iPad

Researchers at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg have discovered weaknesses in the Personal Hotspot feature in iOS. The weak, and somewhat predictable password generation -- used in all current versions of iOS up through iOS 6 -- means people are susceptible to brute force attacks when using the personal hotspot feature on their iPhone or cellular iPad. A brute force attack is one that systematically tries all possible combinations of a password until the correct one is found. The more complex a password, the more computing power and/or time it takes to try the combinations. Under Settings on iOS, inside Personal Hotspot, you will normally find Wi-Fi Password to be pre-populated with a memorable password followed by four digits. Andreas Kurtz, Daniel Metz and Felix C. Freiling found that iOS chooses from only 1,842 words in a wordlist, each 4 to 6 characters in length, when generating these default passwords. iOS generates these passwords with one of the words from the list, followed by a four-digit number. This combination only leaves the possibility of about 18.5 million different passwords, a relatively low number when it comes to password cracking, making it an easy target for a brute force attack. It was also discovered that words from the list aren't chosen randomly, and some words are chosen much more frequently than others. This knowledge can potentially speed up the process of cracking the password by trying the most commonly chosen words first. The researchers state that all of these factors make it possible to compromise a hotspot connection in less than 50 seconds. The Personal Hotspot feature employs WPA2-PSK encryption, which is generally regarded as secure for WiFi. However, the short list of known passwords being used in iOS means that these default passwords are extremely susceptible to brute force attacks. When a device connects to a hotspot, a handshake takes place in which the client and the hotspot negotiate their connection. This is also the time where the client authenticates with the hotspot using the pre-shared key. By capturing this handshake, an attacker is then able to run a brute force attack using the known word list to generate and attempt all 18.5 million possible passwords, until it finds a match. Once a match is found, an attacker could then connect to your personal hotspot to use your connection, or potentially leverage further attacks against other connected devices. The report also mentions that other mobile platforms showed signs that they were affected by similar problems, including Windows Phone 8 and some vendor-modified versions of Android. The researchers also released the source code for Hotspot Cracker, an iOS app that demonstrates their findings. The app allows you to generate and export the wordlist from iOS, view the 20 most common words used for personal hotspot passwords, enter your hotspot password to find out approximately how long it would take to crack, and gives instructions on how to crack a password once you have captured the handshake. When calculating how long it would take to crack your password, the app presumes a GPU cluster of four AMD Radeon HD 7970s, which can run about 390,000 guesses per second. With these calculations, the app determined my iPhone's personal hotspot password would take just under 25 seconds to crack. The reason iOS and other mobile platforms generate passwords automatically is to avoid having users set up hotspots without any encryption. These passwords are certainly better than having no encryption at all, but this research shows that these passwords should not be considered secure. iOS shows you how many devices are connected to your hotspot, making it easy to recognize if there are ever more devices connected than you expect. Until Apple changes to more secure defaults, the easiest thing for iOS 6 (and earlier) users to do is simply set their own unique password for Personal Hotspot.

User experience (UX) design studio Teehan+Lax is offering a free downloadable Photoshop file containing interface elements from the first beta release of iOS 7. You can grab the iOS7 GUI PSD file by visiting their Web site. Teehan+Lax said that the file is being offered "to help you pitch, design and build amazing software." It's suitable for using with mockups that you're creating, but the company asks that people interested in making software or their own Photoshop files that work similarly to recreate their own interface elements independently.

