Claire Swedber, RFID, 1/31/2012

Proximiant expects its RFID-enabled solution to be used by 1,000 stores by late spring, allowing a retailer’s customers to download receipts and discount offers on their mobile phones, thereby eliminating the need for paper receipts and coupons.

California startup Proximiant reports that a dozen San Francisco Bay Area stores are piloting its Near Field Communication (NFC)-based system at the point of sale (POS), enabling shoppers to receive receipts, coupons, loyalty points and store credits on their mobile phones. By late spring 2012, approximately 1,000 stores are expected to participate, according to Fang Cheng, the company’s cofounder and CEO. Since the pilots began in December 2011, stores’ customers have been able to use an NFC-enabled phone—or an NFC-based Proximiant RFID card paired with a non-NFC phone—to download purchase receipts or discount coupons. After installing the Proximiant application on the phone, a customer can tap the NFC phone or card against a transceiver at the point of sale, thereby eliminating the need for paper receipts, coupons or loyalty cards.

Cheng says she conceived the idea in 2010, while traveling for business. She typically traveled between the Bay Area and New York every two weeks, and managed an expense account to pay for the various costs incurred during the trips. However, she says, collecting and storing all of the receipts became so cumbersome that she had a tendency to simply pay for the expenses herself, rather than be bothered with keeping receipts. She began to investigate whether NFC could provide a solution. Not only could an electronic receipt system based on NFC technology save time and trouble for consumers, she explains, but it could also make it easier for merchants to offer customers discounts or loyalty programs. In addition, Cheng notes, there was also the green aspect of using an electronic solution to consider: If she could offer a service for delivering receipts electronically, she could eliminate the need for all of the paper collected and then discarded by shoppers.

Customers can use an NFC-enabled phone, or a Proximiant RFID card paired with a non-NFC phone, to download receipts for purchases or coupons for discounts.

Cheng launched the company in March of last year with two other cofounders, and the trio then focused on developing a solution. The partners outsourced the design of the NFC POS device and NFC cards to a third-party contractor, and built the software to manage the read data, as well as a phone app for storing and displaying receipts, coupons and loyalty points.

To utilize the system, a merchant can visit Proximiant’s Web site and request the service, which is currently free for those businesses piloting the technology. Beginning next month, the cost will be $50 for the device with a built-in RFID reader (developed for Proximiant) and 500 consumer NFC cards (made with NXP Semiconductors‘ 13.56 MHz passive RFID NFC chips) in the form factor of a key fob. There will also be a $14.99 monthly fee to manage read data, including the storage of each transaction, with a lower fee for every additional device used. The reading device can be plugged directly into the POS terminal, similarly to a receipt printer, and the store can then download Proximiant’s driver software.

Most consumers do not yet have NFC-enabled phones, Cheng notes. Therefore, stores can provide customers with a Proximiant key fob with a built-in passive NFC RFID inlay, at no cost. Users who have a cell phone can then download the Proximiant app to their phone for free, by visiting the iTunes or Android Market app store. After installing the app, the user inputs the six-digit serial number on the back of the key fob, which then pairs the phone to the fob in Proximiant’s server. A participant need not provide any personal information, since the data is simply linked to the phone rather than to a specific individual using it. When a purchase is made at any participating store, once the transaction is complete, the screen on the POS device lists the items purchased, along with their cost and the total amount due, and invites the customer to tap his or her phone or card against the device in order to receive a receipt. The patron can tap the key fob or NFC-enabled phone within 5 centimeters (2 inches) of the reader—the fob’s RFID inlay can be read through a wallet, so the fob can be kept in a wallet if the consumer so chooses—and the transaction data will then be stored on the phone.

For those with NFC-enabled mobile phones, the data is now stored on their phones, and they can simply scroll through the records to view their receipts. For those using the fob, the information is sent to the phone via an SMS connection. In either case, the phone must be powered on to receive receipts.

