Repeat of S Korea, US Cyberattacks Cause no Damage

Associated Press

Hundreds of computers that helped cause a wave of outages on U.S. and South Korean government websites last July launched new attacks on the same sites, but no major interference was reported, police said Thursday.

The computers were programmed to attack every July 7, according to police, so this year's assault appeared to be a continuation of last year's, which began over the July 4 holiday weekend in the U.S. but reached South Korea on July 7.

More than 460 computers infected with malicious computer codes assaulted 25 websites, including those of the White House and South Korea's presidential Blue House, on Wednesday, said Jeong Seok-hwa, a police officer handling investigations of the cyberattacks.

Although last year's attacks were initially blamed on North Korea, experts have more recently said they have no conclusive evidence that it was behind the assaults.

The malicious computer codes, called malware, triggered denial of service attacks, in which large numbers of computers try to connect to a site at the same time in an attempt to overwhelm the server.

"But the attacks were so weak that there were no problems in accessing the sites," Jeong said.

An analysis of an infected computer in Seoul showed that it was programmed to attack every July 7 and the malware used was identical to that used last year, said Hyun Jae-sub, another police official. In other words, the computers apparently attacked again this year because last year's malware hadn't been removed, not because another assault was launched.

Hyun said the attacks were traced to computers that participated in last year's attacks and still were infected. He said about 270,000 infected computers were involved in the original assaults.

AhnLab, a top South Korean cybersecurity company, said it provided free vaccine programs - which can repair infected computers and prevent denial of service attacks - to computer users following last year's attacks as part of efforts to prevent their recurrence. Police had no tally of how many were vaccinated.

Jeong said about 430 infected computers are in South Korea and others are traced to the U.S., Britain, China and Japan. Hyun said the Internet Protocol addresses - the Web equivalent of a street address or phone number - showed the attacks came from computers in South Korea but authorities have not yet located all the infected computers in the country.

AhnLab official Song Chang-min said owners of infected computers would not suspect they were compromised because the infection would not cause any problems or malfunctions in everyday use.

Later Thursday, new attacks were launched on 16 websites - including those of the Blue House and the Korea-U.S. joint military command. But no serious problems were reported, Jeong said.

The attacks came a month after two South Korean government websites were struck with denial of service attacks that officials said were traced to China.

Last year, government websites in South Korea and the U.S. were paralyzed by cyberattacks.

South Korean officials believed those attacks were conducted by North Korea, but U.S. officials have largely ruled out North Korea as the origin, according to cybersecurity experts.

Experts say there is no conclusive evidence that North Korea, or any other nation, orchestrated it.

South Korean media have reported that North Korea runs an Internet warfare unit aimed at hacking into U.S. and South Korean military networks to gather information and disrupt service.

Samsung Forecasts Record 2Q Operating Profit

Associated Press

 

Samsung Electronics Co. forecast Wednesday that operating profit rose to a record high in the second quarter on what analysts said were strong sales of computer memory chips and liquid crystal displays.

The Suwon, South Korea-based company said it expects consolidated operating profit of between 4.8 trillion won and 5.2 trillion won ($4.2 billion) for the three months ended June 30, according to a statement. That would beat the company's previous all-time high of 4.41 trillion won set in the first quarter.

Samsung, a major force in the global electronics industry, is the world's biggest seller of computer memory chips, liquid crystal displays and flat-screen televisions. It ranks No. 2 in mobile phone handsets after Finland's Nokia Corp.

The company gave no reason for the quarterly performance and will formally announce second-quarter earnings at the end of this month, according to spokesman Jason Kim .

Samsung does not release net profit forecasts. The company recorded net profit of 2.25 trillion won in the second quarter of 2009, a figure based on South Korean accounting standards, according to spokesman James Chung. Samsung adopted international financial reporting standards, or IFRS, from the first quarter of this year.

Lee Min-hee, an analyst at Dongbu Securities in Seoul, forecast that Samsung will record second-quarter net profit of 4.2 trillion won.

Operating profit is seen as a direct indicator of business performance before taxes, dividends, asset sales and other items that are figured into net profit or loss.

Analysts said Samsung benefited in the second quarter from strong sales of liquid crystal displays as well as DRAM, or dynamic random access memory, chips used mostly in personal computers. Seo Won-seok, of NH Investment & Securities in Seoul, estimated that the company's DRAM profit margin exceeded 40 percent.

The outlook for extending its record operating profit performance the rest of this year was uncertain.

"Many investors doubt that this trend is sustainable in the second half as the global economy slows down," said Lee of Dongbu Securities.

