Google Looks to Kill Passwords, but Experts say Not So Fast

While passwords security is not ironclad, experts say they need to be in the mix with device-assisted authentication as an additional layer.

Google's security team is experimenting with ways to replace passwords for logging in to websites. But while acknowledging passwords alone are no longer enough to protect users, security experts believe they shouldn't be tossed.
Google is testing device-assisted security as a possible password replacement. Ideas include a small Yubico crytographic card that could be inserted into a USB reader to log in to a Google account or some other supporting website, Wired.com reported Friday. Such a mechanism would have to be supported by the Web browser.
Other authentication options might include someone tapping their smartphone or a smartcard-embedded finger ring on a computer. Details on Google's thinking are contained in a research paper that is scheduled to appear this month in the engineering journal IEEE Security & Privacy 

Magazine. Google Vice President of Security Eric Grosse and engineer Mayank Upadhyay wrote the paper.
Google was not able to make Grosse or Upadhyay available for an interview, but said in an emailed statement, "We're focused on making authentication more secure, and yet easier to manage. We believe experiments like these can help make login systems better."
The diminishing effectiveness of passwords is seen everyday by the amount of spam spewing from hacked Web mail and social media accounts, such as Facebook and Twitter. Consulting firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu predicts that more than 90% of passwords generated this year would take only seconds for a hacker to crack.
While passwords fail to provide ironclad security, experts believe they need to be part of the mix with device-assisted authentication as an additional layer.
"The cell phone is the weakest option, but any sort of two-factor authentication is a serious improvement," said Chester Wisniewski, security adviser for Sophos. "It is important for people to know that this doesn't replace passwords, it simply augments them."
The general principle for strong authentication advises using something you know, something you have and something you are, such as a password, a USB token and a fingerprint reader, respectively. While expecting consumers to have all three would be impractical, having a couple of them would be much stronger security than having just one.
"The notion of authentication strategy is if you start mixing these things, then it's a lot harder for a bad guy to break the system," said Eve Maler, an analyst with Forrester Research.
New layers of authentication are also being invented, Maler said. For example, when a person makes a purchase through PayPal, the online payment site will check the authenticity of the request through algorithms that consider multiple factors, such as the IP address of the computer, what's being purchased and for how much.
"They're silently observing your behavior," Maler said.
Such techniques can go a long way toward augmenting passwords, Maler said. However, users will still have to choose much stronger passwords than they do today. In its 2012 list of worst passwords used on the Web, SplashData found the top three passwords to be "password," "123456" and "12345678."
The use of any device in authentication opens up the possibility of having it lost or stolen. One answer would be biometrics to established the identity of the user. "There needs to be an accompanying mechanism to ensure that your device can only be used by you," said Dan Olds, an analyst with the Gabriel Consulting Group.
How far Google can take its ideas toward widespread adoption remains to be seen. But recognizing and trying to solve the password problem is a step in the right direction.
"It's about time we got serious about replacing passwords," said Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle. "Maybe news of Google's experiments will encourage other vendors to look seriously at alternatives."

Apple's Bigger 4.8in 'iPhone Math' Could Look Like This

Russian site has created renderings to illustrate what an iPhone with a 4.8in display might look like.

 

This week, reports emerged from China suggesting that Apple is preparing to launch three new iPhones this year, including a bigger device with a 4.8in display, dubbed 'iPhone math'. The bigger iPhone could compete with rival smartphone makers' 'phablet' devices, such as Samsung's Galaxy Note range. The speculation has led Russian website Apple Digger to create a 3D rendering of the so-called 'iPhone math', to illustrate what the device could look like.
Apple Digger's images show an iPhone with a design similar to the iPhone 5, with an aluminium back and central front-facing camera. The site expects that Apple would achieve the bigger screen by making the iPhone taller, as it did with the iPhone 5. This would allow a sixth row of icons to be displayed on the home screen.
Some rumours have suggested that Apple's next iPhone will be available in a variety of colours, so, in addition to the current black & slate and white & silver models, Apple Digger's concept also shows a green, blue and pink iPhone, taking design cues from the latest iPod touch.


