Mobile devices are increasingly subject to many of the threats that plague personal computers. Now a leading security researcher has presented a new way to detect malware on mobile devices. According to this article, the new approach  can catch even unknown threats and can protect a device without draining its battery or taking up too much processing power.

Researchers have begun to identify ways to protect devices from malicious software. But traditional ways of protecting desktops against threats don’t translate well to smart phones, says Markus Jakobsson, a principal scientist at Xerox PARC and the person behind the new malware detection technology.

Most antivirus software works behind the scenes, comparing new files to an enormous library of virus signatures. Mobile devices lack the processing power to scan for large numbers of signatures, Jakobsson says. Continual scanning also drains batteries. His approach relies on having a central server monitor a device’s memory for signs that it’s been infected, rather than looking for specific software.

Devices have two types of memory–random-access memory (RAM), used by active programs, and secondary storage, which takes longer to access and generally holds data not currently in use. Jakobsson’s system would check a device by first shutting off nonvital applications, such as an e-mail app or a browser. At that point, nothing should be running except the detection software and the operating system itself. He demonstrated the software using a device running the Android mobile operating system at the RSA conference.

If malware is present and active, it will need to use some RAM to execute instructions on the device. So the central server contacts the detection software to check to see if malware is using RAM by measuring how much memory is available. It does this by completely filling the remaining memory space with random data and checking the amount of data needed against a fingerprint of the memory that was created when the device was known to be malware-free.

At this point, any malware running in the open would be revealed. The malware could try to hide its presence by allowing the random data to overwrite it in RAM, Jakobsson says, but this would prevent it from taking any further action. And if it tries to hide by accessing data in the device’s secondary storage, this would slow the device’s response to the central server, revealing the presence of malware.

The success of iPhone has not only changed the way phone companies and handset makers operate but also impacted other media channels. For instance, companies are now racing to build marketplaces for TV programs that act much like iPhone apps, able to interact with social-networking services, play games, call up movies and other Web content—all using a remote control, rather than a computer equipped with browsers. With PTCL and Wateen in the smart TV game, its only a matter of time before we see more of this.

I previously wrote about some initial steps that Verizon took. with social apps as widgets. Yahoo was also an early contender with a technology for TV applications it calls widgets. The TV applications are designed to exploit new consumer electronics devices with Internet connections that are beginning to appear in homes in significant numbers. More from this article:

Vudu, a startup that offers a streaming movie service; DivX, known for a popular format for storing digital movies; Boxee Inc., which offers software that lets users view Internet content on TVs; Roku, which sells a set-top box for receiving Internet content; and Syabas Technology, which announced a set-top box at CES.

Vizio Inc., a U.S. TV maker that has been pushing Internet-connected sets, was among the first to use the term apps for TV software. Besides using Yahoo’s widgets, the company worked with Adobe Systems Inc. to adapt the popular Flash format to offer a second ways for developers to write TV apps.

The company this week announced Vudu Apps, which it describes as a platform to deliver Internet software to TVs, Blu-ray players and other products.

Vudu says it already has attracted 100 apps, which appear in a menu that users can call up on the TV screen using a remote. They include versions of Web services like the photo-sharing site Flickr, the music-discovery site Pandora, the microblogging site Twitter and a news feed from the Associated Press. Initial TV makers expected to incorporate the technology are units of Mitsubishi Electric Corp., Sanyo Electronic Co., Sharp Corp. and Toshiba Corp.

DivX, meanwhile, says it has lined LG Electronics as an initial user of its new software platform in LG Blu-ray players. The San Diego-based company also says it has attracted content apps from sites that include Twitter, Daily Motion, Rhapsody and CNET, and says its DivX TV platform can help users find and call up movies and photos stored on computers in the home.

Recently PTA organized a conference on the topic of promoting local content. This event was sponsored by Motorola. It appears that a new ICT policy is in the works.

I wish the press release had more information and specific details about the local content providers and their applications. It would also be useful if they could share the plan for commercializing these apps. I am interested in finding out more about the channels through which these apps will be available and what will be the cost structure. How will the govt or PTA contribute?

Nine local content providers displayed their ICT applications and ideas during this conference. This conference was planned to spot the latest access technologies in the country and understand the challenges faced by telecom industry in terms of high cost of ownership and OPEX.

Chairman PTA, Dr. Mohammed Yaseen said that the key issue in further development of data segment is non-availability of local contents and applications.

