iPad Security Hole Exposed

Today the New York Times released an blog that details how 114,000 3G iPad owners personal information was hacked. According to the blog, the list contains people from "military personnel, staff members in the Senate and the House of Representatives, and people at the Justice Department, NASA and the Department of Homeland Security." Also several top executives from fortune 500 companies were apart of the list. The group called Goatse Security, discovered the exploit when they were on the AT&T website and found that when you entered in an iPad's number you could get the owner's email address. From there they were able to develop a script that would guess the algorithm AT&T used to come up with the ID numbers.

Should AT&T be held accountable for this exploit? Should your email address be considered private? I think AT&T should have done their due diligence when designing their website and realized that someone could easily have come up with a way to guess customer's ID numbers. As a result, I think AT&T needs to make a formal apology to their customers and remove that feature from their website. However, from the list of users provided in the blog it appears most user's included their work email addresses which theoretically might be searchable. I do not think the publication of these email addresses is too big of a deal.


Reference: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/09/att-exposes-e-mail-addresses-of-114000-ipad-owners/?emc=eta1/

Why No One Should Use A Windows Machine

For many years all I ever knew about was Microsoft Windows. My first desktop was a Windows 3.0 machine. I thought it was the greatest operating system ever. As the years went by I upgraded to Windows 95 then ME and finally to Windows XP. However it was not until 2006 that I discovered the wonders of a MAC. Gone were the days of Super Tuesday where Windows would release 20 different security patches because someone found another vulnerability. The OS X platform is not perfect and can be hacked just like a windows machine, however the shear number of updates every week was a nightmare. Every Windows system needs to have an anti-virus installed plus the firewall enabled and it a nightmare to manage. It comes as little surprise to me that this week Google announced it would be phasing out Microsoft Windows use because of new security concerns associated with Microsoft Explorer. Google will now start implement MAC OS and Linux systems because their operations in China were hacked. According to Google anyone who wants a windows machine needs to get approval from the CIO. Do you think Microsoft is being singled out? Is Google simply conducting a PR campaign to distance themselves from Microsoft? I think Google is just fed up with Windows and all of the problems associated with them.

Over the past decade Microsoft’s dominance in the PC world has started to slide considerably. Many security events have forced users and companies to adopt what they perceive as more secure operating systems. However, given the number of windows machines in the marketplace it could be said that their systems are under a more critical eye than others. If Apple had as many or machines in the market would their operating systems hold up better? In my opinion I think so, because their software architecture is more sound. Only time will tell if Microsoft will be able to further secure their operating system or if another operating system will emerge and conquer everyone out there including Apple. I personally think Apple’s operating system will be the one emerge as the industry leader within the next ten years.


References:
http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/kit-eaton/technomix/black-hat-hacker-reveals-your-macs-not-safe-you-think
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=10793367