Hacking Citibank's Virtual Keyboard

I have been using Citibank's virtual keyboard for sometime now and have always been skeptical that this would actually make my transactions secure. A security researcher in India has vindicated my beliefs. I am by no standards a smart hacker, but even I knew that if you can run any of the 'N' number of applications that can decode the string in the textbox, you can get the password for that account.

Let me explain how the virtual keyboard works. Every time you type in your account number, a virtual keyboard is presented that lets you click the digits of your password. These digits go in an encrypted form to the textbox that is present in that screen. And when you press enter you are allowed to login.

My friend and I have actually tried out an application which just essentially requires you to just point your mouse to that textbox and voila you get the actual password. So trust me, we knew this was pretty insecure, but we didn't care since I knew the hackers wouldn't be too interested in my bank account considering I don't own a whole lot :)

Investors spooked by Cisco's Third Quarter Results

Though Cisco's fiscal third-quarter profit surged by 34 percent, its stock fell down in after hours trading because of weakness in Cisco's core areas of business.

The fear among investors stems from the fact that there is a slowdown in orders from US businesses, even though the sales in the other regions grew at a double digit rate. The fear is understandable considering that the first three months, US enterprise business grew at a rapid pace at 20%, but hence after has dwindled down to single digit growth. Obviously, the investors are at a loss to categorize this downturn as a temporary one or as a start of a huge deceleration.

It usually takes three quarters to predict a behaviour and since only the last two quarters have been bad in this segment for Cisco, we have to wait for another quarter before passing judgements. Also, I personally don't think it is a big deal, because Cisco is making huge inroads in the other markets and they would more than comfortably make up for the lost ground.

But then, it is always good to be strong in your home turf before winning over foreign lands :)

It's finally Through

The acquisition of Hutch by Vodafone finally got the approval of the Indian government thus putting an end to all the gossip going around that this deal would be nulled due to some irregularities. Quoting from the report

Ending a torturous period of regulatory review, Chidambaram signed off on the deal Friday, sources told Forbes.com. The approval came a week after India’s foreign investment regulatory body cleared the $11.1 billion acquisition by Vodafone(nyse: VOD - news - people ) of a controlling stake in the fourth-largest Indian cellular service provider. It is the largest foreign investment in the country, which is the fastest growing cellular market in the world.

The questions that were raised was whether this acquisition violated India’s cap on foreign control of telecom companies, but this approval vindicates the Vodafone stand that everything was legal. I heard from some sources that Airtel was looking for some stakes in this venture and it is possible that this delay in approval might have been the result of political wranglings in the background.

But hey, all I care about is whether the service going to be better and will it match Vodafone's international standards? Will Vodafone drive in the next gen technologies? Hope to get the answers for these soon.

Telecom Meeting in Chennai

Twelve of us met together Friday evening for the first Telecom meet in Chennai. It was a blast. Needless to say, there was lot of talk on SIP, IMS et al.

I still can hear the reverberations of some of the conversations. I hope to write a detailed summary sometime this weekend. Vivek of Unleash Networks took some pictures and hopefully he can send it across he has them posted in his blog. ( And, thanks for calling me the VoIP Blogger :) )

What went wrong with Veraz IPO?

Mercator Capital has once again come up with a brilliant analysis (I might have to move them up on my "Most Under-rated' list) as to why Veraz's IPO went bust and Acme's IPO was a huge success even though they are in a similar space and the difference in months between the two IPOs was just months.

Mercator talks about three main reasons,
1) They were running at a loss at the time of IPO.
2) They are against the big names like Cisco, Nortel etc.
3) Most of their revenues are from the Legacy TDM solutions rather than from IP.

The third one is arguably, the most important reason why the IPO failed. The first two, though they are challenges, can be addressed and if the company has future-proof solutions, investors tend to overlook the fact that they are not profitable or against the big names. Being niche and being next-gen is definitely the way to go.

The above are the reasons why I think the likes of Nextone, Soundbite will have great IPOs.

Truphone thinking of striking back

As most you would be aware, Vodafone and Orange have disabled VoIP functionality in their N95 handsets in an attempt to protect their precious minutes. (In a related story, check out the post on VoIP Providers missing the point). Looks like Truphone has decided to fight back.

According to this report, they are planning to bring a lawsuit against the above mentioned operators. This report includes the statement issued by Truphone

The move by Orange and Vodafone is tantamount to blocking its service and also suggested that it was a “threat to mobile net neutrality” – the concept that all network operators, wireless or otherwise, should be prohibited from blocking or degrading web-based services, including VoIP, or denying access to websites on their networks.

The removal by two of the UK’s mobile network operators of VoIP functionality from Nokia’s flagship handset, the Nokia N95, constitutes a major threat to mobile net neutrality that should concern all mobile phone users,” the company said in the statement. “Net neutrality (News - Alert) has been critical to innovation on the web to date. In particular, the way people shop, learn, communicate and work would be very different if Internet access wasn’t neutral.

Net neutrality means that - for example - broadband providers do not lock customers into specific products, services or content controlled by that provider,” the statement reads. “It’s because of net neutrality that businesses such as Ebay, MySpace, or Amazon have thrived when, if their exposure had been confined to small uncompetitive ‘walled gardens,’ available only to a proportion of Internet users, they may never have achieved their global popularity and current success.

Now the question really is, do the mobile carriers "own" the network they run? If so, they are legally entitled to block Truphone kind of services. But think about this, if Microsoft tomorrow goes and says it will disallow Firefox to run on Windows because it "owns" the OS, what would the anti-trust lobby do? Isn't this the same? Aren't they killing competition unfairly? What do you think?

BT developing Motion Control Laptop

Just saw an interesting post that BT was developing a motion control laptop/tablet pcs. The user can move the device back and forth and control the cursor. The release says

This revolutionary piece of technology is in the development stages, but is already being tested by engineers who are trying to find situations where this sort of control would be invaluable, this would include engineers, etc.

Am still trying to figure out where this would be useful. It is targeted for people who have so many things to do, they can use only one hand. Not very commonplace. Will keep an eye on this to see how it evolves.