AT&T extends network to Mexico with $2.5 billion lusacell acquisition

AT&T will pay US$2.5 billion to acquire Mexican wireless company lusacell, in a major push to expand its coverage and improve mobile Internet service for those living south of the U.S. border.

The acquisition, announced Friday, includes lusacell's network assets, licenses, retail stores, and its 8.6 million subscribers. AT&T expects the deal to close by the end of next March.

lusacell's network covers roughly 70 percent of Mexico's 120 million residents, and AT&T plans to expand it to cover millions more consumers and businesses.

"Mexico is still in the early stages of mobile Internet capabilities and adoption, but customer demand for it is growing rapidly," AT&T chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson said in the company's announcement.

"This is an opportunity for us to provide lusacell the financial resources, scale and expertise to accelerate the roll-out of world-class mobile Internet speeds and quality in Mexico, like we have in the U.S."

The deal, he said, is an opportunity to create "the first-ever North American mobile service area covering over 400 million consumers and businesses in Mexico and the U.S."

It will all be one network, in other words, that could eliminate some headaches for customers traveling between the countries.

lusacell operates 3G as well as 4G services, according to its website, though likely at below typical LTE speeds.

lusacell will keep its headquarters in Mexico City after the deal closes, AT&T said. The transaction is subject to review by Mexico's telecom regulator and its National Foreign Investments Commission.

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Motorola may have won the 'First to Lollipop' prize with the new Moto X

Happy Friday, Android users! And if you're currently sporting the second-generation Moto X, you're in for a treat. Motorola said it would deploy Android Lollipop quickly, and boy, did it deliver.

Motorola has apparently not only has begun its soak test for Lollipop for the new Moto X, but it's already put up arelease notes page for the update with a complete change log of what's in the software package. We've yet to receive an indication of a Lollipop update on our Moto X unit, however.

Why this matters: It's not the biggest news to happen on a late Friday afternoon, but if the software update is pushed live over the weekend it means that Motorola technically beat Google to the Android 5.0 update punch. While the Nexus 9 tablet ships with Lollipop, no other devices with prior Android versions have been updated yet—not even the Nexus 5 and 7!

For comprehensive coverage of the Android ecosystem, visit Greenbot.com.

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Microsoft looks to find its way in app market via free Office deal

By unlocking core edit functions in its free Office apps for iOS and, later, Android, Microsoft is trying to close out pesky rivals in the mobile market and lure new subscribers to Office 365.

Accomplishing those goals is vital if the company is to protect and grow its huge Office franchise. But success is far from assured, with the latest moves coming seven months after it released Word, PowerPoint and Excel for the iPad, and more than a year after an initial, weaker version of Office Mobile for iPhones.

The iPad apps were widely praised, but many questioned the wisdom of requiring a subscription for anything beyond the ability to view properly formatted files, since the App Store is brimming with free alternatives, including Apple's iWork and Google's Docs, Slides and Sheets.

"This is a rebalancing of what Microsoft makes available for free," said Phil Karcher, a Forrester Research analyst.

It's offering enough capabilities to expand the number of free users it can attract, while reserving a set of "premium" capabilities that could tempt them into subscribing to Office 365.

"Having to pay just to edit documents was a high hurdle. With the rebalancing, customers are more likely to get sucked into using the free version of the app," Karcher said.

Office Mobile for iPhones, which shipped in mid-2013, was panned for its lack of functionality, and until March this year it required an Office 365 subscription to use it. Reacting to the poor response, Microsoft is now replacing it with standalone apps for Word, Excel and PowerPoint that are more powerful because they're built from the same code base as the iPad apps.

Similar apps will be offered for Android tablets and smartphones early next year. And a touch-optimized version of Office for Windows tablets and smartphones will be released with Windows 10, possibly by mid-2015.

"Microsoft realized that compared to the competition, it wasn't looking real great, so why not offer consumers apps they can truly use, " said Guy Creese, a Gartner analyst. "This is a response to market pressures to give users what they'd like to have."

But time is of the essence. The iPad has been out since 2010, and during the period when Office was non-existent for iOS and Android, and when it later required a subscription, people latched onto whatever productivity apps were available.

"We did a field research study about 18 months ago and asked people what they were using [for mobile productivity] and it was all over the map," Creese said. "In the absence of Office, they resorted to a wide variety of apps."

A portion of those people will stick with what they've gotten used to.

While the moves this week are aimed at the consumer market, there will be an effect on enterprises as well. "Its primarily a consumer market move, but people carry expectations into the workplace based on what they experience in their consumer lives," Karcher said.

And use of mobile apps is growing more and more in business, for both accessing and creating content. In a survey earlier this year, Osterman Research found that information workers spend around one third of their typical workday on a mobile device, half on a desktop computer, and 15 percent not working on a computer at all. The firm also found that 42 percent of work-related electronic content is used on a mobile device, while 31 percent is created on a mobile device.

"The announcements are part of Microsoft's continued realization that it needs to focus increasingly on mobile users in order to maintain growth in its Office franchise, and that the Surface tablet is not going to provide the avenue of growth into the mobile space that Microsoft needs," said Michael Osterman, the company's president.

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Facebook will be mostly video in 5 years, Zuckerberg says

If you think your Facebook feed has a lot of video now, just wait.

"In five years, most of [Facebook] will be video," CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Thursday during the company's first community town hall, in which he took questions from the public on a range of topics.

He was responding to a question about whether the growing number of photos uploaded to Facebook is putting a drag on its infrastructure. But Facebook's data centers have it covered, he said. The real challenge is improving the infrastructure to allow for more rich media like video in people's feeds.

Zuckerberg took questions from a group of users who were invited to its headquarters in Menlo Park, California, and people also submitted questions online.

One of the most popular online question was why Facebook forced users to download its Messenger app for mobile.

The 30-year-old acknowledged not everyone was thrilled with the change.

"Asking everyone in our community to install another app is a big ask," he said. But Facebook thought it could provide a better, faster messaging product if it split it off from its own app.

"We really believe this is a better experience," Zuckerberg said.

One user in the audience asked him if Facebook is losing its charm or becoming boring.

The question of Facebook losing its "cool" gets raised from time to time, Zuckerberg said, but "my goal was never to make Facebook cool," he said. Instead, he wants it to be a helpful service that just works.

