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"In a tweet early this morning, cybersecurity researcher Christopher Soghoian pointed to an internal memo of India's Military Intelligence that has been liberated by hackers and posted on the Net. The memo suggests that, "in exchange for the Indian market presence" mobile device manufacturers, including RIM, Nokia, and Apple (collectively defined in the document as "RINOA") have agreed to provide backdoor access on their devices. The Indian government then "utilized backdoors provided by RINOA" to intercept internal emails of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a U.S. government body with a mandate to monitor, investigate and report to Congress...

Dr. Charlie Miller -- a man who has been covered extensively here at Engadget -- snagged a doctorate in Mathematics from the University of Notre Dame. He spent five years working on cryptography for the National Security Agency. And, after heading into the wilds of security analysis, he was the first to find a bug in the battery of the first MacBook Air, various bugs within Mac OS X and the Safari web browser and assorted bugs within iOS itself, all while racking up thousands of dollars in hacking contest prize money.

Mobile ad network Millennial Media, is releasing its monthly report which gives a view into how each OS, device and manufacturer is performing on one of the largest remaining independent ad networks in the world. In August, Millennial actually combined connected devices and smartphones when breaking out the OS impression share. That’s significant because iOS and Android share can include tablets into factoring presence on the network. And last month, Android was in the top spot with a 54% share, while iOS was in second with a 28% share. Rim followed with 13% share.

Security blog Defense in Depth has found a glaring security flaw in OS X Lion that enables hackers to change the password of any user on a machine running Lion. “[While] non-root users are unable to access the shadow files directly, Lion actually provides non-root users the ability to still view password hash data,” Patrick Dunstan from Defense in Depth explained in a recent blog post. The result is that anyone could use a simple Python script, created by Dunstan himself, to discover a user’s password. It gets worse. Reportedly, OS X Lion does not require its users to enter...

Western European feature phone shipments continued to decline sharply in 2Q11 as consumers increasingly move to smartphones, according to the latest European Mobile Phone Tracker from International Data Corporation (IDC). Feature phone shipments were down 29% to 20.4 million units in 2Q11, while smartphone shipments increased 48% to 21.8 million units from a year ago. The total Western European mobile phone market, however, declined 3% year on year to 42.2 million units in the quarter, according to IDC. ...SNIP... Android OS strengthened its leadership in the region, with shipments up 352% year on year to 10.5 million units, which represented...

When Windows Live SkyDrive first launched in 2007 (known as Windows Live Folders beta back then), it offered a mere 500 MB of free storage. Later on when the service got out of beta in early 2008, this free storage space increased from 500 MB to 5 GB. SNIP LiveSide recently learnt that Microsoft will soon offer unlimited photos and Office documents storage on SkyDrive Wave 5, and this is how it will work: Unlimited storage space for all Office documents Unlimited storage space for all photos 25 GB of free storage for everything else

Apple has selected Microsoft's Azure and Amazon's AWS to jointly host its iCloud service, The Reg has learned. We understand that Apple has barred Microsoft and Amazon from discussing what would otherwise be a high-profile deal, especially for Microsoft's fledgling Azure cloud service. But Reg sources close to Microsoft this week confirmed rumours circulating in June that Apple's iCloud is running on Azure and Amazon. Customers' data is being striped between the pair. iCloud was released as a beta in August and is expected by the end of this year.

Google’s Android platform gained once again during the three-month period ending in July, increasing it’s share by 1% over second-quarter totals to grab 40% of the U.S. smartphone market. Apple’s iOS stayed flat at 28% and RIM’s BlackBerry OS lost one point from June-quarter figures to fall to 19%.... Android topped iOS in the firm’s survey of which smartphone platform users intend to buy next. From “innovators” to “late adopters,” each consumer group Nielsen polled but one — “early adopters” — found Android to be the most appealing OS for their next purchases.

For the three month average period ending in July, 234 million Americans ages 13 and older used mobile devices. Device manufacturer Samsung ranked as the top OEM with 25.5 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers (up 1.0 percentage points), followed by LG with 20.9 percent share and Motorola with 14.1 percent share. Apple strengthened its position at #4 with 9.5 percent share of mobile subscribers (up 1.2 percentage points), while RIM rounded out the top five with 7.6 percent share.

