Month: June 2016

Doctors Warning: Use BOTH Eyes when looking at your phone in the dark

Dan Uff June 23, 2016 0

FunnyEyes “Warning: Looking at your smartphone while lying in bed at night could wreak havoc on your vision,” The Associated Press reports. “Two women went temporarily blind from constantly checking their phones in the dark, say doctors who are now alerting others to the unusual phenomenon.”

“The solution: Make sure to use both eyes when looking at your smartphone screen in the dark,” AP reports. “In Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine, doctors detailed the cases of the two women, ages 22 and 40, who experienced ‘transient smartphone blindness’ for months.”

“The women complained of recurring episodes of temporary vision loss for up to 15 minutes. They were subjected to variety of medical exams, MRI scans and heart tests. Yet doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with them to explain the problem,” AP reports. “But minutes after walking into an eye specialist’s office, the mystery was solved. ‘I simply asked them, ‘What exactly were you doing when this happened?” recalled Dr. Gordon Plant of Moorfield’s Eye Hospital in London.”

“He explained that both women typically looked at their smartphones with only one eye while resting on their side in bed in the dark – their other eye was covered by the pillow,” AP reports. “‘So you have one eye adapted to the light because it’s looking at the phone and the other eye is adapted to the dark,’ he said.”

Read more in the full article here.

Apple Intentionally left iOS10 Kernel open for speed

Dan Uff June 23, 2016 0

As we reported on Wednesday, reports were coming in that Apple has left the beta of iOS10 'open' for all to see. It was speculated that the company did this by accident potentially leaving its users open to attack by hackers once iOS10 was officially released this Fall.

News Web Site TechCrunch contacted Apple about the possible accident, and the company issued a statement which reads:

The kernel cache doesn't contain any user info, and by unencrypting it we're able to optimize the operating system's performance without compromising security.

Apple traditionally obfuscates the kernel in order to protect its prized operating system from unwanted probing or reverse engineering, potentially by nefarious agents. The small risk — or no risk, according to Apple — of furnishing unobscured kernel cache data is likely outweighed by potential benefits.

Apple Screw up, or Sheepish Move?

Dan Uff June 22, 2016 0

iOSLogo In a bold move — or an egregious error — Apple has left the kernel of its recently released iOS 10 beta exposed, laying bare potentially exploitable security flaws ahead of a wide public release this fall.

Discovered by security researchers and reported by the MIT Technology Review, the decision to distribute an unencrypted kernel would be a vast departure from previous iOS releases, which kept the so-called "heart" of the OS closely guarded. Among the many benefits of obscuring access to the kernel is protection from reverse engineering, a key security breaches.

Like many modern computer operating systems, the kernel in iOS is vital to system management, having a hand in almost every facet of runtime operations, from startup to high-level app execution. Importantly, the iOS kernel grants third-party apps access to, and limits use of, hardware assets. By delivering an unencrypted version, Apple is opening its prized OS to the scrutiny of security researchers and hackers alike.

Whether Apple deliberately left the kernel exposed is unclear, though experts find it hard to believe the move was made in error. More plausible, some say, is that Apple intentionally shipped an unencrypted beta version as part of a daring debugging strategy. More eyes on iOS code could result in higher rates of bug and vulnerability discoveries, which might — hopefully — be reported to Apple and fixed.

The method is a risky one, however, as researcher Mathew Solnik discovered the release to include a security measure that protects Apple's kernel from modification. Access to such information could potentially pose a danger to millions of iOS devices if it fell into the wrong hands.

Noted iOS security expert Jonathan Zdziarski said a decision to open the kernel makes sense coming out of Apple's recent data privacy battle with the U.S. government. In that case, the FBI pressed for access to an iPhone 5c linked to last year's San Bernardino terror attack, a request that would force Apple to create a workaround to its own security safeguards. Apple resisted an issued court order to unlock the iPhone, subsequently staging a legal defensive that sparked intense debate over the boundaries between government reach and personal data privacy.

The action was rendered moot after the FBI was able to bypass the handset's lock protection using a zero-day exploit purchased from an undisclosed third party. According to Zdziarski, an open iOS kernel might be an attempt at deflating the iOS exploit market, an entity in large part driven by demand from law enforcement agencies.

Via: AppleInsider.com