The actual thread of this Trojan has been mitigated because the FBI took down the network involved and seized the servers that ran it—however, infections still persist.

After seizing the IP addresses used by DNSChanger, the FBI has been running the servers as if nothing happened so that people infected could change their settings and move on. However, on July 9, 2012 the FBI will shut down these servers and everyone still infected with this Trojan will suddenly find themselves out in the cold and unable to access web pages—this includes Fortune 500 companies who might have infected systems.

The first date set for this shutdown, March 8, has already passed because the FBI filed for an extension on the shutdown with the expectation that doing so without finding a better solution could be catastrophic.

In fact, Paul Vixie, “Father of DNS,” came out recently to warn that simply shutting down the DNSChanger servers would cause outright blackouts. “Remediation, which has not worked, has taken many forms, which did not work,” Vixie drily noted as reported by The Register.

Solutions have been passed around suggesting that the FBI change the DNSChanger servers to redirect requests to pages that explain the person is infected and then link them to instructions on how to fix their computer. However, this probably wouldn’t have any effect on internal systems that nobody uses to surf the web—but that said, even out of the 500,000+ infections every single one will not be caught.

Google has decided to step up to the plate and offer a solution: the above, except that it will be through their search engine and would provide the message that they should get themselves fixed.

Krebs on Security reports the statement from Google and how the warning will appear to those infected:

The company said the warning (pictured above) will appear only when a user with an infected system visits a Google search results property (google.com, google.co.uk, etc.), and will include the message, “Your computer appears to be infected.” Google security engineer Damian Menscher said the company expects to notify approximately a half-million users in the first week of the notices.

“In general we want to notify users [of malware infections] anytime we are capable of doing so, but the fact that we don’t do this more often is really just because it’s hard to come across cases where we can do it this accurately,” Menscher said.  “In many cases we only have maybe a 90 percent confidence that someone is infected, and the false positive rate of 10 percent is simply too high to be feasible. But in this case we can be essentially certain that someone is infected.”

Google is throwing a lot of resources at this, including translators to localize the message across the globe.

“We think part of it is that all of the public press on this so far has been in English or a handful of other languages,” Menscher said. “It turns out that only half of these infected users speak English as their primary language.”

Time is running out on people and corporations infected with DNSChanger. Individuals may simply just not know and if they’re lucky enough to use Google they’ll find out shortly—corporations, on the other hand, will have to look to their IT Departments to make sure they’re not burned come July 9.

No Mayans involved.

FBI Shuts Down DNSChanger in July; Google Sets Out to Warn the Infected is a post from: SiliconANGLE We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

In the same vein:

• Anonymous Threatens To Shut Down the Internet; the FBI Could Darken the Cloud Instead March 8
• Anonymous “Operation Blackout” That Didn’t Happen but What-Could-Have Been
• Tomorrow: Anonymous Threatens to Blackout the Internet on March 31st
• Feds File for Extension on DNSChanger Trojan Shutdown
• Online Threat Growing Rapidly, Can Destroy Companies, says FBI Cyber Security Head
• Adobe Addresses Vulnerabilities in Defense Industry, Recommends Upgrades

According to The Washington Post, although Daniel happens to be a budget official, he’s been placed highly in the role of managing security and “has overseen classified programs being run by U.S. spy agencies and the Defense Department. He has also coordinated the budgets for the government’s cybersecurity programs.”

The statement from the White House includes numerous accolades for Daniel, noting that he’s been involved in “virtually every major issue affecting the Intelligence Community.” His work with the Defense Department means that he should be aware of what’s rolling around in the minds of the military and the NSA. As cybersecurity coordinator, he will be advising the President as to new policies and legislation arising on this topic.

“I am very honored to be asked to take on such an important role, especially at a time when cybersecurity issues are so prominent,” said Daniel in a statement. “The challenges in this area are real and serious, but I have the benefit of building on the progress Howard has made through his leadership and I look forward to continuing my career in public service in a new way.”