Another asked why he always seems wear the same t-shirts and hoodies. Zuckerberg said he wants to spend as much time as possible on things that matter, like how to build products, even if it means thinking less about what he wears.

"Steve Jobs had the same approach," he said.

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Sierra Leone pushes ITU members to back tech against Ebola

Spurred by Sierra Leone, the U.N.'s ITU has teamed up with the GSM Association, the World Health Organization, and the Internet Society, committing resources to a worldwide effort to develop technology tools to help stop the spread of Ebola.

"We have the technology," said ITU Secretary General Hamadoun Toure in prepared remarks at the International Telecommunications Union Plenipotentiary Conference in Busan, Korea. "We have the information—but in a world in which everybody is talking about big data, we still haven't been able to set up the right mechanisms to accelerate the distribution and utilization of realtime information when it is mostly needed."

The ITU formalized its commitment to technology in a resolution proposed this week by Sierra Leone, one of the countries hit hardest by the Ebola virus in what has become in a matter of months the worst epidemic of the disease in history.

Sierra Leone proposed that the ITU identify communications infrastructure needed for the timely exchange of information on Ebola virus transmission and collaborate with organizations, particularly WHO, to combat its spread. The resulting ITU resolution, with the overwhelming endorsement of member countries including the U.S., Canada, Russia, the UAE, U.K. and Japan, offers assistance and support to consumers, humanitarian organizations and industry to develop technology to fight Ebola.

Japan immediately responded to the proposal, offering 180,000 Swiss francs (US$187,000) to develop a mobile application for smart phones that can provide crucial information for the prevention of the spread of Ebola diseases, as well as other effective measures.

More than 13,000 people have been infected with the Ebola virus and more than 4,800 have died, mostly in the West African nations of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, according to WHO.

The ITU has already tapped technology to help battle Ebola, according to Cosmas Zavazava, the chief of the Project Support and Knowledge Management group at the U.N. organization's Telecommunication Development Bureau (BDT).

"ITU has deployed satellite terminals to be used in remote areas where there is no fixed or mobile-cellular coverage," Zavazava said in email.

The ITU has also focused on developing various apps, Zavazava added. The apps have been designed to provide a means of communication for government agencies to disseminate information to the public, and can be used for early warning, Zavazava said. "Victims could also contact government agencies, their families, etc. The apps could also help in big data analysis for decision making," he said.

The use of apps and various forms of messaging are efficient uses of technology partly because of their ability to connect a large number of the growing mobile phone users in the affected areas.

Apps are increasing awareness of the disease worldwide as they provide updates on what is happening in Sierra Leone and other affected countries, said Al Turay, the developer of the Sierra Leone Ebola Trends app.

"On a local level, alerts from the app provide current statistics including expanded details on lost lives including health officials and survivors and how to take further precautions to prevent the disease," Turay said via Facebook. "It also helps to keep users engaged in sharing their stories, pictures and videos of popular news briefs around the world about the disease."

Every day, the Emergency Operation Center in Sierra Leone churns out figures on new cases and the latest developments in the fight against Ebola, using several channels to communicate to the public. Apps such as Turay's could be helpful in the effort, though he noted that a major challenge has been the low number of Android and iOS devices in the hardest-hit areas.

On its website, WHO noted that the recent halt of new cases of Ebola in Senegal was achieved not only through the country's rapid infectious disease control work, but also by using a novel SMS-driven platform originally designed in partnership with major mobile phone operators in the country to help people manage diabetes.

The GSMA has also been working with many organizations and individuals to develop tech tools and services, including mobile apps, said spokeswoman Claire Cranton. The tools include WHO's Ebola messaging services delivered via SMS and applications using the USSD protocol; UNICEF's U-Report, a social media application for engaging communities in discussing Ebola issues, monitoring affected areas, polling, and counselling; and Mobilium's Smart Health Pro, which consolidates onto a single user interface a number of services involving supportive care, enhanced diagnostics, improved patient monitoring and health payments.

Cranton added that the GSMA Disaster Response team has also been involved in continuing anti-Ebola efforts by the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), and has helped update the wider humanitarian and technology community on progress. The GSMA has also been working with The Gates Foundation, Flowminder.org and USAID to identify problems in anti-Ebola efforts and prioritize activities.

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UK teen relieved after light sentence on hacking charges

A 19-year-old U.K. man said he was relieved after receiving probation for pleading guilty to four hacking-related charges in connection with a large distributed denial-of-service attack on the Metropolitan Police Service's website.

Jordan Lee Jones, who lives in Stockton-on-Tees, U.K, pleaded guilty to four counts of impairing the function of a computer, a violation of the Computer Misuse Act of 1990.

Jones was sentenced to 12 months probation after a judge in Teeside Magistrates Court on Wednesday concluded he acted as part of a group that encouraged malicious activity but that he has since stopped.

"The reason why the judge decided to set me free was partly because since my arrest last year I made efforts to redeem myself by working with different organizations and helping them identify security flaws in their security systems," he said via an interview over instant message on Friday.

He could have faced up to 10 years in prison.

"It has taken a lot of stress off me now," Jones said.

Jones wrote a Python script that when used in combination with a DDoS tool called the "Low Orbit Ion Cannon" can be used to send overwhelming amounts of traffic to a website. The tool, which had widely been used in attacks perpetrated by the loose-knit group Anonymous, was used by Jones to attack the Metropolitan Police's website in October 2013.

He was also expecting charges for taking advantage of SQL injection vulnerabilities in the website of a major bank and entertainment company, gaining internal access to their systems. But Jones said it appears those charges will be dropped since he informed the companies of the issues.

Earlier this year Jones reported several vulnerabilities to eBay that he found in its website and has continued to be an independent computer security penetration tester.

Jones was studying IT at Stockton Riverside College, but dropped his courses a few months ago to take some time off. He has since reapplied, but the college has declined his application, which he thinks might be connected to his legal situation. He said he would like to attend university.

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'Dridex' malware revives Microsoft Word macro attacks

A recent piece of malware that aims to steal your online banking credentials revives a decade-old technique to install itself on your PC.

Called Dridex, the malware tries to steal your data when you log into an online bank account by creating HTML fields that ask you to enter additional information like your social security number. Thats not unusual in itself: Dridex is the successor to a similar piece of malware called Cridex which also targets your bank account.