Lots of people itch to try new iOS beta versions when they become available and iOS 7 has definitely attracted lots of people that were curious to try out the new features ahead of time. If you were one of those and didn't heed our warning about betas, you may find yourself frustrated with lots of bugs and annoyances. Fortunately, there's a pretty easy way to get back onto iOS 6 without too much fuss. If you're regretting the decision to install iOS 7 beta, follow along and we'll help you get back to iOS 6. Before you begin Please keep in mind that if you downgrade back to iOS 6, you'll only be able to go to the most current version, which is 6.1.4 for iPhone 5 users and 6.1.3 for iPhone 4S and below. When it comes to iCloud backups, you won't be able to use an iOS 7 backup on an iOS 6 device, so be aware that you're going to lose any information you may have in those backups. You also won't be able to recover any jailbreak with saved blobs. If you're still wanting to downgrade after understanding all this, continue on... How to downgrade from iOS 7 beta to iOS 6 First download the most recent firmware file for your device from our downloads section. Save it somewhere easy to access such as your desktop. Launch iTunes on your Mac or PC. Now you'll need to plug in your device and put it in DFU mode, NOT recovery mode. If you don't know how to do this, you can click here for directions. Once it's in DFU, return to this guide to complete the downgrade. Make sure the screen is black and does not say connect to iTunes. This is recovery mode, not DFU. Try again until you successfully achieve DFU mode and have a black screen before continuing. Once you're device is in DFU mode, you'll see a message pop up from iTunes saying the device can't be used until it's restored. Just click Ok. Now hold down the alt/option key (Shift for PC users) on your keyboard and click on Restore iPhone in iTunes. Navigate to the firmware file for iOS 6 that you saved in the first step and click Open. Now just let iTunes do its thing and if all goes according to plan, your device should eventually reboot and be downgraded to iOS 6 again. If you've managed to successfully downgrade your device to iOS 6 again, let us know how it went in the comments!

FiftyThree, the company behind the very popular Paper app, have received $15 million in funding to jump-start the development of their next project. Posting on their blog about the goals for these plans, FiftyThree said that they're working on a suite of mobile creativity tools, focusing on two key area: physical creation and collaboration. TRUE COLLABORATION—Social media has changed the way we communicate, but real collaboration has been left behind. Still nothing has surpassed the simple act of sitting down in a room with a group of motivated people. We believe a breakthrough around collaboration will revolutionize the creative process. How we work together. How we discover new collaborators to work with. Moving beyond apps, FiftyThree has ideas for hardware accessories as well. Using tools, they say, is an important part of how we as humans express ourselves. We've already seen part of this philosophy with Paper. Of course you can use the app without a stylus just fine, but FiftyThree encourages the use of one. With new hires in the New York and Seattle offices, the company as strengthened not only their software team, but also their services and hardware teams. FiftyThree has not yet announced specifics regarding either hardware or software projects. They only say that they're building"the essential suite of mobile tools for creativity." Source: FiftyThree, Chris Dixon

A quick heads up for Mailbox users that the latest update that has been pushed out to the App Store brings portrait support for the iPad. Strangely, when Mailbox finally gained iPad support, it was only useable in landscape view, but that has now been rectified. Other than this, there's a handful of bug fixes thrown in for good measure, and you can download a copy for yourselves now. Portrait view something you've been waiting on? Free - Download Now

Did you know that Apple TV supports Bluetooth technology? I guess I never even looked for that. I know that the iOS app Remote from Apple can be used on the set top box in conjunction with the iPad. It is a bit clunky and tends to freeze up. It is good in a pinch, but I always end up using the physical remote instead. Which makes entering text a real pain. Logitech recently reminded consumers of TV connectivity from their company blog. Since we reviewed the Easy-Switch Keyboard from Logitech in January, I thought I’d try it out on my Apple TV. Guess what? It works great. Thanks to the Easy-Switch technology, I was able to connect the Logitech keyboard to my Apple TV in just a few seconds. I paired it with channel 3 and was typing into the YouTube search bar like a pro. To connect the Easy-Switch Keyboard to Apple TV, go to the settings section on the set top box. Then, select General. Then, select Bluetooth. The next step is to push the Bluetooth button on the back of the Easy-Switch Keyboard so that it becomes discoverable. When the three channels start blinking, touch the key you want to pair the keyboard with. Once paired, your keyboard will be usable on Apple TV. The Easy-Switch Keyboard is designed to be compatible with Apple related products. It works great with Apple TV. There are command keys specifically related to Menu, Media Control, Select, D-Pad, Pause/Play, and Tab. Of course, the best part is that you can type text so that when you are searching for a movie with a really long title in Netflix, you don’t have to use the remote to move around and find the letters. You can just type it using the full keyboard. Now, they just need an Easy-Switch Keyboard that has four channels so I can pair all of my Apple devices instead of having to leave one out. You can purchase the Logitech Bluetooth Easy-Switch Keyboard for $99.99 from the company’s website. This little gadget will come in very handy when Apple TV is upgraded to run iTunes Radio. » Related posts: Logitech’s Bluetooth Easy-Switch Keyboard Is Just That, Easy: Hands-On Accessory Review Logitech Announces Easy-Switch Technology for Mac, iPhone, iPad Logitech’s New iPad Keyboard Features Cool Backlighting and Hand Sensors