Already we’ve seen some poorly received legislation pass the House in the form of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing and Protection Act—or CISPA—which displays a culture of misunderstanding of what makes security by opening up the door to huge privacy concerns. Any cybersecurity coordinator taking the role right now will need to stay abreast of our nation’s attempts to secure itself from cyberthreats both foreign and domestic and at the same time weigh those risks against the necessity for privacy.

Much of the current lawmaking attention is being directed towards national infrastructure and data services with legislators calling for policies that operate electric power plants, water supply, banking systems subject themselves to the basic cybersecurity standards. However, cybersecurity is more than just a moving target, it’s a case-by-case systems paradigm that depends on many factors so it might be difficult to write these requirements into law.

The idea is to avoid possible events similar to what was feared to have happened to a water pumping station in Illinois—discovered to be an overreaction—or what happened to medical records in Utah. Infrastructure would be a favorite target for hackers as will be any large-enough database of information available online (social security records, medical records, law enforcement archives.) As we’ve seen the hacker mayhem group LulzSec made a mockery of several different law enforcement agencies by breaking into their e-mail archives on more than one occasion and they’re not even professionals.

Daniel will find himself walking into an atmosphere of political struggle about how the nation should approach problems such as LulzSec and Anonymous as much as concerns about foreign powers looking to steal state secrets. While it’s unlikely that cyberterrorism will be at our door anytime soon—it’s not exactly a lucrative operation to hit another country’s power grid in this era, especially the United States—but it would be foolish to even connect the control system of a water pump or a power grid to general communications.

Still, we have a climate of uncertainty moving into the future and cybersecurity is a quickly growing industry. A budget official will probably keep that in mind as he advises the President about who to listen to about making laws to that effect.

White House Chooses Budget Official as Successor for Cybersecurity Chief is a post from: SiliconANGLE We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

In the same vein:

• U.S. Cybersecurity Czar Howard Schmidt to Step Down
• U.S. and Chinese Militaries Practice Cyberwar and Play House
• Online Threat Growing Rapidly, Can Destroy Companies, says FBI Cyber Security Head
• Cyberthreat Weekly: CISPA Passes House, New Hacker Group, Android Malware on the Rise, and More
• Is Encryption the Answer to Data Security in the Cloud?
• LulzSec Leaked VMware Code Raises Concerns and Implications

Schmidt is a former Air Force officer and previously chief information officer at Microsoft making him a fairly good call for the job. Now that he’s stepping down, members of the White House are hoping that he stays on long enough to guide current legislation working its way through the House and Senate related to homeland cybersecurity.

His job of late has been overshadowed by another position, that of Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency and head of the military’s Cyber Command, especially with arguments about the role of the NSA and the Department of Homeland Security in cybersecurity.

With Schmidt stepping down from his position, he will be succeeded by Michael Daniel, chief of the White House budget office’s intelligence branch.

His stepping down from his office of two and a half years comes during a tumultuous time with cybersecurity with lawmakers and the executive branch of the government. Malware is on the rise, corporate espionage has been brought to the media as the next-big-narrative, Anonymous is used as a bogeyman…and CISPA passed the U.S. House. Said bill before the government is considered to be an unthinking disaster for cybersecurity by much of the security industry and privacy watchdogs.

We have even seen the rise of expectations that cybersecurity will take a fundamental role in future warfare and terrorism. As recently as November 2011, fears of cyberterrorism led to questions about a software failure at an Illinois water pump and possible sabotage; although that turned out to be an overreaction it raises questions about networked and Internet-wired infrastructure security.

According to The Washington Post, Schmidt will leave behind a legacy of newfound thinking about our nation’s cybersecurity:

During Schmidt’s tenure, the White House unveiled its first international strategy for cyberspace, which stated that the United States will respond to hostile acts in cyberspace as it would to any other threat to the country, reserving the right to use “all necessary means,” including diplomatic and military, to defend the country.