Whats different is how Dridex tries to infect your computer in the first place. Its delivered in the form of a macro, buried in a Microsoft Word document in a spam email message.

Cybercriminals started using macros more than a decade ago but they fell out of favor after Microsoft strengthened its security defenses against them. But some hackers are apparently trying them again.

Most PCs disable macros from running by default. But if the malicious Word file is opened, it advises users to enable macros, and if they do, Dridex starts downloading to the PC, wrote Rhena Inocencio, a threat response engineer, on Trend's blog on Wednesday.

"The move to macros could be seen as one way of ensuring a higher chance of successful attacks," she wrote. "If the macro feature was already enabled prior to the attack, the attack commences without any additional requirements. Otherwise, the attack must use a strong social engineering lure in order to convince the user to enable the feature."

Once installed on a computer, the malware is programmed to jump into action when it sees a person visits one of a long list of banks, including Bank of Scotland, Lloyd's Bank, Danske Bank, Barclays, Kasikorn Bank, Santander and Triodos, she wrote.

The spam messages for Dridex came mostly from Vietnam, India, Taiwan, South Korea and China, while the top three countries infected with it are Australia, the U.K. and the U.S.

A Switzerland-based computer security project that has for years tracked command-and-control servers for some of the more infamous banking malware program such as Zeus is now also tracking Dridex's command-and-control servers.

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AMD reveals Civilization: Beyond Earth game bundle, Radeon R9 290X with 8GB RAM

Mere days after Nvidia announced a holiday games bundle that pairs Ubisoft's most hotly anticipated titles with new high-end GeForce GTX graphics cards, AMD's striking back by offering a free copy of the absolutely stellar Civilization: Beyond Earth with its top-tier Radeon hardware.

But here's the truly interesting twist: This promotion is separate from and can be combined with AMD's existing Never Settle: Space bundle, meaning that buyers of a new Radeon R9 290, R9 290X, or dual-GPU R9 295X2 can walk away with Civilization: BE and three additional games of their choice. Whew!

AMD's also announcing a new, overclocked variant of its flagship R9 290X graphics card that doubles the previous amount of onboard memory to a full 8GB, making it better suited for Civilization: Beyond Earth's thirst for GPU framebuffering—and amplifying what was already a strong suit for Radeon graphics cards.

The story behind the story: The recent introduction of Nvidia's GTX 900-series graphics cards threw AMD's Radeon lineup for a loop. The Radeon R9-series graphics cards are more than a year old and lag behind the GTX 980 and GTX 970 in both power efficiency and pure performance at common resolutions. Since then, AMD's been fighting back with the tools it has at its disposal: steep price cuts, abundant free games, and gaming performance at ultra-high resolutions.

Putting AMD's best foot forward

Much as the recent GeForce game bundle focuses on titles built using Nvidia's GameWorks technology, Firaxis worked closely with AMD during the development of Civilization: Beyond Earth. The game utilizes AMD's performance-boosting Mantle API to do two things: increase frame rates in traditional PC setups by optimizing how the CPU talks to the GPU, and create a smoother gameplay experience in multi-card Crossfire setups by using a "split frame rendering" subsystem. This subsystem assigns each graphics card a portion of each frame to render, rather than having the cards alternate rendering of entire frames, as is the norm.

An AMD slide deck about the benefits of Mantle.

Civilization is one of the biggest names in PC gaming. Working so tightly with Firaxis and being able to offer this giveaway is a major win for AMD.

That goes double when you consider that new Radeon R9 290-series buyers will still be able to select three free games of their choice from more than 25 available options as part of the Never Settle: Space bundle. Considering how cheaply AMD's top Radeon cards are selling for these days, and that the Space bundle includes killer games like Alien: Isolation, Sniper Elite 3, Darksiders II, Saints Row IV, and Star Citizen, you could walk away with an awful lot of gaming goodness for an insanely compelling price. Civilization: BE and Alien: Isolation alone retail for $60 a pop, and you could grab two more games beyond that.

Double the memory, double the fun?

The AMD Radeon R9 290X reference card.

Playing off Civilization: Beyond Earth's heavy use of GPU memory, AMD's also announcing a new, overclocked R9 290X variant with 8GB of onboard RAM.

While Nvidia's new GeForce GTX 900-series graphics tend to triumph over AMD's top single-GPU cards at 1080p or 2560x1600 resolution in our tests, the Radeon R9 290X actually holds the upper hand in many gaming tests conducted at 4K resolution, or across multiple monitors using AMD's Eyefinity technology. A graphics card with flat-out more memory essentially offers the ability to handle higher antialiasing settings at ultra-high resolutions.

In other words, doubling the R9 290X's memory from 4GB (formerly the maximum) to 8GB only strengthens AMD's advantage on pixelicious monitor setups—though if you're gaming at 4K you'll probably want a pair of the cards in a CrossFire setup to keep frame rates up to snuff.

The official details are fairly light. AMD would only say that Sapphire, PowerColor, and MSI will be the initial hardware partners, with a soft target MSRP of $429. That seems like a hefty markup for memory considering that 4GB R9 290X graphics cards are selling for as low as $300 these days, but hey, if you're rocking a pricey 4K display or a multi-monitor setup, twice the memory might just be worth the money.

The arrival of overclocked R9 290X graphics cards with double the onboard memory has one more bit of significance: If AMD's partners are rolling out new flagship variants in November, I'd be shocked if the next generation of Radeon GPUs surface before the end of the year.

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US net neutrality advocates plan Hungary-style protests

Protests are planned outside the White House in Washington, D.C., and at several locations across the U.S. on Thursday evening to object to leaks that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission is considering a new "hybrid" proposal to break through the deadlock over net neutrality rules.

Taking a cue from recent protests in Hungary against an Internet tax, the demonstrators plan to hold their mobile phones, laptops, tablets and flashlights above their heads as a symbol of protest to "shine light" on alleged corruption in the federal government.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler was planning a partial reclassification of broadband as a regulated utility, while not explicitly prohibiting special access deals between broadband and content companies.

By the reclassification, back-end broadband services, through which broadband providers serve as a route for Web sites to distribute content, would be classified as a common carrier under Title II of the Communications Act and brought under the FCC's authority, according to the report. Retail services provided to consumers by Internet service providers would not come under the reclassification.