Good news for Max Payne fans today; Rockstar Games has announced that the latest title in the series, Max Payne 3, will finally make its way to the Mac on June 20. That's just two days from now. You're going to need a pretty well specced out Mac to play it, with a dual-core Xeon or i Series chip at 2.4GHz or above to play, 4GB of RAM and a whopping 35GB of free space on your hard drive. You'll also need OS X 10.7.5 and above, and either a NVIDIA® 8800GT 512MB VRAM or AMD Radeon HD 4870 512 VRAM graphics card too. Max Payne 3 sees the title character on the streets of Sao Paulo protecting a wealthy family, far away from the New York City police life of old. Bullet time is back, and it promises lifelike movements and a "dark and twisted story." Sounds great. No word on pricing as yet, but we're not too far out from release either. Who's excited? Source: Rockstar Games (Twitter)

Acquisitions are part and parcel of the modern life of app development. For differing reasons, large companies have a habit of buying up smaller app developers. Sometimes -- take Instagram as an example -- the app in question lives on as its own separate entity. Others, like Snapseed, lose their apps on some platforms, but remain on others. And then, there's those that get killed altogether. So, lets take a look together at some of those apps which have gone the way of the Dinosaurs. Kitcam and Photoforge 2 Kitcam and Photoforge 2 are the most recent casualties of the acquisition market. Big spending Yahoo! snapped up the team at Ghostbird Software just last week with a view to integrating them into their Flickr team. While existing users can continue to use their apps, and even re-download them to their devices, anyone yet to try them out is out of luck; both were removed from the App Store at the same time as the acquisition announcement. Kitcam is one of our favorite photography apps, and we're sad to see it go. Sparrow Sparrow quickly became a success, and earned a reputation as being one of, if not the best email clients for iOS. While it 'lives on' in the sense that it can still be downloaded for both iOS and Mac, the acquisition by Google ceased all active development for Sparrow. Thankfully we have plenty of options to fill the Sparrow shaped hole in our hearts, but it shall be missed. Summly Summly is another application that was acquired to come under the Yahoo! banner. It gave us summarisation's of news, little bite size snippets. While the app may have died, the service lives on as Yahoo! has integrated the service into their own mobile applications. The only drawback is that you have to use Yahoo! apps to get Summly, and not everyone wants to do that. Wavii Wavii is another service that was acquired by the mighty Google, absorbed into their own services and discontinued from the App Store. The Wavii acquisition was all about their natural language technology, which Google wanted to fold into their own voice recognition software. And with that, this promising, news aggregating iOS app faded away into the night. Poster This one is literally hot off the press, with Automattic having just acquired Poster in the last couple of days. Poster was regarded as a far better solution for editing and posting WordPress blogs than the official iOS apps, and now Poster has been acquired to be absorbed into the WordPress empire. Many say simply that WordPress should bin their own iOS app and re-release Poster as their own. Those people might have a point. So, there's just a few great apps that were acquired by big corporations and either re-deployed or pulled completely. Join the discussion in the comments below, and share with us your favorite apps that were killed off by an acquisition. We'll pour one out for each and every one of them.