UPDATE: Former U.S. Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell will not speak at a tea party event featuring former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in Indianola, Iowa, this weekend, an organizer told Washington Wire. “I made a mistake,” said Ken Crow, president of Tea Party of America. “I assumed there was an open slot and there wasn’t.” Monday night, Mr. Crow told Washington Wire that Ms. O’Donnell would appear. Tea Party of America’s cofounder, Charlie Gruschow, said the group withdrew Ms. O’Donnell’s after receiving numerous “emails from a lot of tea party folks that were very disappointed that she would be speaking.” “We...

You likely know the HTC HD2 as the phone that just can't be held in the past. While it started life with Windows Mobile 6.5, it's since met better fortunes with Android, Meego, and most recently... NoDo. Now, after the leak of Windows Phone Mango RTM, things are about to heat up once again.

... The results indicate that, over all countries, the estimated levels of government consumption and investment expenditures that are associated with maximal growth in per-capita RGDP are 8.5% and 6.2%, respectively. This implies an optimal level of government expenditures of 14.7%.

"Apple has much to learn about securing an operating system, and it could learn how from Microsoft, Roger Grimes writes in the wake of further evidence that Macs are more vulnerable to attack than Windows machines. 'It's taken Microsoft 10 years to turn security from a weakness into a strength. Apple can use the lessons learned by Microsoft to manage a quick turnaround. Apple has already hired one of Microsoft's former security leaders, Window Snyder, and it has adopted a modified form of Microsoft's Security Development Lifecycle programming practices. Apple has the benefit of seeing how Microsoft fixed its past...

Whoa there, Apple, we know you're starting to feel pretty darn good about besting Nokia and Samsung for the title of world's largest smartphone manufacturer, but hold on for just one minute. Gartner has a different idea of how the numbers game really works, and its interpretation makes all the difference in determining who earns the title. Rather than measuring the number of units each manufacturer ships out to the distributors (as IDC, ABI Research and Strategy Analytics do), Gartner gauges its numbers by how many devices were actually sold to end users instead. Thus, Nokia still keeps its title...

Goods and services from China accounted for only 2.7% of U.S. personal consumption expenditures in 2010, of which less than half reflected the actual costs of Chinese imports. The rest went to U.S. businesses and workers transporting, selling, and marketing goods carrying the "Made in China" label. Although the fraction is higher when the imported content of goods made in the United States is considered, Chinese imports still make up only a small share of total U.S. consumer spending. This suggests that Chinese inflation will have little direct effect on U.S. consumer prices.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) introduces legislation that would require online retailers such as Amazon to collect sales taxes. Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) plans a similar measure in the House.

Computerworld - Almost anyone can snoop the secure data traffic of unpatched iPhones and iPads using a recently-revised tool, a researcher said today as he urged owners to apply Apple's latest iOS fix. The nine-year-old bug was quashed Monday when Apple issued a patch for the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS and third- and fourth-generation iPod Touch.

In an accidental moment of honesty, White House Deputy Press Secretary Dan Pfeiffer today admitted on Twitter that President Obama will likely sign any debt deal Congress sends his way. This revelation came in an exchange with Stephen Gutowski, the blogger known as The College Politico. Gutowski asked Pfeiffer: “Do you see a scenario where the house & senate pass a deal but the President doesn’t sign it?” and Pfeiffer responded: “No, bc only something that has R and D support can pass both bodies”.

In May 2011, 42 percent of UK mobile consumers used a smartphone compared to only 27 percent a year ago. The rising adoption of smartphones in the UK has created a very competitive landscape for the top 3 mobile operating systems, Apple, Google and Symbian. Apple has overtaken Symbian over the past year to become the top smartphone platform in the UK with 27.1 percent market share, followed by Google’s Android with 26.7 percent market share and Symbian with 22.5 percent. Android has rapidly grown its user base adding nearly 4.7 million new users over the past year, equaling a...

Security researcher Charlie Miller, widely known for his work on Mac OS X and Apple's iOS, has discovered an interesting method that enables him to completely disable the batteries on Apple laptops, making them permanently unusable, and perform a number of other unintended actions. The method, which involves accessing and sending instructions to the chip housed on smart batteries could also be used for more malicious purposes down the road.