The FCC has said that Wheeler has not decided on a net neutrality plan and added that all broadband reclassification options are under consideration.

The protests are supported by groups such as Fight for the Future, PopularResistance.org and Free Press.

The net neutrality issue came to the forefront in January this year after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit largely overruled the earlier Open Internet Order which prohibited broadband providers from blocking or unreasonably discriminating against content providers or applications for network access.

Supporters of net neutrality have been demanding that broadband in its entirety should be reclassified under Title II and regulated. The reclassification could, however, invite lawsuits from broadband companies like Verizon, which warned the FCC recently that reclassification had "significant legal vulnerabilities."

In September, net neutrality groups and companies observed Internet Slowdown Day with thousands of websites participating by showing spinning-wheel icons to mimic slow-loading sites. The aim of the protest was to convey to visitors the Internet slow lanes activists claim will appear if the FCC doesn't pass strong net neutrality regulations.

The protests on Thursday will include demonstrations at San Francisco's Civic Center Plaza, Federal Plaza in Chicago and at the Philadelphia headquarters of cable company Comcast, according to PopularResistance.org. Supporters who can't make it to the event are asked to take a photo of themselves holding a sign that says #RealNetNeutrality or #ReclassifyTheInternet and upload the snap to the Tell the FCC - My Voice Matters! page, according to Free Press.

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Michael Dell gets his payback, slams 'turmoil' at HP and IBM

What a difference a year makes.

For much of 2013, while Michael Dell was fighting a costly battle to take his company private, his rivals played up the distraction and did their best to lure his customers away. Now the shoe is on the other foot.

Michael Dell opened the Dell World conference in Texas on Tuesday and, looking decidedly relaxed and pleased with himself, wasted no time denouncing the "turmoil" his rivals in the industry are going through.

"They're splitting away businesses, spinning off pieces of their businesses, and one has to ask the question: who is this for? Does this actually help the customers? Does it help them create the next great innovative products?"

You can't begrudge him a bit of schadenfreude. Just six months ago Meg Whitman was calling Hewlett-Packard a "paragon of stability" compared to its rivals and now she's breaking the company in two. And IBM is selling its x86 server business to Lenovo and fighting to keep its profits above water.

Dell became a private company almost exactly a year ago, and Michael Dell doesn't have to worry about those quarterly targets any more. He said that allows Dell to invest in better products and growing its business.

Dell can focus on a future that's "beyond the next quarter, the next year or the next shareholder activist," he said, perhaps thinking of Carl Icahn, who made him pay millions more to take his company private.

It also means that Dell's financial results are no longer public, so it's hard to know how its business is really doing. Dell's PC shipments grew almost 20 percent in the U.S. last quarter, Michael Dell said, faster than those of HP and Apple.

That's correct, according to IDC, though Lenovo and Acer grew more on a global basis, and Dell still trails HP in the U.S. and worldwide.

Still, Dell is clearly investing in new technologies. On Wednesday it will announce a new "converged infrastructure" system called the PowerEdge FX, he said, which combines servers, network and storage in a new design that offers "the most density in the world."

It's also investing in services, and launched the beta of a "cloud exchange" last week that will give businesses a place to select and sign up for cloud infrastructure services. He also touted recent partnerships with VMware and Microsoft's Azure for private cloud deployments.

Michael Dell isn't the most relaxed or emotive speaker as a rule and this was a candid display for him, even taking questions from reporters in the audience. His enthusiasm was tempered when someone asked him why, if Dell is growing so much, it had to lay off some of its employees this year. He said his company needed less people in some parts of the business but more in others, and that Dell is actually hiring engineers and salespeople despite the job cuts.

With Apple's Mac shipments growing fast, PCs don't look like such a dire industry to be in any more, at least compared to recent years. That's lucky for Dell, which still gets a huge chunk of its revenue from desktops and laptops, even as it tries to expand its more profitable businesses.

"We still believe the PC is how real business gets done," Michael Dell said.

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Google and LG strike broad patent licensing deal

Google and LG have entered into a patent cross-licensing deal, the latest partnership seeking to reduce the threat of lawsuits between major tech companies.

The agreement, announced on Tuesday, covers "a broad range of products and technologies" built on the two companies' existing patents as well as those they file over the next 10 years, they said. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.

"We're pleased to enter into this agreement with a leading global technology like LG," said Allen Lo, Google's deputy general counsel, in a statement.

The agreement is likely to stave off any potential patent lawsuits between the two companies like the drawn out, costly legal battles that have ensued between Apple and Samsung or Google and Oracle. Google's Android OS is in a number of LG smartphones and the South Korean company owns patents covering smartphones, consumer electronics and other portable gadgets.

But perhaps more importantly, the Google-LG patent arrangement may support new technology for connected devices for the home.

LG has already partnered with other companies like Google and Nest to develop Internet-connected home appliances. LG also offers its line of Smart ThinQ appliances that can be monitored and controlled from afar using a mobile app.

The deal allows each company easier access to technology from the other.

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Apple security checks may miss iWorm malware

Apple's security technologies for Mac OS X may still miss iWorm, a piece of malware discovered in late September that infected thousands of computers.

Apple released an update for its XProtect antivirus engine to detect iWorm, but the update only detects when iWorm's installer is launched, which is a one-time operation, said Patrick Wardle, director of research with Synack, a computer security company based in Redwood City, California. He wrote a paper describing his findings.

It means that computers already infected with iWorm before the update would still be compromised.

Apple "released a signature, but it doesn't address the problem," Wardle said in a phone interview Tuesday. "Unless the user has another antivirus product installed that has a correct signature, those infections aren't going to go away."

iWorm, which is a backdoor that can steal data from a computer, infected more than 18,000 machines, according to security company Dr. Web. It does not exploit any vulnerabilities on Mac OS X but instead relies on tricking people to install it.

The malware was found wrapped into pirated copies of Adobe Systems' Photoshop and Illustrator applications, Parallels Desktop and Microsoft Office for Mac software offered on The Pirate Bay, the infamous search engine for content shared using the BitTorrent peer-to-peer network.

Why Apple only released an update—known as a "signature"—for iWorm's installer is unclear. Apple officials couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

Wardle contends that's dangerous since another Apple security technology, called "Gatekeeper," can also fail to stop iWorm in some scenarios.

