***Samsung Smart Phone Theft or Lost ***

~~~~THIS INFORMATION I'M SHARING IS FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY.PLEASE USE IT TO YOUR DISCRETION...~~!  

   Samsung which is currently believed to the highest Smartphone’s Seller in the World is now providing a Remote tracking solution in all its smart phones to Track the lost phone with the name "Samsung Dive".

    The Service is based on the Architecture which primarily acquires precise location of the smart phone using it GPS and other subsidiary location acquisition techniques. The Service is basically meant to be used by the users to track their phone in case of theft or lost phone.

 Security Researcher Jiten Jain discovered that this GPS based location tracking service provided by manufacturer (Samsung) is also vulnerable to Theft and Malwares.

   To use this inbuilt tracking Service, User has to simply create an account with Samsung (www.samsungdive.com). Users than have to enable remote services to track device and wipe data remotely. The permission can be disabled or modified only by the Samsung account holder after logging in and cannot be disabled by anyone else. 

   When a user wants to track his device, He simply has to log on to Samsung tracking Service website "www.samsungdive.com" and just press track my device button. The application will then remotely connect to the lost device and switch on its GPS receiver automatically and acquire the precise location of device. In case of GPS unavailability other subsidiary location acquisition techniques like Wi-Fi or cell tower triangulation may be used. The acquired location is then sent to the Server and shown on a Map to the User.

   During Research Mr. Jain found that this location based tracking Service provided by Device Samsung in its Android based Smartphone is completely vulnerable to Location Spoofing Attacks. Which means in case of Phone theft the Thief can simply broadcast a fake location on Samsung tracking server and mislead Original Phone User/Owner to believe that the phone is genuinely at fake location? The locations can be faked continuously to random places anywhere in the world. All this happens because Samsung’s Location API's are completely vulnerable to be manipulated by installing commonly available simple GPS location spoofed on the device.

   To demonstrate this flaw a simple easily available location spoofing app was installed in the targeted Device in Delhi and Spoof Location was set to somewhere in Jordan. The location Spoofed application was then activated to Override any GPS location request in the device and instead provide the pre-set spoofed location coordinates of Jordan. Then Samsung’s Device tracking Service was used to track the Targeted Device. The Location shown on the Samsung's Device Tracking Map on Web Interface showed that Phone was Indeed in Jordan.

  Pictures of Spoofed Location of a Samsung Galaxy Note are shown below.

 

   Though other applications AVG and famous tracking application like Lookout also provide similar Services were are also vulnerable to location spoofing but Samsung's own tracking service becomes far more critical and important as Samsung is the device Manufacturer and tracking module comes inbuilt in the phone and most widely used. Since such tracking applications also provide remote data wipe service also, Phone owners always prefers device manufacturers solution instead of a Third party tracking application

   Apart from this Location spoofing Vulnerability, To make thing worse, Samsung tracking application also shows notification that device is being tracked remotely. This simply alerts the hacker or thief. This defeats the very fundamental principal and purpose of a tracking application, which should always work on the principal of hidden remote tracking in case of theft.

   This leaves Millions of Samsung smartphone owners who rely on Samsung’s tracking service vulnerable and helpless and in case of phone theft. Since Samsung's Location API's are so vulnerable to location spoofing attacks, This vulnerability may well be Used by malware writers to remotely spoof the location of a device, Which will throw the Navigation applications like Google Maps show the incorrect current location and wrong crazy Routes to destinations and it may also be well used by an hackers to write malwares to throw Location based services on the device in complete disarray.

In guidance of http:// www.thehackernews.com 

*****Flame Vs French Government****

      ~~~~THIS INFORMATION I'M SHARING IS FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY.PLEASE USE IT TO YOUR DISCRETION...~~!  

  The news is sensational, according the French magazine L'Express the offices of France's former president Sarkozy were victim of a cyber attack, but what is even more remarkable is that for the offensive was used the famous Malware Flame.

 

   On the origin of the Malware still persist a mystery, many security experts attribute it to joint work of Israel and US development team.

  Let's remind that according the analysis on Flame source code conducted by Kaspersky the Malware is linked to Stuxnet, a version of the famous virus shared a module with the spy toolkit.

   Frame is considered one of the most complex spy tool produced by a state sponsored project and its use in the attacks against French government suggests the existence of a cyber espionage campaign to collect sensible information.

  An official declaration coming from spokesmen of the Elysee Palace and reported by the magazine states:

"Hackers have not only managed to get to the heart of French political power," "but they were able to search the computers of close advisers of Nicolas Sarkozy."

  Surely the operation has led to the theft of confidential information regarding the policy of the French government even if it seems not to have directly involved the President who does not have a personal computer.

"secret notes were recovered from hard drives, and also strategic plans." reports the article.

   The vector used to spread the Malware is the popular social network Facebook , the hackers shared a link to compromised website that replicated the Elysee's intranet site gathering also user's credentials.

  Flame has infected the PC belonging presidential network which include of a number of Sarkozy's closest collaborators.

   The malicious code has been detected by the Agency nationale de la sécurité des systèmes d'information (Anssi) that immediately has knocked out the network to conduct the proper analysis and of course the sanitation of the IT infrastructure.

   The French government avoided to comment the incident, but in internet is circulating the news on a possible involvement in the operation of the United States.

  Fonts of the government revealed that the national infrastructures are steadily under attack, they declared that other two large scale cyber attacks were discovered in May without providing further info.

*****Mac OS X10.6 IN WINDOWS-7****

