Aiko Solutions has recently released SecuBox 1.5, an advanced data encryption solution for Windows Mobile phones. The application provides transparent on-the-fly encryption of data stored in the smartphone memory and its media cards, protecting corporate and personal information in case the mobile devices get lost or stolen.

SecuBox is easy to use, and anyone can securely store their confidential documents, private files and images in a SecuBox container, protected by AES 256 bit encryption. The application then automatically locks data when user becomes inactive or when the phone goes into “sleep” mode…

SecuBox runs on Windows Mobile 5 and higher devices and is available for $39.95 for touch and non-touch enabled devices. A free 30 day trial version is also available.

Recently, some 1337 haxx0rz have purportedly broken into T-Mobile (NYSE: DT)’s internal systems and claimed “We have everything, their databases, confidental [sic] documents, scripts and programs from their servers, financial documents up to 2009,” and are offering the goods to the highest bidder. T-Mobile has officially acknowledged the breach, although they’re playing down the repercussions:

“To reaffirm, the protection of our customers’ information and the security of our systems is paramount at T-Mobile. Regarding the recent claim on a Web site, we’ve identified the document from which information was copied, and believe possession of this alone is not enough to cause harm to our customers. We continue to investigate the matter, and have taken additional precautionary measures to further ensure our customers’ information and our systems are protected. At this moment, we are unable to disclose additional information in order to protect the integrity of the investigation, but customers can be assured if there is any evidence that customer information has been compromised, we would inform those affected as quickly as possible.”

Supposedly no competing carriers were biting at the hacker’s offer, but I could see a few rich and unscrupulous bloggers interested… Is anyone worried about the slip-up, or are you going to take T-Mobile’s word for it that nothing of dire importance made it out?

Update: We just got another statement from T-Mobile:

“Following a recent online posting that an alleged hacker apparently accessed T-Mobile servers, the company is conducting a thorough investigation and at this time has found no evidence that customer information, or other company information, has been compromised. Reports to the contrary are inaccurate and should be corrected. T-Mobile continues to monitor this situation and as a precaution has taken additional measures to further ensure our customers’ information and our systems are protected. As is our standard practice, customers can be assured if there is any evidence that customer or system information has been compromised, we would inform those affected as quickly as possible.”

[via CellPhoneSignal, pic]

Karaway Entertainment is proud to announce the multiple patent pending Gaming Stick® System. This complete electronic gaming system utilizes a USB flash drive device will give a gaming establishment the ability to offer electronic gambling on a casino floor or even at the customer’s home under certain conditions. The Karaway system is designed to allow players to play their choice of multiple games that are multi-denominational on any type of computer with a Windows operating system, special gaming terminal or PDA with a Windows operating system. There is also a special high security micro-mini Gaming Card under development that will be used for mobile gaming on cell phones. It is also part of the Karaway system and will be available in 2009.

Karaway will also start negotiations for movie content for the entertainment sticks upon completion of a test proto-type model (to be completed by 6/15/2009). There will be 4 formats of each movie that can be downloaded into Cards from a computer program or Kiosk. The user has the ability to purchase or rent movies. The user does not have to return to the Kiosk/computer if movies are rented (there is a timer built in to stop the card from playing rented movies after rental period expires.) Each card is individually registered to user and can have password protection.  The user can not copy, hack or accidentally delete content on Card. The Cards have a history section of viewers watching habits and will transfer this data each time viewer buys or rents. The system tracks every penny and can breakdown royalties to be paid. Kiosks can be on a route where operator loads new content each week from a special USB device or it can be connected to central terminal via internet. Skill games, video games, books, or Movies can be loaded into Cards.

FORMATS are Mobile for cell phones, MP4 for MP3 hand held devices, SWF for computers and Full definition for computer/TV. The Cards will be available from 4GB to 32 GB this year and 64 GB next year.

