Cellebrite, the Israeli company that helped the FBI hack into an encrypted Apple iPhone 5C last year, has fallen victim to hackers itself.
The company has admitted it on its website, with a statement that there was „unauthorised access to an external web server“. It is now investigating the cause of the breach.
„The impacted server included a legacy database backup of my. Cellebrite, the company’s end user licence management system. The company had previously migrated to a new user accounts system,“ it said.
„Presently, it is known that the information accessed includes basic contact information of users registered for alerts or notifications on Cellebrite products and hashed passwords for users who have not yet migrated to the new system. “
It added that it did not believe there was any significant risk to customers as a result of the incident, but customers were nevertheless advised to change their passwords. Customers are also being notified of the incident.
„The company is working with relevant authorities regarding this illegal action and are assisting in their investigation,“ it said.
It does not appear the attack has any relation to the work the company did helping the FBI crack the iPhone’s security.

© Source: http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/3002567/fbi-apple-iphone-hackers-cellebrite-falls-victim-to-web-hack
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A few brave souls predict IoT standards will start to gel this year, but making all those connected things work together still looks like a long shot.
Two years ago, some industry analysts cautiously suggested that a vast array of IoT standards would merge into just a few beginning in 2017. If the internet of things in late 2014 was a cacophony of discordant musicians tuning up, it’s now reached the point where a few virtuosos are playing the same tune. But there’s still a lot of sheet music getting passed around.
Two of the biggest rivals in IoT did find harmony last year. The Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF) was formed out of the AllSeen Alliance — which used the Qualcomm-developed AllJoyn — and the Intel-backed Open Interconnect Consortium. Previously, each group had been promoting its own way for devices to discover and learn about each other.
In another promising sign, the IEEE p2413 standard, which will provide a unified approach to defining IoT architectures, may be finished this year, according to Oleg Logvinov, chairman of the p2413 working group. The standard is meant to span all industries plus consumer devices. It wouldn’t replace existing data formats but would reduce the amount of effort required to share data among them.
Some players are offering established technologies as common layers for interoperability. Last week at CES, the ZigBee Alliance announced Dotdot , which it calls a universal language for IoT. It’s an open application layer that handles the same kinds of things as OCF, but it’s based on the upper-layer protocol already implemented in many devices that use the ZigBee wireless network. Dotdot can already work with Thread networks.
Sigma Designs, the main company behind Z-Wave networks, has released the Z-Wave interoperability layer to help developers integrate those networks with applications and services using cloud-based platforms like HomeKit.
But there are still too many choices, for both developers and consumers, to make IoT simple and easy, industry analysts say. That will probably still be true 12 months from now, and maybe for two or three more years, they said.
„I don’t think we’ve gotten to the point where consolidation has made the lives of solution providers and application developers much easier,” Machina Research analyst Andy Castonguay said. “You still have a tremendous array of options out there. „
That’s kept consumer choices fragmented, too, which is one issue holding back smart homes, Avi Greengart at Current Analysis said. Most consumers won’t buy IoT gear until they see clear value, ease of installation, and ease of interoperability, he said.
“Every major computing and silicon vendor is competing in this space, and there hasn’t been a consolidation around winners just yet. The market is kind of a mess right now,” Greengart said.
Why is it so hard to agree on standards? „They’re big companies, and they move slowly,“ said Mike Krell of Moor Insights and Strategy. Standards tend to raise intellectual property issues that bring armies of lawyers into the picture.
Even breakthroughs in standards diplomacy aren’t guarantees. Just because an impressive list of vendors, including Microsoft, Samsung, Cisco Systems, GE Digital, and Haier belong to OCF, that doesn’t mean they’ll all adopt the organization’s standard across all their products, Krell said. It’s common for big vendors to join many industry groups just to engage with and influence trends.
There’s too much at stake in a potentially huge market for major companies to give up the chance to dominate home IoT, Greengart said.
“I’m highly skeptical that ‚co-opetition‘ in this regard will prevail over competition. And given than nobody knows what layer of the stack is going to be the most valuable one, everyone is fighting for their own,” he said.
The common thread that will make smart homes work may turn out to be a system from one vendor, like Apple’s HomeKit, Greengart said. Apple is as well-positioned as any company to make that happen. But even though many manufacturers at last week’s CES show introduced products that use HomeKit, they didn’t play up that capability much, he said.
Alexa, Amazon’s cloud-based AI platform that made a splash at CES, at least provides a single user interface, though Greengart said it’s not really a full IoT platform like HomeKit — yet.
Even if part of the technology stack is standardized and life gets easier for developers and buyers, there are other hurdles to mass adoption of home IoT.
Security, one of consumers’ biggest worries, has to be addressed across the board instead of one component at a time, as it is now, Machina’s Castonguay said.
“We still are waiting for the market to develop an approach that would allow for a full, end-to-end, consistently updated and audited security approach,” he said.
Then there’s the issue of how consumers will choose to buy IoT products. While most smart homes are do-it-yourself affairs today, carriers and cable companies may become the main sales channel, Krell said. But it’s still too soon to say.
While things may be murky at home, there are glimmers of hope in another part of the internet of things.
Last year, the 3GPP, which sets cellular standards, settled on two specifications for low-power versions of LTE. Those technologies, called Category M1 and Category NB1, will lead carriers to roll out specialized IoT services, Castonguay said. Both of the new technologies are slower than regular mobile data service but use less energy, so they’re compatible with small, battery-powered connected objects like sensors. As part of the LTE standard, these systems are relatively easy and economical upgrades to current networks.
Another low-power, wide-area networking standard, LoRa, is gaining momentum with more national rollouts, Castonguay said. Comcast announced in October that it’s considering a nationwide LoRa network to serve enterprises. Some carriers in other countries already use the technology. Ingenu, a U. S. company with its own type of low-power network, is also making gains around the world, he said.
Wherever IoT does reach mass adoption, it will be thanks to one or two technologies — open or not — that have somehow caught on with users. “Sometimes ubiquity is the most important part of a standard,” Greengart said.

© Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/3157826/internet-of-things/is-this-the-year-iot-standards-will-finally-make-sense.html
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It’s a home console, it’s a tabletop gaming system and it’s a portable games tablet. It’s the Nintendo Switch and after months of waiting, we’ve finally taken it for a spin.
2016 was supposed to be the year modular gadgets caught on. Phones like Google’s Project Ara , the LG G5 and the Moto Z promised to let you upgrade your phone just by snapping on new parts. Intel’s Thunderbolt 3 port paved the way to turn a thin laptop into a beefy gaming PC just by plugging in an external graphics dock.
(Motorola appears to be full steam ahead on Moto Mods, promising 12 new snap-on accessories per year , but a leak suggests that the company’s upcoming Moto X may not include the feature.)
Nintendo’s Joy-Con controllers slide right into the Switch console, and maybe other devices will do the same down the road.
What does any of this have to do with the new Nintendo Switch? It could be the last, best chance to prove people actually do want modular gadgets — or the final nail in their coffin.
The Nintendo Switch is a portable gaming system that uses modular parts to transform. Snap on a pair of controllers and pick it up like a gamepad, or snap ‚em off to use as wireless motion controllers. Drop the tablet into a dock to connect it to your TV like a full game console, and snap the two tiny controllers together into a bigger gamepad that charges their batteries at the same time. Cool, no?
While that may sound like a bold new idea, it’s actually a lot like Nvidia’s Shield tablet from 2014, or the Razer Edge tablet from 2013, each of which let you buy an optional gamepad, dock and cables so you could use them with a TV as well.
Here’s everything you’ll get in the box.
Unlike most modular gadgets (including every single one I mention above), you don’t need to buy the parts separately. For $300, £280 or AU$470, it comes with everything you need to transform the Switch into each of its modes. It’s the smartest thing Nintendo could have done, and a little surprising considering Nintendo is the company that stopped including power adapters with its latest handhelds.
Including everything means Nintendo doesn’t have to worry about whether you’ll actually buy any of the modular pieces, decide how to market them or stock them on shelves. (You’ll only need to buy replacements or extras for friends.)
It means game developers can create games for the Switch without worrying about whether you’ll be able to transform it into the right mode — unlike software for, say, the old Wii Balance Board (which came with Wii Fit ) or MotionPlus peripherals.
Heck, it might even mean accessory developers can build intriguing modular accessories for the Switch, knowing owners are already familiar with swapping on and off pieces of their console.
It also can’t hurt that the Switch is a Nintendo product, which (unlike pretty much every other modular product I’ve mentioned) will be widely known and recognized around the world.
It’s pretty much the perfect ambassador for modular gadgets. But that’s a double-edged sword: if the Switch fails, it’ll be held up as the ultimate example of how people don’t want gadgets with pieces that pop off.
If Nintendo doesn’t make modular work with the Switch, I doubt anyone will.

© Source: https://www.cnet.com/news/nintendo-switch-last-chance-modular-systems/
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For some sectors of the IT industry 2016 was a difficult year particularly hardware, which struggling with lower sales for years, particularly in the PC market. However, 2017 is looking up for the worldwide IT industry, according to Gartner’s 2017 Worldwide IT Spending Forecast. The research firm’s data indicates that these troubled divisions last year will at least see their sales performance stabilize this year while stronger sectors experience significant growth. However, Gartner said that IT industry as a whole can expect to see spending rise in the next couple of years, thanks in part to investments in innovation from major companies like Microsoft and Google. Still, there are lingering signs of business uncertainty in the industry, according to Gartner, since is a chance that hardware sales could again take a hit in 2018. This slide show cover the highlights of Gartner’s IT market findings and explain why the worldwide IT industry should expect to have an up year in 2017 after a rather disappointing 2016. Gartner also looks farther ahead to see what the business prospects are for 2018.

© Source: http://www.eweek.com/pc-hardware/slideshows/gartner-predicts-return-to-growth-for-some-it-market-sectors-in-2017.html
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