 ~~~~THIS INFORMATION I'M SHARING IS FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY.PLEASE USE IT TO YOUR DISCRETION...~~!  

        The following step by step guide will help you in installing Mac OS X  10.6 Snow Leopard  as a guest virtual machine in Windows 7. You’ll need to have a system with an Intel processor which supports hardware virtualization, original OS X Snow Leopard  retail disk, VMware Workstation 7 and Windows 7, Vista or XP installed as host operating system. If you meet all these requirements, you can then install OS X Snow Leopard  as a VM under Windows and can enjoy the best of both worlds.

Note: We don’t in anyway encourage downloading Apple software  via file-sharing / torrent sites and run it in an virtualized environment under Windows. This guide is for informational purposes only. If you like OS X Snow Leopard, Get a Mac.

Step 1: Download  and install VMware Workstation 7.

Step 2: Download pre-made modified version of Snow Leopard.vmdk and darwin_snow.iso files required to get this thing to work. Please don’t ask for the link to these files. You can find them easily elsewhere on the web.

Step 3: Start VMware Workstation and open up “Mac OS X Server  10.6 (experimental).vmx” file which you downloaded in Step 2.

Step 4: Click on”Edit virtual machine settings”, select CD/DVD (IDE) option from left hand side and then and select “Use ISO image file” option. Point it to “darwin_snow.iso” which you downloaded in Step 2.

Step 5: Now power on the virtual machine and hit “F8” key. You should now have a screen similar to the one shown below.

Step 6: Now you’ll have to point your virtual machine to OS X Snow Leopard retail DVD instead of “darwin_snow.iso”. To do this, right click on CD/DVD option found in lower right most corner of your VMware window and select settings.

Insert OS X Snow Leopard retail DVD in your DVD drive and select the “Use physical drive” option.

Step 7: Now go back and select “c” option (Boot DVD) from the prompt which you got in Step 5 to boot from the OS X retail DVD. OS X boot screen with Apple logo should now appear. If the boot screen doesn’t appear for you, try booting it in verbose mode by pressing “F8” key after selecting “c” option, and then enter “-v” (without quotes). This will enable the system to boot OS X DVD using verbose mode.

Step 8: Wait for a couple of minutes for the Installation Setup screen to show up. From here on, simply follow the onscreen setup instructions to install OS  X Snow Leopard. Make sure you format your virtual hard drive in “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” format using Disk Utility . Customize your installation with minimum set of printer drivers and language options for a lightweight trouble free installation experience.

Step 9: Once the installation is completed. System will automatically reboot. At this point, close your guest virtual machine and change your CD/DVD option again like you did in Step 2 to point it to “darwin_snow.iso”.

Step 10: Start the virtual machine again. Press “F8” key and select “h” option to “Boot first hard disk”. Voila! Snow Leopard should now be running live under Windows 7!

