Apple has released a software patch to address a recently described security flaw in the iPhone.

Experts revealed on Thursday that modified SMS messages could result in iPhones being disconnected from the network or hijacked altogether. Apple said phones incorporating other mobile operating systems, such as Windows Mobile and Google Android, were also potentially vulnerable. It added that no-one had actually used the flaw to gain access to an iPhone.

A spokesperson for O2, the iPhone’s service provider in the UK, said: “We will be communicating to customers both through the website and proactively. We always recommend our customers update their iPhone with the latest software and this is no different.” Access all areas Charlie Miller and Collin Mulliner told the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas that the hack works by slightly modifying the data - sent by the network and which the user does not see - that arrives as part of a text message. The system that processes such messages is similar across different operating systems and can, once compromised, gain access across a range of applications including a phone’s address book or camera. The team say that hackers could develop programs to exploit the weakness in as little as two weeks, but told the conference that publicizing the means of attack was necessary to ensure the problem was addressed. “If we don’t talk about it, somebody is going to do it silently. The bad guys are going to do it no matter what,” Mr Mulliner, an independent security expert, said. The team wrote software to exploit the weakness, targeting iPhones on four networks in Germany as well as AT&T in the US. However, they believe it would work equally well in any country. The approach is particularly dangerous because messages are delivered automatically, and users cannot tell that they have received the malicious code. The problem could be fixed by directly patching the vulnerability in smartphones’ operating systems, or the network providers could scan for messages that look to be trying to gain access to phones via the malicious code. The researchers said they had informed Google of the hack and that the company had already taken steps to address the problem. The Black Hat gathering, part of a leading series of conferences for information and computer security experts, took place from 25 to 30 July.

A mega partnership between Yahoo and Microsoft, nearly a year and a half in the making, may finally be nearing reality.

The two technology giants are said to be close to finalizing a search advertising deal, according to AllThingsD.

Microsoft would sell search engine ads for both companies while Yahoo would probably take over display advertising sales, the report said. However, the details of the proposed agreement remain fluid, and the negotiations could still collapse, as they have several times in the past.

Several of Microsoft’s leading executives have flown to Silicon Valley from their headquarters in Redmond, Wash., to finalize the details, according to the report. They include Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president for Microsoft’s online business group, and Qi Lu, who is in charge of the company’s search group.

Microsoft and Yahoo representatives declined to comment about the negotiations.

By cooperating, Yahoo and Microsoft would present a more formidable challenge in search to Google, at least in theory. Individually, their small size (Yahoo’s U.S. search market share is 19.8 percent while Microsoft’s is 8.4 percent, according to comScore) compared with Google (65 percent), means that they lack reach and therefore often command lower ad prices.

Microsoft’s search business, long dismissed as largely irrelevant, has gained a small amount of momentum recently with the release of its redesigned search engine, Bing. It has received good reviews and a small bump in traffic, although it’s unclear whether that can be sustained over the long term.

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz is under pressure to do something to revitalize the Sunnyvale Web portal, which has suffered because of indecision, lack of innovation and the recession. She has repeatedly said that she’s willing to cut a deal with Microsoft as long as the terms are lucrative enough.

A community implementation of .NET is splitting in two, hoping to protect Linux and open-source against potential patent claims from Microsoft.

The Mono Project plans to split between a core set of APIs that are based on ECMA specifications of Microsoft’s C# and Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) and a stack that implements other Microsoft APIs for ASP.NET, ADO.NET, and Winforms.

Microsoft has promised it won’t assert patent claims against non-Microsoft implementations of C# and CLI, but it has made no such clear promise on the rest.

The distinction is important, as Mono has been used in a variety of open-source applications that can ship with and work on popular Linuxes such as Debian and Ubuntu.

Applications using the C# parts of Mono include the Banshee media player, the Gnome Due application installer, Beagle desktop-search, and the Tomboy note-taking application.

Mono leader Miguel de Icaza told The Reg: “The concern is Microsoft won’t sue over the ECMA code but there’s no word on the others so we are going to split those out so everybody isn’t concerned.”

ASP.NET is under Microsoft’s Shared Source Initiative, which provides limited rights to view the Microsoft source code. ADO.NET is available under Microsoft’s Public License. And Winforms come in a variety of open and copyrighted licenses.

The very presence of Mono in applications used by Debian and Ubuntu reached a crescendo last week, with GNU-daddy Richard Stallman calling it a threat to open-source because Microsoft could assert its claims over C# to kill Mono-based projects.

