How worried should we be about net security scares?

Anyone concerned about the security of their computers and the data held on them might sleep a little uneasily tonight.

Over the past few weeks we've heard reports of serious vulnerabilities in wireless networking and chip and pin readers, and seen how web browsers could fall victim to "clickjacking" and trick us into inadvertently visiting fake websites.

The longstanding fear that malicious software might start infecting our mobile phones was given a boost when the Information Security Center at US university Georgia Tech outlined how phone software could be hijacked to create "botnets" and allow handsets to be remotely controlled.

And now a group of researchers at the Security and Cryptography Laboratory at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland have shown that you can read what is typed on a keyboard from 20m away.

It takes some sophisticated equipment to do it, but with the right antennae and a bit of luck it seems you can detect the radio emissions coming from the wires that connect keyboards to computers and tell just what someone is typing.

Web addresses, usernames and passwords are all visible, as well as the content of letters, e-mails and Facebook updates. These aren't wireless keyboards, which are clearly vulnerable to snooping, but the good old USB or PS/2 keyboards we all use every day.

And even though the kit you need isn't the sort of stuff that your average credit-card skimmer is going to have lying around their flat, it shows that there are many unexpected vulnerabilities to be discovered.

The researchers suspect that cheaper keyboards with poor shielding are to blame, so government departments and hospitals may have to find a better supplier if even more of our sensitive data is not to leak out.

This is a good example of how lack of foresight can lead to security problems when faster hardware catches up with the assumptions made by system designers, and it also lies behind the newly-emerged vulnerability that affects secure wireless networks.

Written by Bill Thompson

World’s first dual-screen notebook

Lenovo has introduced the ThinkPad W700ds mobile workstation, which gives users prime screen real-estate as the first mobile workstation in the industry with two screens.

Lenovo said it has combined a new balance of design with complex engineering and a new level of performance to give users in the most demanding of fields such as digital content creation, oil and gas exploration, computer-aided design and photography, the ultimate mobile workstation.

"The ThinkPad W700ds dual screen mobile workstation challenged our international development team to engineer a notebook to fit the way workstation users work, in the office and on the road," said Mark Cohen, vice president, Notebook Business Unit, Lenovo. "Bringing this level of innovation to the most extreme PC users required continually balancing size and functionality with keeping the PC cool and quiet. This mobile workstation is the result of where Lenovo innovation and performance intersect."

Lenovo said that as many workstation users typically work with two monitors, it designed the ThinkPad W700ds mobile workstation with two screens to accommodate their work habits while on-the-go and to eliminate the compromise of having only one display when operating in a mobile environment. Research has shown that extra screen real-estate with multiple monitors helps maximize user productivity versus single display solutions.

Measuring almost 40% of the 17-inch primary screen, the 10.6-inch second screen gives users extra screen real-estate, measuring approximately the size of a Lenovo IdeaPad S10 netbook. The second screen easily slides out from the PC cover behind the primary screen, and it can also be adjusted to fit a user's viewing angle by up to 30 degrees, similarly to how a car's rear view mirror tilts. This feature only adds a few millimeters in additional thickness to the mobile workstation over its predecessor, the ThinkPad W700 mobile workstation.

Written by IT News Online Staff

Windows 7 beta gives hope for less-bloated operating system

You get the idea that Microsoft (MSFT) can't shove aside its Windows Vista operating system fast enough. Microsoft recently opened up a beta, or test, version of Windows 7 — Vista's eventual successor — to anybody who wanted an early crack at it.

The software is best downloaded at this stage only by techies who have a spare PC to try it on. For-sale versions of Windows 7 aren't expected until late this year or early next.

Microsoft has made bold promises for Windows 7: that it will crash less and be faster, more secure, more reliable and easier to use.

If Microsoft delivers, well, amen. Critics have hammered Vista for being bloated, a resource hog and overly intrusive. It's premature to evaluate Windows 7's performance against Vista. But what I've seen so far gives me great hope.

I've been trying out Windows 7 on a Lenovo ThinkPad preloaded with the beta. The interface has the familiar look of Windows, though less cluttered. The machine booted up (about 35 seconds) and shut down (9 seconds) much faster than my Dell desktop with Vista. Of course, my Vista PC is stuffed with programs and files.

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Hands are the new remote control

A 3D camera that picks up gestures and allows the user to control their television is on display at the CES tech fair in Las Vegas.

Click's Richard Taylor demonstrates the GestureTek creation should make flicking through photos or your collection of video games as easy as raising a hand.

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UK forges ahead with next gen net

Do-it-yourself broadband schemes are springing up around the UK as communities refuse to wait for big firms to roll out faster networks.

That is the conclusion of a new report into the state of broadband in Britain. The Communications Consumer Panel, an advisory body, has mapped over 40 local broadband projects. They range from a scheme in Hampshire to run fibre to just 30 houses to one in Yorkshire that will connect around 550,000 homes.

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What's with Google's new mini icon?

What's the most recognised logo in the world? It would probably be Google's if only they could stick to one. Yet as the world's most popular search engine tries out a new favicon, Craig Smith says the old branding rulebook is being rewritten.

It's not the size that matters, it's how often you use it. So the thinking goes at Google, which has just revealed the design of its latest favicon - the tiny logo that shows any web user, on any web browser, anywhere in the world, precisely whose internet "real estate" they are currently residing upon.

An example of a favicon can be seen at the top of this page (so long as you are using an up-to-date enough web browser). Just in front of the URL http://news.bbc.co.uk/... there is a small BBC logo. That 16x16 pixel square is the size of the favicon in question, if not the scope.

Now consider that, at the website owner's discretion, the logo appears on every single one of its pages that the world's web population loads. For Google that amounts to upward of 1, 200 million individual searches. Every day.

Add to that its Google News, Google Images, mobile search and multitude of other online services. Suddenly the favicon takes on an importance that belies its fingernail-sized dimensions, and the motivation for Google to roll out its third design in less than a year, as it attempts to get its favicon right, becomes clear.

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