Samsung began issuing earnings estimates, or guidance, last year in hopes increased transparency would help minimize market speculation over its performance. The estimates include the performance of its overseas and domestic subsidiaries.

Samsung estimated consolidated sales of between 36 trillion won and 38 trillion won for the second quarter. That compares with sales of 32.51 trillion won a year earlier, a figure Samsung recalculated to conform with IFRS.

The company said in May it would invest a record 26 trillion won this year in capital spending and research and development as it bets on future growth, despite questions about the global economic outlook. Samsung said investment in new production facilities meant it expects to hire 10,000 new workers this year.

Shares in Samsung fell 0.8 percent to close at 769,000 won Wednesday. The company's stock price surged 77 percent in 2009.

Apple Plans Update for iPhone 'Signal Strength' Glitch

The Wall Street Journal

Apple Inc. said all of its iPhones, including its new iPhone 4, mistakenly inflate readings of their cellular signal strength, an uncharacteristic stumble for the consumer electronics giant.

The Cupertino, Calif., company said Friday in an open letter to iPhone 4 owners posted on its website that it had been using an incorrect method to determine the number of bars of cellular signal strength it displays on its devices. In several instances, iPhones mistakenly show better cellular reception than exists, the company said.

"Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong," the company wrote. Apple said the problem has been present since the original iPhone.

The investigation into the issue was touched off by user dissatisfaction over the iPhone 4's antenna. Adding that "gripping almost any mobile phone in certain ways will reduce its reception by 1 or more bars," Apple said iPhone 4 users appeared to be seeing a bigger drop than normal in antenna reception when they held their phones in a certain way because they were in low-reception areas to begin with. Apple said it would make a software update available to fix the bar display problem for the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G within a few weeks.

The admission is the latest glitch to befall the iPhone 4, the newest version of Apple's blockbuster iPhone that went on sale late last month. In addition to antenna reception issues, people have reported some discoloring on their iPhone 4 displays, which designers say is a temporary problem that comes from glue that isn't yet completely dry.

Apple also said last week that it was having problems making the white casing for a version of the iPhone 4. Its U.S. carrier AT&T Inc. stopped taking orders for the device temporarily after it experienced problems processing the higher-than-expected demand. And even before Apple unveiled the latest iPhone, details of it were published by Gawker Media LLC's tech blog Gizmodo, which had obtained a prototype that had been left behind in a bar.

Apple and AT&T declined to comment.

Still, the problems don't appear to be hurting sales. The device has been a huge sales success, with more than 1.7 million units sold in its first three days on the market. That's significantly higher than the one million iPhone 3GS devices that were sold in the same period a year ago.

Apple's online store continues to show a three-week delay in shipping iPhone 4s as demand outstrips supply.

Overall, Apple has sold more than 50 million iPhones since it first introduced the smartphone three years ago.

But analysts say the issues could be a sign of the increasing pressure that Apple is under to stay ahead of its competition. "It points to how difficult it is to keep up the pace of innovation," said Edward Synder, managing director of Charter Equity Research.

He added that "this performance is hurting their reputation."

The iPhone 4, which starts at $199, has a sleek edge-to-edge glass exterior and a stainless steel frame that functions as the antenna.

But what was supposed to be a cutting-edge antenna design has proven to be problematic as customers reported weak reception when the phone is held in a way that covers the bottom left corner.

Despite Apple's stance that reports of the faulty antenna reception are largely a perception problem and that all mobile devices lose some reception when gripped a certain way, antenna experts say that the iPhone 4 is more susceptible because its antennas aren't insulated from human touch as in other phone designs. A hand touching the metal antenna affects its effective area, they said.

"If you start making new design from scratch, that's where you run into problems," said Marlin Mickle, a professor of electrical engineering who specializes in antennas at the University of Pittsburgh.

In a recent advertisement for the rival Droid X, which launches on July 15, manufacturer Motorola Inc. and carrier Verizon Wireless pointed out that it has a double antenna design "that allows you to hold the phone any way you like it."

Spencer Webb, president of AntennaSys, which designs antennas, said it will likely take a while longer to know whether there's a bigger iPhone 4 antenna or mobile SEO problem beyond the bars on the display. "You can't figure that out without making calls and using it for a couple weeks," he said.

Apple issued the latest letter after its initial response to antenna issues—advising people to avoid covering the lower part of the device or get a case—failed to satisfy some consumers. At least three separate lawsuits were filed Wednesday alleging Apple knowingly sold a defective product.

The company reminded users Friday that they can return their iPhone 4 for a full refund within 30 days of purchase.