Stallman’s comments followed what appeared to be a great deal of community politicking, debate, and personal attacks made through various email lists apparently designed to get people to boycott Debian and Canonical and force them to dump Mono, which is sponsored by Novell. Mono has been taking heat since Novell’s controversial patent protection deal with Microsoft in November 2006.

In some cases, people have reacted to the anti-Mono wave.

One commenter on an Ubuntu mailing list promised his company would look into switching from Ubuntu to Fedora because Mono “is just too dangerous” and said he stood by the position taken by Stallman. He was speaking after The Ubuntu Technical Board said it saw no harm in Mono.

The sticking point was that since 2001, Microsoft has made Mono available on reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) terms rather than a royalty free license, a license Microsoft had promised it would adopt.

The sore point was what constituted “reasonable” as Microsoft could set the terms. de Icaza said nobody had followed up to make the ECMA C# and CLI specs available under the promised royalty free license.

Microsoft’s promise Monday of availability under its Community Promise is designed to rectify that and satisfy critics of Mono. The C# and CLI parts of the Mono core can still be installed with the other part of the Mono stack, covering ASP.NET, ADO.NET, and Winforms. ®

Sony Corp. said Tuesday it will launch a tiny new laptop starting in August, the company’s belated entry into the growing but cutthroat “netbook” PC market.

The new addition to its Vaio line of computers will cost about $500 in the U.S. and 60,000 yen ($630) in Japan when it goes on sale next month. It will be about the size of a hardback book and run on lower grade hardware than other Sony models.

Netbooks — small, cheap laptops with stripped-down components — have been a lone bright spot in the PC market, expanding even as consumers cut back on more expensive purchases. But the tiny computers have low profit margins and can put well-known brands in direct competition with budget manufacturers.

“The netbook market is expanding, and Sony is following this trend,” said a company spokesman.

Sony, with its well-known Vaio line, is one of the last major PC makers to enter the market. Apple Inc. is another holdout, with Chief Executive Steve Jobs saying the company doesn’t know how to build a sub-$500 computer “that’s not a piece of junk.”

However, nearly every other major global PC maker has rolled out an ultra low-cost laptop for Web browsing and emails since the category was first created in 2007. Research firm Gartner estimates that the “mini-notebook” category will reach 21 million units in 2009 and 30 million units next year.

Sony already sells a similar product, a petite Vaio laptop it bills as a “Lifestyle PC,” but that computer has slightly higher specifications and software, and the company was careful to avoid the netbook label.

The new Vaio W-Series has a 10.1-inch screen, a 3.5-hour battery life and weighs 1.19 kilograms (2.6 lbs.). It comes in three colors: white, pink and brown.

It’s Twitter day at Microsoft, apparently. Not only did the software giant announce that it would start adding tweets to its Bing search results, the company actually started officially using Twitter today.

To be clear, Microsoft had a rather large presence on Twitter before through its various departments/products/services, but now it’s using the main /microsoft account to tweet. The account is being run by its corporate communications team, consisting of four people. So far there have been only 2 tweets and the account only has about 1,000 people following it. That should change, fast.

So what was its first tweet? “Anyone can make games now, Kodu is available on Xbox LIVE Marketplace http://bit.ly/3wlWKo #microsoft #xboxlive #kodu” Like any good Twitter user, Microsoft has self-promotion down cold. But that’s not nearly as slick as Google’s first tweet back in February.

There’s probably not much to read into Microsoft’s love-fest with Twitter today, but you never know. After all, rivals have been snooping around, flirting with the service.

The 14-year-old girl believed to be the only survivor of a Yemenia jetliner crash off Comoros was thrown from the plane amid darkness, she tells her father. The 14-year-old girl believed to be the lone survivor of a yemini jetliner crash in the Indian Ocean was thrown from the plane and into the waves, where she heard voices but saw no one in the darkness, her father told a French radio station Wednesday. “She is a very, very shy girl. I never thought she would survive like that,” Kassim Bakari said of his daughter, Bahia, in an interview with French RTL radio from his suburban Paris home. “I can’t say that it’s a miracle. I can say that it is God’s will.