The consumer can utilize the Proximiant phone app to later retrieve a receipt by entering the store’s name or the date, or simply scroll through the receipts listed. To return an item for exchange or refund, the shopper can present the receipt on the phone to the merchant, who can employ a bar-code scanner to read the bar code displayed on the electronic receipt. In the event that the store offers incentives, such as a discount for future purchases at that location, this data is also forwarded to the phone at the time of a transaction, and a user can redeem the discount at the point of sale, by presenting his or her phone to the merchant. The system also works for those who lack a mobile phone, Cheng says. For example, a consumer can still receive the NFC key fob, visit Proximiant’s Web site and input the card’s six-digit serial number to view an online record of receipts.

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Nancy Gohring, IDG News Service, 1/10/2012

T-Mobile is offering a calling service for iPhone and iPad users, even though it doesn’t sell those devices.

The operator is expanding its free voice-over-IP service, called Bobsled, to iPhones, iPads, and Android phones. Users with the app can make calls to mobile or landline phones in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico without incurring charges. Users can make the calls over cellular data networks, which typically charge for the data usage, or over Wi-Fi, which could be free.

T-Mobile’s Bobsled for iPhone

The new services are an expansion of the Bobsled service that T-Mobile first launched early last year. Initially, it let people make calls only to Facebook friends from PCs. In October, it began letting people make calls from Facebook to mobile devices and make calls from PCs to U.S. mobile and landline phones.

T-Mobile is also separately launching a Bobsled Messaging app on Tuesday for Android phones, with plans to also offer it for iPhones and iPads later this year. That app lets users send group text and multimedia messages.

Key to both apps is that they are tied to a user’s mobile phone number. That means a user can download Bobsled Messaging on their Android tablet and tie the app to their mobile phone number, so that when they send a message, the recipient will see that the message is coming from the sender’s regular phone number.

Users will find some benefits to downloading the app on multiple devices. For example, a user can read conversations on their tablet that were started on the phone. They’ll also be able to access their contacts list from the app on both devices.

In the future, T-Mobile plans to start issuing phone numbers along with Bobsled. That means someone with a Wi-Fi-only iPad, for example, could attach a phone number to the tablet that friends would recognize when the user made calls and sent messages from Bobsled.

T-Mobile has a number of reasons for wanting to get into the VoIP business, said Brad Duea, senior vice president of marketing for T-Mobile. VoIP traffic is only expected to grow, he said. “It might cannibalize some revenue, but we think it’s a much greater opportunity. We don’t have a fixed-line business to protect. So we’re saying, ‘cut the cord, here’s how we can empower you,’” he said.

Some other mobile service providers that have landline businesses are often less keen to promote VoIP because it competes with traditional landline phone service.

For now, T-Mobile isn’t saying much about how it will make money from the service. It plans to bring some new business models to the market, including ad-supported services and contextual advertising, he said. The company will talk more about that in a couple of months, he said.

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Nancy Gohring, IDG News Servic, 1/9/2012

The operator also said it plans to launch an online store for HTML5 apps this year

AT&T is hoping to encourage developers to use HTML5 with the release of a new API platform. “It’s essentially a rich set of APIs and tools aimed at furthering the HTML5 appeal as an app development choice,” said David Christopher, chief marketing officer at AT&T. “Why are we focusing on HTML5? We think it has the potential to address fragmentation.” He spoke Monday at the AT&T Developer Summit in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show.

Developers must rewrite native applications to run on iPhones, Android phones, Windows Phones, and BlackBerry phones. HTML5 simplifies things for developers by letting them instead build apps that run in a browser accessible by any smartphone. HTML5 apps look and act similar to a native app. By 2016, 85 percent of smartphones will have browsers capable of running HTML5, Christopher said, citing a prediction made by Strategy Analytics.

A spokewoman told InfoWorld she was not sure whether the APIs could be used for apps expected to run on devices provisioned by any carrier — the norm in most companies given the mix of corporate-supplied and employee-owned devices — or just on devices running on the AT&T network.

The new API (application programming interface) catalog includes APIs for MMS, SMS, location, and mobile-health capabilities. In addition, it allows developers to let users make payments in the app that appear on their AT&T bill. It also includes technologies that sense what capabilities a smartphone has to optimize the app for the individual smartphone.

The APIs are hosted on cloud services, including Heroku and Microsoft’s Azure. Developers must pay a $99 registration fee to start using the APIs.

