Cody Taylor

gardel writes “Google appears to have fixed a significant security hole in its two-week-old Voice calling service though some vulnerabilities remain. Until about 7pm PDT Tuesday, an unauthorized party could use a SIP device to spoof a phone number attached to a Google Voice account to call the Google Voice number, giviing the spoofer access to greetings and voicemail, and the ability to make outbound calls, including expensive international calls. Though spoofing via SIP is no longer possible, continued existence of some vulnerability was still apparent Tuesday night. Voxilla was able to set the caller ID of a PBX extension to a mobile number attached to Google Voice account and call in, using a business VoIP trunk, to gain access.”

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CWmike writes “Although three of the four browsers that were targets in the PWN2OWN hacking contest quickly fell to a pair of researchers, none of the smartphones were successfully exploited. TippingPoint had offered ,000 for each exploit on any of the phones, which included the iPhone and the BlackBerry, as well as phones running the Windows Mobile, Symbian and Android operating systems. ‘With the mobile devices so limited on memory and processing power, a lot of [researchers’] main exploit techniques are not able to work,’ said TippingPoint’s Terri Forslof. ‘Take, for example, [Charlie] Miller’s Safari exploit,’ referring to Miller’s 10-second hack of a MacBook via an unpatched Safari vulnerability that he’d known about for more than a year. ‘People wondered why wouldn’t it work on the iPhone, why didn’t he go for the ,000?’ she said. ‘The vulnerability is absolutely there, but it’s a lot tougher to exploit on the iPhone.'” Chrome was the only browser at the contest that was not successfully exploited. We previously discussed day one of the contest, and a summary of day two is available as well.

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O2, Apple’s mobile phone partner in the UK, is to offer the iPhone 3G for free as part of a new contract deal available from next month.

The Pre, Palm’s new mobile phone, stole the show at CES this year. Looks helped, but mainly it was the Pre’s iPhone-like touchscreen tech that wowed the industry crowd. Two weeks later, Apple COO Tim Cook expressed his irritation (without directly naming Palm) to analysts on a conference call: “We will not stand for having our IP ripped off”

Jive.ly is a new app in full beta, billing itself as a Twitter-like site for mobile. Created by UK-based developer Martin Buhr, the app is designed as a place to update your social network accounts with images and videos from a mobile without having to hook up third party services like Twitpic.

theodp writes “While the universal remote has served humanity with distinction, its days are numbered, and your smartphone is to blame. Whether you want to control your music, your television or your PowerPoint presentation, there’s probably a solution using your phone. Try as it might, the universal remote simply can’t navigate the digital world the way the smartphone can — it’s a lot easier to put the remote’s abilities in the smartphone than vice versa.”

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The beta version is still slow and has a ways to go before it can compete with Apple’s iPhone-ized Safari browser, but these are forgivable shortcomings, given its beta status.No, the real problem with Fennec is that it’s available only for one platform: Nokia’s N810 Internet Tablet. Who cares about that device?

MBCook writes “AppleInsider has an article discussing Dell’s attempt to enter the smartphone market, as well as the news that the phone was rejected by carriers as too dull. The article doesn’t pull punches: ‘Dell’s failure to successfully step from the commodity PC business into the mobile handset market should come as no surprise, as smartphones requires expertise in software platform development, consumer design savvy, and portable device engineering, all things Dell has never demonstrated any proficiency in.'”

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he iPhone 3.0 software includes the ability to copy-and-paste, a landscape keyboard, and push notifications. However, none of these updates were as revolutionary as the new features Apple offered to iPhone application developers. The one to watch however is the ability to purchase items within an application.

During Apple’s iPhone 3.0 event, the presentation of a mobile-attached blood glucose monitor for diabetic users apparently bored some journalists in the room. However, the demonstration not only revealed Apple’s most important leap yet in mobile devices, but also answered the pleas of a diabetic blogger.