The French government announced early Wednesday that search teams had picked up a signal coming from one of the plane’s “black box” recorders. But it later reversed that assertion, saying the electronic impulses detected were from the plane’s distress signals. The two black boxes — the cockpit recorder and the flight data recorder — are crucial to determining what caused a crash. French army spokesman Christophe Prazuck said the black boxes were probably several hundred yards beneath the ocean surface and “inaccessible to human divers.” The Yemeni government said preliminary indications were that bad weather may have caused the yemini airliner to plunge into the sea as it approached the airport in Moroni. Flight 626 had left the Yemeni capital, Sana, carrying mostly Comorans and French nationals. Many of them had originated their journey in Paris and flew to Marseille before stopping and changing aircraft in Sana. European aviation officials have said that the plane operated by Yemenia, Yemen’s national carrier, was barred from French airports two years ago after “irregularities” were discovered in a safety review. A European Union official said the airline crashed, last year had passed safety requirements and was not blacklisted in Europe. Anger against the carrier continued at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris among young protesters, many of them of Comoran descent, who tried to block passengers from a Yemenia flight. French media reported that about 60 passengers did not check in but that the flight departed with 100 passengers. Comoran Vice President and Transport Minister Idi Nadhoim scolded French authorities for not warning Comoros about the Airbus A310’s questionable safety record. “I wish the French could have informed us about any irregularities with this plane,” he said in a telephone interview with France 24 television. “What is this? Discrimination between French passengers that have to be protected in France and those French people who are left to fly in these kinds of planes?” “She clung to a piece of debris from the plane for 12 hours,” French Cooperation Secretary Alain Joyandet told France Info radio. Later in the day he told reporters she was en route home to Paris. “She signaled to a passing boat, and it was able to pick her up. She really showed incredible physical and moral strength,the only survivor of yemini plane crash.”

Google says it will take “all necessary steps” to remove pornography from its Chinese language portal, Google.cn

The firm was responded to criticism from China’s internet watchdog which said Google was “disseminating pornographic and vulgar information”.

Google has been warned twice about allowing unacceptable porn sites to be seen in search results.

The news comes as China tries to make sure all new PCs sold in the country are fitted with filtering software.

A popular outcry over the PC filtering plan prompted the Chinese government to clarify that, although the surveillance software will ship with every computer, it does not have to be used.

The Chinese government said its crackdown on Google - and other major websites - was to tackle the “large volume of foreign internet pornographic information [that] has entered our borders”.

Google responded in a statement, saying it had met with government officials to discuss issues surrounding its Google.cn service.

“We are undertaking a thorough review of our service and taking all necessary steps to fix any problems with our results,” said Google’s communications director, John Pinette, in a statement.

China’s Internet Illegal Information Reporting Centre (CIIRC) said further action may be taken.

According to the CIIRC, 1001 websites were blocked by authorities for “distributing porn and other lewd material” and more than 4,000 other sites were also closed.

At the end of 2008, the number of net users in China, which has a population of 1.3 billion, was almost the same as the entire population of the United States.

Iraqi police say early morning bomb attacks have killed at least 11 people in different areas of Baghdad.

A car bomb exploded on the road to the government compound known as the Green Zone killing at least five people.

Another attack in the eastern Sadr City area killed three students on a minibus as they were on their way to an exam.

The rush-hour explosions come days before US troops are due to withdraw from Iraqi cities under a security pact with the Iraqi government.

Reports say at least 62 people have been injured in Monday’s bombings.

In addition to the explosions in Karrada and Sadr City, which was caused by a roadside bomb in Hamza Square, there was another roadside bombing in Shaab neighbourhood in north-east Baghdad which killed three people and wounded another 30.

There are also early reports of a suicide attack west of Baghdad, although details were not immediately available.

Attacks in and around Baghdad are common, despite an overall drop in violence in Iraq.

On Saturday, a bomb attack near the northern city of Kirkuk killed 72 people - the deadliest in Iraq for more than a year - and injured another 200.

The US plans to withdraw its troops from Iraqi cities and major towns by 30 June, and is due to end combat operations across Iraq by September 2010, leaving Iraqi security forces to cope alone.

There are concerns that anti-US insurgents may try to take advantage of the withdrawal, although the country’s leaders say Iraqi forces are capable of handling internal security without US support.

British scientists have developed a portable microwave scanner to help police identify individuals carrying concealed guns and knives.

It is small enough to be used covertly, at some distance from the subject.

The device is based around microwave radar technology and is designed to pick up the “reflections” of weapons concealed beneath clothing.

Some officials believe technology like this could help increase the effectiveness of stop-and-search.

