TechDistortion

Patent Bile Part 5: Apple Now Allowed to Fight The Troll

As I’ve discussed previously Apple filed to intervene in the Lodsys Patent Troll attack on 3rd party Apple developers. As I predicted the courts have allowed Apple to do just that - it only took 9 months or so. Of course the actual verdicts in the lawsuit will still take a long time to be resolved and this is just another step. App Developers who are currently under attack from Lodsys can at least breathe a little easier now knowing that Apple is at the crease and ready to ready to bat.

OSX.Flashback Too Much Trust

It was a rush to get out the door before a long-awaited holiday - or at least that’s what I’ve told myself. In the end there’s no excuse - I’m a seasoned computer user with over two decades of experience and I’ve run Windows and Macs and been infected with many viruses and more recently malware during that time. Sometimes I feel a bit stupid when I recall contracting malware by my own hand and certainly back in the days when I was running Windows XP as my primary operating system, there were plenty of bad things out there to disrupt my otherwise nice clean computing machine. Then I switched to Macs, lured by their reliability, simplicity and the “fact” that they didn’t get viruses.

Of course, I knew then as I do now that Macs are still vulnerable to attack, but with keeping my Mac up to date with software updates from Apple and not just clicking on anything that just looked out of place asking for my username and password, I ran my Macs without an anti-virus scanner for years but enough of the flashbacks to yesteryear.

Today I returned from my holiday, having read all about the issues when away on my iPad the very first thing I did was run a few command line entries in Terminal. To my initial joy, nothing showed up - despite my recollection of running a Flash Installer just prior to leaving on my holiday. I proceeded to then download FlashbackChecker and ran it - also coming up clean. I then proceeded to one last website to ensure that I was clean and checked the machine UUID in its database of known accessed computers to find the following:

Oh dear. To be sure it wasn’t just trying to get my money or something similar, I tried on the other Mac in the household with this result:

Indeed my first Mac had been infected, however its last check in was days prior and it ran the whole time I was away. What I did do during my holiday (as I am a geek after all) was to use LogMeIn to access my Mac from my iPad and ran my Software Updates which installed java Java update 002.

Looking for more answers as the plot thickened I proceeded to download ClamXAV the freeware anti-virus scanner for the Mac and scanned my boot volume and it returned this result:

I proceeded to delete the file and upon a reboot was able to empty the trash. A rescan of my Mac came up clean.

So what happened? The facts seemed to suggest that I was infected but the Apple update removed or at least disabled the infection. Alternatively the pre-installer detected Xcode on my system and self-deleted. In either case a remnant of the infection was the .null file that I was able to remove without too much trouble. Nothing on my Mac was damaged and everything is backed up and whilst my Mac may be been used as a part of a BotNet for a brief period, no harm was done: so far as I know.

The Mac is a very secure operating system, however it’s not virus/malware proof as this illustrates. The root of the problem seems to be that the Apple-authored Java runtime had a known issue that was patched already by Sun Microsystems (the originators of Java that maintain their own runtime for other operating systems) but Apple had lagged behind some six weeks before it released a patch for the same issue. Flashback had been around for months previously (back in September, 2011 it’s first incarnation was first detected) however it was not until recently that a version requiring no username or password was in the wild and the unpatched systems were waiting to be taken.

Many sites have indicated that the best approach is to disable Java. Certainly this will plug this specific hole, but it won’t fix anything else. People running Lion don’t even have Java installed by default it must be separately downloaded from Apple and this would only occur IF the user needed to use it for some reason. Disabling it would seem counter-productive therefore since the user clearly needed it at some point and will likely need it again - if not even regularly.

The simplest take-aways from this experience are two things: 1) A message to Apple to take malware threats more seriously and work faster to patch issues they become aware of and 2) users should have some basic AV Scanner - not running in the background necessarily but at least scheduled to do a weekly scan just in case.

It’s worth mentioning that ClamXAV found two other spoofing emails in my history but that’s all - neither of which sucked me into clicking their embedded links. The point is that for an installation that’s as old as Lion (approaching a year shortly) this was the only real issue found.

In short, I placed too much trust in OSX and the Mac. Lesson learned: the hackers are watching.

The 'New' iPad Doesn't Work on 4G in Australia, OKAY?

As I noted a few weeks ago after the Apple announcement, the new iPad (aka iPad 3, iPad HD) does not work with the WiMAX, nor does it work with LTE on the only frequency LTE is currently deployed on in Australia (1800MHz, or 1.8GHz if you prefer) by Telstra.

It is quite disappointing that Apple are letting AT&Ts assertions that non-LTE networks have “4G Speeds” that draws grumbles and teeth grinding in the  USA, however in other parts of the world where false advertising is taken seriously, Apple have now found themselves in rather warm water. (Perhaps not Hot Water, just yet…)

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has sought orders against Apple by filing an application with the Melbourne Federal Court on the 28th of March, 2012. In it they claim that Apple has contravened “…sections 18, 29(1)(a), 29(1)(g) and 33 of the ACL…” which stands for the Australian Consumer Law.

Every Australian knows what the ACCC is and what they do, but for those that don’t, read this from their website. In short, they police and enforce the old Trade Practices Act (recently renamed to the Competition and Consumer Act) to ensure businesses operate as fairly as possible with consumers (Okay, so that’s a big simplification but that’s the gist of it) on behalf of the consumers of Australia.