AT&T also said it plans to launch an online store for HTML5 apps this year. It will initially be accessible by Android and iPhone users but will expand to include other phones, said Jeff Bradley, senior vice president of devices for AT&T. “The two things that are the biggest challenges for HTML5 to reach its full potential are distribution and monetization,” he said. The API platform and the new app center are designed to address these challenges, he said.

The operator hopes to take a fresh approach to app stores with the store. Rather than simply listing apps by category, like most app stores do today, it will have a “magazine-like” format, he said. Developers can sign up to be part of the beta of the new app store at developer.att.com/appcenter.

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Tarmo Virki, Reuters, 12/27/2011

Vulnerability in a widely used wireless technology could allow hackers to gain remote control of phones And instruct them to send text messages or make calls, according to an expert on mobile phone security.

They could use the vulnerability in the GSM network technology, which is used by billions of people in about 80 percent of the global mobile market, to make calls or send texts to expensive, premium phone and messaging services in scams, said Karsten Nohl, head of Germany’s Security Research Labs.

Similar attacks against a small number of smartphones have been done before, but the new attack could expose any cellphone using GSM technology.

“We can do it to hundreds of thousands of phones in a short timeframe,” Nohl told Reuters in advance of a presentation at a hacking convention in Berlin on Tuesday.

The convention takes place just days after U.S. security think tank Strategic Forecasting Inc (Stratfor) said its website had been hacked and that some of the names of corporate subscribers had been made public. Activist hacker group Anonymous claimed responsibility.

Attacks on corporate landline phone systems are fairly common, often involving bogus premium-service phone lines that hackers set up across Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia.

Fraudsters make calls to the numbers from hacked business phone systems or mobile phones, then collect their cash and move on before the activity is identified.

The phone users typically don’t identify the problem until after they receive their bills and telecommunications carriers often end up footing at least some of the costs.

Even though Nohl will not present details of attack at the conference, he said hackers will usually replicate the code needed for attacks within a few weeks.

T-MOBILE, SFR LEAD RANKING

Mobile networks of Germany’s T-Mobile and France’s SFR offer their clients best protection against online criminals wanting to intercept their calls or track their movements, shows a new ranking Nohl will demonstrate at his presentation.

The new ranking, at gsmmap.org, lets consumers to see how their operators are performing and lets anyone to participate in measurement of their carriers’ security.

Researchers reviewed 32 operators in 11 countries and rated their performance based on how easy it was for them to intercept the calls, impersonate someone’s device or track the device.

“None of the networks protects users very well,” Nohl said.

The sample is set to grow from 32 carriers dramatically next year as the tool enables anyone to participate in gathering of the data.

Nohl said mobile telecom operators could easily improve their clients’ security, in many cases by just updating their software.

“Mobile network is by far the weakest part of the mobile ecosystem, even when compared to a lot attacked Android or iOS devices,” he said.

Researchers reviewed operators in Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Morocco, Slovakia, Switzerland and Thailand.

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Jason Mick, DailyTech, 12/13/2011

Hackers can reset your phone via SMS, Facebook, or Windows Live Messenger communications

Some of you may have fond memories of “nuking” local Windows 95 machines using urgent pointer (URG) based TCP “winnuke” tools (e.g. “NukeIt”) or Windows 98 machines via large fragmented IGMP packets with malformed headers. Now Microsoft’s Windows Phone has become the latest in a long line of Microsoft Corp. operating systems to be “hosed” by malicious traffic.

The flaw in Windows Phone, which affects the latest build of Windows Phone 7.5 Mango, as well as previous versions, was first discovered by Windows Phone hacker Khaled Salameh.  Rather than following in the tradition of hackers of yore, he worked with the site WinRumors to report the bug and securely disclose it to Microsoft.

The flaw appears to affect all Windows Phones, regardless of the manufacturer or model.

The attack works by sending a message to the Windows Phone message hub application.  As this app accepts a variety of messages, the attacking message can be in the form of a SMS text message, a Facebook message, or a Windows Live Messenger hub.

When the message is received, errors in the handling in the hub cause the message to lock the device, killing whatever work you had in process.  You can recover via a reboot.