Schmidt also led the creation of the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace — a program aimed at developing methods for people and businesses to authenticate their identities online that are safer than using passwords, which can be stolen by hackers.

The United States’ growing dependence on digital networks for daily commerce, energy production and military operations has made cybersecurity a prime national-security issue.

Schmidt is 62 years old and has been at this job for over two years.

After retiring, he intends to spend more time with his family, ride his Harley-Davidson motorcycle, and settle down in his home near Seattle. He has extended family in Wisconsin, and looks forward to a sixth grandson on the way.

We at SiliconANGLE bit him a farewell and wait to vet the next chief of cybersecurity and see how they will shape our nation’s forward-looking policies.

U.S. Cybersecurity Czar Howard Schmidt to Step Down is a post from: SiliconANGLE We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

In the same vein:

• White House Chooses Budget Official as Successor for Cybersecurity Chief
• U.S. and Chinese Militaries Practice Cyberwar and Play House
• USA PATRIOT Act May Put Microsoft Cloud in the Doghouse with the European Union
• U.S. State Department Hacks al-Qaeda Webpages
• Online Threat Growing Rapidly, Can Destroy Companies, says FBI Cyber Security Head
• Cyberthreat Weekly: CISPA Passes House, New Hacker Group, Android Malware on the Rise, and More

As it is unlikely the work of Anonymous (although a cell thereof may contain mischief makers who might do this) a few Twitter accounts and other sources have come out to distance the amorphouse, leaderless activists collective from the attacks. According to SecurityWeek,

Anonymous, as best as they can considering that they are not unanimous and anyone can act under their name, distanced themselves from the DDoS against TPB and said that it wasn’t their doing. Following their initial statement on Facebook, TPB confirmed this in a message that said in part, “…we know that it is not Anonymous who is behind the ddos attack…We may not agree with Anonymous in everything, but we both want the internet to be open and free.”

That said, The Pirate Bay did recently admonish Anonymous for using a DDoS attack against Virgin Media ISP in the UK for complying with court ordered censorship of themselves. The DDoS attack against the ISP in question has dwindled away since; but even with such a diverse group as Anonymous, it’s unlikely that they’re going to cut off their noses to spite their facelessness.

“We do NOT encourage these actions. We believe in the open and free internets, where anyone can express their views. Even if we strongly disagree with them and even if they hate us,” said TPB in response to the DDoS attack against Virgin.

“So don’t fight them using their ugly methods. DDoS and blocks are both forms of censorship.”

Wikileaks moved their active releases and mirrors when the DDoS attack hit their main domains on Monday. Wikileaks has been the target of DDoS orbital-strikes in the past (in fact, November 2010 had one at the level of gigabits per second) so they are no strangers to protecting themselves from such floods. The current attack against Wikileaks has lasted over 72 hours.

Their archives appear to have come completely back online again as of Thursday morning at 7 a.m.

The Pirate Bay and Wikileaks Undergo Massive DDoS Attack from Unknown Source is a post from: SiliconANGLE We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

In the same vein:

• Anonymous “Operation Blackout” That Didn’t Happen but What-Could-Have Been
• NYSE Unaffected by Anonymous Attack; Sabu of LulzSec ‘We still have Sun e-mails’
• UK Police Continue Pursuit of Anonymous with Another Arrest in Hartlepool
• Anonymous Allegedly Leaks 1.7 GB U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics Data
• The Pirate Bay Delivers Tongue-lashing to Anonymous over Virgin Media DDoS
• Anonymous Looks to Obsolete Pastebin for Leaks With AnonPaste

As a result, players grabbed their torches, pitchforks (and keyboards), and besieged the listing for Diablo III on Metacritic to announce their dismay at the online-only aspect of the newly released game. A game that would otherwise be receiving a rating upwards of 9 has seen its rating plummet to 3.6 at the hands of angry users upset that even if they wanted to play just the story mode and not involve themselves with a group must content with server errors.