It is almost unanimous that iPad is a fantastic technological wonder. To get the most out of your iPad, you should try to take some time to learn about what it can do. You can get more out of your iPad by reading the helpful suggestions below. Know which apps are running on your iPad. Many different iPad applications can continue processing information in the background and do not disturb the user. Double-click the Home button if you want to find out what apps are currently running. Everything that is open will be displayed in a bar located underneath all of your other information. When you are finished looking at it, swipe down to close the bar. Iphone Charger Don’t use your iPhone charger for your iPad if you are short on time. Your iPad requires higher wattage to charge than an iPod does. If you charge with your iPhone charger, it will take a lot longer to get a full iPad battery. Use the charger that comes with your iPad for best results. Many people find it difficult to type on tablets, but it gets easier with time. You can utilize the speech recognition abilities of the device. To access this, hit the Home icon twice, then choose the small microphone in this menu. Dictate your text and click the icon a second time when you are finished. When you get your iPad it is set to only show the first two lines of any given message in the preview mode. It can be helpful to see more of the content prior to opening. Just click on Settings and then Mail. You should then choose contacts. tap on calendar and adjust the preview mail option. Quickly Mute It is easy to quickly mute your iPad. There was no mute button on the original iPad. The IOS 4.3 gave the choice of a lock switch to lock the iPad orientation or to mute the sound. In order to quickly mute an iPad, simply hold the volume decrease button. Set up FaceTime with your phone numbers and emails. Your iPad’s FaceTime includes the email you used to set it up with by default; however, it’s possible to add more addresses. To add more emails or phone numbers to FaceTime, utilize the settings on iPad. Do you find it annoying when you’re surfing with your iPad and have no clue where hyper-linked words lead? This is easy to solve. Since you cannot hover over the word like you can on your computer, you can just simply touch and hold the word. This will reveal its URL. It is easy to copy/paste text section when working on your iPad. Whatever text that you hope to cut and paste should be tapped and then held. Then choose select to pick the particular sentence that you want. When the text appears highlighted in yellow, you can select copy. You can then paste your text by tapping, holding and selecting Paste. You can share the documents or music that you have with your iPad and other devices. Sharing documents isn’t a pain anymore and being able to interact with nearly any home computer using iTunes is incredibly helpful. This is actually the best way to access the PDFs stored on your iPad. The iPad comes already loaded with applications you may not find useful. But some of these apps cannot be removed. Make a folder to store all these useless apps out of the way. That way, you can focus your attention on what you actually do use. Choose if you want your lock key to actually lock the device’s orientation or to mute its audio. The early iPad’s cannot perform this function. Any iPad that runs on iOS 4.3 or above will have this feature. You are able to turn down the volume by holding in the button. Getting an iPad security feature is more important than you may think. If you were to lose your iPad, all kinds of personal information would be in the hands of others. To switch between apps as quickly as possible, click on Home two times. This will show all apps that are currently running. Choose the icon of [...]

ChemDraw for iPad allows you to not only create molecular structures directly on your iPad, but share them just as easily via email or ChemDraw's own Flick-to-Share™ technology that allows you to send structures to anyone else using the app. From chemistry student to chemist, ChemDraw is a great learning app and productivity tool wrapped into one. The main menu for ChemDraw gives you access to the tools you'll need to create molecular structures. As you drill down further into the menus, you'll have more options. Options to create collinear bonds, isolated bonds, and more are all there. ChemDraw will also check for errors as you go. For example, if a valence error occurs, you'll see a notification at the bottom telling you so. Once you're done drawing a molecular structure you can tap the info button in the top to view information such as the exact formula, exact mass, and molecular mass. You'll also get a brief elemental analysis all in one view. You can choose to share your structure via email or with ChemDraw's Flick-to-Share option. The latter allows you to see anyone else who is currently using the app in somewhat of a desktop table view. When opening Flick-to-Share you'll be able to simply "flick" your structure to someone else and they'll receive it on there end. Since it doesn't depend on iCloud or any other third party account, it's a nice way to share items with colleagues or other students without the need for additional setup. There is also a nice period table view that will show you the chemical compounds of each element. In order to add an item or bond from any menu, simply tap on it and then tap on the screen where you'd like to insert it. ChemDraw supports many different kinds of molecular structures by default such as linear, tetrahedral, and more. For bonding, the usual suspects are also found in their own menu including normal, wedge, hatched, and dashed bonds. The good Unique interface that allows you to quickly and easily insert bonds and structures Flick-to-Share makes it easy to share what you create with other ChemDraw users with a simple tap and flick ChemDraw has been around for many years, so it's a trust source in Chemistry The bad More ways of sharing would be ideal The ability to annotate would be a great additional option that's currently missing Fine tune placement can be difficult and would be a great addition No functional grouping options The bottom line ChemDraw is off to a very nice start and has the technology and knowledge behind it. It's currently a great tool for students and those new to chemistry. For more experienced users, a few missing features such as annotations could become an annoyance but more than likely, they'll still find ChemDraw to be a very convenient and fun to use way to share and create molecular structures on the go. Admittedly, I'm not a chemistry wizard by any means so if any of you are and have used ChemDraw before, let us know what you think of it in the comments! $9.99 - Download Now