However, your message hub app will stay dead.  It is unclear if there is a fix for restoring messaging functionality, but barring a reformat of your device, the affected phone may be unable to message.  Worse yet, if you have a live tile from the contact that sent the message, once it updates post-reboot it will trigger another system lock-up.  There is a workaround for this — quickly navigate to the homescreen and remove/unpin the tile before it “flips” (updates).

For now, as mentioned, this severe vulnerability’s implementation details are under wraps, pending a fix, so Windows Phone users should only be mildly concerned.

Again, this vulnerability appears to be solely capable of denial of service, and does not affect your system security.  In that regard it appears to be very similar to the aforementioned “winnuke” attacks, or the more recent “SMS-o-Death” messaging attack demoed against Android and iOS by researchers Collin Mulliner, a PhD student in the Security in Telecommunications department at the Technische Universitaet Berlin, and Nico Golde, an undergraduate student at the same institution.

These attacks differ from security-breach attacks, like the SMS attack that affected older unpatched version of iOS, first discovered by Charlie Miller.  The key difference is that those kinds of attacks utilize flaws in messaging apps which allow the execution of arbitrary code as a path to root control; where as attacks like the one in this article exploit flaws in message handling which do not execute arbitrary code, but do trigger some sort of catastrophic system failure.

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Amar Toor, Engadget, 12/13/2011

We cannot comment on all handset manufacturer implementations of Android. Our investigation of Trevor Eckhart’s video indicates that location, key presses, SMS and other information appears in log files as a result of debug messages from pre-production handset manufacturer software. Specifically it appears that the handset manufacturer software’s debug capabilities remained “switched on” in devices sold to consumers.

The firm went on to argue that in Eckhart’s video, keystrokes and text messages were being written to Android log files, which the IQ Agent does not use to “acquire or output” a user’s diagnostic data. Eckhart only discovered this, Carrier IQ says, because of a handset setting that “should be classified as a vulnerability.” The company also provided a list of the data it actually does acquire, and was quick to point out that it never collects nor distributes the “content of multi-media messages (MMS), emails, photos, web pages, audio or video.” As for the keystroke logging dimension of this debate, the company is sticking to its guns, claiming that IQ Agent only uses this ability to pick up on specific numeric codes. “Carrier IQ has never intentionally captured or transmitted keystrokes and is not aware of any circumstances where this has occurred,” the report states. “Carrier IQ is not a keylogger and no customer has asked Carrier IQ to capture key strokes.”

Carrier IQ did issue a small mea culpa in this report, acknowledging an “unintended bug” in a particular diagnostic profile used to determine why voice calls may fail. With these profiles, the IQ Agent gathers so-called “layer 3″ signal traffic between a phone and a radio tower. Over the past week, the company discovered that “in some unique circumstances,” SMS information “may have unintentionally been included” in this collected data. These messages, Carrier IQ insists, were embedded, encoded and not “human readable.” The firm says it has notified its clients of this bug, and that it’s already been patched up.

While this report may offer more concrete detail than some of Carrier IQ’s previous statements, it’s hard to see how a nearly 20-page document could do much to ease the concerns of an already confused Joe Consumer. But with the FTC already on its doorstep and the specter of an investigation looming in Europe, perhaps today’s report represents Carrier IQ’s attempt at a preemptive strike ahead of any regulatory showdown. Its release is even more intriguing in light of a recent report that the FBI may be involved in the case, as well. According to Muckrock News, the Bureau has received an FOIA request for the “manuals, documents or other written guidance used to access or analyze data gathered by programs developed or deployed by Carrier IQ.” In response, the FBI said that it has the documents, but confirmed that it could not disclose them, on the grounds that doing so may jeopardize an ongoing investigation. It’s unclear whether the FBI is investigating Carrier IQ itself, or whether it’s simply using the company’s software to pursue a different beat, but either way, it looks like this tale is far from over.

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morta, HelloAndroid.com, 11/28/2011

For those who spend a lot of time looking at a computer, and can’t be bothered to look at their phone very often, Sand Studio has introduced AirDroid, an app that allows users to control their Android Phone from a computer via WiFi.

The great thing about AirDroid is that it works – it’s easy to start up, and functions flawlessly (in my experience). The interface is also very polished – mimicking a desktop launcher complete with moveable icons, a task bar, and controls that allow you to do just about anything.