Dell buys Scalent, Gains Virtualization Power

Bloomberg Business Week

 

Dell is purchasing Scalent, a provider of server-virtualization management software, Dell announced on Thursday. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Dell plans to roll Scalent's infrastructure management software into its own Advanced Infrastructure Manager (AIM) data-center software package.

Scalent's Infrastructure Manager software package provides the ability to manage both physical and virtual servers without making any physical changes to the network. It could work with both VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisors. The company pitched its software for managing rapid and dynamic deployments of servers, and also as a disaster recovery tool.

Like Scalent's software, Dell's AIM allows an administrator to allocate compute, storage and virtual application workloads from a single console.

The computer giant in Round Rock, Texas, is no stranger to Scalent's software. In September 2009, Scalent signed an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) agreement with Dell, for Dell to offer Scalent's Infrastructure Manager software under its own name.

Dell expects to complete the purchase of Scalent, a privately held company, by the end of this month.

Scalent, founded in 2003, is based in Palo Alto, California. In addition to selling its software through Dell, the company has served as an OEM provider to EMC and Unisys.

Why Printers Get no Respect

The Wall Street Journal

 

Daniel Blackman loves gadgets. The 47-year-old chief operating officer of Howcast Media Inc., a New York Internet video company, has already replaced his iPad with an iPad 3G. He also has a Canon DSLR camera, a Sony handicam and a high-definition home theater projector. One item that he hasn't tried to upgrade to the newest, latest, best: a printer.

Fussy and prone to paper jams, the printer has been trying tempers in offices and homes since the dot-matrix days when paper came in perforated accordion stacks. As other gadgets, from flat-screen monitors to wireless mice, have sprinted ahead toward gasp-inducing irresistibility, one electronic has failed to thrill.

"It's kind of like a toaster," says Jeffery Lauria of iCorps Technologies, a Boston-based information technology provider.

The problem, sometimes, isn't the printer. It's the people printing, printer manufacturers say. Rough handling and mistreatment often upset sensitive machinery. "With computers, people don't want to mess with it. But with a printer, everyone thinks he's a mechanic," says George Lemus, senior manager of ABC Computer Services, a New York repair company where 40% of the business is fixing printers.

Hewlett-Packard Co., the leading maker of printers, said this month that its new printers would come with email addresses, so users can print from smartphones or any other Web-enabled device. It also has laser printers that automatically detect the location of a paper jam and show users where to find it on the screen. H-P says its inkjets failed 25% less often in 2009 compared to 2006, and laser printers improved 20%. The company declined to say how often the machines still misbehave.

Topping the list of common customer complaints are paper jams and problems connecting to a printer. In inkjet printers, the ink often dries out or gets clogged. In laser printers, the culprit is often the fuser, the part that presses the toner to the page and can cause some elements, such as stickers or labels, to melt.

Xerox Corp. makes what it calls "self-healing" machines that monitor their components to anticipate problems and adjust automatically. For example, the printers, starting at $399, can sense internal temperature and humidity and recalibrate their performance accordingly to maintain a consistent print quality. Xerox printers can also automatically notify Xerox when they need new parts or service.

The only people happy about printers? The technicians who repair them. They prefer fixing printers to computers because printers' simpler function means fewer things can go wrong, and there's no shortage of times when they do.

One recent afternoon, ABC Computer Services, the printer repair company, received an "emergency" call from the Somme Institute, a cosmetics maker.

"People say that all the time," said ABC Computer Services technician Roland Chen. "It's just a jam," he predicted.

At the Somme Institute office, Mr. Chen found an HP LaserJet 3390 churning out pages marked with eight circular bruises.

Edward Fallas, a Somme Institute spokesman, told Mr. Chen that he was printing labels. They must have come off inside the printer because now each page bore their imprint.

Mr. Chen suspected the fuser had melted the stickers. It would be impossible to clean off the adhesive gunk, so the fuser would have to be replaced—a $200 cost on a year-old $1,000 machine, plus $85 for Mr. Chen's visit.

"It was a major disruption," Mr. Fallas said later.

Donald Barthelemy, 26, has been a Paramus, N.J.-based technician with Best Buy Co.'s Geek Squad for six years. He makes four to five daily service calls to homes and businesses, and three to four of them involve printer-related problems. (Geek Squad declined to say how much of its business company-wide comes from printers.) Often, Mr. Barthelemy says, the machines show signs of neglect (dried-up ink cartridges) or abuse (broken parts).