When a person downloads an application, Gatekeeper checks if it has a digital signature that indicates it comes from Apple's Store or if it has an approved developer's certificate. If it has neither, Gatekeeper warns that the application could pose a security risk, although users can choose to run it.

But only certain applications, including Safari, Firefox and Chrome, will flag files—known as a "quarantine attribute"—for Gatekeeper to check. If someone downloads a file using uTorrent, a popular client for downloading torrents from The Pirate Bay, it isn't programmed to flag files for inspection by Gatekeeper, Wardle said.

Wardle said he hasn't contacted Apple with his findings, but he said Apple is likely aware of the Gatekeeper's weaknesses, as it appears the way it works was a conscious design decision.

Ultimately, it means that malware authors will still be able to take advantage of the method iWorm uses.

"Unfortunately, it [iWorm] is able to bypass Apple's malware mitigations really easily," Wardle said. "It illustrates that malware on OS X is a problem. It's not that Macs are immune to malware."

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AppDynamics now provides intel for business managers

Looking to expand into a new market, AppDynamics has updated its application monitoring software to provide real-time insights that can be useful for business managers as well as IT staff.

The company announced the Fall 2014 Release of its software at its first user conference in Las Vegas this week. The update also adds new collaboration capabilities and enhancements to keep current with the latest Web development technologies.

With APM (application performance monitoring) systems, developers add software agents to their applications that can collect performance and operational data and relay it back to IT administrators, who use it to spot outages, errors and unexpected latencies.

But in the past couple of years, APM companies have realized the data they collect can be useful to business managers as well. The products provide the ability to see "every interaction within the software stack, from the end user through the business logic," Gartner analyst Jonah Kowall said via email.

A new feature in the AppDynamics platform, called Application Analytics, could help business leaders understand which features in a new app are being most heavily used, for instance. The software could also provide a way to calculate the cost of an app outage in terms of lost revenue. And it could highlight underperforming apps, helping managers make better decisions about IT investments.

Getting that type of data requires no additional coding or infrastructure, according to AppDynamics, which competes with companies like New Relic and Dynatrics, a recent spin-off from Compuware.

Using APM instead of a standard data warehouse can be advantageous because users can get data as it's generated, rather than waiting for it to be collected and stored for analysis in a daily batch process, according to AppDynamics

Along with the new analytics capabilities, the Fall 2014 Release adds a feature called the Virtual War Room, which helps teams collaborate by providing a space where they can discuss data that's being collected. It can also automatically email pre-configured reports to multiple recipients.

The release also adds new analysis patterns to help understand how complex applications are behaving. One such tool, called cross-application flow, can examine well how multiple applications, working together on a common task, are interacting. Another pattern can examine the performance of WebSocket connections, a new Web standard for real-time communications.

AppDynamics now can monitor applications running on the WebMethods and Tibco integration platforms, in addition to applications built with Java, .Net, PHP and Node.js, which have been long supported. It also recognizes the Cassandra database and Microsoft's SQL Azure DB cloud-based services. And in a beta feature, the package can monitor applications written in C/C++.

AppDynamics offers a free "lite" version of its APM product, which can run on-premise or as a hosted service. Use of the "Pro" version starts at US$180 per month.

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Flaw in Visa cards could ring up a very large fraud

Visa's contactless payment cards will approve very large transactions in currencies other than the British pound due to a flaw in a protocol, U.K. researchers contend.

They concluded it would be possible for criminals to turn a mobile phone into a point-of-sale terminal and pre-set a large amount of money to be transferred from a payment card even if it was in someone's pocket.

The type of card, known as EMV after its developers Europay, MasterCard and Visa, uses a microchip to facilitate transactions rather than a magnetic stripe. EMV will soon be used widely across the U.S.

Some types of EMV cards are configured for "contactless" payments, where a customer doesn't have to enter a PIN for smaller transactions that in the U.K. are limited to £20 (US$32).

Researchers with Newcastle University found that Visa's contactless card would authorize a transaction up to 999,999.99 without a PIN if it was in a currency other than the pound.

If an improvised point-of-sale device gets close enough to someone's card in a wallet, the contactless card would approve an offline transaction in less than a second.

The researchers cautioned, however, that they did not test the back-end system of banks, so it is unclear if the transaction cleared by the card would be be fully processed. It wasn't clear from the payment protocol's documentation how banks would deal with the inconsistencies the research uncovered.

Still, they wrote in a news release that "the fact that we can bypass the £20 makes this new hack potentially very scalable and lucrative. All a criminal would need to do is set up somewhere like an airport or the London underground where the use of different currencies would appear legitimate." It isn't clear whether the researchers tried to contact Visa or the banks about the flaw.

EMV cards have been used for many years in Europe and other parts of the world. The microchips that contain account information and authorize transactions are not easy to forge unlike the magnetic stripe data on cards today, which can be easily copied.

But the researchers predicted that as the magnetic stripe is phased out, contactless payments may become interesting to criminals.

Visa officials could not be immediately reached for comment.

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Cortana to give voice and ears to Dynamics CRM

Dynamics CRM 2015 will ship next month with multiple enhancements, including one literally audible: using Cortana on Windows Phone 8.1 devices, users will be able to talk to the customer relationship management suite.

Tasks available via Cortana voice commands will include setting up meetings and reminders, searching for contacts, accounts and activities, calling up customer lists and creating new records.

The integration has a futuristic shine to it, but analysts say the move isn't a technology-for-technology's sake gimmick from Microsoft, which will unveil the Dynamics-Cortana tie-up along with other CRM and ERP announcements on Tuesday.

"This is very significant. Salespeople spend a lot of time on the road, so this lets them leave voice memos on an account while on the go, without having, for example, to be typing and driving," said analyst Ray Wang, chairman and founder of Constellation Research.

It also ties in with an ongoing push by the Dynamics CRM team to make the product simple to use so that it can help salespeople be more productive. "That's why Dynamics CRM has been doing so well," he said.

Meanwhile, analyst Rebecca Wettemann, vice president at Nucleus Research, said it's been proven that adding mobile access to CRM drives significant productivity gains. "This is just the tip of the iceberg in vendors leveraging the voice capture and analytics technologies to deliver CRM productivity," she said.

Wetttemann also views the integration as part of a broader and recent Microsoft trend to leverage its product portfolio to boost its enterprise applications under new CEO Satya Nadella. "The bigger story is that this is a great example of how Microsoft is bringing its product strengths to bear on CRM," she said.

