Samsung Ships Laptops With Spyware

People who bought Samsung laptops may be sending private information to Samsung without their knowledge, according to a report from Network World.

Mohamed Hassan, a consultant at NetSec Consulting Corp., in Canada, said he found that two different Samsung computers he bought - models R525 and R540 - carried software that logs every keystroke a user makes, even those in password-protected boxes.

It then sends all that information to an unknown email address, whether or not the user is actually at the computer.

Hassan said he called Samsung about it, and Samsung's technical support department initially denied that it had installed that kind of software. After a conversation with a tech support supervisor, Hassan writes that the company admitted it had installed such a program in order to monitor how its computers are used.


The software Hassan found is called StarLogger. Besides logging every keystroke, it can send screenshots as well. The software is made by de Willebois Consulting, a Dutch software firm and is available for downloading.

The software can be found in the C: directory, under C:Windows and is marked SL.

The Federal Trade Commission heard a case about a similar software program used by Sony BMG. At the time, Sony was shipping CDs with a program on them that monitored user behavior and limited how CDs could be copied and played. The FTC ruled that such behavior was illegal and ordered Sony to pay damages.

NASA Released First Image Ever Obtained from Mercury Orbit.

Early this morning, at 5:20 am EDT, MESSENGER captured this historic image of Mercury. This image is the first ever obtained from a spacecraft in orbit about the Solar System's innermost planet. Over the subsequent six hours, MESSENGER acquired an additional 363 images before downlinking some of the data to Earth. The MESSENGER team is currently looking over the newly returned data, which are still continuing to come down.

The dominant rayed crater in the upper portion of the image is Debussy. The smaller crater Matabei with its unusual dark rays is visible to the west of Debussy. The bottom portion of this image is near Mercury's south pole and includes a region of Mercury's surface not previously seen by spacecraft. Compare this image to the planned image footprint to see the region of newly imaged terrain, south of Debussy. Over the next three days, MESSENGER will acquire 1185 additional images in support of MDIS commissioning-phase activities. The year-long primary science phase of the mission will begin on April 4, and the orbital observation plan calls for MDIS to acquire more than 75,000 images in support of MESSENGER's science goals.

On March 17, 2011 (March 18, 2011, UTC), MESSENGER became the first spacecraft to orbit the planet Mercury. The mission is currently in its commissioning phase, during which spacecraft and instrument performance are verified through a series of specially designed checkout activities. In the course of the one-year primary mission, the spacecraft's seven scientific instruments and radio science investigation will unravel the history and evolution of the Solar System's innermost planet. Visit the Why Mercury? section of this website to learn more about the science questions that the MESSENGER mission has set out to answer.

Apple iPhone 5 release could be delayed

After Apple announced the dates for its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), the focus has shifted to the old hobbyhorse of tech websites - the iPhone 5 release date. And there is apparent consensus that iPhone 5 may not be launched in June as was expected generally.

Gadget market observers have taken cues from Apple's statement in which it made the WWDC announcement. "At this year’s conference we are going to unveil the future of iOS and Mac OS,” the statement quoted Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, as saying. “If you are an iOS or Mac OS X software developer, this is the event that you do not want to miss.”

Tech websites read meaning into Apple's focus on iOS to infer that Apple may not release iPhone 5 in June. The reason is that Apple has designed the WWDC event as a software show, not as a hardware show. The WWDC will be held from June 6 through June 10 at San Francisco’s Moscone West.

 "The iPhone 5 will not be making an appearance at the event, we’re now hearing," MG Siegler of Techcrunch said. But there could be other reasons too. "The iPhone 5 launch may be delayed in order to give Apple enough time to iron out any issues with the iOS 5, which is gradually turning out to be one of the most important iOS since its launch back in 2006," writes ITProPortal.

Apple has been said to be working on a "completely re-designed" iPhone for debut in summer 2011 with a four-inch display to take on the larger screens found on some of the latest smartphones running Google's Android operating system. The gadget market is abuzz with leaked images, specifications and features of the much-anticipated product.

The next generation iPhone is said to cost less and might feature a new integrated SIM card that would be easily configurable on any supported carrier, 9to5Mac ahd reported earlier. The iPhone 5 may also carry an upgraded A4 processor, already dubbed the A5 chip, in addition to a new Gobi WWAN chip already found in the Verizon iPhone, designed to work on both CDMA and GSM networks, it said.

Other rumored iPhone 5 specifications include a multi-core A5 CPU powered with a dual-core graphics core and the addition of Near Field Communication (NFC) technology.