All things Tech!

[*Anya*]

Apple confirmed a longtime conspiracy theory — and gave regular customers a big reason to distrust it

Troy Wolverton December 20, 2017

Apple on Wednesday admitted it had been secretly throttling the performance of older iPhones.

The admission outraged even some of the company’s biggest fans.

Customers have good reason to be distrustful of the company and to suspect its motives.

Apple has long inspired an almost religious devotion among customers and tech aficionados – but it just seriously undermined its fans’ faith and loyalty.

The company on Wednesday acknowledged what some people have long suspected: that it has been secretly stifling the performance of older iPhones.

Critics have accused the company in the past, based on anecdotal evidence, of purposely slowing phones to compel users to upgrade to the latest model. While Apple admitted to the practice on Wednesday, it sought to underscore that it had done so for a purely altruistic reason: to prevent older phones from shutting down unexpectedly.

The justification hasn’t mollified Apple’s outraged fans. If anything, the company’s statement has stoked the conspiracy theories, and for good reason.

Apple was caught red-handed: By the company’s own admission, it’s been throttling the performance of iPhones since last year.

Apple hasn’t explained why it didn’t disclose the practice until now, after GeekBench released charts based on its data that showed how older iPhones were not performing as quickly as they had when they launched.

Apple’s secrecy – a badge of honor when it comes to unveiling new products – is certain to encourage distrust in this situation. Apple comes across as an organization that was intentionally hiding something, something it acknowledged only when it was caught red-handed.

If Apple didn’t acknowledge that it was throttling older phones until one year after it started doing so, what else is the company not telling customers? Why should iPhone users believe the company’s explanation for why it’s throttling phones? And why should they believe that it only started doing that a year ago?

Such questions might sound like the ravings of conspiracy theorists. But in this case, the conspiracy mongers were proved right: Apple was slowing down their phones. And there are rational reasons to think the company may not be offering a full explanation for why.

The iPhone maker has a big reason to push customers to upgrade

The fact is that Apple has an incentive to push users to upgrade; it makes money selling new devices, after all. And the company has a history of artificially making older devices look inferior to new ones. The iPhone 4, for example was perfectly capable of running Siri, but Apple reserved that feature for the model that replaced it, the iPhone 4s. Likewise, the camera in the iPhone 3G was capable of shooting video, but Apple didn’t turn that feature on and instead made video recording the signature capability of its next device, the iPhone 3GS.

Planned obsolescence is a long-standing practice in the tech and broader manufacturing industries.

Apple may well be honest in explaining its motives for throttling phones and about the time frame when it started doing so. But many folks just aren’t going to believe that.

“For years, we’ve reassured people that no, Apple doesn’t secretly slow down their older iPhones to make them buy new ones,” the blogger and iPhone developer Marco Arment said in a tweet on Wednesday. He added in a follow-up Twitter post: “The reputation damage from secretly slowing down old iPhones, regardless of the reason, will likely linger for a decade.”

Whatever the company’s motives for throttling iPhones, it should have made clear long ago what it was doing, if only for public-relations reasons. If it had told users what it was doing when it introduced the throttling feature – or heck, even better, when it first started seriously considering building the feature into the iPhone’s operating system – it would have been able to shape the discussion and maybe even improve how the feature works.

Instead, it’s now drawing customers’ criticism, distrust, and ire. And it has no one to blame but itself.

https://www.businessinsider.nl/apple...onal=true&r=US

[homoe]

Originally Posted by *Anya*

Apple confirmed a longtime conspiracy theory — and gave regular customers a big reason to distrust it

Troy Wolverton December 20, 2017

Apple on Wednesday admitted it had been secretly throttling the performance of older iPhones.

The admission outraged even some of the company’s biggest fans.

Customers have good reason to be distrustful of the company and to suspect its motives.

Apple has long inspired an almost religious devotion among customers and tech aficionados – but it just seriously undermined its fans’ faith and loyalty.

The company on Wednesday acknowledged what some people have long suspected: that it has been secretly stifling the performance of older iPhones.

Critics have accused the company in the past, based on anecdotal evidence, of purposely slowing phones to compel users to upgrade to the latest model. While Apple admitted to the practice on Wednesday, it sought to underscore that it had done so for a purely altruistic reason: to prevent older phones from shutting down unexpectedly.

The justification hasn’t mollified Apple’s outraged fans. If anything, the company’s statement has stoked the conspiracy theories, and for good reason.

Apple was caught red-handed: By the company’s own admission, it’s been throttling the performance of iPhones since last year.

Apple hasn’t explained why it didn’t disclose the practice until now, after GeekBench released charts based on its data that showed how older iPhones were not performing as quickly as they had when they launched.

Apple’s secrecy – a badge of honor when it comes to unveiling new products – is certain to encourage distrust in this situation. Apple comes across as an organization that was intentionally hiding something, something it acknowledged only when it was caught red-handed.

If Apple didn’t acknowledge that it was throttling older phones until one year after it started doing so, what else is the company not telling customers? Why should iPhone users believe the company’s explanation for why it’s throttling phones? And why should they believe that it only started doing that a year ago?