The existing prototype is suitable for the detection of guns, but researchers say subsequent versions of the technology will be able to identify concealed knives as well.

The new device employs low-power microwaves to identify weapons, using similar wavelengths as the body scanners currently in use at a number of airports.

However, Professor Nick Bowring from Manchester Metropolitan University, who led the development of the new device, said it worked on a different principle.

Unlike airport scanners, the portable machine does not produce an image of the subject, it only analyses signals.

“It is designed to work out on the streets and is not (restricted) to a closed, controlled environment,” Professor Bowring told BBC News.

A human operator will transport the device, using it to direct microwave emission at a person of interest.

Return signals - microwaves reflected back towards the device - are picked up, sensed and analysed.

Weapon signature

“[The scanner] does a lot of computing and processing of the signals it acquires. It puts them all together, analyses them over a short period and makes a decision,” said Professor Bowring.

“It works on the principle that the radar returns from people, when they are carrying a gun or a knife, look different. And we pick up on those small differences.”

So-called neural network technology is employed to identify signals from concealed weapons and to ignore those from everyday items. Similar technology is used in the automatic recognition of car number plates.

Professor Bowring said he and his team had found ways to reduce the numbers of “false positive” readings to a “very low level”.

Because of sensitivities surrounding its use, he could not say what distance the device worked over, but explained it was a “useful stand-off range”. Researchers are reluctant to release pictures of the experimental set-up for similar reasons.

Tests are currently being carried out by the Metropolitan Police’s operational technology department to see how the scanner could work in practice.

If those trials are successful, a device could become available to police forces within two years.

Catherine Coates, head of innovation at the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), said: “This device could save lives and free up valuable policing time currently taken up with gun and knife detection.”

‘Public scrutiny’

Anita Coles, policy officer for Liberty, told BBC News: “We welcome scientific innovation in the fight against crime but this kind of technology needs public scrutiny and foundation in law.

“The causes of violence also need attention. You will never eliminate all the guns, knives, bottles and glasses so it’s important to consider other conditions that foster conflict.”

In a statement, Stuart Ibbotson, head of engineering for the Metropolitan Police, said: “We are still at early stages and a way off deploying operational capability yet, but so far, results are very encouraging.

“This kind of device would be of great service to officers, helping them to catch people carrying guns and knives without putting themselves in increased danger. It could also help to target stop and search to further increase its effectiveness.”

The number of firearms operations rose by almost a fifth last year in police forces in England and Wales.

Officers fired weapons seven times - up from three incidents the year before, but still fewer times than in 2001.

The Home Office figures showed a drop in firearms operations in some police areas commonly believed to have significant gun crime problems.

Professor Bowring said the scanner had been developed relatively cheaply, at a cost of only a few hundred thousand pounds.

The project involved researchers from MMU, Manchester University, Newcastle University and Queen Mary University of London.

It was funded by the EPSRC, supported by the Metropolitan Police and the Home Office Scientific Development Branch.

BEIJING — China plans to require that all personal computers sold in the country as of July 1 be shipped with software that blocks access to certain Web sites, a move that could give government censors unprecedented control over how Chinese users access the Internet.

The government, which has told global PC makers of the requirement but has yet to announce it to the public, says the effort is aimed at protecting young people from “harmful” content. The primary target is pornography, says the main developer of the software, a company that has ties to China’s security ministry and military.

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The Chinese government has a history of censoring a broad range of Web content. The new requirement could force PC manufacturers to choose between refusing a government order in a major market or opening themselves to charges of abetting censorship.

The software needn’t be preinstalled on each new PC — it may instead be shipped on a compact disc — giving users some choice. But if installed, foreign industry officials who have examined the software say, it could transmit personal information, cause PCs to malfunction, and make them more vulnerable to hacking. It also makes it difficult for users to tell what exactly is being blocked, officials say.

A spokeswoman for Hewlett-Packard Co., which has the largest PC market share of any U.S. vendor in China, said the company is “working with the government authorities and evaluating the best way to approach this. Obviously we will focus on delivering the best customer experience while ensuring that we meet necessary regulatory requirements.”

Susan Stevenson, spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, said the embassy was studying the new rule to assess its impact. “We would view any attempt to restrict the free flow of information with great concern and as incompatible with China’s aspirations to build a modern, information-based economy and society,” she said.

