Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 11th Oct 2010 16:18 UTC
So, today was the big day for Microsoft. It's all or nothing. Die tot oder die gladiolen (cookie if you get that one without using Google). The software giant from Redmond officially launched its Windows Phone 7 operating system, alongside about ten handsets from different OEMs. Since Windows Phone 7 has been covered quite a lot already, leaving little to the imagination, did something actually new come out of all this? Yes, it did.
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Member since:2009-08-26
No, that's incorrect. Sure, your "average" assembly code won't run on the platform directly, but assembly is anything but average and my opinion would be that less then %5, maybe even %1, of malware would have any assembly code in it.
Assembly code has nothing to do with it. WP7 can not execute a standard Win32 exe. Windows malware makes Win32 specific calls in order to keep itself alive. Not only is WP7 unable to process a Win32 executable but even if it could the exchange would look like this:
Malware: Requesting standard access to the registry.
WP7: What the hell are you talking about?
However, MS did port the .NET stack and hence pretty much anything written in VS will run just fine. Sure, I'm guessing some file locations have moved, etc..., but the code itself will run just fine.
In short, Win7 mobile probably has plenty of the same holes as regular Win7, especially the .NET related ones.
First of all the vast majority of malware that is not installed voluntarily take advantage of buffer overruns. Both Java and C#/.NET are interpreted languages that require bounds checking to prevent them from happening.
If what you are really saying is that trojans written in .net can be ported to WP7 well that means nothing since trojans can be placed inside Android apps as well. Since WP7 doesn't allow outside apps Android is actually more vulnerable to this type of attack.
Saying that WP7 will be a security risk because of .NET makes about as much sense as saying that Xbox is a security risk because of .NET or that Linux distros are at risk because of Mono.
Edited 2010-10-13 07:31 UTC
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.More News »
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2006-05-12
WP7 is all ARM, I don't think they even plan on having it ported for Atoms.
No, that's incorrect. Sure, your "average" assembly code won't run on the platform directly, but assembly is anything but average and my opinion would be that less then %5, maybe even %1, of malware would have any assembly code in it.
However, MS did port the .NET stack and hence pretty much anything written in VS will run just fine. Sure, I'm guessing some file locations have moved, etc..., but the code itself will run just fine.
In short, Win7 mobile probably has plenty of the same holes as regular Win7, especially the .NET related ones.