Android Ads Could Attack, Study Warns

Trap Door: This permission screen—typical for a free Android app—also grants the same permissions to the app’s ad libraries.
Technology Review

Android Ads Could Attack, Study Warns

Ad libraries, bundled with free apps, could sniff data and even install malicious software.

• Monday, March 19, 2012
• By David Talbot

To guard against malicious behavior, apps that run on Android smart phones must ask politely for permission to do things like access your personal information, track your location, or transmit data via the Internet. But once they have approval, these apps can share the permissions with the advertising libraries they use to serve up ads, creating serious potential privacy and security vulnerabilities, researchers have found.

Combing through 100,000 apps selected randomly from Google Play (the erstwhile Android Market), a team of researchers at North Carolina State University found that 48,139 of the ad libraries used by these apps tracked the user's GPS location; 18,575 tracked the identity of the phone (its IMEI number); 4,190 let advertisers track the user via GPS; and 4,047 accessed the device's phone number.

Dozens of such "ad libraries" exist, generating onscreen ads with the associated apps. When you click on an ad, the app maker gets a fee. One of these libraries, called energysource, uses an insecure method of loading code from the Internet, says Xuxian Jiang, the North Carolina professor who led the study, released as a paper to be presented at a conference in Tucson next month. Though the researchers did not detect malicious behavior from the app, they did say it poses a security threat simply by allowing code to be downloaded and run.

Of the 100,000 apps, 297 contained ad code that allowed the phone to run code downloaded from the Internet, providing a potential path for malicious software to get inside the device. "If your app has permission to access personal information, the ad library also has permission to access your information," Jiang says.

The North Carolina research is only the latest evidence of gaping security and privacy holes in smart phones. In April of last year, iPhones and Android devices were found to track users' locations automatically. Then, in December, these and other smart-phone devices were found to carry diagnostic software that also tracks a wide range of user information. More recently, it was discovered that both iPhones and Android devices share users' address books and other information with apps. And instances of mobile malware have been rising.

The new findings point to a flaw in the business model behind apps, Jiang says. Developers rely on revenue from ad libraries to support free apps, but they have no control over what those libraries do. "The current model of embedding ad libraries in mobile apps for monetization purposes poses security and privacy risks. These ad libraries will essentially have the same set of permissions granted to the apps that enclose them. And certain ad libraries may abuse them for other unwanted purposes."

Mobile device makers should provide ways to isolate the two, Jiang says, so that the ads run separately from the host apps—and require separate explicit permissions. "There are fundamental concerns in the way mobile apps are being monetized," he adds.

Adding insult to injury, other research has recently found that ads associated with free Android apps are also battery-drainers. Abhinav Pathak, a computer scientist at Purdue University, and colleagues at Microsoft Research found that as much as three-quarters of the juice used by such apps is spent to serve ads and transmit user data back to advertisers.

New service reports text spam

In the United States, text spammers have to stop sending you messages if you reply "stop."

• North American wireless carriers have deployed a new spam-reporting service
• Service generates a data feed of spam reports that carriers can integrate into security
• Organizations that disobey shortcode rules can find their shortcode lease revoked
• The service doesn't tell you if any action was taken against the spammer you reported

Editor's note: Amy Gahran writes about mobile tech for CNN.com. She is a San Francisco Bay Area writer and media consultant whose blog, Contentious.com, explores how people communicate in the online age.

(CNN) -- Unsolicited text messages from scammers, companies and political campaigns are illegal and annoying. But at least now they're easier to report.

Recently all of the major North American wireless carriers have deployed a centralized spam-reporting service backed by GSMA, a global association of wireless carriers. This service collects information about spam complaints from all participating carriers into a common database, which may make it easier for carriers to identify spammers and take action against them.

According to GSMA, one feature of the new spam-reporting service is that it generates a data feed of spam reports that carriers can integrate into their network security measures.

It may be hard to tell whether this new system does any good. But it probably can't hurt.

I just tested it. Here's how it works:

When you receive a spam text message on your phone, forward that text to the shortcode 7726 (which spells "SPAM"). You'll then receive an automated message from your wireless carrier, asking you then to enter the phone number from which the spam text was sent.

I first reported as spam a text message I received from the Mitt Romney presidential campaign. (To be clear, the Romney campaign did not spam me. I voluntarily signed up to receive its text updates. However, I had to test this spam reporting service with somebody's text message, and I doubt that one spam report would do Romney much harm.)

The Romney campaign sends texts from a common shortcode (a short telephone number that's leased by the U.S. government for texting programs -- a use that is highly regulated). So when I responded to Verizon with the sender's phone number, I received a response that said: "It is likely that your message came from a shortcode. Please return to the original message and reply STOP."

