traffic for the entire country. (Gallgher, 2012) More examples of internet tracking and filtering are surfacing in countries such as China, North Korea, and Iran. While these methods to deter western influence on extremely conservative countries seem like radical ideas to our American free world ideals, to eastern viewpoints, our western ideals seem radical. Americans would consider this huge breach of privacy an unethical abuse of government technology and power.

                Unfortunately, Americans may be surprised to know that the National Security Agency (NSA) may be guilty of these same monitoring and surveillance practices, which is illegal in the United States. The EFF was issued evidence by AT&T employee Mark Klein that the broadband megacorp was working in conjunction with the NSA to direct an entire fibre optic line to a special analysis location controlled by the NSA. (Electronic Frontier Foundation) As the saying goes “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire”, there is sufficient reason to believe the NSA conducts other clandestine monitoring of the nation’s citizens.

                Is networking analysis and monitoring unethical? In cases such as the aforementioned fibre splitter, copying citizen’s internet data without warrant is illegal. In countries where monitoring and filtering is widely acknowledged and practiced, should global organizations make efforts to combat the abuse of technology to subvert privacy? One must look at the context of these two drastically different implementations. In America where privacy is greatly protected by law, actions such as the NSA’s are extremely unethical, regardless of cause. In eastern countries where culture, religion, and tradition are paramount, internet access control and monitoring may be seen as a necessary precaution to the ruling body.  It is difficult to determine whether internet traffic monitoring is strictly unethical, but in the United States, the law slims down this shady area of grey.

Electronic Frontier Foundation. (n.d.). AT&T's Role in Dragnet Surveillance of Millions of Its Customers. Retrieved September 3, 2012, from www.eff.org: https://www.eff.org/files/filenode/att/presskit/ATT_onepager.pdf

Gallgher, S. (2012, August 29). Big Brother on a budget: How Internet surveillance got so cheap. Retrieved September 3, 2012, from Ars Technica: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/08/big-brother-meets-big-data-the-next-wave-in-net-surveillance-tech/

Porter, T. (2010, October 19). The Perils of Deep Packet Inspection. Retrieved September 3, 2012, from Symantec Connect: http://www.symantec.com/connect/articles/perils-deep-packet-inspection