Facebook iPad App Preview Leaks Out

Update: It looks like Facebook has blocked access to the app at this time. Still, you can check out our screenshots to see how the app looks.

Facebook users were able to get a sneak peek of the social networking site’s long-rumored iPad app on Monday by using a jailbroken device and tweaking a file embedded in Facebook for iPhone.

The hack appears to have been first uncovered by Marvin Bernal on Twitter, and TechCrunch has since confirmed “with a source who had previously seen the Facebook iPad app” that this is indeed the iPad app that the company planned to launch with.

Facebook for iPad

Take a look at our screenshots and a description of some of the other features below:

   

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How a Security Researcher Discovered the Apple Battery ‘Hack’

A security “noob” mistake has left the batteries in Apple’s laptops open to hacking, which could result in a bricked battery or, in a worst case scenario, fire or explosion. This was revealed Friday after Accuvant Labs security researcher Charlie Miller disclosed that he plans to detail the hack at the annual Black Hat security conference in early August.

We were curious as to how Miller, known for repeated hacks of Apple’s Safari Web browser at the annual Pwn2Own hacking competition, stumbled upon this hack in the first place—after all, it is somewhat obscure and doesn’t fall into what most people consider to be his typical focus area (browsers). Miller took time to answer our questions about what the hack is and how he found it, as well as what he plans to do when Black Hat rolls around.

The vulnerability

Laptop batteries include microcontrollers which constantly monitor charging voltage, current, and thermal characteristics, among other properties. These microcontrollers are part of a system called the Smart Battery System, designed to improve the safety of Li-Ion and Li-Poly cells used in these batteries.

According to Miller, these controllers can be hacked in a fairly straightforward manner. By reprogramming the microcontroller’s firmware, a battery could report a much lower internal voltage or current, causing the charger to overcharge the battery. In Miller’s testing, he was only successfully able to turn a series of seven $130 MacBook Pro batteries into expensive bricks, but he told Ars that it may be possible to cause fire or even an explosion.

“Lithium-ion batteries are potentially dangerous, and it’s possible that futzing with the parameters could cause the battery to fail at best, or explode at worst,” Miller said. “I know there are internal fuses and other safeguards to prevent that from happening, and I never did it myself, but there’s certainly potential to get some malware to rewrite the smart battery firmware and cause some catastrophic failure.”

As Miller noted, Smart Battery Systems include fuses which can disable cells if they reach dangerous internal voltages. But even these safeguards occasionally fail, resulting in toasted laptops.

Miller also told Ars that the battery firmware hack could be used to create a sort of “permanent” malware infection. Such malware, or a least a portion of it, could be installed in the micorcontroller’s flash memory. Even if an infected computer’s drive were replaced and the operating system re-installed, it’s possible that an exploit could allow the malware to be reloaded from a laptop’s Smart Battery System firmware.

The discovery

While the threat of un-installable viruses that cause laptop batteries to explode is highly unlikely, the truth is that the vulnerability exists in the first place because of a blunder on Apple’s part. While researching potential vulnerabilities in the MacBook Pro’s power management system, Miller inadvertently discovered that Apple used default passwords described in publicly available documentation on the Smart Battery System, which allows rewriting the firmware itself.

Miller began by trying to determine if it was possible to manipulate or control the battery charging system. He downloaded a battery firmware update that Apple released a couple years ago, and dug through its code to see how the system communicates with the Smart Battery System. Inside the firmware updater, he found a password and a command to “unseal” the microcontroller, which allowed the firmware updater to change some of the battery’s parameters.

This particular updater, according to Miller, merely told the battery to always keep a slightly higher minimum charge in order to keep the battery from becoming unable to hold a charge after being unused for an extended period of time. But searching for the unseal command led Miller to the Smart Battery Charger Specifications. Digging through the documentation, Miller learned that the password Apple used to unseal the microcontroller was the default used in the specifications.

On a whim, Miller tried the default password to switch the microcontroller into “full access mode,” sort of like an administrator account on your Mac. “Unlike the unsealed mode, in full access mode, I could change anything: recalibrate the battery, access the controller at a really low level, including getting the firmware or changing it,” Miller said.

Miller downloaded the firmware and reverse engineered the microcontroller’s machine code, bricking several batteries in the process. Eventually he was able to change the firmware to “always lie, like to say it wasn’t fully charged even when it was.”

The fact that Apple never bothered to change the default password is disconcerting, especially considering the effort Apple has made to beef up security in Mac OS X Lion. Lion’s implementation of address space layout randomization (ASLR) is now “complete,” according to Miller, making it impossible to know where the OS has loaded system functions into memory. Furthermore, Safari—Miller’s preferred exploit vector—is now divided into two sandboxed processes, one for the GUI and one for rendering Web content.