OK, this might sound like the new spam reporting service didn't really do anything -- but actually it probably did the right thing. In the United States, any texting campaign that uses a shortcode has to obey strict rules. One of those rules is that if you reply "stop" to any message that came from a shortcode, it has to stop sending you messages.

Many mobile users don't know this, so this is a good reminder first to try to unsubscribe. And also, it verifies that my test didn't do Romney's campaign any harm.

But many text-spam messages are sent from regular phone numbers, not shortcodes, precisely because shortcode use is so tightly monitored and regulated. Organizations that disobey U.S. shortcode rules can find their shortcode lease revoked, or their messages blocked by carriers.

Next I tested the spam-reporting service by forwarding to it a spam text I had received from an ordinary phone number. It claimed to be offering a Walmart gift card, but that was most likely a ruse.

After I got Verizon's acknowledgment of my spam report and sent it the full 10-digit phone number of the spam sender, the system responded: "Thank you, we appreciate your assistance." It also offered Verizon's instructions for blocking text messages from a specific number.

This spam reporting service apparently doesn't tell you whether any action was taken against the spammer you reported. So it's a little unsatisfying in that regard. Also, this service is new, so it's unclear so far what kind of difference it might make in the fight against spam texts.

However, forwarding spam texts to an easy-to-remember shortcode is a simple thing to do. So it might be a good idea to try using this service to report any spam texts that you receive. Let's hope it helps.

The opinions expressed in this post are solely those of Amy Gahran.

Genius SW-G2.1 3000 Gaming Speakers

Genius SW-G2.1 3000 Gaming Speakersby Edwin - on March 19th, 2012

I clearly remember when I bought my very first gaming rig with my own money more than a decade ago, setting up a LAN in the home with my brother and a housemate, where we need not waste any more money at cybercafes since we can always get some good, old fashioned fragging Quake action going on in the comfort of our homes. Of course, to go up head to head against one’s opponent required plenty of stealth and guile, not to mention wearing a pair of headphones so as not to give away my location to the opponent so easily.

When I am playing other single player games alone, however, that is a totally different matter – it was time to unplug the headphones, jack in a pair of high powered speakers, and blast away. Blasted away I did, until the neighbor from the row of houses behind ours came knocking on our gate, asking me to reduce the volume as he wanted to get a good night’s rest. Of course I complied, but those were the days when I was living the “young and dangerous” lifestyle. Genius knows that a power-packed speaker system is always something worth looking into, hence the Genius SW-G2.1 3000 Gaming Speakers.

With the Genius SW-G2.1 3000 Gaming Speakers, it will offer 70 watts RMS of juice, throwing in the GX series’ loudest subwoofer at the same time with 6.5″ of tub-thumpin’ goodness, delivering 40 watts of bass, while a couple of 15 watt curvaceous satellite speakers and a separate control box for easy adjustment of volume and bass rounds off the list of included hardware as well as their capabilities.

It comes highly recommended for you to place the subwoofer, speakers, and control box in the right array in order to maximize the acoustics and layout of just about any room, all the while retaining volume and bass control at your fingertips. With 3″ metal cones, the SW-G2.1 3000 satellite speakers are capable of playing middle to high range audio in a vivid and vibrant manner, while audio from the satellite speakers will be able to complement the deep, rich bass of the wooden cabinet subwoofer. In order to achieve high volumes at low distortion, the Genius SW-G2.1 3000 speaker system has more than enough wires inside going to have it achieve such depths of performance. If you are interested, it will retail for $119.99 a pop.

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King Jim Pomera DM100 digital memo

King Jim Pomera DM100 digital memoby Edwin - on March 19th, 2012

Most of us these days own a smartphone, a tablet, a phablet (like the Galaxy Note), or all three. Just when you thought that there was no longer any room to fit yet another gadget into your pant’s pockets, here we are with a digital memo known as the King Jim Pomera DM100. A digital memo? Don’t we all have a smartphone or tablet that has the Calendar app to remind us of all our appointments already? Why is there a need to carry another redundant device?

Hold your horses, boys and girls, as we read about how the King Jim Pomera DM100 digital memo is going to add value to your life. After all, the Japanese do not create anything without any purpose or not having a niche to fulfill, so with the King Jim Pomera DM100 digital memo, it is meant to help you take your memos with you wherever you go, being able to access it anytime, and there are also features like a straight keyboard for easy typing and preloaded electronic dictionaries to get you started.