While most, including us, believe that the name 'iPhone math' could be a codename or a mistranslation, the possibility of a larger iPhone cannot yet be ruled out completely.
In fact, this isn't the first we've heard about the possibility of an iPhone with a bigger display. Earlier this month, Topeka Capitals analyst Brian White said that the next iPhone could come in three sizes, including a smaller and larger model. Before that, Jefferies analyst Peter Misek had also predicted a bigger iPhone, after "several prototypes" were spotted "floating around".
However, Digitimes said yesterday that its sources believe the bigger iPhone won't arrive until 2014.
Do you think Apple should launch a bigger iPhone? Let us know in the comments section below or on Twitter.

You can watch the 'iPhone math' video created by Apple Digger below:

‘Give a personalised-saving coin to every child’

Each week a global thinker from the worlds of philosophy, science, psychology or the arts is given a minute to put forward a radical, inspiring or controversial idea – no matter how improbable – that they believe would change the world.

This week Oxford University anthropologist Catherine Dolan proposes a hi-tech solution to tackle debt and financial exclusion.
“My ideas if for a barcoded, payback savings coin.
Every child born in the world will be given a payback savings coin worth one dollar with a barcode and a sample of the child’s DNA embedded in it.
The coin is currency and a child can choose to spend it or save it. If the child saves it until he or she is 18 they would be able to automatically exchange it for a working bank account, identified by the barcode. The bank account would hold all the interest that accrued on the child’s dollar since birth and the child would be the only one authorised to withdraw the money.
Importantly, the scheme would be funded by the fines levied against banks involved in unscrupulous practices, whose name would be imprinted on the each coin.
This plan has at least three benefits.
One, it would teach all children the benefits of saving and remove the barriers that the poorest everywhere face because they can’t open a bank account.
Two, it would provide women who are often economically marginalised with their own source of income.
And three, it would serve as a powerful reminder to financial institutions that ethics count.”

You can listen to Catherine discuss her idea with angel investor Sherry Coutu and leading coffee entrepreneur Andrew Rugmore on the BBC World Service programme The Forum, where you can also download more 60-second ideas.

If you have a 60-second idea or would like to comment on this story, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter.

Touch-sensitive video-screen floor is in step with you

 
 
A prototype floor that senses your every step and displays interactive video could one day bring strange sights and new possibilities into your home

GLANCE down at the interactive floor in Patrick Baudisch's lab and you will not see your reflection in the glass. Instead, you will find your computer-generated doppelgänger, wearing a facsimile of your clothes, which walks and moves just like you do. It seems to be stuck to your feet (see picture).

This mirror world is one of the applications Baudisch and his colleagues at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany, developed after building an 8-square-metre pressure-sensing floor that can recognise people by their weight, track their movements and display video for them to interact with. The idea is that the pressure-sensing technology could lead to a raft of ways to control objects in your home, play games, or assist older or disabled people.

For instance, to play a version of indoor soccer, the floor generates a CGI football that can be kicked about by the people in the room. Or if someone sits on the floor, the system recognises who they are by their precise weight and flips a TV on to their favourite channel. Similarly, an elderly person's activity levels could be monitored.

Developed with funding from Microsoft Research in Cambridge, UK, Baudisch envisions the device as a forerunner to pressure-sensing floors in people's homes. His team will present the invention, dubbed GravitySpace, at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Paris, France, in April.

The team's prototype consists of a slab of 6.4-centimetre-thick glass installed in a hole cut into a standard floor, and an infrared camera and high-resolution video projector in the room below that tracks footprints and beams video up onto the glass.

Infrared LEDs surround the flooring, which is also coated with a rubbery, pressure-sensitive film. A footstep on the surface makes the film interfere with the infrared light, creating an image of the footprint that is captured by the camera below. "This pressure sensor is of such high resolution that the floor can recognise anything from shoe prints to fabric textures to someone's knees," says Baudisch.