As with players such as me, discovered this screen when attempting to log in during the first day:

User b7ad’s experience reflects that of many, “Haven’t been able to play yet at all…been sitting for hours getting error messages and unable to log in,” they write. “You HAVE to log in to the server even if you just want to play single player, so literally have not played ANY yet.”

The hordes also went to the Amazon page to vent their frustrating, giving the game a crushing 3.5 stars with 485 1-star reviews and rising.

The inability to play during a positively popular launch of any given MMO is not uncommon—it happened with World of Warcraft and it’s various expansions—but gamer culture is not used to bridging the gap between players interested in single-player games and multiplayer games. In this era, not everyone has Internet access and using it as a proof-of-purchase coupled with making people unable to play their games when its down raises a lot of hackles.

The Real Money Auction House and Diablo III

Many have seen the online-play only aspect of the game to be a gigantic imposition and the use of Internet-connectivity as a sort of DRM; but there might be another side to the decision by the video gaming giant and that is the cash driven auction house introduced with Diablo III. The previous two incarnations of Diablo had online gaming and competitions with their multiplayer modes; in fact, much of the games shifted entirely online even though solo play was always available, a big part of those online communities was trading in rare virtual items.

Many people went to sites such as Craigslist and eBay and traded their rare items for cash via auction sites in direct violation of the TOS.

Of course, seeing that this could actually be lucrative, Blizzard announced the launch of a real money auction house, owned and operated by them, in which players could trade in rare in-game items for a small fee. The fee is assessed on items upon placement for sale and another fee is assessed upon the sale—both fees are small and not related to the price of the item itself.

Online-only play will force all players to be part of the online community and lead them like gazelles to the oasis of the auction house—and potentially the real money auction house—and this means a greater revenue for Blizzard. Although it also means that they must deal with every box purchase as a potential weight on their servers. With this gambit, the gaming giant is attempting to defray costs of running servers over a long period of time through the rarity of items in the game and the economics of gamer desire.

This is not the first time that Blizzard has tested the waters with real money trade. In October 2011, the game publisher released an aesthetic pet that could be bought in the cash shop but also traded in game, making an item in the game worth real money.

However, due to the rocky launch, Blizzard has delayed the real money auction house.

Diablo III Online-Only DRM Strategy Leaves Players’ Eyes Stinging, Throats Raw is a post from: SiliconANGLE We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

In the same vein:

• Blizzard Planning Diablo III Cash Auction House: Items Will be Bought, Sold for Real Money
• Blizzard to Experiment with Real-Money for Gold Scheme in WoW via Tradable In-Game Pet
• Occupy World of Warcraft: The Allure of Virtual Gold
• World of Warcraft Subscriptions Plummet Ten Percent; Activision-Blizzard Triples Profits
• Virtual BlizzCon 2011 for $40: The Price of Eyeballs-Only Admittance
• Scalify Raises $2 Million for Peer-to-Peer Cloud-Gaming Networking

According to Bitcoinica, this represents only a fraction of the total of their bitcoins and withdrawal requests will be honored; but they have suspended operations while the investigation proceeds. The exchange also believes that the database itself was compromised.

This particular breach comes after a months of repeated, serious wallet compromises where massive numbers of bitcoins have been stolen or lost. In early March, a Linode server hack caused the loss of ฿46,703 BTC (worth $228,845 at the time) with the largest fraction of nearly ฿43,000 BTC of the loss coming out of Bitcoinica’s pockets. In August 2011, Bitomat lost their wallet with almost ฿17,000 BTC due to a backup failure when using Amazon’s elastic-computing cloud. Also in that same month, MyBitcoin.com disappeared with $250,000 worth of BTC. Finally, starting the long-line of targeted attacks against Bitcoin wallets and exchanges (or just plain bugs) was the hack against MtGox last year in June—the nascent currency hasn’t caught a break with breaches, insecurity, and bugs since it started to gain widespread publicity.