While RIM’s press briefing today at WES 2009 was boring for the most part, but there was this little thing that their security VP brought up that looked really cool. MicroSD cards with embedded Smart Card security have apparently been around at least two years, but it’s certainly new to me. Giesecke & Devrient have a card shown here that carries up to 2 GB of information, in addition to ensuring only the designated device can access the data on that card, as well as being used for key generation. RIM’s big on security, and I could see security-embedded microSD cards taking off with the particularly tight-lipped enterprises of the world. For a closer look at what Giesecke & Devrient’s cards can do, check out their product sheet.

As the world continues abandoning fixed-line communications in most homes, the days of the traditional “wiretap” are fast drawing to a close. The term “wiretap” is rooted in the earliest of eavesdropping investigations – authorities would literally “tap,” or splice, into an existing telephone landline in order to listen in on suspects’ conversations. These days, the “wiretap” really has no basis in real-world methodologies. In fact, most wiretaps have nothing to do with any wires, or any “taps” for that matter!

The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts’s recently released Wiretap Report shows that 94% of all wiretap applications in 2008 were aimed at wireless devices like cellphones and pagers. With fewer and fewer Americans relying on fixed-line communications, it makes sense that authorities would want to tap mobile phones. The mobile revolution has clearly changed the way law enforcement handles its business.

Druggies were highest on the list of criminals attracting wiretaps. The data shows that 84% of wiretap applications sought to listen in on drug-related criminal conversations, far out-pacing wiretaps in homicide, racketeering or gambling investigations. And, in a day and age when a mobile phone is as accessible as a pack of cigarettes, these wireless wiretaps have proven successful – wiretaps ended in 2008 netted 4,133 arrests and 810 convictions thus far.

Just because you’re on your cellphone doesn’t mean Big Brother can’t listen in on your conversation. In fact, if you’re a criminal, you can pretty much assume that the fuzz is tapping your BlackBerry.

[Via: AP]

Could it be Philip Markoff, the man accused of being the ‘Craiglist Killer’ was/is actually a BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) user? And could it be that his own BlackBerry device was a large part of bringing him to justice? It’s looking that way. You may have noticed on TV news all over North America (and no doubt the world) Mr. Blurrycam images of Markoff clutching onto his BlackBerry. In fact, in the image above you can see what appears to be Markoff doing some impromptu texting on-the-go. Look at those thumbs. A telltale sign of texting.

The Boston Herald has reported that Markoff’s online trail is what did him in. Investigators followed and checked out high-tech leads and traced IP addresses to actual locations in the real world.

Arraignment is scheduled for today, so I’m sure we’ll learn more on this one soon. If found guilty, I doubt he’ll get any reception in prison.

Read more over at the Boston Herald.

Car theft has long been a nagging problem in many parts of the world, and even with anti-theft devices and systems, it seems as though the cars just keep disappearing. With that in mind, students over at the University of Saskatchewan have developed a prototype that aims to solve the problem (or at least deter it some more) once and for all. The prototype brings your cellphone’s text messaging capabilities and your car’s computer system together. How does it work? Well, if you notice your car is stolen, pick up your cell (hopefully you haven’t left it in your car) and send a quick text message to your car. The car will initiate a shutdown process to stop the thieves right where they are. Cool.

Explains student/developer Michael Siourounis:

“You text your vehicle and inform it that it has been stolen. It will actually initiate a sequence of events that causes the car’s internal computers, that we don’t modify at all, to think that the car has overheated.”

Very cool. The students also noted that once the text is received by the car, it will go into a limited power mode for about 30 seconds. The car will slow down to a maximum of 30km/h, which will give the thieves time to pull over before the car stops for good.

Siourounis also noted that the device is still a prototype and costs about $600. However, once a device like this gets tied into an on-board GPS, the results can be even more powerful. The test vehicle the students used had an on-board GPS, and once the car stopped, the unit would text back the location of the ’stolen’ car… You know, so you can alert the police or head down there yourself to lay a beating on the thieves if they’re still around. Great work and two thumbs up to the students at the University of Saskatchewan.

