» 2009 » July

Apple has released a security patch for the SMS implementation flaw we wrote about yesterday. The patch will repair the flaw that researchers Charlie Miller and Collin Mulliner discovered in early July and demonstrated at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas yesterday.

The flaw will allow attackers to take control of your phone and hijack important information stored on your phone or shut it down all together. Apple was quick to respond to the conference demo yesterday.

The demonstration was late yesterday afternoon and the release was early this morning. I want so badly to write that they should’ve listened to Miller and Mulliner weeks ago when they brought it up, but even after this Apple still comes out smelling like roses.

President Obama had a hard time selling the American people on his health care plan last week, so it appears that he’s decided to pitch something else: Kwik Fit Tires. Ad agency DDB of London used old sound bites from Obama’s many video clips to create a fake viral ad about tires. The ad is far from original. Everyone has done some form of this cut and paste marketing. Even the last Die Hard movie had it’s own spliced up compilation of presidential tidbits, although in the movie all of the presidents since Kennedy were included. So DDB is not on Die Hard level but it’s still a funny advertising video.

Your iPhone could be under attack at any moment. It’s being reported that iPhones have a flaw in the SMS implementation. The flaw could lead to SMS attacks. The attacker can then take control of your iPhone or shut it down completely.

The Black Hat Conference being held in Las Vegas is currently providing demonstrations but sadly not a cure. Apple has yet to repair the flaw, even though the earliest reports on the flaw came at the beginning of July.

The best advice anyone has is to watch for SMS messages that are empty or contain a single square or other character. If you receive a message like this, immediately turn off your iPhone. Leave it off. Unfortunately no one knows how long is a reasonable amount of time to keep the phone off. So turn it back on at your own risk and prey that Apple comes up with a patch soon.

Federal CIO Vivek Kundra

As part of the Obama Administration’s crusade to bring more transparency to the federal government, the Office of Science and Technology Policy created a webpage to discuss the outdated cookie policy of federal websites.

Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra and Michael Fitzpatrick of the Office of Management and Budget, laid out their case for an update of the nine year old policy.

The cookie policy, as it stands, puts limits on the use of “certain web-tracking technologies, primarily persistent cookies, due to privacy concerns.” A cookie is a small piece of text placed on a user’s computer by a web browser. The cookie stores information about the user that can later be accessed by the site you visited to transmit preferences or a myriad of other information about your last visit.

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I’m not sure what to think about Dawn’s new TV commercial, which is about saving wildlife. The part that is troubling to me is the the disclaimer that shows up while you watch the commercial that reads “simulated demonstration”.  I’d be curious to know if they actually use Dawn to clean the oil slick off real animals or if this is just some sort of twisted brand strategy.  Lastly, not so sure about the quack at the end… seems out of place.

Derren Brown

Advertising on the most simplistic level is essentially persuasion. It is an art form to convince someone that the thing they need most in life is what you’re selling.

So it was amusing this morning when we opened an email from one of our loyal readers who showed us a video from Derren Brown, a British illusionist. Although the video is just for fun, it also accurately captures the widespread effect that advertising has on all of us in our day-to-day lives.

We had hoped to embed the video but apparently Derren Brown doesn’t like to embed his videos on other sites. His power of persuasion has somehow taken us over and forced us to simply link over to his video.