One of the most impressive features is the ability to access SMS messages, manage them, and send messages right from a web browser. Users can also manage contacts, uninstall/backup apps (AirDroid will download your apps as apk files), browse files, access the Android Market, and manage music and ringtones, in addition to the ability to look at phone information from CPU status to battery level and beyond.
Best of all, AirDroid is completely free from the Android Market. With all the powerful features it offers, this app is certainly worth checking out.

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Phil Nickinson, AndroidCentral, 9/27/2011

If you’re a fan of the Firefox browser for Android, know that Firefox 7 is now available in the Android Market. Officially, the changelog is as follows:

• Improved copy and paste: Copy any site content and paste to other applications, SMS, or text fields
• Built-in language detection on first run
• WebSockets API: Powerful tool for Web developers to build responsive Web apps and sites

The list of desktop changes is a bit longer, but rememeber that the mobile app is cut from the same cloth, and we’re very much enjoying this accelerated release schedule. Download links are after the break.

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Dan Seifert, MobileBurn, 8/25/2011

Verizon Wireless and Intuit have introduced GoPayment, a new service that allows small businesses to accept credit card payments for goods and services with a smartphone or tablet.

Similar to the Square program that is already available for the iPhone and iPad, GoPayment utilizes a card reader that plugs into the top of a smartphone or tablet and allows user to swipe a credit card to capture payment information. The card reader transmits the info to the GoPayment app on the smartphone or tablet, where it is then processed. Users can input the card information manually as well if the reader does not work. GoPayment is compatible with Android, iOS, and BlackBerry smartphones and tablets.

With the GoPayment app, merchants can create lists of popular items that they charge for to make the transaction quicker and easier. Tips and sales tax can be added on top of the items, and receipts with maps of where the transactions took place can be delivered to the customer via SMS or email. Intuit promises that no credit card data is stored on the phone, and any data that is transmitted is encrypted twice – once by the card reader, and a second time by the app itself.

Businesses can sync their transactions with Intuit’s QuickBooks software to save time when logging them, and GoPayment will support up to 50 different users on one account, ideal for businesses with multiple employees.

Verizon Wireless is offering the GoPayment reader for free after rebate to those who sign up for a GoPayment account. The basic service has no monthly fee, though Intuit will collect a 2.7 percent fee from each transaction. There is a monthly service for $12.95 per month that drops the fee to 1.7 percent. Customers who opt for the monthly plan will get their first two months free. Interested businesses can check out Verizon’s GoPayment site for more information

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Brad Reed, Network World, 7/14/2011

Android users hit by banking Trojan that has plagued Symbian, BlackBerry and Windows Phone users

A banking Trojan that has plagued Symbian, BlackBerry and Windows Phone users has now made its way to Android devices.

The Zitmo Trojan, which has been used by the ZeuS criminal gang to steal banking information, was confirmed to be on Android devices by security firm Fortinet last week. In a blog post on the company’s website, senior antivirus analyst Axelle Apvrille said that the Trojan poses as a banking activation application and then once installed sniffs out SMS sent from the bank to the user. It then combs through the SMS to pull out the mobile transaction authentication number (mTAN) that is used as a one-time password to complete mobile banking transactions.

As outlined by the S21Sec security blog last year when the Trojan first made appearances on other mobile operating systems, the Trojan is a clever way to sneak around banks’ two-factor authentication systems for performing mobile transactions. First, ZeuS-created malware must obtain a person’s bank account user name and password. From there, it acquires the user’s cellphone number and sends an SMS purporting to be from the bank that contains a malicious application posing as an online banking app. Once this app is installed, it sniffs all incoming SMS for mTANs that it can use to perform transactions on the user’s account.

“In the background, it listens to all incoming SMS messages and forwards them to a remote Webserver,” explains Apvrille. “It’s simple, but just enough for the ZeuS gang to grab your banking mTANs.”

Although the Zitmo Trojan is a potentially expensive headache for Android users, it isn’t at all unique to Android devices and is unrelated to security issues Android has had in the last year with its online Android Market application store. The most high-profile problem came in March when Google removed around 50 applications from the Android Market that contained malicious code. Google has long had a policy of allowing any developer to post mobile applications on the Android Market and relying on users to flag malicious apps for the company to remove.

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