[MobileSyrup via CBC]

Spam is an unfortunate reality that we all have to deal with. If you’re lucky, you won’t have to deal with with too much spam hitting your SMS text message inbox. SMS spam is a big problem in the US. So bad, in fact, that a new bit of legislation has hit the Senate floor with the potential to dramatically reduce SMS spam messages.

Congress passed the CAN-SPAM Act in 2003, which banned the sending of emails to mobile phones. But, that left the door open to SMS-based spam messages. As the number of spam text messages continues to grow, many wireless subscribers are picking up the tab. Concerned that mobile customers are getting charged upwards of 20 cents for each incoming message, a couple of Senators have introduced a bill that would prohibit the sending of commercial text messages to wireless customers listed in the FTC’s Do Not Call list. This new legislation would explicitly ban spammy text messages from hitting cellphones, a provision that the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 failed to outline.

As annoying as email-based spam messages are, spam text messages are potentially more problematic than email spam ever was. Because spam SMS is delivered directly to the mobile phone, it has the potential to invade and disrupt our personal lives, not to mention the potential to cost customers big money.

[Via: eWeek]

Probably a story that you will be very familiar with if you (a) live in the EU somewhere and (b) read the news on the net at all. An EU law was put in to effect on Monday 6th which means that all ISPs have to store the logs of internet phone calls and emails (but not necessarily the content of them) for one full year – I’d imagine that is going to be a HUGE amount of data, when it’s all totalled up!

People could be forgiven for thinking purely in terms of their PCs (either at work or at home), and the usage of popular apps on them – but of course there’s a not insignificant amount of this traffic that is now generated via Mobiles! I don’t know about you, but I would say I now do the lions share of my emailing on the move – and I’m sure at some point I might convert to the benefits of moby-VoIP also.

But how many people spare a thought as to the implications of that data storage – apparently it’s going to be used to “determine connections between people” (whatever that means), but crucially, organisations other than the Police could get access to this data.

Now let’s be clear – it’s already the case that lots of data about you, your preferences, purchasing patterns etc, passes “under the table” and is shared by organisations (and don’t even get me started about how easy it is to buy peoples’ credit card details – £12 will do it according to a recent news report I saw!), so what’s going to happen when the “data trail” you leave around the InterWeb is snapped up and processed by potentially unscrupulous organisations?

I don’t view this as scaremongering in the slightest – mistakes get make, data gets lost, false accusations are made based on bad data – the list goes on – only this time, there’s more of your “digital footprint” out there for people to piece together in whatever way they see fit.

If you want to read a really good article on this issue, from a wider perspective than just Mobile, check out this article on the BBC News website.

It’s worth a thought for all of us to consider the implications of the digital artefacts we leave behind as we connect to the InterWeb – be it via Mobile device, or other.

[Original story via: BBC News]

SymbianGuru has recently released the new version of their Bluetooth-protectin’ application for Symbian S60 devices – BT Guard. The most important feature of the version 2.2 is the added support for Symbian S60 5th Edition. Yap, that means the application will have the optimized-for-touch user interface when installed on the Nokia (NYSE: NOK) 5800 XpressMusic or the upcoming Nokia N97.

As for other improvements, the new release also fixes some of the known bugs of the previous version.

Those not familiar should know that BT Guard works as a resident application (always in the memory, once started), and it makes sure the phone is invulnerable to potential Bluetooth hacks. One of the ways BT Guard does this is to automatically change Bluetooth status according to user’s settings. When it is time to change a Bluetooth status, the application can ask for confirmation to turn it invisible or off.

However, I must add that if you’re smart enough — i.e. read instructions provided on the screen — chances to get a malware on your Symbian S60 device via Bluetooth are practically non existent. That said, I wouldn’t buy BT Guard myself, but I can see some people going for it, “just for case.”