HTC Intros Touch Pro, a Business-Centric Version of Touch Diamond

High Tech Computer on Wednesday announced the Touch Pro, a business handset a similar design to the iPhone rival, HTC Touch Diamond revealed last month to great fanfare.

Touch Pro shares the curved diamond backside of its sister handset, but it’s thicker due to the Qwerty-keypad that slides out for easy thumb typing. The keypad also includes a fifth row, a top line with numbers, which HTC handset keypads have not had in the past.

Also like the Touch Diamond, the Touch Pro is a 3G (third generation mobile telecommunications) smartphone running Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional OS. The 2.8-inch screen on front is made for easy touch navigation using HTC’s TouchFlo touchscreen software.

Touch Pro marks the second 3G touchscreen handset HTC has announced head of the 3G iPhone. Last year, the company launched its popular Touch smartphone a few weeks ahead of the iPhone and has sold 3 million since then.

Apple has not formally announced a launch date for its 3G iPhone, but some speculate it may be out this month.

Touch Pro is aimed at business users who need the keypad and message/e-mail functions. An HTC representative said the device will be out globally around August.

The smartphone works on WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) networks. For mobile Internet access, it offers data rates up to 7.2M bits per second using HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) on cellular networks, or via Wi-Fi 802.11b/g.

HTC Touch Pro also includes a video-out port so people hook the device up to a larger screen or television and project a bigger image, a boon for activities such as giving presentations.

Price information was not immediately available for the device. As a reference, Touch Diamond will cost around NT$26,000 ($857) when it launches in Taiwan next month. An EDGE-based (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution) version of the Touch Diamond launched in India last month at a price of Rs. 27,500 ($646).

The price reflects some of the expensive features on board the device, which are similar to the Touch Pro; including GPS (Global Positioning System) and a 3.2-megapixel camera.

First mobile ransom Trojan

Making money is what today’s malware is all about and the first ransom Trojans for smartphones have been found in China. We have already seen similar Trojans on the PC side before which infect your computer, take your data ‘hostage’ or somehow disrupt your computer’s capabilities, and then offer to restore everything back to normal if you pay out the ransom money. Typically, the ransom Trojan first encrypts your hard drive and then sends you a password after you have sent money to the criminals via an online money transfer system.

In the case of Kiazha, the first smartphone ransom Trojan, you get infected by downloading a shareware lookalike program on your phone, which then drops several known older viruses on your phone. Next it sends a message explaining that you can only get the phone fixed by transferring the equivalent of seven dollars to the attackers through an online payment system. Today’s smartphones are so important to many people that they are prepared to pay a ransom to get back their phonebook, calendar and mobile emails, so we might well be seeing much more of this type of malware in the future.

Apple MacBook Air Hacked In Two Minutes

Apple’s MacBook Air was hacked in just two minutes at the CanSecWest security conference’s PWN 2 OWN hacking contest, with former National Security Agency employee Charlie Miller walking away with a $10,000 prize.

Show organizers also offered a Sony Vaio, Fujitsu U810 and the MacBook Airas prizes, saying that they could be won by anybody at the show who could find a way to hack into each of them and read the contents of a file on the system, using a previously undisclosed ‘0day’ attack.

Nobody was able to hack into the systems on the first day of the contest when contestants were only allowed to attack the computers over the network, but on Thursday the rules were relaxed so that attackers could direct contest organizers using the computers to do things like visit websites or open email messages.

The MacBook was the only system to be hacked by Thursday, however, the word on the show floor is that the Linux and Vista systems will meet with some serious challenges today.

Miller, a former National Security Agency employee best known as one of the researchers who first hacked Apple’s iPhone last year, didn’t take much time. Within two minutes, he directed the contest’s organizers to visit a website that contained his exploit code, which then allowed him to seize control of the computer, as about 20 onlookers cheered him on.

He was the first contestant to attempt an attack on any of the systems.

