Intel has purchased part of the large wireless chip maker Infineon Technologies AG, buying the company behind the chips used in the Apple iPhone.
The company has fallen far behind in the growing smartphone processor market since their technology uses too much power, draining the phone battery too quickly.
With the acquisition today, for $1.4 billion in cash, Intel now has the wireless-chip division of the company, and an instant “in” to the market.
Intel purchased the mobile software company Wind River Systems last year for $885 million, and they have since been creating the mobile OS dubbed “Moblin,” which will run on smartphones using Intel chips.
Additionally, the company recently paid $7.68 billion for the large security software firm McAfee, and the company plans to integrate security into its mobile chips.
Result for: security software
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the United States has launched a probe into an incident that led to the exposure of personal information of AT&T Inc. customers. Among the affected customers were White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and the mayor or New York City Michael Bloomberg.
A group calling itself Goatse Security was able to get information on over 100,000 AT&T iPad subscribers by exploiting a major bug on a script at an AT&T website. The group simply needed to insert an ICC-ID as part of a HTTP request to the vulnerable script which then returned the e-mail address associated with the specific iPad device.
AT&T has stressed that only e-mail address data was actually retrieved by the group and nothing more sensitive was at risk. Still, a collection of 114,000 active e-mail addresses has value by itself without even including the personal e-mail addresses of celebrities or government officials that were revealed.
“The FBI is aware of these possible computer intrusions and has opened an investigation to address the potential cyber threat,” FBI spokesman Jason Pack said. Apple’s iPad, which launched in April this year, has already sold over 2 million units.
Security experts, for the most part, maintain that the hype surrounding this hack has more to do with the fact that it involves an Apple device and some well-known names than with iPad or even AT&T security. “The hype around Apple products — like the new iPhone and iPad — is amazing. However, the reality is this type of vulnerability isn’t really news and happens all day long,” George Kurtz, chief technology officer for security software company McAfee, said.
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Result for: security software
Facebook has announced today that they have signed a deal with McAfee that will give all 350 million members a free six-month license for Internet security software.
“Now, if your computer is infected, you will be asked to run a scan … and clean it before accessing Facebook,” added Facebook project manager Jake Brill. “We’re not aware of another free Internet service that takes this much responsibility for helping people keep their accounts secure.”
After the six months, you will have to pay to continue using the license, but McAfee says the fee will be cheaper than the annual subscription price for the software in stores.
The software will run on Windows PCs only, with no expected Mac OS X or Linux deal coming anytime soon.
