provisioning
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Vulnerability lets text messages steal emails from Android phones
Bogus text messages aren't just being used to send you to malicious websites or crash your phone -- in some cases, they can hijack your emails. Check Point Research has discovered a vulnerability in phones from Huawei, LG, Samsung and Sony that lets attackers use custom SMS to intercept all email traffic on target devices. The attack uses the common Open Mobile Alliance version of over-the-air provisioning, a carrier technique for deploying settings to new phones, to access emails. The attacks require different methods depending on the phone and available info (such as IMSI numbers and requesting PIN codes), but the result is the same: intruders trick users into compromising their phones through messages that pose as network settings changes.
Hungry? Elder Scrolls Online is revamping provisioning
When The Elder Scrolls Online's Update 6 launches later this month, characters with the provisioning skill should go make us a sammich. Just kidding. But if you do decide to make us a sammich, you'll find the process much more streamlined and effective, as ZeniMax is plotting a major overhaul of the profession. In a dev blog posted last night, the studio explained that it will be reducing the overall number of ingredients in the game, adding new recipes, updating the cooking UI, and giving food additives some oomph. Roleplayers will be happy to learn that lootable food-related objects will soon yield appropriate ingredients (apples from apple baskets, for example), and food buffs will make a bit more sense, like "meat dishes [that] increase your health and fruit dishes [that] increase your magicka." If you're not actually a cook yourself, all you really need to know is that you should start skinning fish, cows, and chickens for meat and that drink buffs won't suck anymore. Hooray!
DevJuice: Provisioning portal redesigned, allows deletion of some App IDs
We've been hearing from various delighted developers this weekend responding to Apple's redesigned provisioning portal. And yes, you can now delete many (not all) App IDs from the portal. The newer the ID, the more likely it seems to be that you'll be able to select it, configure its settings and click that all-too-welcome delete button. Did it work for you? Drop a note in the comments. Me? I've been happily weeding many apps out this weekend.
TestFlight reaches Android in beta, gives app developers a safety net
You may not know about TestFlight if you're used to running apps rather than building them, but odds are that you know its effects when over 300,000 iOS apps have reached testers that hopefully caught bugs in advance. That makes the launch of a private Android beta something of an event, as it gives developers the same simple feedback and provisioning for pre-release apps. Coders who split their time between both Android and iOS also get a truly cross-platform management console as part of the expansion. There's no set date for when the beta expires, but TestFlight eventually plans to offer its utility directly through the Google Play Store -- and might just keep the Android app train rolling smoothly.
TestFlight helps developers to prepare their apps for takeoff
I remember the good old days of software distribution for mobile phones, when having an "app" on your phone meant you had to scour the depths of the internet to find and download the app that you wanted -- most of which were written in Java and built for specific groups of devices. For a developer, distributing your software meant hosting downloads and instruction guides on your own website, or partnering up with a distributor like Handango in hopes of better exposure. Fast forward to today, where the App Store has opened the doors for independent developers and installing apps on your device is as simple as tapping a button. Well, at least installing regular apps from the App Store is simple; installing beta versions of an app that is not quite ready for prime-time is usually more complex and reminiscent of the antiquated installs of yore. That is, until now. Enter TestFlight, a very interesting project with a simple goal: to make distributing and installing beta versions of apps as simple as tapping a button. In short, and to coin a phrase that is often synonymous with Apple products in general, "it just works." TestFlight is one of those rare utilities that is able to evoke a feeling of magic when you first use it. This feeling is not just because it does exactly what it advertises, or because the process is so simple, but because it does all of this just by loading a simple web page from your device. Sound interesting? Read on to find out how TestFlight is making the testing process better for everyone.
Kin firmware torn apart, reveals provisioning for AT&T, T-Mobile, Fido?
In public, Microsoft has been adamant about its relationship with Verizon in bringing the Kin to market, even saying that the research and development process involved regular trips to Big Red's New Jersey offices -- but how strong is that bond behind the scenes? Well-established WinMo hacker Conflipper seems to have stumbled across a Kin ROM in recent days, tearing it apart in search of interesting tidbits, and here's a doozy: the firmware appears to be ready for provisioning on a variety of North American, European, and Asian carriers, including T-Mobile and AT&T in the US, Fido (a Rogers subsidiary) in Canada, O2, 3, TeliaSonera, China Mobile, China Unicom, Bharti Airtel for India, and both NTT DoCoMo and SoftBank in Japan. Amusingly, launch partner Vodafone is misspelled as "Vodaphone" in the files, but seriously, we're wondering how close any of these deals are to actually going down. Fido would make a lot of sense since Microsoft has yet to announce a Canadian partner, but we've previously heard that Microsoft has no intention of taking the phone to Asia -- so this could be a completely meaningless list after all.
