Taking control of local data-transfer functionality like AirDrop can help you avoid unwanted surprises

Article

Cyberflasher Airdrops rude images to victim’s iPhone | Naked Security (Sophos)

My Comments

A problem that has started to surface for Apple iOS users is the ability for someone to send gross images to strangers courtesy of the AirDrop feature that newer iterations of this platform have. Situations where this typically happened were when the offender and victim were on public transport or in public areas.

This feature makes it easy to share photos between iOS and MacOS X devices in a local area using Bluetooth and Wi-FI technologies and provides a thumbnail image of incoming photos rather than a dialog box asking if you want to receive the image.

This was feasible with Android and other open-frame mobile operating systems courtesy of Bluetooth Object Push Profile but these platforms. especially Android, hardened themselves against this by making your phone undiscoverable by default and providing a narrow time limit for having your phone discoverable by Bluetooth devices. As well, these platforms required your permission to start receiving the file and you didn’t see one bit of that file until you gave the go-ahead.

Android and Windows improved on this using a passcode that you and your correspondent exchange before a file is transferred and the NFC functionality that is part of recent Android versions requires you to physically touch the backs of the phones as part of instigating the data transfer.

The same situation may also crop up with Wi-Fi Aware as it implements Bluetooth local discovery for ad-hoc Wi-Fi networks created by mobile devices and will require users to be able to take control of what notifications and files they receive on their devices if this technology is for transferring files.

Protecting yourself

A good practice to observe is to turn off the AirDrop feature unless you make regular use of it. Or, at least, set AirDrop’s discoverability settings to “Off” or “Contacts Only” rather than “Everyone” so that every man and his dog can’t discover your phone. You would turn this function on if you are expecting a photo from someone not yet in your Contacts List.

In some situations, you may have to disable Wi-Fi and Bluetooth unless you are actually using these features such as linking to a hotspot or using a Bluetooth headset.

You may find that changing your device’s identity to your initials or something innocuous rather than your first name may work wonders in these situations.

I would also prefer that any local data transfer or similar activity between users takes place in a manner where each participant can see each other. This may be at the same table in a café, restaurant or library, the same seating cluster in a lounge area, the same row of seats in a public-transport vehicle or a similar area of close proximity. As well, such activity should be preceded by relevant conversation.

What must be preserved

If a setup allows for local data transfer between computer devices using a wireless medium, there must be a way of allowing the users to confirm their intent to transfer the data between each other. This means that the sender and receiver know whom the data is coming from and to and must occur before a single bit of the actual data changes hands.

This may be through the sender exchanging a simple passcode to the receiver or requiring the devices to physically be near each other at the start of the data transmission. The latter solution may be in the form of NFC where the users touch the backs of their devices together, or a QR code shown on the sending device’s screen that the receiving device has to scan before transmission takes place.

If a user wants to simplify this process, they could create a “trusted recipients” list which can be their Contacts list or a separately-created list. Personally, I would use all of the “friends” in a social network as this list because that tends to encompass too many people and an account can too easily be compromised.

The same thing must also apply to social networks, online gaming and similar services where one user may want to enrol another user in to their personal lists. This is more important if any of these services facilitate the transfer of files between users or support any form of instant messaging.

Article

Aylesbury Vale – to benefit from real broadband

Aylesbury Vale Broadband Project Starts Rollout of Fibre Optic Network |ISPReview.co.uk

From the horse’s mouth

Aylesbury Vale Broadband

Project Page

Press Release – At long last we’re laying the fibre

My Comments

Two villages in Aylesbury Vale, Buckinghamshire have been reached for real next-generation broadband thanks to the Aylesbury Vale Broadband project.

North Marston (population 800) and Granborough (population 600) have been the first to benefit from this technology which will primarily be fibre-to-the-premises. But the Aylesbury Vale Broadband Project is taking a mixed-technology approach with fibre-to-the-cabinet if it isn’t feasible to roll out the better technology. Once these villages are proven as successful for this project, other Aylesbury Vale communities will be looked at for covering with next-generation broadband.

This is a complementary project that will focus on areas that are missed out on by the Broadband Delivery UK and the Connected Counties rural-broadband programmes. A lot of the effort is driven by volunteer labour courtesy of the local villagers. There is public funding from the New Homes

Once the service is fully active, the cost to join will be at least GBP£25 per month along with a GBP£150 installation fee. This will include the supply of a wireless router that supports 802.11ac Wi-Fi technology to be positioned at the home network’s Internet “edge” while the service has a 12-month minimum term contract. The full-fibre services will run initially at 300Mbps but are capable of Gigabit speeds.

The Aylesbury Vale Broadband project is one of many examples in the UK that I have read about where local effort and initiative has brought a rural area out of the digital backwaters and drawn it to something that satisfies today’s realities. This is being seen as of importance when we deal with the countryside being a small-business hub or attracting people who have had enough of the city life.

An Internet-Of-Things sensor that would require regular software updates to be secure

Article

Content security vendors need to prevent babycam hacking nightmares | VideoNet

My Comments

A problem that will get worse in this day and age is weak security affecting home automation and security. This is based around easy-to-misconfigure hardware pitched at home users on a “set it and forget it” basis. It has led to consumer IP-based cameras being hacked and their content being thrown to undesirable Websites.

This is driven by a common mindset associated with devices sold to consumers where the goal is to buy it. install it and use it without requiring the consumer to worry about it more.