Since bitcoins aren’t just numbers in a bank, and it’s possible to steal them by just copying them out of a wallet and then transferring them, they make a pronounced low-hanging-fruit to hackers looking to make a quick buck. MtGox and other exchanges have seen huge amounts of expenditure and investment into making their own severs more secure against invasion since last June; but it’s obvious that the digital nature of bitcoins are changing the face of the digital heist—and Bitcoinica is the latest victim of a vast loss.

According to posts on the Bitcoin Talk forums, left by Bitcoinica CEO Zhou Tong, the hackers appear to have breached root access at their server host at Rackspace discovered via a massive transfer of bitcoins from the given wallet from what appeared to be one of the site administrators. To this extent, it’s suspected that the Rackspace password was changed by attackers via the password-recovery mechanism and an intercepted e-mail. Amidst the comments, some respondents criticized Bitcoinica for not using better security such as two-factor password recovery and offline cryptographic storage for the bitcoin wallet.

Of course, there are strong reasons to keep particular sums of bitcoins liquid and open in wallets in order that they may be moved quickly when transactions need to happen. As a result, Tong defended the decision to keep such a large wallet in the open:

“The sum of margin balance is the absolute minimum of funds we have to keep (so that we can honor every withdrawal request),” Tong explained. “Since the system is down at the moment, we don’t have the knowledge of open positions. We’re pretty sure that margin balance can be covered with our off-site reserves, but we are unable to determine value of unpaid unrealized profits and the unpaid swaps.”

The Bitcoin market has seen some ups, some downs, but largely it’s been driven by popular attention and these large-numbered and high-profile hacks reveal that its vulnerable to what I dubbed a “new type of bank heist.” Bitcoin exchanges are the cyberspace version of Wells Fargo transporting money via stagecoach and locomotive with bandits looking to waylay the money train.

Bitcoinica’s ability to cover the bitcoin assets of their customers through the loss will be instrumental to keeping a sense of balance in the market and also a sense of security.

However, looking at this heist in the long-line of bitcoin losses related to cybersecurity, we might still be in for the long haul.

Bitcoinica Suffers Staggering $87,000 Bitcoin Loss in Server Breach is a post from: SiliconANGLE We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

In the same vein:

• Linode Breach Leads to Massive Heist of 46,000 BTC from Bitcoinica, Faucet
• Bitcoin7 Hacked, Funds Recovery Requires Sensitive Personal Information
• Bitcoinica Growing Pains Result in Data Errors
• Bitcoinica Adds a Little Forex Brokerage to the Bitcoin Ecology
• Forum User Passwords Possibly Stolen In Bitcointalk.org Bill Cosby Hack
• Who is Tom Williams? MyBitcoin.com Reappears with Statement Claiming Site Was Hacked

Virgin Media was one of the first ISPs to comply with the order—but didn’t do so without criticizing the High Court’s decision and pointing out that it would ultimately fail.

Anonymous set in shortly using their favorite weapon, the distributed denial of service attack, to show their dismay and protest the action. Their target? The same industry victimized by the High Court’s decision.

The Pirate Bay posted on Facebook how they feel about the attack,

We do NOT encourage these actions. We believe in the open and free internets, where anyone can express their views. Even if we strongly disagree with them and even if they hate us.

So don’t fight them using their ugly methods. DDOS and blocks are both forms of censorship.

If you want to help; start a tracker, arrange a manifestation, join or start a pirate party, teach your friends the art of bittorrent, set up a proxy, write your political representatives, develop a new p2p protocol, print some pro piracy posters and decorate your town with, support our promo bay artists or just be a nice person and give your mom a call to tell her you love her.

The Pirate Bay published this shortly after twitter feeds connected with cells of the Anonymous collective began to emit: “Virgin Media – Tango Down #OpTPB”. All earlier this week.

Virgin Media is one of five ISPs to comply with the order, including Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk and O2. And a sixth ISP, BT, has requested a few weeks to consider its position on the matter.

According to a BBC article on the matter, the DDoS began at 5pm BST (British Summer Time) and lasted about an hour.