Miller was quickly given a nondisclosure agreement to sign and he’s not allowed to discuss particulars of his bug until the contest’s sponsor, TippingPoint, can notify the vendor.

Contest rules state that Miller could only take advantage of software that was pre-installed on the Mac, so the flaw he exploited must have been accessible, or possibly inside, Apple’s Safari browser.

By late Thursday, Apple engineers were already working on patching the issue, said Aaron Portnoy, a TippingPoint researcher who is one of the contest’s judges.

Miller’s $10,000 payday may sound sweet, but it’s not the most Miller has been paid for his work. In 2005, he earned $50,000 for a Linux bug he delivered to an unnamed government agency.

Last year’s contest winner, Dino Dai Zovi, exploited a vulnerability in QuickTime to take home the prize.

Dai Zovi, who congratulated Miller after his hack, didn’t participate in this year’s contest, saying it was time for someone else to win.

Shane Macaulay, who was Dai Zovi’s co-winner last year, spent much of Thursday trying to hack into the Fujitsu Vista laptop, at one point rushing back to his Vancouver area home to retrieve a file that he thought might help him hack into the system.

But it was all in vain.

“It’s one thing to find a vulnerability, it’s another thing to make working exploit code,” said Terri Forslof, TippingPoint’s Manager of Security Response.

Forslof said that a number of “high quality” researchers have said that they will attempt to hack the machines on Friday, the last day of the conference.

She expects both systems to be hacked on Friday, when contest rules will be further eased, and hackers will be able to attack popular third-party software that can be installed on the systems. “I don’t think we’ll have to take any home,” she said.

Multi-Touch Trackpad for Asustek’s New Eee PC

The next generation Eee PC laptop by Asustek Computer will come with a multi-touch trackpad in addition to the larger screen, better Webcam and increased data storage, a company representative said Thursday.

The Eee PC 900 boasts an 8.9-inch screen, larger than the 7-inch display on the original Eee PC 701 model, along with a 1.3 MP camera and 12GB solid-state disk drive (SSD). The Webcam on the Eee PC 701 is only 0.3MP and the largest SSD is 8GB.

The Eee PC 900’s oversized touchpad works similar to the Macbook Air. Using two fingers, a person can zoom in and out of documents and photos, scroll up and down, and more, an Asustek representative said.

A picture of the Eee PC 900 can be found on the Federal Communications Commission’s Web site, where details were submitted for approval by the U.S. government regulator.

A few things the Eee PC 900 will not have include a touchscreen and GPS (global positioning system), the Asustek representative said, despite some news reports to the contrary.

The Eee PC 900 will come pre-loaded with either Microsoft Windows XP or Linux OSs, the representative said.

The first devices will likely hit some markets by June this year. Pricing will vary by country, but in Europe, the new Eee PC will cost around $626.

Sony Unveils First Internal Blu-ray Disc Drive

Sony Electronics unveiled its first internal Blu-ray disc (BD) ROM drive (BDU-X10S) for the computer. The drive offers consumers an option to upgrade their desktop to a Blu-ray player, which can also play DVDs and CDs.

The BDU-X10S now comes bundled with the CyberLink’s PowerDVD BD Edition software for playing movie titles, recorded Blu-ray disc home videos, DVD-ROMs and CD-ROMs. It also supports playback of recorded Blu-ray discs in MPEG-2 or H.264 format, standard DVD-Video discs or recorded DVDs encoded with MPEG-2 or AVCHD formats.

The internal drive allows fast and easy transfer of data or videos through its high-speed Serial ATA (SATA) interface.  Its standard 5.25-inch form factor enables easy installation in desktop PCs running Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows XP operating systems.

Other technical specifications include,  8x DVD ROM (Read Only), 24X CD-ROM (Read Only), data buffer size of 4MB, physical dimension of 5.25 x 1.63x 7.0 inch and installation angle supporting both vertical and horizontal.

Sony BDU-X10S is available through Rashi and its branches throughout India for Rs. 16,950 and enjoys one year warranty.