“That second process is sandboxed; it can’t access your files and other stuff,” Miller explained. “Even if you have browser exploits, the only way to do anything [useful] is to get out of the sandbox.” Miller said that would mean finding a bug in the kernel itself. “That’s not impossible… but it’s definitely much harder with a sandbox than without.

“It’s certainly going to be a lot harder to own a Mac at Pwn2Own next year,” Miller admitted.

Miller speculated that Apple assumed that the battery would never be a target for hackers, and so kept the default passwords described in the documentation as a convenience. Unfortunately, that convenience has resulted in a potential headache for Apple laptop users.

Miller handed his research over to Apple a few weeks ago to give the company time to come up with its own workaround before he presents his findings at the Black Hat conference on August 4. Miller has also written a Mac OS X tool that will generate a random password and store it in a battery’s firmware, preventing future hacks—but also preventing future firmware updates, which will be released when he gives his talk at Black Hat.

Photo illustration by Aurich Lawson


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Chinese Officials Demand Closure of Two Imitation Apple Stores

Chinese officials have demanded the closure of two imitation Apple stores in Kunming, reports Reuters.

After an American blogger in Kunming posted photos of “a beautiful [Apple store] ripoff” last week, Chinese officials began to investigate around 300 shops in the area, finding five fake Apple stores. Two of the stores, lacking the proper business permits, must now close their doors. Despite the intellectual property concerns, the other three remain open for now.

In China, companies aren’t allowed to copy the “look and feel” of other companies’ stores. These retail outlets are impeccable replicas of Apple stores, down to the winding staircases and employee t-shirts. In fact, the stores are so convincing most staffers believed they worked for an authorized Apple retailer. All five stores sold genuine Apple products, according to a Kunming city official.

Apple has just four official Apple stores in China, two in Beijing and two in Shanghai. They are some of the most popular Apple stores in the world, outselling even Manhattan’s 24-hour Apple mecca on Fifth Avenue. Apple plans to build a third Shanghai store with more than 16,000 square feet of space, plus dozens more around the country. The company generated a mammoth $3.8 billion in revenue in greater China during the third quarter, appealing to the country’s rapidly expanding upper-middle class.

Apple creates most of its products in China, outsourcing production of its gadgets to companies like the suicide-plagued Foxconn. Burdened with illegal overtime and meager pay, Foxconn employees aren’t allowed to talk, carry a mobile phone or even sit down. In May, several reports indicated that Foxconn staff members were required to sign a “no suicide” pact, though Foxconn itself denies the existence of such a document.

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Official iPad Facebook App Hidden Inside iPhone App

Facebook’s iPad app could be a lot closer to launch than we thought. A full-sized, fully-functional version of the iPad app is hidden inside the current iPhone app. That means that, if you are running the iPhone app you already have the iPad executable on your phone.

Discovered by M.G Siegler, Apple writer for AOL’s Tech Crunch, the iPad app is a lot more modern-looking than the tired old iPhone version, and looks a lot like Twitter’s official iPad app. On the left is a source list to navigate between your Wall, info, photos and friends sections.

Up top, below the status bar, you’ll find more icons to take you to different sections (places and chat, amongst others), and if you flip to horizontal orientation you get a combination of both these navigation “aids,” and the top-bar nav icons remain.

In short, Facebook has managed to fully port the signature confusion of its Web site to a tablet app, a not insignificant achievement.

Siegler, who found the app after reading about it on Twitter, calls the app “spectacular.” The discovery was made by a an engineering student named Marvin Bernal, who also gives instructions on how to get it running on your own iPad:

If you are smart enough to know what that means, and yet you still use Facebook, then go ahead and hack away. The rest of us can either wait for the official launch, or wait for Google to release Google Plus for the iPad.


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What Twitter Can Learn From Facebook

Tom Anderson is the founder and former president of MySpace. MySpace sold in 2005, and Anderson left the company in early 2009. You can find him on Google+, Twitter or Facebook.

Sometimes when you follow a trend, you fall flat on your face.

Early adopters of Google+ have declared that Twitter is now “obsolete” and that they are “bored” using Twitter. Most suggestions for improvement are a list of Google+ features that Twitter doesn’t have.

Yet, even while Twitter’s own CEO, Dick Costolo, has maintained that Twitter will remain simple, the company’s founder and executive chairman Jack Dorsey recently let go four key product people from Twitter, indicating some kind of change is in the works. So what’s @Jack to do? What does the future of Twitter look like?

Taking Measured Risks

Facebook is actually instructive on this front. One of the things that founder Mark Zuckerberg and crew have done exceptionally well is to know what and what not to incorporate from competitors. They’ve evolved their vision, but instead of jumping on every trend, they’ve found ways to expand by incorporating the best innovations of their competitors into a holistic vision that’s kept Facebook growing.