I guess the King Jim Pomera DM100 digital memo caters for those who have a phobia of devices that are too convergent – and once in a while, would prefer something else that has only one function, and does it well. The moment you open up the King Jim Pomera DM100, you are able to write a memo there and then. It will obviously be powered by batteries, and uses Sanyo’s Eneloop AAA batteries at the moment. There is an SD memory card slot for you to stash away all your created documents and for easy transfer to a computer later on.

The Pomera DM100 measures 24.5mm at its thickest point, and 11.6mm at its thinnest. The display itself is a 5.7″ TFT monochrome LCD display with backlight that will be able to do more than enough to show off its SVGA resolution. There are also pre-loaded copies of the Meikyo Japanese dictionary MX, Genius English-Japanese dictionary MX, and Genius Japanese-English dictionary MX. Whenever you create a document, you just need to press a button to reference the Japanese dictionary.

Apart from that, there is also a QR code conversion feature that has been thrown into the mix, where pressing this button will have a previously created document converted to QR code instantly. It can then be read by a smartphone using the right app, where said document is then imported as text. Now how about that?

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iPhone To Television Karaoke Player

iPhone To Television Karaoke Playerby Edwin - on March 19th, 2012

Love singing your heart out? Well, we do know that it was the Japanese who invented karaoke, and since then the whole world has also caught up with this particular craze. However, not all of us are willing to let our voices be heard in public, simply because we croak like Kermit the Frog. I am one of those, for example, and I guess the only way you are ever going to get me sing is to purchase the $79.95 iPhone To Television Karaoke Player, hook it up to my TV at home, and when there is nobody around (with all the windows and doors closed, of course), I will then start to croon, thinking that I am like Frank Sinatra but ending up like performing a mating call of some undiscovered species.

Back to the iPhone To Television Karaoke Player – this particular device will display lyrics as well as play music on your TV, where the iPhone dock itself will obviously need to be hooked up to the TV via the included component cable. Thankfully, there is also a free app that offers access to five songs, including All You Need Is Love by The Beatles, Don’t Stop Believing by Journey, and Cry Me A River by Ella Fitzgerald. There is a built-in microphone that transmit your voice through the TV’s speakers while the lyrics appear on the screen. Nice to know your iPhone gets juiced up as it is docked.

Recesky Twin Lens Reflex Camera Kit

Recesky Twin Lens Reflex Camera Kitby Edwin - on March 19th, 2012

So, we are living in a digital age where digital cameras all sport super high resolution counts, but with the $29.99 Recesky Twin Lens Reflex Camera Kit, things are a little bit different. This particular twin-lens reflex camera is one which you are fully capable of building yourself, assuming you are able to interpret all the fixing together instructions properly. I know, some of us still do experience such troubles, but it is nothing that cannot be overcome with sheer perseverance.

The Recesky Twin Lens Reflex Camera Kit will rely on standard 35mm film (your kids might just ask you as to why you use such film, as they scratch their heads to comprehend an age where there was no such thing as film in the past) to get the job done, that is, helping you create old school pieces that used to use film. Retro always has a place in the hearts of man, that is for sure.

Library of Classics MP3 Player – Your Required Reading List in your Pocket

Library of Classics MP3 Player – Your Required Reading List in your Pocketby Julie - on March 19th, 2012

I love to read and I can honestly say that my whole family enjoys a good story, but they just don’t invest the time it takes to be able to sit down and enjoy a good novel, its a shame, because there are so many tales worthy of the few hours it would take to experience them. I must admit I actually hated to read in school, but I think that was more because I HAD to, I’ve always had a problem being told what to do. I wish I got this next item for one of my birthdays, back when I was in High School… It would have changed my life.

Let’s welcome the Library of Classics MP3 Player, this nifty little unit, smaller than a deck of cards, comes already loaded with 100 of the most important literary works of all time (and need I point out, required reading in most High Schools and Colleges) Simply press a button and listen to:  A Tale of Two Cities, Pride and Prejudice, The Art of War, or Gullivers Travels. For a complete list of the 100 unabridged titles, click  here. 

So imagine if you will, all the great literary masterpieces you will now be able to experience while you are working out, driving to work or just relaxing at the beach. Every book is recorded by an expert narrator and is digitally enhanced for the highest sound quality.

So whether you just love a good story, or want to finally read all the stuff you lied about in college, you might want to put this tiny pocket library on your wish list. The Library of Classics MP3 Player comes with the Personal MP3 player preloaded with the 100 greatest books in audio format, headphones, adapters for listening in the car and at home and a bonus gift that includes 50 of the Greatest Classical Music Performances of all time, all for under 99 bucks at Amazon.com Wow, I feel smarter already!

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