Another recent example of this approach was last month's launch of the Sales Productivity bundle, which combines Dynamics CRM Online Professional with Office 365 and Power BI.

Tuesday's announcements, which Microsoft will make at its Convergence 2014 Europe business conference in Barcelona, also include updates to the suite's platform, which lets customers tailor Dynamics CRM in various ways; and an interoperability between Thunderhead.com's One Engagement Hub and Dynamics CRM to offer omni-channel customer engagement capabilities.

Also on tap is an update to Dynamics AX, Microsoft's ERP suite for large customers, which is due in December and which will let customers run the ERP suite in hybrid environments—on premises and on Azure, according to the company. The update also adds a new point-of-sales client for Windows tablets and phones, and capabilities to streamline warehouse and transportation operations for faster order fulfillment.

Microsoft will also demonstrate Dynamics NAV 2015, the new version of the ERP suite for small and medium size businesses, which features a user experience optimized for tablets and other touch devices, personalized homepages for users, and simpler invoice design and production via interoperability with Word.

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Gmail 5.0 for Android gets a new look, Exchange support

The upcoming version of google's Gmail app for Android features a new look and support for non-Gmail email accounts, Android Police reports.

The new look app features the material design that Google has developed for Android apps, and has a retooled navigation interface. The mailbox pane, for instance, lives in a restyled slide-out "drawer," and the message viewer has a new, cleaner look. The app also has a brighter color scheme compared to the ubiquitous light gray of the older Gmail app.

Also new is support for Microsoft Exchange, as well as POP and IMAP email accounts (think Yahoo Mail, iCloud, email from your ISP), so you no longer have to use two different apps to check all your email. With version 5.0, Gmail for Android becomes a full-fledged general-purpose email client. 

Why this matters: Material Design is Google's name for a new look and feel for its apps, and it's a key new feature of Android 5.0 Lollipop. Gmail 5.0 is not the first app outside of Android 5.0 to get the new look: Version 5.0.13 of the Google Play app also features this new design.

Google will push the updated app to users' phones, but it may take a while before your phone gets it. If you want to get the updated app now, however, Android Police has provided links to mirrored versions of the APK that you can download and install onto your phone manually.

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Samsung acquires flash caching software developer Proximal

Samsung Electronics has acquired Proximal Data, a developer of software that caches I/O in the server virtualization layer, to boost its SSD offering in the server market.

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Proximal in San Diego, California, offers AutoCache, which attaches inside standard hypervisors such as VMware ESXi, where it inspects I/O from all virtual machines and places hot I/O into a local PCIe flash card or SSD. Embedded intelligence provides hot reads back to virtual machines that request them, without needing the system administrator to modify the deployed storage or VM infrastructure, according to a product brief.

Its CEO and founder Rory Bolt was involved in three startups, including as CTO of enterprise-class data protection software company, Avamar Technologies, which was sold to EMC in 2006 for US$165 million. Bolt said in a statement Sunday that after the acquisition, AutoCache will be enhanced and new products in enterprise storage will be developed.

Proximal said on its website that the software was developed to address I/O bottlenecks, a big barrier in virtualized server environments. AutoCache is said to efficiently cache I/O in the server virtualization layer while minimizing the use of system resources "without guest OS agents." The software works with standard flash PCIe cards or SSDs in virtualized servers, such as Microsoft Hyper-V or VMware ESXi.

Samsung said the acquisition will help expand its SSD business in the server and data center markets. The company acquired Nvelo in Santa Clara, California, in 2012, a privately held company that specialized in SSD caching. Samsung has offered the Nvelo technology for its branded SSDs since last year, it said.

The South Korean company evidently sees software as a key differentiator, even as it focuses on newer NAND technologies at the chip level.

Samsung said in October it had started mass production of its 3-bit, multi-level-cell (MLC), three-dimensional vertical NAND flash memory for use in SSDs. The 3D V-NAND technology achieves higher density with 32 vertically stacked cell layers per NAND memory chip for a total of 128 gigabits of storage per chip.

The company did not immediately respond to a request for more information, including on how much it paid for Proximal.

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Adobe's e-reader software collects less data now, EFF says

Tests on the latest version of Adobe System's e-reader software shows the company is now collecting less data following a privacy-related dustup last month, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Digital Editions version 4.0.1 appears to only collect data on ebooks that have DRM (Digital Rights Management), wrote Cooper Quintin, a staff technologist with the EFF. DRM places restrictions on how content can be used with the intent of thwarting piracy.

Adobe was criticized in early October after it was discovered Digital Editions collected metadata about ebooks on a device, even if the ebooks did not have DRM. Those logs were also sent to Adobe in plain text.

Since that data was not encrypted, critics including the EFF contended it posed major privacy risks for users. For example, plain text content could be intercepted by an interloper from a user who is on the same public Wi-Fi network.

Adobe said on Oct. 23 it fixed the issues in 4.0.1, saying it would not collect data on ebooks without DRM and encrypt data that is transmitted back to the company.

Quintin wrote the EFF's latest test showed the "only time we saw data going back to an Adobe server was when an ebook with DRM was opened for the first time. This data is most likely being sent back for DRM verification purposes, and it is being sent over HTTPS."

If an ebook has DRM, Adobe may record how long a person reads it or the percentage of the content that is read, which is used for "metered" pricing models.

Other technical metrics are also collected, such as the IP address of the device downloading a book, a unique ID assigned to the specific applications being used at the time and a unique ID for the device, according to Adobe.

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The best gaming rigs, the fastest graphics cards: PCWorld celebrates glorious PC excess

Sad but true: Sony and Microsoft's so-called next-generation gaming consoles don't seem very next-gen at all, with a slew of top games locked at 30 fps and still struggling to hit even 1080p resolutions. Even entry-level PC graphics cards can pull that off.

But we're not here to harsh on consoles. Instead, we're celebrating just how good we PC enthusiasts have it. All week long, PCWorld's basked in glorious, face-melting excess that's possible only on PCs: Breaking benchmarks with AMD and Nvidia's top graphics cards, building audacious rigs, and showcasing graphically beautiful—and PC-punishing—games.

There's truly never been a better time to be a PC gamer. Buckle up.