When Facebook had 12 million uniques thanks to nearly every college user in America using the service and MySpace had 80 million uniques (what seemed like “everyone else” at the time), it was a bold move to open up the site to the outside world. In hindsight, it may have seemed risk-free, but it could have killed the entire feel of Facebook. They moved slowly, adding companies, high school students and eventually went fully public. It wasn’t a given that this wouldn’t destroy the closed, private and wonderful service Zuckerberg had created for college students.

When Twitter became a significant force, Facebook tried to acquire the youngish company. A deal was never reached and Facebook ended up up incorporating the status update into the newsfeed — which really made the newsfeed more interesting than it ever would have been otherwise. Again, a great move that fit in with the evolving vision of Facebook as a “sharing platform” (before that, Zuckerberg used to talk more about “efficient communication“).

But it’s also instructive to look at the things Facebook did not do. To compete with MySpace, lots of people thought Facebook should offer some level of profile customization (definitely controversial), but even more thought they should launch a music service. Facebook toyed with the idea by briefly allowing users to put some apps on their profile pages, and they gave priority status to iLike, a music service that let you create playlists. I’d heard rumors at the time that Facebook had actually built a full customization platform for profiles that they never launched. Just this month, Facebook decided to allow users to put images and videos into comments (something that probably would have been too MySpace-y back in the day). Facebook knew when to add feature at the right time. And that music service? Well, it may still be coming.

What This Means for Twitter

So what does this teach us? It’s difficult to extract a lesson or set of rules from these examples. It’s hard to know how to evolve your service, and it’s hard to say what Twitter should do to continue its growth trajectory. I think the answer lies in trying to step back and understand what’s the real value you provide to your users. How can your service evolve to realize that mission without following every trend that rules the day?

In Twitter’s case, is the 140 character constraint really a benefit or is it a leftover relic of the text-message infrastructure that smart phones have replaced? As pundits and users, we can all make our demands about what we want from Twitter, but that probably only tells us about our own personal biases. Twitter will undoubtedly do better to analyze its own data to understand its own user behavior.

Then they can look at those numbers in the context of competitors’ numbers that are public. Who’s driving more engagement, where and how?

You might say, you and I don’t know jack about Twitter. Only @Jack knows jack about Twitter.

Depending on what he learns, he’ll make the tough decision of what to change and what to keep the same. Maybe he’ll test, iterate, analyze and revise. He’s already decided he needs a new product staff, so change seems to be coming.

No answers here, but hopefully they’re the right questions.


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Google Responds to Google+ Account Suspension Controversy

Google has finally made a public statement about the recent wave of controversial Google+ account suspensions designed to enforce the company’s “common name” policy.

The policy is outlined in section 13 of the company’s User Content and Conduct Policy. It’s designed to stop users from creating fake profiles and to set a positive tone. Section 13 reads as follows:

To help fight spam and prevent fake profiles, use the name your friends, family or co-workers usually call you. For example, if your full legal name is Charles Jones Jr. but you normally use Chuck Jones or Junior Jones, either of those would be acceptable.

This weekend, Google started enforcing the policy, deleting a large number of Google+ accounts. While some of the suspended accounts were indeed fake profiles, others like Limor “Ladyada” Fried and lifestyle blogger A.V. Flox were accidentally deleted and quickly restored.

SEE ALSO: GOOGLE+: THE COMPLETE GUIDE | VIDEOS | REVIEW

Google SVP of Social Vic Gundotra admitted to Robert Scoble on Sunday that the company has made some mistakes with its first attempt at cracking down on fake profiles. And in Monday, Google VP of Product Bradley Horowitz wrote a more detailed post in an attempt to clear the air and set the record straight.

“We’ve noticed that many violations of the Google+ common name policy were in fact well-intentioned and inadvertent and for these users our process can be frustrating and disappointing,” Horowitz said in his Google+ post. “So we’re currently making a number of improvements to this process, specifically regarding how we notify these users that they’re not in compliance with Google+ policies and how we communicate the remedies available to them.”

Among the changes Google intends to implement:

•  Google will give users more warning and the chance to comply with the common name policy.
•  The company is improving the signup process.
•  Finally, the search giant is exploring better ways to support nicknames, maiden names and  pseudonyms.

Hotowitz also took time to dispel the rumor that a suspension of a Google+ account means that a user loses his or her access to Gmail, Google Docs or other Google services. “When an account is suspended for violating the Google+ common name standards, access to Gmail or other products that don’t require a Google+ profile are not removed,” he said.

Google+, which will hit its one-month anniversary on Thursday, has clearly been suffering from growing pains. It has received strong criticism for its handling of Google+ brand pages.


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Bring back your FB Chat Style works for Chrome, Mozilla and Opera (UPDATED)

To bring back your Facebook Old Chatbox...

Just follow the steps below:

For Google Chrome Browser

1. Click to bring back your Old Facebook Chatbox
   
   
2. After clicking the link above it will display the image below:
   
   
   
   
3. Click Continue then click Install and your done.

Share and Like if it works for you!
Spread the word!