****Mac OS X on a PC ****

~~~~THIS INFORMATION I'M SHARING IS FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY.PLEASE USE IT TO YOUR DISCRETION...~~!  

      Great progress has been made in hacking PCs to run OS X, and it is now possible to install Mac OS X without a Mac. Thanks to some great tools put together by some brilliant hackers, it is also much easier and does not involve nearly as much time and effort as was once required.

Step 1: Getting The Hardware Ready

      I recently purchased the following set of hardware for the purposes of building a Hackintosh (often PCs running Mac OS X are referred to as such):

  §  Intel Core i3-530 Clarkdale 2.93GHz

  §  Gigabyte GA-H55M-USB3 Motherboard

  §  4 GB DDR3 1333 RAM (2 x 2GB)

  §  DVD Burner

  §  MicroATX Computer Case

  §  585 Watt Power Supply

  §  4-pin to 8-pin Power Adapter

      The motherboard has an 8-pin power connector on it, and although it is possible to connect a single 4-pin connector to it, you may encounter odd issues running with just a single 4-pin connector. To ensure that you provide sufficient power to the board, you should purchase the 4-pin to 8-pin power adapter. Alternatively, you could purchase a power supply with 3x 4-pin connectors (1 for the 20+4-pin main connector, and 2 for the 8-pin connection) or an 8-pin connector.

      I did not purchase a hard drive or video card, as I used some I already had from another PC, but you will need those items as well. As of the time this article was written, you can get a 1TB drive shipped for 5500 and an NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT video card .

      I also purchased v10.6.3 of OS X Snow Leopard retail DVD.

        All-in-all, the full system (without monitor) will run. You could certainly try doing it even cheaper with different hardware, but you’ll need to figure out the appropriate changes to make in the BIOS and boot loader installation.

    To put together a fairly modern system for a very reasonable price. Having used this set of hardware, I can affirm that it runs OS X Snow Leopard very well. Without a doubt, it is a far cry from what you would spend on an equivalent Mac from Apple. Granted it won’t be as compact or pretty as an iMac, but it will be just as functional.

Step 2: Putting The Hardware Together

     If you purchase the hardware I used, along with a hard drive and NVIDIA GeForce video card, you should be able to follow the instructions exactly as I’ve laid them out. If you’ve never built a PC before but are willing to give it a try, you’ll definitely want to check out The Idiot’s Ultimate Guide to Build Your Own PC. It is a step-by-step guide to building your own PC, with plenty of photos to help you out.

       You can try following this tutorial with existing hardware you have as well, although you may need to make adjustments when configuring the BIOS and installing the boot loader. The more modern your hardware is, the better the chances are it will work for you. It would be best if you have a 64-bit Intel dual-core (or quad-core) processor, although an older CPU might still work as well. I would recommend NVIDIA GeForce video card, but ATI cards should work too.

Step 3: Prepare The Boot Disk

       In addition to the hardware and a retail copy of Mac OS X Snow Leopard, you’ll also need a blank CD. You may want to use a rewritable CD if you’re using a different hardware configuration, just in case the first one I recommend doesn’t work for you. There are two boot disk images that will allow you to install OS X directly from the installation DVD:

   §  iBoot (by tonymacx86 and MacMan)

   §  Empire EFI (by Prasys)

     I successfully used both of them with my hardware setup. However I recommend you try iBoot first, as it is a bit leaner and doesn’t take as long to boot. If you’re using my hardware configuration, be sure to download the iBoot Supported disk image. If you use Empire EFI, download the Empire EFI v1.085 R2 image.

       You can use one of many free programs to burn CDs if you don’t have one. Be sure to use the disk image burning mode in your CD burning software. Do not just simply copy the disk image file to a blank CD. I like InfraRecorder, because it makes this very easy. All you have to do is click the Write Image button, select the image, and burn it. Once again, you may wish to use re-writable media if you’re using a different hardware configuration than mine.

Step 4: Bios Configuration

           Fortunately, the Gigabyte GA-H55M-USB3 does not require a lot of configuration to run Mac OS X. When you first turn on or reboot the machine, press the delete key to enter the BIOS setup. You can just load the Optimized Defaults, and just make a few changes within three sections of the bios: Advanced BIOS Features, Integrated Peripherals, and Power Management Setup.

4.1 – First, go to Advanced BIOS Features and set the First Boot Device to CDROM. I have my USB drive as the second drive and then Hard Disk as third – you can configure yours the same way if you wish to ever boot from a USB drive. Just be sure that Hard Disk is the Second Boot Device or Third Boot Device.

4.2 – Next, configure SATA to run in AHCI mode in the Integrated Peripherals menu. You’ll need to set both PCH SATA Control Mode and Onboard SATA/IDE Ctrl Mode to AHCI.

4.3 – Finally, go to Power Management Setup and set the HPET Mode to 64-bit mode.

Step 5: Installing Mac OS X

5.1 – Insert the iBoot (or Empire EFI) boot disk.

5.2 – When you see screen below, eject the disk.

5.3 – Insert the Retail Mac OS X Snow Leopard DVD, wait a few seconds, and press F5.

5.4 – When you see the screen below, select Mac OS X Install DVD (it should already be selected) and press Enter.

5.5 – If all goes well, you should eventually see the language selection screen for the installer. If all did not go well and you do not make it to the language selection screen, try downloading a different version of iBoot or Empire EFI.

5.6 – Select your language and click the arrow to proceed.