Virgin Media reiterated that they’re only blocking TPB because they’ve been ordered to do so by the High Court.

“As a responsible ISP, Virgin Media complies with court orders but we strongly believe that tackling the issue of copyright infringement needs compelling legal alternatives, giving consumers access to great content at the right price, to help change consumer behaviour,” it said.

Meanwhile, the DDoS from Anonymous affected Virgin Media and their customers by greatly degrading their service. This is probably what ruffled the feathers of The Pirate Bay and led them to accuse Anonymous of the same sort of censorship that the collective itself has taken a strong moral stand against.

The Pirate Bay Delivers Tongue-lashing to Anonymous over Virgin Media DDoS is a post from: SiliconANGLE We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

In the same vein:

• The Pirate Bay and Wikileaks Undergo Massive DDoS Attack from Unknown Source
• UK High Court Rules That ISPs Must Block The Pirate Bay
• The Pirate Bay Experiences Traffic Boost After Block; Youth Look into Privacy via VPN
• Anonymous Looks to Obsolete Pastebin for Leaks With AnonPaste
• Anonymous “Operation Blackout” That Didn’t Happen but What-Could-Have Been
• Anonymous vs. Zeus: an Attack on Hackers

In a bid of their own, antivirus and security company Symantec appears to be looking for a turnkey solution for businesses to let their workers go with the flow without opening themselves to potential breaches. A blog post about this trend by Brian Prince at SecurityWeek mentions the keynote at the Symantec Vision and where this might take the company in the future.

“Our vision is, (for) bring-your-own-device, is you need to manage devices, and you need to manage and control the applications,” Symantec CEO Enrique Salem said during his keynote at the Symantec Vision Conference in Las Vegas, California.

To this end, Symantec is looking to Nukona, a mobile device management application company that the antivirus and security vendor acquired earlier this year. In 2011, Citrix invested in Nukona themselves as part of an accelerator program, as a virtualization company well known for siting in the forefront of bringing the office-into-unexpected-places, that investment appears that it will soon pay off for the industry.

Nukona’s app management platform allows IT departments to make their own virtual machines inside of mobile devices, let users enter into that and access available apps, encrypt in transit, encrypt on device, and even make policies on what information and networks they can access. As a result, the Nukona-driven Symantec BYOD solution will provide a sort of DMZ safe-zone for businesses to trust third-part devices in the hands of their workers.

Brian Duckering, senior manager of enterprise mobility at Symantec, thinks that this is key to increasing worker productivity by allowing them to bring their own devices:

“The problem comes when maybe you are in a regulated industry…if one of those companies wants to do BYOD they are going to have a problem because the policies that they would apply in their MDM (mobile device management) solution are going to be pretty severe, and they should be,” he said. “The problem is then the end user brings in their own device, and [says], ‘I’m not going to sign up for this – I don’t want you turning off my camera, blocking access to the app store [and] doing all these other things. I am paying for this device.’”

“If you can put authentication, encryption, copy control and all of the controls that you need on that app that contains the data, you can actually accomplish what you need to without taking over the entire device,” Duckering added.

Symantec Mobile is looking to hook into both iOS and Android devices with their venture which should open up most of the market to them.

Currently, much of the BYOD trend is being seen warily by the enterprise sector because of the risks involved. A survey done by Mimecast revealed that 26% of the industry still doesn’t permit BYOD for official tasks, and 21% consider it too high a risk. Those percentages may feel like they’re small; but they’re the undercurrent beneath the modern-day expectations of mobile devices, especially with Android malware on the rise and the potential that trade secrets could be leaked should a mobile device get left on a bar stool or targeted-and-pilfered at a technology conference.

Looking at BYOD not as proprietary device-centric but as virtual machine and software management could provide a solution that would allow a wider variety of devices to enter into the protected huddle of corporate networks. With proper policies, intrusion detection, and especially on-board encryption that scrambles or destroys sensitive information on mobile devices will go a long way to preventing it from falling into the wrong hands or getting leaked.