Software running on a linked computer recognises what those objects are doing and generates relevant video in response. In the football app, for example, the floor measures the rate of change of pressure on the non-kicking foot to determine when you are kicking - the floor cannot "see" the foot that is in the air - and the ball is moved in response.

"It's an extremely exciting research result," says Ken Perlin, at New York University. "The future of computer interfaces is to become more sensitive to people's needs. A floor that understands where you are and what you are doing is a logical step in that direction."

Digital information can be stored in DNA - study

It can store the information from a million CDs in a space no bigger than your little finger, and could keep it safe for centuries.Is this some new electronic gadget? Nope. It's DNA.
The genetic material has long held all the information needed to make plants and animals, and now some scientists are saying it could help handle the growing storage needs of today's information society.
Researchers reported Wednesday that they had stored all 154 Shakespeare sonnets, a photo, a scientific paper, and a 26-second sound clip from Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. That all fit in a barely visible bit of DNA in a test tube.
The process involved converting the ones and zeroes of digital information into the four-letter alphabet of DNA code. That code was used to create strands of synthetic DNA. Then machines "read" the DNA molecules and recovered the encoded information. That reading process took two weeks, but technological advances are driving that time down, said Ewan Birney of the European Bioinformatics Institute in Hinxton, England. He's an author of a report published online by the journal Nature.
DNA could be useful for keeping huge amounts of information that must be kept for a long time but not retrieved very often, the researchers said. Storing the DNA would be relatively simple, they said: Just put it in a cold, dry and dark place and leave it alone.
The technology might work in the near term for large archives that have to be kept safe for centuries, like national historical records or huge library holdings, said study co-author Nick Goldman of the institute. Maybe in a decade it could become feasible for consumers to store information they want to have around in 50 years, like wedding photos or videos for future grandchildren, Goldman said in an email.
The researchers said they have no intention of putting storage DNA into a living thing, and that it couldn't accidentally become part of the genetic machinery of a living thing because of its coding scheme.
Sriram Kosuri, a Harvard researcher who co-authored a similar report last September, said both papers show advantages of DNA for long-term storage. But because of its technical limitations, "it's not going to replace your hard drive," he said.
Kosuri's co-author, Harvard DNA expert George Church, said the technology could let a person store all of Wikipedia on a fingertip, and all the world's information now stored on disk drives could fit in the palm of the hand.

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Battle of the bulge - Micromax A100 vs Spice Mi-500 vs iBall Andi 5c

Kunal Dua, November 01, 2012

A world where mobile phones are getting bigger and tablets are getting smaller has seen the rise of a new category of devices. At first considered Frankensteins of the mobile computing world, phablets became cool with Samsung Galaxy Note's success.

Recently, we've seen a bunch of new devices trying to make a mark by appealing to those looking for large screen devices, minus the stylus. We look at three such devices that attempt to woo the budget-conscious - the iBall Andi 5c, Micromax Superfone Canvas A100 and Spice Stellar Horizon Mi-500.

Build/ Design
The Micromax A100 is a clear winner in this department. The curves of the A100 fit well in hand, thanks, no doubt, to the slightly smaller profile compared to the other two devices. While none of the three devices scream "cheap plastic" (the Spice comes the closest), the overall finish of the Micromax ensures it stands out from the rest.

The Micromax A 100, like the iBall Andi, has the power button on the right, which makes it rather convenient to use for a large handset. We didn't find the top placement of the power button on the Spice particularly handy, given the length of the device. The Spice handset has the volume rocker on the right, another odd choice, compared to the Micromax and the iBall Andi, which have it on the left. All three devices come with a Micro-USB port - the Micromax has it at the bottom, while the other two at the top, next to the audio jack.

The iBall Andi is the only device that comes with a physical home button, flanked on either side by capacitive touch Menu and Back buttons. The Spice goes all capacitive touch with same button options, whereas the Micromax A100 goes the all-virtual route, with Back, Home and Recent Apps button appearing at the bottom of the screen at all times (except when you play full-screen video). Picking any one of the three based on style of buttons is down to personal preference.