Secretary IT drew attention of the participants to four main focus areas which could give a boost to the development of ICT sector. Those areas include IT & Telecom education, research, entrepreneurship and local industries. He said that to carry out productive work in these areas, support of an efficient policy is also mandatory, for which the Government is working extensively and soon this policy will be introduced to the industry.

Finally, is there no Urdu word for “Content” – for whatever reason the phrase “Muqami Content” just doesn’t click for me.

We had recently talked about Telecordia facing a hard time for its entry in India and facing scrutiny by Indian government. As mentioned earlier, Telenor also had to go through this. The latest is that Telecordia will be getting entry on the same conditions entry Telenor was allowed. The excerpts of the news item from The Economic Times gives the details.

None of the staff of the US-based telecom firm, who have worked in Pakistan at any point of time, can be employed in the Indian operations. Also, the chief executive officer of the Indian arm, a 74:26 joint venture between Telcordia Technologies and Deepak Talwar Consultants, will have to be an Indian.

The reasons given,

By separating the human assets of the Indian and Pakistani arms of Telcordia, the government hopes to minimise risks such as spying and subversion.

This takes the India MNP a step up. You may read more about our earlier story on the same topic, here.

Guess what is the background of the event shown below? Other than prayes, are we doing the right things to make Pakistan an “Information Based Society”? Talking about local content is fine but I have been hearing about that for many years. What about local peering and IX?

The news release which accompanied this picture tells us that PTA will hold an exclusive conference on ‘Promoting ICT Sector’ on February 25, 2010. This conference is being organized in view of the importance of local content and applications for future promotion of ICT industry and infrastructure.

I hope there is some action from this other than plain talk.

In 2008 I wrote about VNL and its efforts to create low power base stations. Here’s an update about their work which appeared at Technology Review.

An Indian telecom company is deploying simple cell phone base stations that need as little as 50 watts of solar-provided power. It will soon announce plans to sell the equipment in Africa, expanding cell phone access to new ranks of rural villagers who live far from electricity supplies.

Over the past year, VNL, based in Haryana, India, has reengineered the traditional technology of the dominant cellular standard, called GSM, in order to create base stations that only require between 50 and 150 watts of power, supplied by a solar-charged battery. The components can be assembled and booted up by two people and mounted on a rooftop in six hours.

One such station–dubbed a “village station”–can handle hundreds of users. Groups of such village stations feed signals to a required larger VNL base station within five kilometers. In turn that larger station, which is also solar-powered, relays signals to the main network. The village station can turn a profit even if customers spend on average only $2 a month on the service, instead of the $6 required to make traditional systems cost-effective, the company says.

“We’ve scaled down the cost, the energy, and the equipment so that almost anybody can deploy it,” says Rajiv Mehrotra, VNL’s CEO. “It lends itself to many business models that can serve the bottom of the pyramid,” a reference to the roughly 1.5 billion rural people who do not have access to electricity grids around the world.

To date, some 50 VNL base stations have been installed in the Indian state of Rajasthan, introducing thousands of people to cell phone service for the first time. An African rollout is imminent, the company says, without elaborating. The initial batch of 50 stations support voice and data transmission–but not initially text-messaging, a decision mainly based on the fact that many new users may not be able to read or write.

Besides enabling basic communication, cell phones can provide enormous financial opportunities for rural people, especially if those people adopt services that provide banking and lending via cell phone. More than half of India’s 1.1 billion people lack any access to basic financial services, and instead pay usurious rates to local loan sharks. Furthermore, while microlending can lift people from poverty, only about 150 million people worldwide use such services. Expanded cell networks, together with banking programs geared to the rural poor, could change all of that.

Guest Post by Naveed-ul-Haq, Member, ISOC Pakistan Chapter. Assistant Director (ICT), PTA.

Editor’s note: Mr. Naveed-ul-Haq attended the fourth annual Internet Governance Forum meeting in Egypt in November as an ambassador of The Internet Society (ISOC) , Pakistan Chapter. We thank him for sharing his experience and views with us.

While living in today’s world of technological modernization where humans and devices are in continuous interaction with each other, Internet evolved as a unique innovation that now has became a necessity. This evolution didn’t happen overnight, it has an historic link with ARPANET (a defense based project initiated in 1963 to exchange data packets over computer network). Then after 25 years of research and development of standards, Internet came into use of common man during early 90’s.