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Microsoft Universal Mobile Keyboard hands-on: Solid, but not quite universal

Lawyers, pedants and fanboys may hold that Microsoft wasn't lying when it named its Universal Mobile Keyboard. But Windows Phone users may come away unconvinced.

From a hardware standpoint, Microsoft's $80 Universal Mobile Keyboard continues its tradition of excellence, with a well-thought-out design incorporating a hardware switch to reconfigure the keyboard for Android, iOS, and "Windows" devices. Look closer, though, and what Microsoft bills as a "universal" keyboard simply doesn't deliver, because it doesn't support Windows Phone. 

It's yet another frustration for Windows Phone users, who have become accustomed to playing second fiddle, even within Microsoft itself. It's a practice that Microsoft's Ifi Majid, head of experiences marketing for Microsoft's Devices Group, promised would end—but Microsoft's design teams apparently didn't get the memo.

Great hardware, if a trifle small

Closed, the keyboard looks something like a Lenovo ThinkPad—just a rectangular oblong of black plastic. But when opened, the keyboard reveals itself, and powers on automatically. Charge it overnight, Microsoft says, and it's good for six months. If you hold the power button on for several seconds, it pairs with discoverable Bluetooth devices that support the Bluetooth HID standard.

Mark Hachman

A switch reconfigures the Microsoft Universal Mobile keyboard for Mac/iOS, Android, and Windows devices.

The upper part of the case "holds" a phone or tablet with one of two plastic ridges that grab it, like holding on to a ledge with your fingernails. But despite that metaphor, the construction is quite sturdy. Initially, the ridges didn't hold the mobile device at an angle I found convenient. Surprise! The keyboard's top half detaches, allowing you to find a comfortable angle to work. The most important consideration is how thin the device is: I would expect all modern smartphones to fit, but the the ridges wouldn't grab a thick Microsoft Surface Pro 2 tablet. 

The flagship feature of the keyboard is to the upper right—a switch that slides between icons for the Android (4.0+), iOS (6.0+), Mac (10.7+) and Windows 8/RT operating systems. In this, Microsoft's Mobile Keyboard is similar to the Logitech Bluetooth Easy-Switch K811, a similar mobile keyboard released last year, which uses separate Bluetooth profiles for each device. What Microsoft's keyboard does is automatically remap some of the keyboard keys to functions each device supports. (If you forget the flip the switch, as I did, some function keys may exhibit wonky behavior.)

Mark Hachman

A pair of ridges hold the phone, although not totally securely.

It only sounds confusing

On iOS, both the ESC and CMD keys on Microsoft's keyboard take you to the home screen of your iPhone and iPad. Pressing a dedicated function (Fn) key plus the ALT key can open or close your virtual keyboard on your iPad. If an Android phone or tablet is connected, tapping a dedicated "Home" key brings you back to the home screen. Hitting ESC equates to the Android back button. And tapping CMD is equivalent to the CTRL key on Android—which I would have assumed to be the menu option, showing a list of recently opened programs on my Galaxy Note 3. But it doesn't seem to have a specific function on that particular phone.

It all sounds rather confusing, but in reality there's only a few key combinations that shift from OS to OS. Most people already instinctively know to type ESC to back out of an operation. I kept the keyboard cheat sheet near me for a few minutes, but found I could discard it after then.

But there's one major problem: Microsoft's Universal Mobile Keyboard doesn't seem to pair with Windows Phone. Yes, it pairs with Windows; if you have a Windows tablet without a keyboard, you can use the universal keyboard instead. But if you want to connect to Windows Phone, it doesn't pair. I tried it with two: a Nokia Lumia Icon (Windows Phone 8.1) and the latest Lumia 830 (Windows Phone 8.1 Update) just to check, but—nope. Why, Microsoft, why?!

A solid keyboard

Overall, the keyboard measures about 9.4 inches by 4.2 inches, with an official weight of 12.875 ounces. I measured each key at about 1.3 cm on a side, about 27 percent smaller than the keys on the Surface Pro 3 Type Cover.  The tactile feedback is surprisingly good for what's essentially a chiclet keyboard. (I wrote this entire review on it, while seated at my dining-room table.) 

Mark Hachman

Microsoft takes keys from several different keyboard layouts.

So how does it type? Pretty well, but with a few hiccups.

In general, I found I could type at about 80 to 90 percent of the speed I can reach on a Surface Pro 3—which isn't all that fast, about 50 words per minute or so. (Unlike the SP3, the Universal Mobile Keyboard lacks a touchpad or pointing device.) The smaller keys didn't lead to many additional errors, although my fingers sometimes drifted down to the bottom row of command keys. Fortunately, that didn't produce any negative results, although I did find myself tapping the Fn+SPACE keyboard combo by accident, which briefly displays the keyboard language on the screen.

Personally, I find I type fairly quickly over short periods on a smartphone keyboard. But that isn't the target customer for Microsoft's Universal Keyboard—it's the executive who totes around a bunch of different devices in a backpack or briefcase, and has to do some real work in a pinch for a half hour or so. Just not on a Windows Phone. 

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North Korea reportedly blocks Facebook and Twitter

North Korean authorities have reportedly blocked access to Facebook and Twitter for the few people in the country with open Internet access.

The move came into effect earlier this week, according to a report by the Russian ITAR-TASS news agency, which is one of the few foreign news services to maintain a bureau in the country.

Most North Koreans don't have access to a computer, and those who do are restricted to a nationwide intranet. Available through universities, libraries and other state-run establishments, the intranet has websites that include government propaganda, information about science, technology and culture, and even cooking recipes.

Access to outside information is tightly curtailed by the government, which jams foreign radio broadcasts and restricts international phone calls and texts. North Korea is consistently ranked among the worst counties for press freedoms and human rights.

The handful of foreign residents who live there, many of them aid workers and business people, are permitted to access the Internet through fixed and wireless connections, but even over those links, access to Facebook and Twitter has been cut, ITAR-TASS reported.

The report couldn't immediately be verified, and neither Facebook nor Twitter responded to requests for comment.

In September, North Korea's State Radio Regulatory Department told foreign embassies and aid organizations they could not use Wi-Fi or satellite Internet connections without government approval. The ruling, a copy of which was obtained by specialist news site NK News, hinted that an earlier report that embassies were deliberately running open Wi-Fi networks to provide public Internet was correct.