The Pay-TV ecosystem invests in and uses a high-security path to protect the expensive content such as the Hollywood blockbusters or the big-league sports that it provides to its subscribers. This is always evolved and updated to counteract new threats to this ecosystem and to handle new applications. They also used the “end-to-end” approach including supplying hardware to consumers and updating the software in this hardware automatically and without the consumer having to do anything extra.

Similarly, regular-computer setups have been made secure with Microsoft and Apple delivering security updates to Windows and MacOS X on a regular basis as threats come about. This is because of these systems having a heritage of being used in the business environment for a long time.

The article raised the concept of companies who provide home monitoring and allied services offering a turnkey installation and configuration service to their customers as a premium service or simply alerting customers to misconfigured hardware and hacking attempts if customers prefer to install their own hardware. They could use the Pay-TV technology to secure the content path between the cameras and the Web dashboards or mobile apps that the customers use.

“Blind updating”

AVM FRITZ!Box – self-updating firmware = secure network infrastructure

What I would like to see more is the ability to patch network-infrastructure hardware in a similar manner to what is done with pay-TV, regular-computer operating systems and some cloud-hosted services. This is where security updates and patches are delivered and installed automatically to these devices. In some cases, it may be preferable to provide an interactive update process for major software versions that add or change a device’s functionality.

A good step in the right direction was AVM with their Fritz!Box routers where they introduced the concept of automatic software updating to this class of device when they released new firmware for the Fritz!Box 7490.

These processes will have to require manufacturers to instigate software authentication and verification workflows and have their devices verify software updates before deploying them. This is to prevent the deployment of malware to these devices.

Hi everyone!

We are now on FeedBlitz and I have even set up a weekly digest feed option for those of you who would rather follow HomeNetworking01.info once a week or have reduced emails while on holiday.

When you receive an email, you can click on the modify email options to choose whether to have it weekly or daily.

With regards,

Simon Mackay

Hi everyone!

HomeNetworking01.info is undergoing a few improvements. One of these is to have a new look that works well for mobile, tablet and regular (desktop and laptop) computers so you can still enjoy reading the good articles on whatever device you are using.

Soon, those of you who follow this website by email or RSS (Webfeed) methods will be moved towards the FeedBlitz system. This will be in order to benefit from better feed targeting and also newer email subscribers will benefit from an improved onboarding experience where you can catch up with previous featured articles.

It will take some time to iron out the bugs here and there but you will benefit when things become smoother.

With regards

Simon Mackay

Article

Gadgets like these could benefit from chargers that are part of interior designs

King Living’s Smart Sofa Charges Your Smartphone, Remembers Your Seating Position

My Comments

King Living had put forward a “home-theatre” 2-person recliner sofa of the kind you would have in a “Gold Class” cinema. But they integrated USB charging in to this sofa so you can charge your smartphone or tablet or avoid compromising its battery runtime while you are using it.

But this kind of idea hasn’t been really explored by companies who manufacture furniture and general appliances for the home. Here, you could have a lamp or electric fan of the kind that sits on a table or desk being equipped with a 2-port or 4-port USB charger that is part of its base  Or you could have a freestanding trouser press that has the ability for you to charge your smartphone from it while your good pants are being pressed.

Similarly, a furniture maker or interior designer could come forth with a USB charging station that is integrated in to the furniture in the same way that some bedheads came with integrated bedside lamps or clock radios or some bedside tables came with clock radios. This was facilitated with various manufacturers releasing products that are designed from the outset to be integrated in to furniture. In a similar way, some people integrated car stereos that were powered by 12V power-supplies in to furniture to provide an integrated look for secondary-area audio entertainment.

This can be approached with so-called “reference-design” USB and wireless charger products that simplify the process of integrating in to existing designs and circuits. The circuits could come in to their own with furniture that has integrated electrical circuitry like a massage chair or appliances like a table lamp. They may have to be factored to allow for use with low voltages or with mains voltages so there isn’t the need for a separate power supply to be designed for applications that just have AC voltages. As well, they would have to be supplied in “short-form”

Once this is achieved, it could cut down the number of wall-warts that have to exist in the kitchen or office just to charge your gadgets.

Article

Iconic computer and game system Amiga turns 30 | The Age

Video

Amiga Demos of the late 80s

My Comments

In the late 1980s, Commodore released the Amiga series of computers which brought forward the concept of advanced graphics, video and music to the desktop computer.

These computers had the necessary hardware like the Motorola 68000 series RISC processors and graphics and sound chipsets that were advanced for their day. Initially, there was the Amiga 1000 computer but the popular machines that represented the Amiga platform at its peak were the Amiga 500 and the Amiga 2000.

They could generate high-resolution advanced moving graphics which put them on the platform for CGI animated video. As well, they were capable of turning out music which was either synthesised or sampled and this ability became very important during the “Acid House” era of the late 80s where house, techno and other electronic dance music came on the scene.

For that matter, if you ever seen a Commodore Amiga in action or used one of these computers yourself, you may have dabbled with the “demos”. These were self-running programs that showed a moving-graphics display on the screen set to music, typically electronic dance music of the day. I have linked in a YouTube clip of some of these “demos” so you can see what this computer was about.

The fact that the Amiga was popular in Europe instigated the European game-development scene where a lot of graphic-rich game genres that we take for granted were being exposed courtesy of this computer that, at times, was called the “game machine of all time”. For business applications, the Amiga platform even became the heart of some public-facing computer applications where a graphically-rich user interface was considered important, along with it being used to create computer graphics for film and video content.

This computer demonstrated the concept of a desktop computer being able to serve graphically-rich applications whether it be games, video content or the like and other computer platforms acquired this ability through the 1990s and now serve this purpose.