Author: Rebecca

Wearable technology hack prevention taken on by Wichita State profs

| September 10, 2015

The professors have already received $380,000 in funding to help them to accomplish their research.

Two professors from Wichita State University have now received $380,000 in funding in order to discover whether wearable technology is as safe as it needs to be for mainstream consumer use.

The idea is to determine if this latest mobile tech craze is revealing more about people than they know.

The use of wearable technology – such as smartwatches, wristbands, fitness trackers, smartglasses, and others – is starting to grow. It remains somewhat of a niche market, but it is definitely growing to the point that it has the potential to be the next multimillion dollar tech craze. That said, as has been the case with every other form of connected computing, there is a chance that cyber attacks could occur with these devices, and that they could end up revealing far more about the wearers than they realize.

Therefore, the two profs are now aiming to keep wearable technology ahead of wrong-doing hackers.

Wearable Technology ResearchAccording to Murtuza Jadliwala, he and his team are “actually investigating the cyber security and privacy issues linked to wearable devices.” The funding for this project came in the form of a grant from the National Science Foundation. In this project, Jadliwala – who is a computer scientist and electrical engineer – and Jibo He, a psychologist and computer scientist, will work together with their team in order to find out if smartphone, smartwatch, and fitness tracker sensors are revealing too much information about their users.

Jadliwala stated that “What we are trying to study is, data available from these devices, what kind of additional private information can be inferred from this data?” These professors aren’t trying to look at whether or not hackers will be able to break into a device to steal personal information. Instead, what they are trying to determine is how accessible the sensors on wearables are to others, when they are meant to be tracking the wearer’s health information, location, and even the keystrokes entered when typing a search, login, or password.

They also want to see if the motion sensors inside wearable technology can reveal what is being typed into a smartphone. According to He, this is “So we’ll know who you dialed to or we’ll know what’s your password of your email or how to unlock your smart phone.”

Amazon Fire mobile phone may be discontinued

| September 3, 2015

This could follow a string of engineer layoffs from the Lab126 research and development lab.

Amazon recently let dozens of its Lab126 engineers go from its research and development facility, located in San Francisco, and it now looks as though its mobile phone will be the next thing on the chopping block.

The announcement of the discontinuation of the Amazon Fire Phone has not yet been made official.

That said, considering the direction of their R&D, many have speculated that the company’s in-house consumer electronics efforts may be going the way of the dodo, as well. The mobile phone released by the company has been facing considerable struggles ever since it was first launched in 2014. The Wall Street Journal cited “people familiar with the matter” in a recent article in which it stated that the online marketplace had “dismissed dozens of engineers who worked on its Fire Phone.”

This makes it clear why there is considerable speculation involving the cancellation of that mobile phone.

Mobile Phone - Amazon FireThose are the first layoffs that Lab126 has experienced since it first opened its doors 11 years ago, said the WSJ report.

Even though the Amazon Fire Phone did receive some very positive reviews when it was first released in July 2014, it never managed to scoop up a very large portion of the smartphone marketplace. Its initial launch price was $449.00, though that price tag dropped after the first few months. The operating system was a type of branch of Android, and it did receive some criticism based on the proprietary mobile apps that it contained that were clearly focused on the Amazon experience.

Despite the fact that the focus of the mobile phone on linking itself to Amazon in several different ways through its proprietary apps was supposed to provide the device owner with a considerable advantage when shopping, it turned out to be a primary obstacle. People started to view the device as being meant for a “single-purpose”, which was to continually direct shoppers back to Amazon in order to buy both physical and digital products. This criticism was one of the primary barriers to acceptance by many consumers who might otherwise have considered buying it.