The ruling said, "the signals of regional wireless network, installed and being used without licence, produce some effect upon our surroundings."

Organizations wishing to continue using Wi-Fi were instructed to consult with the government so their services could be checked. Those that didn't were threatened with an $11,000 fine.

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Startup Slack gets $120M infusion to kill email at work

Slack, a cloud startup that's landed some big name clients for its business communications product, has raised $120 million [m] at an eye-popping $1.12 billion [b] valuation.

The San Francisco company's funding and early customer wins are signs that venture capitalists and bold CIOs are eager to back entrepreneurs with modern software that can improve business processes, usually by tapping the cloud and mobility and adapting consumer apps for workplace use.

Slack aims to provide a better environment for communications than usually happens over email. A lot of startups demonize email and make it their mission to provide something better. It was an early rallying cry of enterprise social networking (ESN) providers, though many soon realized they would need to co-exist with email. Time will tell whether Slack can overcome the entrenched email corporate culture.

Slack is a SaaS (software as a service) workplace messaging tool for one-to-one or group communication framed within a chat room-like interface. The product also has a strong search engine to let users easily find content in its archive.

The latest funding round, announced Friday and co-led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Google Ventures, brings the total raised by the company to $162 million. Slack, whose CEO is Flickr co-founder Steward Butterfield, plans to use the cash injection to fuel its marketing, grow internationally and pursue acquisitions.

About 30,000 teams are using Slack, generating 200 million messages per month. About 73,000 out of its 250,000 daily users are on a paid subscription. Adoption has been through word-of-mouth because the company doesn't yet have a sales and marketing team, although it's adding over $1 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) each month.

Slack has an open API and is integrated with "dozens" of third-party services, including Twitter, Dropbox, Asana, Google Docs, MailChimp and Zendesk. It launched just eight months ago and customers include Dow Jones, Times of London, eBay, Urban Outfitters, HBO, Nordstrom and Live Nation.

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FCC eyes new rules to protect consumers as voice networks transition to IP

The Federal Communications Commission will consider new rules to ensure real consumer choice as the U.S. shifts from copper-based networks to IP networks, agency officials said Friday.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler will offer a set of proposals aimed at protecting voice customers during the commission's Nov. 21 meeting, senior agency officials said. In addition to network-sharing rules, the FCC will consider requiring power backup systems on VoIP networks, officials said.

In its consumer-protection proposals, which the FCC would release for public comment, the agency will consider rules for large telephone carriers that are currently required to share their last-mile networks with competitors, often to serve small-business customers. Wheeler's proposal would require the large carriers to also share their last-mile IP networks, under similar terms and prices to their copper infrastructure, FCC officials said.

In the transition to IP networks, the FCC believes voice customers shouldn't end up with fewer competitive options, an FCC official said during a press briefing. That proposal could be controversial, as large carriers have traditionally not shared their IP networks with competitors.

The transition to IP-based networks is at a "tipping point," Wheeler wrote in a blog post Friday.

To protect competition, his proposal would "ensure that small- and medium-sized businesses do not have the benefits of competition yanked away from them," Wheeler wrote. "The mere change of a network facility or discontinuance of a legacy service should not deprive consumers or businesses of competitive choices. That would only lead to higher telecommunications prices that are passed along to consumers."

In the FCC's notice of proposed rulemaking, or NPRM, the agency will also ask whether it should require battery backups that will enable VoIP customers to dial 911 during emergencies and make other calls during power outages.

The traditional copper-based telephone network supplies power to connected telephones, but phones connected to fiber-based networks need their own power source. During natural disasters and other emergencies, it's important for VoIP customers to be able to make phone calls, FCC officials said.

The FCC is worried not only about customers being able to dial out during power outages, but also about 911 emergency dialing service interruptions at call-routing centers that increasingly handle emergency traffic from wide geographic regions, the FCC officials said. The agency has tracked an "unprecedented" number of large-scale 911 service outages this year, not due to storms or disasters, but to software and other technology errors.

In April, a software coding error at a large 911 routing center knocked out service to more than 11 million residents of seven states, including California, Minnesota and Florida, for up to six hours. More than 6,600 emergency 911 calls did not go through during the outage, the FCC said.

A transition to IP-based networks will allow 911 call centers to receive texts, videos and data from vehicle crash sensors, Wheeler wrote in his blog post. "But the introduction of new technologies has also introduced new vulnerabilities that cannot be ignored," he added. "We have seen a spike in so-called 'sunny day' outages, when failure comes from the failure of software or databases and not from natural disasters."

In the IP transition proposal, the FCC would require public notification of major changes to 911 service and would expand its 911 service certification requirements.

Wheeler's proposal would also require telephone carriers to notify customers when transitioning to IP networks and consider the impact on legacy telephone-based services before making the switch, the FCC said.

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North Korea reportedly blocks Facebook and Twitter

North Korean authorities have reportedly blocked access to Facebook and Twitter for the few people in the country with open Internet access.

The move came into effect earlier this week, according to a report by the Russian ITAR-TASS news agency, which is one of the few foreign news services to maintain a bureau in the country.

Most North Koreans don't have access to a computer, and those who do are restricted to a nationwide intranet. Available through universities, libraries and other state-run establishments, the intranet has websites that include government propaganda, information about science, technology and culture, and even cooking recipes.

Access to outside information is tightly curtailed by the government, which jams foreign radio broadcasts and restricts international phone calls and texts. North Korea is consistently ranked among the worst counties for press freedoms and human rights.

The handful of foreign residents who live there, many of them aid workers and business people, are permitted to access the Internet through fixed and wireless connections, but even over those links, access to Facebook and Twitter has been cut, ITAR-TASS reported.

The report couldn't immediately be verified, and neither Facebook nor Twitter responded to requests for comment.

In September, North Korea's State Radio Regulatory Department told foreign embassies and aid organizations they could not use Wi-Fi or satellite Internet connections without government approval. The ruling, a copy of which was obtained by specialist news site NK News, hinted that an earlier report that embassies were deliberately running open Wi-Fi networks to provide public Internet was correct.

The ruling said, "the signals of regional wireless network, installed and being used without licence, produce some effect upon our surroundings."

Organizations wishing to continue using Wi-Fi were instructed to consult with the government so their services could be checked. Those that didn't were threatened with an $11,000 fine.

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