Such questions might sound like the ravings of conspiracy theorists. But in this case, the conspiracy mongers were proved right: Apple was slowing down their phones. And there are rational reasons to think the company may not be offering a full explanation for why.

The iPhone maker has a big reason to push customers to upgrade

The fact is that Apple has an incentive to push users to upgrade; it makes money selling new devices, after all. And the company has a history of artificially making older devices look inferior to new ones. The iPhone 4, for example was perfectly capable of running Siri, but Apple reserved that feature for the model that replaced it, the iPhone 4s. Likewise, the camera in the iPhone 3G was capable of shooting video, but Apple didn’t turn that feature on and instead made video recording the signature capability of its next device, the iPhone 3GS.

Planned obsolescence is a long-standing practice in the tech and broader manufacturing industries.

Apple may well be honest in explaining its motives for throttling phones and about the time frame when it started doing so. But many folks just aren’t going to believe that.

“For years, we’ve reassured people that no, Apple doesn’t secretly slow down their older iPhones to make them buy new ones,” the blogger and iPhone developer Marco Arment said in a tweet on Wednesday. He added in a follow-up Twitter post: “The reputation damage from secretly slowing down old iPhones, regardless of the reason, will likely linger for a decade.”

Whatever the company’s motives for throttling iPhones, it should have made clear long ago what it was doing, if only for public-relations reasons. If it had told users what it was doing when it introduced the throttling feature – or heck, even better, when it first started seriously considering building the feature into the iPhone’s operating system – it would have been able to shape the discussion and maybe even improve how the feature works.

Instead, it’s now drawing customers’ criticism, distrust, and ire. And it has no one to blame but itself.

https://www.businessinsider.nl/apple...onal=true&r=US

I just heard about this this morning and it so pissed me off! I think the next time a new Iphone comes along (which it will) people should boycott! The only thing these corporations care about are profits, and the only leverage we as consumers have to show our displeasure is holding our $$$$$.

[PlatinumPearl]

I have known this for quite some time now. I was one of the first iPhone users and after 2 years was forced to upgrade. I could no longer use my phone because I couldn't update to the latest OS. I was missing phone calls and text messages were being significantly delayed and anything I did on my phone took a considerable amount of time until finally I couldn't do anything without receiving a constant pesky message that I had to upgrade to the latest OS. Frustrated and stressed to the max I went to the mall and the mobile guys told me all about how so many other iPhone users came in and gave them grief. I upgraded and went team android and never regretted my decision. I love that I have so much control over my phone. I am due for an upgrade which will be to another Android phone.

As for conspiracies I won't get into conspiracy theories in this post...... I think people need to start opening their eyes to how this world really works.....

Team Android.

[*Anya*]

TECHNOLOGY

Researchers Discover Two Major Flaws in the World’s Computers

By CADE METZ and NICOLE PERLROTH JAN. 3, 2018

SAN FRANCISCO — Computer security experts have discovered two major security flaws in the microprocessors inside nearly all of the world’s computers.

The two problems, called Meltdown and Spectre, could allow hackers to steal the entire memory contents of computers, including mobile devices, personal computers, servers running in so-called cloud computer networks.

There is no easy fix for Spectre, which could require redesigning the processors, according to researchers. As for Meltdown, the software patch needed to fix the issue could slow down computers by as much as 30 percent — an ugly situation for people used to fast downloads from their favorite online services.

“What actually happens with these flaws is different and what you do about them is different,” said Paul Kocher, a researcher who was an integral member of a team of researchers at big tech companies like Google and Rambus and in academia that discovered the flaws.

Meltdown is a particular problem for the cloud computing services run by the likes of Amazon, Google and Microsoft. By Wednesday evening, Google and Microsoft said they had updated their systems to deal with the flaw.

Amazon told customers of its Amazon Web Services cloud service that the vulnerability “has existed for more than 20 years in modern processor architectures.” It said that it had already protected nearly all instances of A.W.S. and that customers must update their own software running atop the service as well.

To take advantage of Meltdown, hackers could rent space on a cloud service, just like any other business customer. Once they were on the service, the flaw would allow them to grab information like passwords from other customers.

That is a major threat to the way cloud-computing systems operate. Cloud services often share machines among many customers — and it is uncommon for, say, a single server to be dedicated to a single customer. Though security tools and protocols are intended to separate customers’ data, the recently discovered chip flaws would allow bad actors to circumvent these protections.

The personal computers used by consumers are also vulnerable, but hackers would have to first find a way to run software on a personal computer before they could gain access to information elsewhere on the machine. There are various ways that could happen: Attackers could fool consumers into downloading software in an email, from an app store or visiting an infected website.

According to the researchers, the Meltdown flaw affects virtually every microprocessor made by Intel, which makes chips used in more than 90 percent of the computer servers that underpin the internet and private business operations.

Customers of Microsoft, the maker of the Windows operating system, will need to install an update from the company to fix the problem. The worldwide community of coders that oversees the open-source Linux operating system, which runs about 30 percent of computer servers worldwide, has already posted a patch for that operating system. Apple had a partial fix for the problem and is expected to have an additional update.