The worst call came about six months ago at a now-defunct trucking company in Paramus he declines to name. It was Friday—pay day—and the firm needed the printer to print the paychecks. The printer wouldn't align correctly, rendering the checks either unreadable or made out for the wrong amount. Some employees walked out, Mr. Barthelemy says.

"They wanted to bash that printer in because it was the reason they weren't getting paid that day," Mr. Barthelemy says. He determined the printer couldn't be fixed and needed to be replaced.

Man-on-printer violence is a burgeoning YouTube subgenre. Many videos pay homage to the 1999 cult classic film "Office Space," in which the heroes abscond with their employer's printer, take it to an empty field and beat it with a baseball bat.

One video was posted by Taylor Fox, a 23-year-old MBA student at the University of Missouri. He made the 23-second clip, in which he throws his Dell printer against a dumpster and stamps on it, three years ago when he was moving from Arizona State University to Missouri and was deciding what to bring.

Fed up with the cost of ink cartridges, he says, "the printer didn't make the cut."

About 10,000 electronic customer feedback forms are processed by Lexmark International Inc. every month. The printer maker and service provider sorts them by common issues, which it calls "pain points."

Printer manufacturers compete fiercely on price. Many home models cost less than $100. In general, the profit margin is higher on ink refills than on printers themselves. H-P now sells cartridges for as little as $10, and Lexmark for as low as $5.

More companies are urging people to cut down on printing not just to save paper but also to save money. Printer supplies and maintenance are typically the largest cost for IT departments, accounting for up to 40% of their budgets, which can be up to 5% of a company's revenue, says Robert Sethre, a Warwick, N.Y.-based partner at research firm Photizo Group LLC. Many companies in recent years have shifted to having employees share a few heavy-duty machines on a network instead of having small printers at every desk.

Those small desktop printers, "they're pieces of junk," says Larry Frydman, owner of Computer Professionals USA, a New York network and printer maintenance company. "They work as long as they work, and when they don't work, they're meant to be throwaways."

Consumers Sue Apple, AT&T over iPhone Antenna Problems

Reuters

"Avoid holding it in that way."

Apple Inc has been sued by iPhone customers in at least three complaints related to antenna problems on its newest model.

Apple launched the iPhone 4 last week to a huge groundswell of demand. But the launch was also plagued by complaints from some customers about poor call reception on the device when they held it in a certain way.

The problems have been a hot topic on the Internet, but it is unclear how many people have been affected. The issue does not seem to have hurt iPhone sales so far. Apple sold 1.7 million new iPhones in the first three days.

A putative class action filed Tuesday in the U.S. District court for the Northern District of California against Apple and AT&T Inc (T.N) -- the iPhone's exclusive wireless carrier in the United States -- includes allegations of fraud by concealment, negligence, intentional misrepresentation and defective design.

"The iPhone 4 manifests design and manufacturing defects that were known to defendants before it was released which were not disclosed to consumers, namely, a connection problem caused by the iPhone 4's antenna configuration that makes it difficult or impossible to maintain a connection to AT&T's network," the lawsuit said.

It said Apple and AT&T have failed to provide customer support and customers have been left with only thee remedies: "hold their phones in an awkward and unnatural manner," pay a 10 percent restocking fee and return their phones, or pay $29.95 to buy one of Apple's cases that are said to fix the reception problem.

The iPhone 4 represents a complete redesign over the previous model. A band around the rim of the smartphone acts as its antenna.

The company responded to user complaints last week by saying the antenna performance of every wireless phone is impacted in some way by the how it is held, depending on where the antenna is located.

Apple and AT&T both decline to comment on Thursday.

In another purported class action complaint filed on Wednesday against Apple and AT&T, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, Kevin McCaffrey and Linda Wrinn said they were sold "defective" iPhone 4 units, which drop calls and data service, "when held in a manner consistent with normal wireless phone use."

Both suits cite emails reportedly sent from Apple Chief executive Steve Jobs, responding to iPhone customers complaints' about reception. Those responses were widely circulated on the Internet.

In one response, Jobs said: "Just avoid holding it (the iPhone) in that way."

The cases are 10-02862 Goodglick v. Apple Inc, and 10-01776 McCaffrey et al v. Apple Inc. et al.

Product Review: Droid X

USA Today

A hot, richly anticipated smartphone is on the horizon, but it's not the iPhone. Amidst the pomp and circumstance of Apple's launch comes the comparatively quiet unveiling of Droid X.

The new handset from Motorola and Verizon Wireless is an impressive, feature-packed Android handset that will give the iPhone 4 a run for its money. It has expandable memory, can serve as a mobile Internet hot spot and will soon make nice with Adobe Flash video. The phone hits stores on July 15, for $200 after a $100 rebate and with a two-year contract. Data plans start at $30 a month; 450 voice minutes adds $40, with unlimited texting an additional $20.