At 168 grams the Micromax A100 is no featherweight, but comfortably lighter than its two competitors. Overall, it's our pick in this section.

Winner: Micromax A100

Hardware/ Performance
The Spice Mi-500 packs a dual-core 1GHz processor that gives it a clear advantage over the other two phones that are powered by single-core processors. The benchmarks as well as day-to-day usage observations were in line with this fact.

While none of the phones suffer from any lag during typical operations, the Spice does a great job of handling everything thrown at it. Though all three phones ship with 512MB RAM, the Spice Mi-500 required fewer reloads of the page when going back to a tab while having multiple tabs open. The Spice is also faster at loading heavy web pages. The touch performance of all three phones is at par.

All three phones are dual-SIM standby, which of course means while you are making a call on one number, the other will appear unreachable.

Winner: Spice Stellar Horizon Mi-500

Display
The Spice and the iBall handsets feature identical 12.7-cms displays with WVGA resolution (480x800). Micromax chose to cram in a few more vertical pixels, going with a FWVGA 480x854 12.5-cm display, a resolution seen in some of the recent Xperia smartphones, amongst others.

The extra pixels ensure that the A100 can boast of a 16:9 display (great for watching videos), compared to 4:3 resolutions that the other two offer. Further, since the A100 comes with virtual buttons, the extra vertical pixels ensure that the effective available pixels (480x782) aren't reduced considerably.

As far as display quality and colour reproduction are concerned, the Micromax A100 fares the best. Images appear sharp and crisp (but not artificially so), and the viewing angles are pretty good. The iBall Andi display is next in line by doing an average job on all fronts. The Spice Mi-500 is let down badly by a poor display - the colours appear washed-up and viewing angles are extremely limited.

Winner: Micromax A100

Software
All three handsets come with pretty much stock Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, though Spice has applied a few tweaks of its own. Each handset comes with a few bundled apps as well, but nothing's that likely to influence your buying decision one-way or the other.

Camera
All three phones come with identical 5-megapixel rear shooters with autofocus and LED flash but the performance is visibly different. While the Spice and the Micromax cameras do a pretty decent job, the iBall Andi camera is a disappointment.

The Spice beats the Micromax in colour reproduction and image quality outdoors, while the Micromax just about edges the Spice under low-light conditions (both with, and without flash).

However, there's a flaw with the Micromax A100 camera. All images clicked with the phone in landscape mode appear upside down. Of course that's easily fixable by rotating the images, but it's a big annoyance no doubt - not everyone's familiar with batch-editing tools for photographs, and we can imagine poor souls having to rotate each image manually. Thankfully, the bug is limited to images only, since videos appeared upright, no matter how the phone is held.

Strangely, Micromax refused to acknowledge the problem- even though there are multiple reports of this problem out there - and tried to pass it off as a "bug with ICS"!

Winner: Spice Stellar Horizon Mi-500

Battery
Big screen need big batteries, and all three phones deliver, with the smallest battery in the lot being the Micromax, that has a 2,000mAh one. However, it does a good job of keeping up with the Spice that has a 2,400mAh battery, and both the phones had pretty similar battery usage patterns in day-to-day tasks. The iBall Andi guzzled up its 2,300mAh battery faster than the other two.

Tie: Spice Stellar Horizon Mi-500 and Micromax A100

Verdict
If you've made it this far, it would be pretty clear that it's between the Spice Stellar Horizon Mi-500 and the Micromax A100 for the overall winner. While the Spice performs better and has a slightly better camera, the Micromax is better looking; a more natural fit in the hand and has a better display. There's nothing to choose between the two as far as the software and the battery life are concerned.

Let's throw the prices into the mix. The Spice Stellar Horizon Mi-500 retails for Rs. 12,499 while the Micromax A100 is available for Rs. 9,799. So is it worth spending 2700 rupees extra to get a phone that offers a better multi-tasking experience but an average display? If you can afford it and find that the Spice handset snuggles into your hand, go for it.