For Firefox Browsers

1. Download first Greasemonkey Mozilla Addon  and Add to Firefox
   
   
   
   
   
2. Click Install Now
   
   

3. Click to bring back your Old Facebook Chatbox

Share and Like if it works for you! Spread the word!


For Opera Browser

1. Download the Extension
   
2. Hit F5 or Reload your Facebook Page. And it is DONE!
   

Share and Like if it works for you! Spread the word!

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Oslo Bombing Video Is a Facebook Scam, Infecting 1 User Per Second [WARNING]

In light of the bombing and shootings in Norway on Friday, it’s hard to believe that scammers would take advantage of such a tragic situation. But that’s just what’s happening on Facebook today, where a bogus post claims to link you to a video from an Oslo security camera showing the detonation of a car bomb near a Norwegian government building in which at least 10 people were killed.

The truth is, there was no security camera that captured such a video, at least as far as we know thus far. So if you see the following message on Facebook (pictured below): “[Video] OSLO Security Camera Captures Blast!”, don’t click on it, delete it from your Facebook feed, and report it to Facebook security. Help Net Security says the scam is infecting one user per second:

According to security firm Sophos, clicking on the link redirects victims off-site to a fake video player that mimics Facebook. They’re asked to take a survey, and then presented with an IQ test. After that, they’re asked to enter a mobile phone number that will charge the victim $2 per trivia question, four times per week. Ouch.

Facebook scams seem to be proliferating these days, preying on the curiosity or desires of unsuspecting victims. For instance, there was a Facebook Video Calling scam during a time of intense interest in the new feature two weeks ago, a particularly virulent scheme that lured users into clicking a link that spammed all their Facebook friends.

Patrik Runald, senior manager of security research at Websense told Help Net Security, “Criminals know how to take advantage of disasters and the hottest news items to get people to click on infected links. Tragedy is just one type of news that the bad guys use to exploit, compromise and infect your computer. Videos are an especially popular lure; we saw the same thing when Osama bin Laden died and when Casey Anthony was acquitted.

Other popular lures involve non-existent but widely desired Facebook features such as a Facebook “dislike button” scam, fake invites to Google+ and fake invitations to Google Music.

We’re always on the lookout for fakey Facebook behavior, so let us know if you see anything fishy. Is there no end to this needless duplicity? Is there any good news on this front? Although scams seem to be gaining popularity, spam decreased 82.22% over the past year.


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Amazing Spider-Man Slings Teen Romance, Giant Lizard

SAN DIEGO — The next Spider-Man to swing into theaters won’t be fully formed. In the upcoming reboot of the Marvel Comics superhero story, audiences will get to see the early days of Peter Parker when he was still just a tortured geek.

If The Amazing Spider-Man’s stars and director are to be believed, that’s where the film finds its purpose.
“I love the idea of a skinny teenage kid beating the crap out of huge guys — that’s always been a dream of mine that I wanted to fulfill,” said Andrew Garfield, who plays Peter Parker/Spider-Man in the upcoming movie, at a Friday press conference before Sony’s panel at Comic-Con International. “What better way to do it than give other skinny kids in the audience that sense of achievement as well.”

During the movie’s Hall H panel Friday, The Amazing Spider-Man trailer was shown, along with two other clips that revealed Rhys Ifans and his green alter ego, the Lizard, and showed just how teen-angsty the movie will get.

(Spoiler alert: Minor plot points follow.)

The rough 2-D footage that focused on Parker and his first love, Gwen Stacy (played by Emma Stone), showed plenty of awkward moments in the life of the boy who will become Spidey. Bullied and obviously troubled, Peter winds up in hot water with school authorities and gets scolded by his Uncle Ben. Then he gets bitten by a radioactive spider, and the rest is comic book history.

The film’s director, Marc Webb ((500) Days of Summer), said during Friday’s press conference that Peter’s relationship with Gwen makes Spider-Man rare.

“That’s one of the things that has made Spider-Man, I think, really unique in terms of the comics, is that there is a real tender, romantic quality to it,” Webb said. “That’s one of the reasons I wanted to make the film is to explore that.”

In addition to Peter’s first love, the movie also explores the genesis of his superhero side. Recalling scenes from the first Iron Man movie, the Comic-Con sneak peek showed a post-bite Peter tweaking the web-shooter gadgets he made and fumbling around as he masters the fine art of web-slinging.

Later, 3-D footage showed Ifans as Dr. Curt Connors and offered a first glimpse of the doctor’s supervillain alter ego, the Lizard. The huge CG creature scared a pair of schoolgirls in a bathroom.

Love and a hateful lizard, coming to a theater near you next summer. The Amazing Spider-Man hits theaters July 3, 2012.



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