You've got mail - on your phone!

You were this close to sending a very important mail to your boss and puff goes your connection, now you could use your phone to call your boss and may be get fired or use the same phone to set things right with a bluetooth-enabled and GPRS phone. The key advantages of using bluetooth are that you don't need to install the phone on the PC and you can keep the phone anywhere close by, such as in your pocket while connecting.

To start, you'll need a Bluetooth phone and you'll need to subscribe to the Advanced GPRS feature that all service providers offer under different names. Check if your connection is working by using the phone's browser to open any website. The next thing you need is, of course, a laptop or a PC with a Bluetooth adapter, installed and working. I'll be looking at Bluetooth adapters that use the WIDCOMM drivers, not the built-in Microsoft ones which are severely limited.

First, enable Bluetooth on the phone. Then, right click the Bluetooth icon on your Windows system tray, select "Quick Connect", then "Dial-Up Networking" and finally "Find devices." It will find your phone and show it in the list. Double click on the phone name, or select it and click "Connect." Windows will install your phone as a Bluetooth modem. When done, it will also create a shortcut to the Bluetooth dial-up connection in your Network Connections folder.

Now the tough part - go to the Control Panel, select "Printers and Other Hardware," and click on "Phone and Modem Options." Switch to the "Modems" tab and highlight the "Bluetooth Modem" item in the list. Click "Properties" to open up a settings box. In here, click the "Advanced" tab to find a box where you can enter "Extra initialization commands." Hutch users enter +CGDCONT=1, "IP","www" and Airtel users use +CGDCONT=1, "IP","www.airtelgprs.com." Confirm these modem initialization strings with your service provider before using them. Click OK a bunch of times to close all the dialogue boxes. The tough part is pretty much over.
Double click on the Bluetooth connection in your Network Connections folder for the dial-up dialog to come up. Don't enter a username or password, just enter *99***1# as the number and click "Dial."

If all goes well, you should be online in just a few seconds! The speed of the connection varies between different times of the day and also between different service providers. At some points in time, the connection is just fast enough to send the email that's pending, but at other times, it's quite fast and actually "browseable." And finally there goes my very important mail to my boss.

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Symantec continues Vista bug hunt

After poking around the Windows Vista networking stack, Symantec researchers have tried out privilege-escalation attacks on an early version of the Windows XP successor.
In a second report on Vista, Symantec takes on a security feature in the operating system called User Account Control, or UAC. The feature runs a Vista PC with fewer user privileges to prevent malicious code from being able to do as much damage as on a PC running in administrator mode, a typical setting on Windows XP.

"We discovered a number of implementation flaws that continued to allow a full machine compromise to occur," Matthew Conover, principal security researcher at Symantec, wrote in the report titled "Attacks against Windows Vista's Security Model." The report was made available to Symantec customers last week and is scheduled for public release sometime before Vista ships, a Symantec representative said Monday.

Conover looked at the February preview release of Vista. The report describes how an attacker could commandeer a Vista PC with Internet Explorer 7, the reinforced version of Microsoft's Web browser. The final version of Vista is not expected to be broadly available until January.
The attack starts out by planting a malicious file on a Vista PC when a rigged Web site is visited. The placing of the file involves using a specially crafted Web program called an ActiveX control that exploits a security hole. The report then describes how the malicious program could gain privileges and ultimately give an attacker full control of the PC.

"The triviality of this privilege escalation...foreshadows the grave difficulty that the Windows Vista security model will have enforcing the separation between low and medium integrity level under the same user account," Conover wrote.

Microsoft has already resolved most of the issues identified in the Symantec report, a representative for the Redmond, Wash., company said in a statement. "Highlighting issues in early builds of Windows Vista does not accurately represent the quality and depth of the final functionality of User Account Control," the representative said.

Additionally, Microsoft said the Symantec research assumes that the user is logged in with an administrator account, a setting Microsoft does not recommend. Instead, the software maker advises the use of standard user accounts, which will require users to enter a password to gain admin-level privileges, for example to install software.

Microsoft has pitched Vista as its most secure operating system ever. UAC and Internet Explorer 7 are two of the key ingredients to deliver that security.

The report on UAC is the second of three reports Symantec plans to release on Windows Vista. A first report, on new Vista networking technology, was publicly released last week. A third report, examining the Vista core, or kernel, is scheduled to be published on Symantec's DeepSight security intelligence service this week.

Traditionally allies, Microsoft and Symantec are now going head-to-head in the security arena. In late May, Microsoft introduced Windows Live OneCare, a consumer security package, and the software giant is readying an enterprise desktop security product. Symantec has also sued Microsoft, alleging misuse of data storage technology it licensed to the company.

"Symantec continuously researches and analyzes new technologies," said Pamela Reese, a Symantec spokeswoman. "Even with the understanding that the issues discussed in this research will likely be resolved before Windows Vista is shipped, Symantec has opted to make this research public because of the public interest in Vista."

But telling the world at large about vulnerabilities in an operating systems that won't ship for a while doesn't help anybody, noted John Pescatore, a Gartner analyst. Except, perhaps, Symantec's marketing machine. "They want to sell desktop security software even when Vista comes out," Pescatore said.

Additionally, security companies benefit from getting their name associated with finding vulnerabilities. "It helps people trust them as a security company," Pescatore said.
Symantec said it is encouraged to see that Microsoft is taking care of the basics by improving the security of its newest operating system. "However, Symantec feels that customers are safer if they can exercise their choice to use the security capabilities offered by Symantec and others," Reese said.

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How would your mobile look in 2015?


BANGALORE: Going back a decade, one would have not thought of 'on-the-move-phones'; the ubiquitous handphone has become a must-have for all and sundry today. Constant innovation in design and technology has enabled features like an inbuilt camera, MP3 player, digital diary, email client, web browser etc.


Let's fast-forward and come to the year 2015. What will this creature look like ten years hence? Needless to say it will be packed with several features and may make many devices that we use today, redundant. What will happen at the design front? Will they retain the 'phone look' or take the look of a ring, a necklace, a bag or a ring?

Phone giant Nokia, hooked 26 design students from London's Central St Martins College of Art and Design, into a contest to design the phones of 2015.

Click here to view the picture gallery !

Students were instructed to keep the users in mind while designing and came up with mobile phone for gamers which doubles as a pair of sunglasses, a phone for security conscious that can be worn as a ring, a necklace phone where each bead is a contact and an aromatherapy phone.Daniel Meyer, won the first prize; the phone's lower portion swivels to allow the phone to sit in a freestanding right angle and act as a picture frame. The handset has an inbuilt trackball that can act as a mouse.

The devices are displayed at the Future of Mobile Design exhibition at London's Air Gallery.

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