The Internet is an amazing mean of communication spanning the globe. It is a stage so open that anyone, anywhere can jump into it. Searching information to paying electricity bill, downloading a multimedia video to playing an online cricket game, advertising your product to checking the status of your shipment, applying for a job to developing social networking, providing electronic government services to enabling cheap VoIP for remote areas and so on; Internet has uses for all age-groups and sectors of an economy. Recent phenomenon of information based society has exploded the significance of Internet which till today is the most convenient technology to disseminate information.

At the same time the Internet is also described as anarchic space for abandoned content, last front for the teenagers to access obscene websites, a growing threat to personal privacy, largest source of harmful computer viruses and open violation of copyrights. In view of development and implication issues of the Internet varying from country to country, a devoted unified platform to converse on these is available is form of ‘Internet Governance Forum’. IGF is a multi-stakeholder forum formed in 2006 to stimulate policy dialogue on issues of Internet Governance.

The fourth annual Internet Governance Forum meeting (15-18 November 2009) was a four-day experience of concentrated debates on various aspects of governing the Internet. The writer attended the forum under Internet Society (ISOC) ambassadorship program awarded to him as a member of ISOC Pakistan Chapter. The Internet Society (ISOC) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1992 to provide leadership in Internet related standards, education, and policy. It is dedicated to ensuring the open development, evolution and use of the Internet for the benefit of people throughout the world. The Internet Society has more than 80 organizational and more than 28,000 individual members in over 80 chapters around the world.

Details regarding joining ISOC are available at www.isoc.org/members

The proceedings of the recent meeting were accumulated with main sessions and number of workshops on Internet Governance subjects. On a broad scale, Internet Governance debate was structured into following areas.

Critical Internet Resources
Discussion in relation to the status, management and concerns related with Internet Protocol (IP) and Internet Domain Name space. Main session gathered views on IPv6 transition, new gTLDs (generic Top Level Domains) and IDNs (International Domain Names), Internationalization of critical Internet resources, recent AoC (Affirmation of Commitments) signed between ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) and U.S government.

Security, Openness and Privacy
Discussion in relation to cyber security, inherited open nature of Internet and privacy of end-user. These three areas are inter-related requiring a careful balance approach while breeding the Internet access and usage. Main session agenda points included respect for privacy and identity theft, Web 2.0 and social networking, cloud computing and illegal web content, regulatory models and open architecture of the Internet, net neutrality and enabling frameworks for freedom.

Access and Diversity
Discussion in relation to enhancing the Internet availability and catering the global Internet requirements of every language, culture and community. Main session looked into issues faced by disable persons, Internet multilingualism and improving the Internet access.
Apart from above mentioned IG debates, there were three other main sessions. The first one was to discuss ‘Internet Governance in the light of WSIS principles’. The idea behind the debate was to assess the so far implementation of the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) principles in the governance of Internet. The second was ‘Taking Stock’ session with a purpose to invite views of concerned stakeholders on the continuation and future of the Internet Governance Forum. The reason behind this dialogue is that as per Tunis agenda 2005, IGF was given a five years span of life. Participating stakeholders were of the view that IGF should be continued and carry more insight deliberation on emerging issues of governance. The last session addressed an emerging issue of social networking and its impact. The growing popularity of social networking websites could easily be witnessed with almost 70% of global Internet users interacting through social networking services like Orkut, Facebook and Twitter. It has become the fourth most popular activity over the Internet surpassing personal e-mails.

The Fourth Internet Governance Forum was attended by more than 1800 participants from 112 countries; reflecting governments, international organizations, telecommunication companies, internet content providers, software organizations, the private sector, civil society and the media. Detail Transcripts of main sessions and workshops can be found and read at http://www.intgovforum.org/cms.

Sharing my experience, IGF was an exclusive experience of extensive and open dialogue on vast array of Internet issues. Listening to the words of experts and panelists during main sessions and workshops provided a distinctive learning opportunity. Catching someone in the corridor and sharing views on Internet governance subjects helped to grasp International best practices. Cordial hospitality of Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (Egypt) together with professional participation environment provided by ISOC puts a cheery on the top.