Symantec Mobile may be hitting a nerve with the industry, but should they provide a secure management for mobile on and off network, they could ride this way all the way into the sunset.

Symantec Mobile Leads the Pack in the Bring-Your-Own-Device Trend Security is a post from: SiliconANGLE We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

In the same vein:

• BYOD Still Blocked for Official Work Tasks
• IncrediBuild-XGE Speeds Up Virtual Working Environments
• We’re Waiting: Hacker Threatened to Release Full Source Code for Norton Antivirus
• VMware’s Serious about Mobile Enterprise, Unveils Horizon Mobile
• Citrix Incubator Says the Science of Startups Gets Better
• Windows 8 Will Bundle Native Antivirus, Symantec and McAfee Scream in Horror

Apple filed claim for iPhone 5 domain

It looks like Apple will be naming the next iPhone the “iPhone 5” as they filed a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization for the iPhone5.com domain name.  Anyone who visits the site will be seeing smartphone ads and forums with discussions regarding the rumored iPhone 5.  Apple doesn’t own the site, but they want to.  Currently, there’s an on going forum as to whether Apple should be given the rights to the site, while another forum is asking people to help stop Apple from getting the rights to the domain.

Apple has a history of filing claims to domain names that are closely related to their brand or their products, even if they don’t actually use them.

In other Apple news, the iPhone maker agreed to drop their patent claims against Samsung in California just so the case could be ready for a hearing in the Summer.

Apple “offers a truly impressive narrowing of its infringement claims in that action, roughly cutting them in half, and five hours later, Samsung offered to drop five of its 12 asserted patents but argued that Apple’s case is still far too big to go to trial this summer,” said Florian Mueller in his Foss Patents blog.

“Apple’s filing accused Samsung of being uncooperative in the build-up to these filings, but Samsung puts all the blame on Apple and says the case still isn’t ready for a summer trial.”

T-Mobile to offer Passpoint

T-Mobile, the fourth largest carrier in the US, is planning on deploying Passpoint – the technology that allows wireless users to automatically access Wi-Fi hotspots from 3G and 4G cellular networks.

Carriers who commit to Passpoint-certified devices and gear, users will be able to seamlessly access WiFi hotspots without the need to set it up or enter a password, drastically reducing the cost of browsing for consumers.  The Wi-Fi Alliance will start certifying network gears and end-user devices, like smartphones and tablets by June.

TwitPic for iPhones

TwitPic launched their iPhone app to provide their users an easier way of sharing photos and videos, see photos of the people they follow, and view popular content across the network.

“We’ve always relied on third-party developers … but we wanted to provide a better experience for our users,” said TwitPic founder Noah Everett in an interview with VentureBeat.

TwitPic is very popular among Twitter users, as it is one of the most convenient ways of sharing photos on the the microblogging site.  They now have a reported 35 million users, and the TwitPic for iPhone app is expected to lure in more users.

AT&T app for shoppers

VeriFone GlobalBay Solutions from AT&T launches today to help shoppers checkout their items quicker.

VeriFone GlobalBay Solutions works like this: sales associates armed with mobile devices roam in retail stores and they can scan items, apply coupons and discounts, and complete credit card transactions from any location in the store.  Aside from the roaming sales associates, the tablet-based solutions provide the ability to sell items from inventory not available in the store – helping to prevent lost sales.  With this solution, associates can remain engaged with their customers, quickly and efficiently.

“Customers don’t want to wait in line or stand around as a sales person runs off to find information on a product — they want great service in a timely manner,” said Chris Hill, Vice President, Advanced Mobility Solutions, AT&T Business and Home Solutions.

“The addition of VeriFone GlobalBay Solutions(TM) from AT&T to our mobility portfolio helps businesses complete transactions efficiently and attentively, ultimately helping to drive new revenue generation and increase competitive advantage.”

Qello HD streaming now available on iOS

Qello, the streaming HD concert app, debuts for iOS devices to bring the world’s largest library of the highest quality concert films and music documentaries to Apple users.