5.7 – Next, you need to partition your drive. Click on Utilities > Disk Utility.

5.8 – Select your disk drive.

5.9 – Click Partition.

5.10 – Select 1 Partition for the partition scheme. Note: If you have a drive that is larger than 2 TB, do not create partitions larger than 1 TB. Split the drive into multiple partitions, and be sure the main installation partition is 1 TB or smaller.

5.11 – Enter a name for the partition (I used Hackintosh).

5.12 – Select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as the Format.

5.13 – Click Options…, select GUID Partition Table, and then click OK.

5.14 – Click Apply.

5.15 – Quit Disk Utility and proceed with the installation. Install on the Hackintosh partition.

Step 6: Installing the Boot Loader

         Do not fret when you reboot after the installation and get a boot error, as you will need to first boot the machine with iBoot (or Empire EFI). Eject the Mac OS X Snow Leopard install DVD, put your boot CD back into the drive, and reboot the machine. Now when you boot up, you should see a second choice for your installation partition (Hackintosh if you named it that way). Select the Hackintosh partition and press Enter to boot into OS X.

Once you’ve completed the first-run setup, open up Safari and download Multibeast. Multibeast is another superb tool by tonymacx86 and MacMan that makes it stupid easy to install the boot loader, along with all the drivers necessary for your Hackintosh to function properly.

          In addition to downloading Multibeast, you will need to download the DSDT for the Gigabyte GA-H55M-USB3 and copy it to the desktop. Be sure to save it as

DSDT.aml

. Launch Multibeast and make the following selections (your choices will differ if you have a different motherboard/hardware configuration):

  §  UserDSDT

  §  System Utilities

  §  Advanced Options > Kexts > Audio > LegacyHDA > ALC889

  §  Advanced Options > Kexts > Graphics > NVEnabler

  §  Advanced Options > Kexts > Network > RealtekR1000SL

  §  Advanced Options > Patched Kernels > 10.3.1 Supported Kernel

    

     After MultiBeast finishes installing, eject the iBoot CD and reboot the system. You should be able to boot right up from the hard drive, and all your devices should work just fine.

Step 7: Getting Started with Your New Mac

       So what now? Most certainly you’ll want to check out 5 apps to get more out of your new Macas well as 15 must-have apps for your Mac. In fact, you should probably just go ahead and browse the entire Mac section on MakeUseOf, as you’ll find a wealth of great free stuff for your new Mac in there. And most importantly make sure to download MakeUseOf’s getting started manual for Mac. Highly recommended for switchers.

        If ever you encounter into problems with your new Mac, you can always seek help fromMakeUseOf Answers.

      If you have any problems installing Mac OS X on your PC, just post a comment right here and we’ll do what we can to help. Just be sure to provide as much information about the hardware you’re using:

    §  Motherboard make and model (i.e. Gigabyte GA-H55M-USB3)

    §  CPU model (i.e. Intel Core i3-530 )

    §  GPU model (i.e. NVIDIA GeForce 9900 GT)

         I never managed to get sleep to work. When I try to put the computer to sleep, it sort of goes into a coma. The fans never shut down and the machine doesn’t wake up when you press the power button. If you manage to get sleep to work with my hardware configuration, please do feel free to share your solution in the comments on this article.

       There are also many great forums and sites out there that provide a lot of information and assistance with running Mac OS X on PC. Here are just a few you may want to check out:

    §  tonymacx86 Forum

    §  InsanelyMac Forum 

    §  Hackint0sh

    §  Prasys’ Blog

    §  OSx86 Project

        If you do seek assistance from any of these or similar resources, be sure to search for your problem before posting it. You will be flamed to no end if you ask a question that has already been answered. Another tip for posting in these forums: never call it a MAC (in all caps) instead of a Mac, or you will solicit many abusive responses. Mac is an abbreviation not an acronym.

         Here are a few more links that provide tools and files to help you set up a Hackintosh on hardware other than what I’ve mentioned here:

     §  myHack – Another bootloader/kext installer, similar to Multibeast

     §  Kexts.com – A good resource for downloading Kexts (device drivers)

     §  Kext Helper – A tool that makes it easy to install new Kexts

     §  Kext Utility – A tool to ensure proper kext installation

     §  Chamelon Boot Loader – The boot loader that pretty much all the boot disks out there use (including iBoot and Empire EFI).

    §  netkas PC EFI – Used in combination with Chameleon to provide maximum compatibility for booting OS X. Most boot disks use this as well.

     §  BootCDMaker (French) – Utility (for Mac) to create your own custom boot disks.

        A million thanks to tonymacx86 and MacMan for developing iBoot and Multibeast to make installing Mac OS X Snow Leopard on PC a piece of cake. Enjoy your new Hackintosh and let us know what you think of it!  :)

Disclosure Statement: Please note that the links to the hardware in this article are affiliate links. MakeUseOf will earn a small commission on any purchases you make. Commissions earned will support the staff of MakeUseOf and allow us to continue to bringing you more great articles.

Disclaimer: Please note that running Mac OS X Snow Leopard on hardware other than a Macintosh is against the Mac OS X End User License Agreement (EULA). If you have concerns about this, you may wish to read Is Making Your Own Hackintosh Legal? By installing Mac OS X you are in breach of a contract (breaking a contract is not the same as breaking the law). As long as you own a legal copy of the software, you are not in violation of copyright law.