The software patches could slow the performance of affected machines by 20 to 30 percent, said Andres Freund, an independent software developer who has tested the new Linux code. The researchers who discovered the flaws voiced similar concerns.

This could become a significant issue for any business running websites and other software through cloud systems.

There is no evidence that hackers have taken advantage of the vulnerability — at least not yet. But once a security problem becomes public, computer users take a big risk if they do not install a patch to fix the issue. A so-called ransomware attack that hit computers around the world last year took advantage of machines that had not received a patch for a flaw in Windows software.

The other flaw, Spectre, affects most processors now in use, though the researchers believe this flaw is more difficult to exploit. There is no known fix for it, and it is not clear what chip makers like Intel will do to address the problem.

It is not certain what the disclosure of the chip issues will do to Intel’s business, and on Wednesday, the Silicon Valley giant played down the problem.

“Intel and other technology companies have been made aware of new security research describing software analysis methods that, when used for malicious purposes, have the potential to improperly gather sensitive data from computing devices that are operating as designed,” the company said in a statement. “Intel believes these exploits do not have the potential to corrupt, modify or delete data.”

The researchers who discovered the flaws notified various affected companies. And as is common practice when such problems are identified, they tried to keep the news from the public so hackers could not take advantage of the flaws before they were fixed.

But on Tuesday, news of the Meltdown flaw began to leak through various news websites, including The Register, a science and technology site based in Britain. So the researchers released papers describing the flaws on Wednesday, much earlier than they had planned.

For now, computer security experts are using a patch, called Kaiser, that was originally discovered by researchers at the Graz University of Technology in Austria to respond to a separate issue last year.

Spectre will be much more difficult to deal with than issuing a software patch.

The Meltdown flaw is specific to Intel, but Spectre is a flaw in design that has been used by many processor manufacturers for decades. It affects virtually all microprocessors on the market, including chips made by AMD that share Intel’s design and the many chips based on designs from ARM in Britain.

Spectre is a problem in the fundamental way processors are designed, and the threat from Spectre is “going to live with us for decades,” said Mr. Kocher, the president and chief scientist at Cryptography Research, a division of Rambus.

“Whereas Meltdown is an urgent crisis, Spectre affects virtually all fast microprocessors,” Mr. Kocher said. An emphasis on speed while designing new chips has left them vulnerable to security issues, he said.

“We’ve really screwed up,” Mr. Kocher said. “There’s been this desire from the industry to be as fast as possible and secure at the same time. Spectre shows that you cannot have both.”

The Meltdown flaw was discovered by Jann Horn, a security analyst at a Google-run security research group called Google Project Zero, last June. Mr. Horn was the first to alert Intel. The chip giant then heard from other researchers who had also discovered the flaw, including Werner Haas and Thomas Prescher, at Cyberus Technology; and Daniel Gruss, Moritz Lipp, Stefan Mangard and Michael Schwarz at the Graz University of Technology.

The researchers had been working through the Christmas holiday on a patch, and coordinating with companies like Microsoft and Amazon to roll out the fix.

The second flaw, Spectre, was also discovered by Mr. Horn at Google and separately by Mr. Kocher, in coordination with Mike Hamburg at Rambus, Mr. Lipp at Graz University and Yuval Yarom at the University of Adelaide in Australia.

A fix may not be available for Spectre until a new generation of chips hit the market.

“This will be a festering problem over hardware life cycles. It’s not going to change tomorrow or the day after,” Mr. Kocher said. “It’s going to take a while.”


A version of this article appears in print on January 4, 2018, on Page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: 2 Big Flaws Discovered In Nearly All Computers.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/b...pgtype=article

[Esme nha Maire]

There's also this article (aimed at IT bods) at The Register on this, too: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01...u_design_flaw/ Main extra thing to take away is that it is NOT just Windows machines that are affected - Apple and Linux kit may be affected too.

The nasty-tasty icing on the already unpleasant cake, for me, is that despite moden comuters having CPUs running hundreds of times faster than the ones I first used, the durned OS's never seem to boot any faster. And now they;re going to have to be slowed further due to a cock-up on basic security design features in hardware? Grrrr....

[*Anya*]

Yes, the article below mentioned: "The worldwide community of coders that oversees the open-source Linux operating system, which runs about 30 percent of computer servers worldwide, has already posted a patch for that operating system. Apple had a partial fix for the problem and is expected to have an additional update".

What help is a partial fix?

Originally Posted by Esme nha Maire

There's also this article (aimed at IT bods) at The Register on this, too: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01...u_design_flaw/ Main extra thing to take away is that it is NOT just Windows machines that are affected - Apple and Linux kit may be affected too.

The nasty-tasty icing on the already unpleasant cake, for me, is that despite moden comuters having CPUs running hundreds of times faster than the ones I first used, the durned OS's never seem to boot any faster. And now they;re going to have to be slowed further due to a cock-up on basic security design features in hardware? Grrrr....

[*Anya*]

Link to long article from ars technica with responses from Intel, Microsoft, Apple re: meltdown and spectre.

By Peter Bright January 5, 2018


https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018...oing-about-it/