“Qello represents a new dimension in HD concert entertainment that offers music lovers an easy-to-use way to engage in the live music experience whenever they want to – on any iOS device,” Qello CEO Brian Lisi said.

Qello is a premier source for HD concert films and music documentaries streamed on demand across multiple touch points. Outfitted with an extensive selection of HD concert films, from the hottest new shows to a vast vault of legendary concerts, Qello brings music aficionados to the front row of the concert anytime, anywhere.

Apple and Samsung Lower Patent Claims, Apple Seeks iPhone 5 Domain is a post from: SiliconANGLE We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

In the same vein:

• Apple Takes a Bite out of HTC with Latest Patent Court Win
• iPhone 5 Release Confirmed For October?
• Apple’s Color of the Day: White iPhone Arriving in US Stores, White iPads Tops Black Version
• FCC Panelists Valued Wireless Spectrum by Current Use, by Cost and by Demand
• RIM To Open Source BlackBerry OS, Samsung Preps Cloud Service?
• Nokia Reports Massive Loss, Intel to Release First Smartphone

The process of identifying malaria-infected blood is extremely time consuming for developing nations; however, as we’ve seen demonstrated in the past, that while people will be more error-prone than an expert looking at a slide, a lot of people averaged together will successfully come close to a proper answer by allowing the errors to fall out when combining their answers. As a result, having unskilled gamers (across the globe) become part of the diagnosis could save a great deal of time in diagnosis a patient who has the disease so that they can get on anti-malarial drugs faster.

In an article in The Atlantic the process is described as thus:

Gamers begin with a short tutorial where they first learn the characteristics of an infected blood cell. Then, they’re presented with a six-by-eight grid of blood cells. The object of the game is to use one tool to neutralize bad cells and another to select all the remaining healthy cells. Once they’ve cleared a stage, players are given another grid to analyze.

According to citations on the project and a paper published on the endeavor [PDF], untrained students at UCLA capably diagnosed malarial blood cells with a 1.25 percent margin of trained pathologists. This could mean that crowdsourcing for certain projects may become a real, viable route to help ease pressures in developing nations for diagnosis. Imagine if the Amazon Mechanical Turk were plied for this sort of project (it has worked for Zappos.com and others.)

Video games are a powerful mechanism to draw and keep attention from us humans, after all we like to set goals and attain them. Gamification has been used in multiple markets, not just gaming, but it’s definitely a sign that there’s an untapped potential in the human-ability to game. In the past, we at SiliconANGLE have spoken with Amr Awadallah, CTO of Cloudera, about the untapped benefits of the “gaming-instinct” in humans.

Gamers produce a lot of data, he explained talking about Modern Warfare 3 from Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty series, and all of that data is logged and studied by gaming companies. That’s millions of man-hours a year of people doing things and it’s all entertainment—but if we could harness that instinct and that desire to compete and be part of a social experience as a culture, we could do great things. He went on to mention Stargate: Atlantis, a TV show in a popular science fiction series, where one character gained his place on a scientific mission by solving a mathematical puzzle in a video game.

With the rise of game-like crowdsourcing like the anti-malaria application, Foldit, and others we might be seeing a slow breakthrough of gaming-centric scientific breakthroughs. We’ve even seen augmented-reality combined with gaming used at McCormick School of Engineering in order to entice students to get better pictures of not-often-photographed locations.

The usefulness of crowdsourcing and using gamers to help in scientific discovery, especially if there’s an incentive or a social boon, could be outstanding. Using our interconnected Internet-enabled society to tap into the resources of millions of wired people, many of whom who might just be glad to escape the boredom on the road with a mobile device, might be the next-big-breakthrough in many different avenues of scientific inquiry or even hypersocial crowdsourced philanthropy.

A few minutes of picking malaria cells today might save the life of someone tomorrow.

Video Game Uses the Crowd-Sourced Gaming to Help Doctors Diagnose Malaria is a post from: SiliconANGLE We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

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