If you prefer something that's lighter on the pocket, as well as your hand, has a better display and don't mind a little bit of a performance hit, pick up the Micromax A100. If you do, also get IrfanView for Windows or an Automator action on Mac to flip those inverted camera photographs in a batch - until Micromax wakes up and fixes the problem.


For more pics click here

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MacBook Pro with Retina display: First look

When I was 13, I was sent to the optician for the first time, and came home with glasses. Suddenly, the world was sharp all around me. I was surprised by the crisp lines of the tree branches against the sky. It was news to me that I was near-sighted, because I had been used to seeing the world in a blur.Apple Inc. sells a similar epiphany, starting this week, in the shape of a notebook computer. One of its new MacBook Pro models has a "Retina" display, a screen that packs four times as many pixels as a standard display.
Why is this a big deal? It's not easy to describe in print, but a look at the screen tells the whole story. It's like putting on glasses and realizing you're nearsighted. Much like the screen on the latest iPad, the new display makes all other screens look dull and fuzzy.
Even the icons on the Mac screen look so much more detailed. On the calendar icon, you can make out the dots for the individual dates. On the Address book, you suddenly see that the "at" sign on the cover is embossed.
High-resolution photos look really, really sharp. Low-resolution photos, like those on Facebook, are revealed as mushy and indistinct.
With a resolution of 2,880 by 1,800 pixels, the Retina screen can show every pixel in a five-megapixel shot, all at once. It has more pixels than a high-definition TV set - 2.5 times as many.
As you might expect, this epiphany doesn't come cheap. The MacBook Pro with Retina display starts at $2,199.
That's nearly three times more than the average consumer spends on a laptop, but it isn't a bad price for the video editors, photographers and graphic designers who are the intended buyers.
In fact, the new MacBook looks like a steal compared to a regular, non-high-resolution MacBook with a screen of the same size, at 15.4 inches diagonally. When a regular MacBook is upgraded with the 8 gigabytes of RAM and 256-gigabyte flash-based "hard drive" that come standard on the Retina model, it costs $2,399. So you're basically saving $200 by getting the better screen.
There are a few other differences between the Retina MacBook and the regular one. It's thinner, lighter and lacks a DVD drive. It even lacks an Ethernet port for Internet connections. This was a problem as soon as I unpacked the unit, because getting on the office Wi-Fi can be troublesome. Apple sells a $29 Ethernet adapter that plugs into one of the two high-speed, multi-purpose "Thunderbolt" ports. It would have been a nice gesture for them to include one in the box.
If the stripped-down features of the MacBook Pro remind you of something, it's probably the MacBook Air, that ultra-slim laptop Apple first released in 2008. Many who saw it then recognized it as the future of laptops, and the new MacBook Pro is the proof of that prophecy - in many ways, it's a super-sized MacBook Air.
The MacBook Pro is just 0.7 inches thick. That's the same as the Air at its thickest point, but unlike the Air, the Pro doesn't taper into a wedge shape. It's the same thickness all the way through, making it feel a lot more substantial than the Air.
The screen is partly to blame for this. That's because the sharper screen is also darker. To get it looking as bright as other laptops, Apple has to pump more light through it. More light takes more power. To get the Pro to last for about seven hours of work (a claim I did not have time to test), Apple had to increase the size of the battery. It takes up nearly half of the internal space of the laptop.
I suspect the Retina screen is coming first to a relatively big MacBook because its chassis provided Apple with the space to expand the battery. In a MacBook Air, there's no space for a bigger battery, so a Retina screen would have meant shorter battery life. That would have been a tough sell.
I hope Apple or another manufacturer figures out a way around the battery issue, because I want to see this type of display in every device. Of course, desktop displays aren't limited by power consumption in the same way, so we can hope to see super-resolution monitors soon. It's time for our computers to give us glasses.

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