The issues of Internet governance require a collaborative policy approach between all Internet communities. Developing countries receive a key opportunity in this regard by observing the proceedings of such International forums and dig out best practices / guidelines. These best practices can be applied to improve the penetration and usage of Internet in their respective localities. Another area of attention is lack of Internet Governance awareness among public, private and civil stakeholders of our country. We require necessary methodology for Internet Governance capacity building among all relevant entities. Academia could play a vital part by collaborating with International institutes like Diplo Foundation and European Summer School on Internet Governance (Euro-SSIG) to introduce necessary learning courses on Internet Governance.

As I said earlier, Internet is becoming a required necessity of life and if we are to enable an information-based society, required dialogue and consideration with respect to ‘Internet Governance’ is not an exception.

For any question about ISOC and IGF, author could be reached at naveedpta@hotmail.com

This WSJ article on Telcordia shows how telecom is also getting caught up in the intense politics of South Asia. Telcordia had helped with mobile number portability and now that has come under scrutiny by Indian government. Quite funny. We had heard the same kind of concerns about Telenor. Is this an isolated instance or does this mean more trouble for telecom vendors who are doing business in South Asia?

Telcordia Technologies Inc. sold its software to several cellphone companies in Pakistan a few years ago, just as it has done in 14 other countries. Now that fact is making life difficult for the U.S. company in Pakistan’s archrival, India. Telcordia makes back-end software for wireless and fixed-line networks.

Millions of Indian cellphone users are awaiting the chance to switch wireless providers while keeping the same phone number. Telcordia, which is based in Piscataway, N.J., was one of two companies the Indian government selected to provide crucial services to carriers in the transition to so-called number portability.

But in recent months, India’s Home Ministry has raised objections that partnering with Telcordia could compromise national security, effectively putting the company’s plans on hold.

The Indian ministry noted its concerns that Telcordia “has presence in Pakistan,” according to notes from a January meeting of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board, the government body that reviews foreign investments.

Read more about this after the break.

The Home Ministry “has serious concerns over telecom security” and the potential for unauthorized eavesdropping if the foreign vendor is allowed to manage number portability, the notes say.

Anuj Kapur, Telcordia’s India country head, said in an emailed statement the company’s only business in Pakistan has been the sale of its standard “clearinghouse” software that helps cellphone companies coordinate user requests for transferring numbers to a new service.

India has allowed in other telecom companies that have operations in Pakistan. Norway’s Telenor ASA, for example, operates one of Pakistan’s largest wireless carriers and is the majority stakeholder in an Indian wireless start-up, Unitech Wireless. Given that, “It’s hard to make an argument that Telcordia shouldn’t be allowed in,” said Harit Shah, a telecom analyst at Angel Broking in Mumbai.

The Telcordia issue threatens to further delay number portability in India, which the government has already pushed back three months to a March 31 deadline because some carriers say they aren’t yet equipped to make the switch. Some analysts say the industry is simply dragging its feet. “There are operators with a vested interest to push this back,” said Kunal Bajaj, managing director of telecom consulting firm BDA in New Delhi. “They’ll find any excuse to delay it.”

Number portability would be a boon to India’s 525 million cellphone users, making it smoother for them to switch providers and demand better customer service from their existing carriers. But it could mean new costs for carriers.

Here’s a video report from Mobile World Congress 2010 at Barcelona, which talks about the  innovation and cool new gadgets.

Reports are circulating that Microsoft plans to introduce long-awaited new software (Windows Mobile 7) for powering cellphones in Barcelona this week as the company seeks to regain ground lost to rivals like Apple Inc. and Google Inc. in the mobile market. Compare Apple which went from zero to over 13% smartphone share, MS only gained 1% more from 2006 till now, its a dismal performance. It has been a rough time. Microsoft acquired a startup Danager along the way, fired most of its Windows mobile team last year and botched up data backups for Sidekick. WSJ reports:

The operating system, Windows Mobile 7, sports a revamped user interface that resembles the look of Microsoft’s Zune HD music player, said people who have seen it. Bloomberg News earlier reported the planned announcement.

Microsoft also has a separate mobile project, unlikely to be announced next week, to design a cellphone aimed at teenagers, people familiar with the matter said. The device, code named Pink, is a successor to the T-Mobile Sidekick, a youth-oriented smart phone powered by software and services from Danger, a start-up Microsoft acquired two years ago.

In addition to Windows phones with more pizazz, Microsoft needs to strengthen its following among independent mobile-software makers. Such “apps” are a big selling point on iPhones and handsets running Google’s Android operating system, adding everything from games to photography programs.