Celltrust targets banks with encrypted SMS app
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InfoWorld - Celltrust developed its SecureSMS application so banks could deliver secure text messages to their customers' mobile phones -- but the company's chief technology officer wonders whether French president Nicolas Sarkozy might like a copy of the software.
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At 3GSM conference, company unveils system that allows sharing of protected content between mobile phones, PCs and other devices.
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Grisoft has launched the AVG Mobile Security suite for mobile phones, now available as a free beta.
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Gwava, a developer of security software, plans to introduce on Monday a new product that lets enterprises easily track and find text messages and phone calls that BlackBerry users send and receive.The software should appeal to enterprises that need to comply with regulations that require them to track employee communications. Key to the Retain for BlackBerry Enterprise Server is that it doesn&#39;t require any client software. That means an IT administrator can manage it fully from the back end.The BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES), which companies use to let workers send and receive corporate e-mail on their BlackBerry devices, already logs data about SMS (Short Message Service) text messages and e-mails sent and received. However, users must view the data in a giant Excel spreadsheet where each row is one transaction, said Mitch Lauer, director of business development for Gwava. &quot;It&#39;s extremely difficult to utilize,&quot; he said.&quot;Our software goes into the BES and makes sense of all these logs,&quot; he said. Retain shifts the data to a SQL database. IT administrators can then manipulate the data using a viewer that can be accessed on multiple workstations.On the viewer, an administrator sees a list of BlackBerry users and can view their history of e-mails, text messages and phone calls. The list of e-mail and text messages includes the actual messages as well as who sent and received them. The phone call list includes the phone number of the person who called or was called and the length of the call.Enterprises using BlackBerry phones can already easily audit e-mail messages because they run through a separate e-mail server, such as Microsoft Exchange. But tracking text messages is harder, and Retain lets administrators see e-mail, text messages and voice logs in a single view.The software also tracks Pin messages, which are text messages that BlackBerry users can send to each other in a slightly different way than text messages offered by mobile operators.IT administrators can also view data such as the top ten users of phone calls in chart form. To further analyze or investigate an issue, an administrator can also export the information into Excel.Retain for BlackBerry can also send alerts to administrators when specified keywords appear in user text messages.Gwava envisions many reasons that an enterprise might want to use the software, including to comply with regulations such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or Sarbanes-Oxley Act, to investigate human-resources issues such as sexual harassment, or to pursue legal problems such as intellectual property leaks, Lauer said.While similar offerings exist, Retain for BlackBerry has an advantage because it doesn&#39;t require any software for the BlackBerry phones, Lauer said. That makes it easier for IT administrators to manage, and also means that the capability is transparent to end-users. &quot;The biggest value proposition, besides the amount of work for IT to deploy the software, is that the device user can&#39;t alter or delete a phone call or SMS or Pin message at the device level,&quot; he said.Retain for BlackBerry costs 40 percent as much as an enterprise pays for its BES server, so users can take advantage of discounts that they may have realized when buying their BES, such as volume processing.&#160;
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Researcher finds two flaws that under unusual circumstances could let a malicious program read private data or render a phone unusable.
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Users can speak into the phones and have their words converted directly to SMS messages.
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(InfoWorld) - Efforts to establish security standards for mobile devices were boosted Tuesday with the release of the Mobile Trusted Module (MTM) specification. The specification offers a set of standards for mobile phone manufacturers and software developers toÂ store data securely in mobile devices, such as smartphones and wireless PDAs (personal digital assistants). The standards, issued by the Trusted Computing Group industry association, have been years in development. They are backed by numerous companies, such as Nokia, Samsung Electronics, and France TÃ©lÃ©com, which are members of the Trusted Computing Group's Mobile Phone Work Group. Like the Trusted Platform Module used in PCs, the MTM stores information in a secure area of the device to ensure the device's operating system, applications and data haven't been virtually or physically tampered with. It uses a system of "engines" within the device that report the state of their code so that their "trustworthiness" can be established. Vendors can determine whether the MTM should be a discrete silicon chip or a system-on-chip implementation. In addition to helping manufacturers and operators reduce the risk of virus attack and identity theft, the MTM can enable mobile payment and ticketing services. Further information about the mobile phone security specification isÂ available here.Â
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New software will let users securely access enterprise networks and data from handheld devices with two-factor authentication.
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Google has launched a beta test version of a text service that allows people to use mobile phones to search the Web via text messages.
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Google Inc. last week filed a patent for technology that would allow users to make payments using text messages or SMS.
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With consumers finally getting wise to phishing attacks, scammers are hitting the phones.The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation&#39;s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) warned Thursday that so-called &quot;vishing&quot; attacks are on the rise. These are scams where criminals send an e-mail or text message to a victim, saying there has been a security problem and the victim needs to call his or her bank to reactivate a credit or debit card.&quot;Upon calling the telephone number, the recipient is greeted with &#39;Welcome to the bank of ...&#39; and then [is] requested to enter their card number in order to resolve a pending security issue,&quot; the IC3 said in its alert.In the past few years, inexpensive VoIP&#160;technology and open-source call-center software has made it inexpensive for scammers to set up phony call centers, paving the way for these new types of scams. Security experts say that vishing can be more effective than traditional phishing techniques -- which direct victims to fake Web sites -- because the voice-based attacks have not been as widely publicized.A new vishing scam involves sending text messages to cell phones, instructing victims to contact the fake online bank to renew their accounts, the IC3 said.Those who are unsure whether they have been targeted by this scam should look up the bank&#39;s phone number and call the bank directly, the IC3 advises.Operated in partnership with the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center, the IC3 is a clearing house for Internet crime complaints.
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The Trusted Computing Group plans to unveil a new specification to secure mobile devices at next month's CTIA show.
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WirelessWallet begins consumer trials of mobile search and payment via cell phones.
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(InfoWorld) - Banks and other companies switching their phone systems to VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol) are making themselves vulnerable to phishing attacks for which there are currently no effective detection or prevention tools, a security researcher warned Wednesday. "People will be able to penetrate bank networks and hijack their phone lines," said an independent security researcher, known by his pseudonym The Grugq, in an interview. VOIP is becoming increasingly common as companies and operators look to the technology to help cut costs, which makes them moreÂ vulnerable to attack, he said. The Groqg, who spoke this week at the Hack In The Box Security Conference (HITB) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, saidÂ VOIP phishing attacksÂ will emerge by the end of this year. The attacks will allow hackers to steal personal data, including credit card numbers and bank account information, and there is little security managers can do to stop them. "Theoretically, you phone up your bank and the customer service line has been taken over by hackers," The Grugq said. In this scenario, the customer would be asked by the hacker to enter personal banking information before being passed on to an actual bank customer-service representative. "There's no security technology out there that companies can deploy to fix this," The Grugq said, noting that existing intrusion-detection systems are not capable of detecting when a VOIP attack takes place. During his presentation at HITB, The Groqg announced the release of alpha code for SIPhallis, a tool he wrote that allows security managers to manage SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) VOIP packets on their networks. "It gives you an interface to create and send VOIP packets; it also allows monitoring of VOIP packets," he said, adding the application can also be used to inject packets into a VOIP stream. Existing softphone or PBX software is all that is required for hackers to launch a VOIP attack, The Grugq said. HITB runs through Thursday, Sept. 21.
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Upgraded version of this encryption app adds plenty of tools for networked users.
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Putting some truth the rampant rumors that Google was getting into the instant messaging business, the company has announced the beta test release of Google SMS, the mobile phone equivalent of IM.
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T-Mobile USA today released a new secure encrypted Connection Manager that will enable users to login to any of the 4700 nationwide HotSpot wireless networks.