Droid X has 8 gigabytes of internal memory and a preinstalled 16-GB memory card that can be upgraded to 32 GB. The entry-level iPhone 4 has 16 GB of memory that can't be upgraded.

I like Android phones. They're highly customizable. You get to choose among multiple carriers and handsets. I recently tested the Sprint HTC Evo, a 4G, or fourth-generation, phone that I would like a whole lot more if it had a longer-lasting battery like the Droid X. Evo has been a smash hit for Sprint.

Droid X belongs at or near the top of the Android list. Verizon has a sterling reputation. Call quality was good. In a week's worth of testing, I never had a dropped call. Find an iPhone user who can say the same. I hear all the time from folks wondering if and when the iPhone will land on Verizon's network. I wouldn't bet on that happening soon.

Meanwhile, Droid X is a standout in its own right. A closer look:

Basics. The nearly 5.5-ounce, 5-inch tall Droid X device dwarfs the iPhone. While surely a turnoff for some, the payback is a mammoth 4.3-inch high-resolution display. Droid has an excellent Web browser (with pinch and zoom), accelerometer and the ability to run third-party apps.

Initially, Droid X will run version 2.1 of Google's Android mobile operating system software. In the summer, you'll receive an "over-the-air" update to Android 2.2, a version code-named Froyo. (Google's own Nexus One is just now getting Froyo.) Froyo promises to make Droid X more business-friendly and let you store apps on a memory card. Moreover, Droid X will get a summer update to support Adobe Flash video, a major advantage over the iPhone.

The first Droid had a slide-out (and so-so) physical keyboard. Droid X is touch-screen only. You can use a standard multitouch keyboard or try an alternate method called Swype as I did. Rather than lift your finger as you normally would after pecking each letter or key in a word, with Swype you don't lift your finger until you've finished with a word. So you're in effect tracing a path along an onscreen keyboard. It's supposed to be a faster and a simpler way to enter text. There's a learning curve, but I got the hang of it.

Apps. The Android Market is approaching 70,000 free and fee-based programs, well short of the 225,000 or so in Apple's camp. Still, you'll likely find most of the kinds of apps you'd want from Android, from games to grocery lists.

Motorola and Verizon have partnered with Blockbuster on Demand (buying/renting movies) and NFL Mobile (streaming live football) on Droid X. The Blockbuster app was still being tweaked. I did watch video via Verizon's subscription V Cast service with mixed results. On a bus from New Jersey into Manhattan, videos hiccupped badly or dropped out completely as I slipped in and out of 3G coverage. On Wi-Fi, I watched live World Cup soccer via V Cast, but the video was jerky.

Multimedia. Droid X has an 8-megapixel camera with flash and zoom. It produced decent pictures. You can apply special effects on the fly — turning video into black and white, for instance. You can shoot high-definition video (up to 720p). Droid X also has a mini-HDMI connector that, with an optional $25 cable, lets you display what you shot on a big-screen TV. You can't use HDMI to watch Blockbuster, the NFL network or other commercial content that originates on the phone.

Droid X has no built-in video chat or front camera as on the new iPhone. If you have gear that supports a standard called DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance), you can wirelessly share music, pictures and videos from your phone with those machines.

Droid X also comes with an FM radio.

Navigation and more. Droid X employs several Google services, from voice search to Gmail. You can use Google Maps to get free audible turn-by-turn directions. You can overlay traffic on the map or get a satellite view.

You can also use Droid X as a 3G hot spot for up to five Wi-Fi-capable devices. It worked fine with Dell used laptops and an iPad. Cost: $20 a month for 2 GB of data. It's also a battery drain.

Overall, the cell phone battery performed well. I didn't receive low-battery warnings until evening. The battery is rated at about eight hours of talk time.

The iPhone may hog most of the attention, but Droid X is a terrific smartphone that deserves a place in the spotlight.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Droid X from Motorola and Verizon

$200 (after $100 mail-in rebate) and with two-year Verizon Wireless contract

3 and a half stars out of four

Pros: Android phone has large and lovely display, can function as 3G hot spot, expandable memory, 8-megapixel camera can shoot high-definition video, mini-HDMI connector, will support Adobe Flash. Free Google navigation. Good battery life. Good call quality.

Cons: Phone is on large side. Mini-HDMI connector can't be used for commercial content. Hot spot feature is expensive if you go over 2-gigabyte allotment. Must wait for Android 2.2 update and Adobe Flash update.