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Today’s topics include the introduction of Apple’s new iPhone 7 with an upgraded camera and wireless earbuds, how phony Facebook hacking tools are exploiting only would-be hackers, Intel’s sale of a 51 percent share in its cyber-security software business and the spinoff of HPE’s software unit to Micro Focus.
As it does every September prior to holiday season, Apple introduced the latest versions of its top mobile products at a major media briefing. This time it was Sept. 7 at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in downtown San Francisco.
Apple introduced its next-generation iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus smartphone models, along with an updated version of the Apple Watch. Apple is touting the water-resistance features of both the new iPhone models and the new Apple Watch Series 2.
To make the iPhone water resistant, Apple designed the new model without a headphone jack and instead is introducing new wireless earbuds called AirPods. The iPhone 7 is also equipped with a 12-megapixel, 1.8 aperture camera and a 7-megapixel HD camera, along with a speedy new A10 Fusion processor.
For those looking to hack the Facebook accounts of others, there is a marketplace for Facebook Hacker tools that offer the promise of point-and-click ease.
According to a new report from the Blue Coat Elastica Cloud Threat Labs (BCECTL), the promise made by many Facebook hacker tools is false. Rather than providing access to the Facebook accounts of others, BCECTL found that most Facebook Hacker tools only exploit the users of the tools.
“The samples we have analyzed don’t perform any real Facebook hacking as opposed to what is being claimed,” Aditya Sood, director of Security and Elastica Cloud Threat Labs at Blue Coat Elastica, now part of Symantec, told eWEEK.
Intel is spinning out its cyber-security software business in a partnership with private equity firm TPG, marking the latest move by the chip giant to remake itself in an industry undergoing rapid change.
Intel officials said Sept. 7 that it’s working with TPG to create a new, independent company based on its Intel Security unit in a deal worth about $4.2 billion, a far cry from the $7.6 billion Intel paid for the McAfee security software company in 2010. TPG will own 51 percent of the business and Intel 49 percent.
The private equity firm will put another $1.1 billion into the new company to help accelerate its growth. Chris Young, senior vice president and general manager of the Intel Security Group, will become CEO of the new company, which will adopt the McAfee name. Intel officials in 2014 pushed the McAfee brand into the background, renaming the business Intel Security.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise is spinning out its enterprise software businesses and merging it with Micro Focus as CEO Meg Whitman continues to pare down the company’s product technology portfolio to focus on enterprise infrastructure and services.
The deal, announced Sept. 7, comes the same day that one of HPE’s biggest rivals, Dell Technologies, completed its $60 billion-plus acquisition of data storage leader EMC, creating a much larger company with a broad reach across the enterprise IT landscape.
Where CEO Michael Dell said earlier in the day that scale is important for an IT vendor, Whitman told analysts and journalists during a conference call that with the rapid changes going on in the industry around the cloud, internet of things, data analytics and software-defined infrastructure, HPE needs the focus and agility of a smaller company.