The software’s Chinese name is “Green Dam-Youth Escort.” The word “green” in Chinese is used to describe Web-surfing free from pornography and other illicit content. Green Dam would link PCs with a regularly updated database of banned sites and block access to those addresses, according to an official who tested the product for a government agency.

The May 19 Chinese government notice about the requirement says it is aimed at “constructing a green, healthy, and harmonious Internet environment, and preventing harmful information on the Internet from influencing and poisoning young people.”

The software was developed by Jinhui Computer System Engineering Co., with input from Beijing Dazheng Human Language Technology Academy Co.

Bryan Zhang, founder of Jinhui, said Green Dam operates similarly to software designed outside China to let parents block access to Web content inappropriate for children. Some computers sold in China already come with parental-control software, but it isn’t government-mandated.

Mr. Zhang said his company compiles and maintains the list of blocked sites, which he says is limited to pornography sites. He said the software would allow the blocking of other types of content, as well as the collection of private user data, but that Jinhui would have no reason to do so. He also said the software can be turned off or uninstalled.

His company plans to transmit new banned addresses to users’ PCs through an Internet update system similar to that used by operating-system software and antivirus programs.

The software requirement was outlined in a notice that was issued by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on May 19 but that hasn’t yet been publicized by state media. The notice, a copy of which was seen by The Wall Street Journal, says PC makers must ship PCs to be sold in China as of July 1 with the Green Dam software “preloaded” — pre-installed or enclosed on a CD.

The notice says PC producers will be required to report to the government how many PCs they have shipped with the software. The notice doesn’t mention any punitive action for noncompliance.

Sales of PCs in China neared 40 million units last year, second only to the U.S. Chinese company Lenovo Group Ltd. had the largest market share, with 26.7% of units shipped in the first three months of 2009, while H-P had 13.7% and Dell Inc. had 8.1%, according to research firm IDC.

Manufacturers have more than just sales in China to consider when the government asks them to do something: Major PC companies also have investments in factories and research facilities in China.

Dell declined to comment on the software. Lenovo said, “We review all legislation relating to our business,” and didn’t comment further.

Foreign industry officials say companies have been given little time to properly test Green Dam. “The lack of transparency, the shortness of time for implementation, and the incredible scope of the requirement that is not matched anywhere around the world present tremendous challenges to the industry,” said an industry official who has discussed the plans with several major PC makers.

China already operates an extensive Internet filtering system, commonly called the Great Firewall, which blocks access to a range of content, from pornography to politically sensitive sites. Such sites have included those promoting Tibetan independence and the spiritual group Falun Gong; in specific circumstances the government has blocked access to foreign media sites.

But that system blocks content at the network level, and many users circumvent it. The new method could give the government a way to tighten its control, say foreign industry officials who have examined the software.

Having one universal application that opens a link into every computer could also make those computers more vulnerable to cyber attacks. Mr. Zhang said that the software is no riskier than other programs that are updated periodically through the Internet.

Moreover, Green Dam, which is designed to work with Microsoft Corp.’s Windows operating system, could also conflict with other applications, causing glitches or even system crashes, industry officials said.

Wu Weiwei, an official from the government’s China Software Testing Center who oversaw testing of the software, said extensive tests of the software have shown no problems.

U.S. Internet companies have for years grappled with demands from the Chinese government to censor content or share potentially private data with police.

Several of the biggest — including Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft — joined together last October to announce a set of guidelines for how they would comply with censorship requests from countries such as China, including a promise to be transparent about the requests they receive. But the effort, known as the Global Network Initiative, was criticized by some civil-liberties groups as being short on specifics and not doing enough to fight censorship laws. No computer hardware makers are members of the group.

A Yahoo spokeswoman said that the company would “continue to analyze international developments that may impact our industry.” “We strongly support the free flow of information and the right to freedom of expression,” she said.

Jinhui’s Web site said it has a long-term “strategic cooperative partnership” with a research institute of the Ministry of Public Security on image-recognition technology, as well as long-term “technical cooperation” with the People’s Liberation Army’s Information Engineering University.

Mr. Zhang said Jinhui has only worked with the Ministry of Public Security on issues concerning pornography.

The Web site of Dazheng, the other software company involved in developing Green Dam, says the company works with the Armored Engineering Institute of the People’s Liberation Army, and that it helped the PLA in 2005 produce a system to intercept “confidential” documents.

Wang Jingcheng, deputy general manager of Dazheng, said the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has “strict regulations and forbids all software companies from collecting any personal information.” He added that the software will block content “according to the law.”