The sections they call out in the ACL are linked above but are reproduced here for your convenience:

• 18: Misleading or deceptive conduct: (1)  A person must not, in trade or commerce, engage in conduct that is misleading or deceptive or is likely to mislead or deceive.
• 29: False or misleading representations about goods or services: (1)  A person must not, in trade or commerce, in connection with the supply or possible supply of goods or services or in connection with the promotion by any means of the supply or use of goods or services:  (a)  make a false or misleading representation that goods are of a particular standard, quality, value, grade, composition, style or model or have had a particular history or particular previous use; or (g)  make a false or misleading representation that goods or services have sponsorship, approval, performance characteristics, accessories, uses or benefits.
• 33: Misleading conduct as to the nature etc. of goods: A person must not, in trade or commerce, engage in conduct that is liable to mislead the public as to the nature, the manufacturing process, the characteristics, the suitability for their purpose or the quantity of any goods. Note: A pecuniary penalty may be imposed for a contravention of this section.

So what DID Apple do to set this off? Their Australian Website on the 22nd of March, 2012 read like this (cached) (thanks to Google for caching it) and in PDF in case the cache disappears.

Let’s take stock now: Apple was originally advertising the new iPad as having a 4G version. The ACCC points out that the technical definition of a 4G network only fits networks in Australia that the new iPad can not connect to. Hence saying 4G capable is false advertising. It’s that simple. The problem is that technically savvy people like me and likely you (the reader) know enough to figure out that the new iPad doesn’t support Telstras 4G LTE network here in Australia. The problem the ACCC has is that most people, well, don’t know that. It’s as clear cut as it gets. Or is it?

Looking at what qualifies as 4G technically is, unfortunately, a bit fuzzy. Reading this ITU release from December 2010 is depressing to an engineer like me who likes boundaries and specificity. In particular, this very long sentence irks me: “…IMT-Advanced is considered as ‘4G’, although it is recognized that this term, while undefined, may also be applied to the forerunners of these technologies, LTE and WiMax, and to other evolved 3G technologies providing a substantial level of improvement in performance and capabilities with respect to the initial third generation systems now deployed.”

Translation: The ITU says that even though LTE and WiMax don’t technically meet the 4G requirements for speed, they’ll accept them because they’re close enough and hey, what the heck , let’s just say anything that’s faster than “initial 3G networks” that are in use already can call itself 4G.

The reality is that there is really only one requirement that anyone cares about in the 3G/4G argument and that is speed. The only carrier in Australia with a relatively well rolled out LTE 4G network is Telstra (just for you Dan, it used to be called Telecom Australia, they shortened it to Tel..stra… in the 80s) and on their website they tout Next G 3G as delivering 1.1Mbps to 20Mbps and their 4G LTE “Next G” as 2Mbps to 40Mbps. Clearly 4G is faster than 3G but the new iPad will not work at 4G speeds on Australian networks by Telstras own descriptions.

(Side note: Yes, I know that dual channel HSPA+ yields a peak of 42Mbps but those speeds are never realised in real-world scenarios okay? That plus Telstra makes no such claims for their devices either. Good now? Thanks)

Apple responded with this at the preliminary hearing. For what they’ve done already, taking a quick look at their website we see the original page (refer above links) looks a lot like the current US page (okay, no surprises there). Now take the current US URL and enter this URL: http://www.apple.com/au/ipad/4g/ to reach the Australian page as it currently stands. It redirects to this page with this URL: http://www.apple.com/au/ipad/ultrafast-wireless/.

So Apple not only removed all mention of 4G from the page, but also redirected the URL to one containing “ultrafast -wireless” instead. I’d call that pretty thorough and decisive. In addition they have offered refunds for any customers who believe they were mislead and will have signage at their stores informing customers that the device does not work on Australian 4G networks.

Where does that leave the court case then? Apple will argue that Telstra’s Next G 3G network approaches 4G speeds based on the ITU definition, however will very likely lose considering the local market does not recognise the Next G 3G network as a 4G network in any way. Whether that is technically correct or not (thanks to the ITU for screwing us all over with vague definitions of what 4G really is) it is unlikely Apple will escape unscathed.

There’s more to this saga coming in a few weeks when the trial goes ahead and Apple faces up to $1.1M AUD fines per contravention so this is big money and serious stuff. Make no mistake, the coin has flipped for Apple: once the underdog is now the biggest company (by some measures) in the world and is quickly become the focal point for angry consumers wanting to take their own bite out of Apple for something, anything.

The New iPad

Apple have just announced their new iPad. It sports a retina display with a resolution of 2048 x 1536 (246 pixels per inch) and has LTE and a better camera. It has a few updated applications plus a new app for iOS: iPhoto. The pricing is unchanged compared to the current models and they’re keeping around the iPad 2 in a 16Gb WiFi/3G in White/Black models at a lower price point ($429 AUD for 16Gb WiFi).

My only two comments: The iPad 2 will be a very high selling model and will help keep any other tablets in the market at bay. Also, the LTE won’t work with Telstras 1800MHz 4G network, so don’t get excited about download speeds on this device in Oz.

Apple have chosen to call the new iPad, “The New iPad” which to me seems a bit silly. In many ways the market and consumers will give it their own name. For example the iPhone originally was not called anything other than the iPhone originally, but in time has gained two names: the iPhone 1 and the iPhone 2G. In time, the market will name it either the iPad 3 or iPad HD. Apple can’t stop it. It needs a proper name eventually.