Today’s topics include Apple addressing a long list of iOS 9 security flaws, AT&T’s modifications to its “throttling” rules for unlimited data customers, Cisco aims its Mobility Express Platform at small businesses and Alcatel Lucent released a report on network security.
In addition to many new features for its mobile devices, Apple’s iOS 9 addresses a long of security vulnerabilities. The iOS 9 security updates follow the security updates to iOS 8.4 that came out June 30. The iOS 9 patches deal with a particularly dangerous spoofing risk in the Mail application that a Salesforce.com security engineer reported to Apple. Apple Pay also received a patch for a vulnerability that incorrectly implements transaction log functionality on some configurations. However, the largest single source of patched vulnerabilities in iOS 9 is found in the WebKit rendering engine, which is being fixed for 34 different issues.
AT&T will now let unlimited data customers use as much as 22GB of mobile data in a month before throttling back the user’s speeds due to overuse. This is more than four times the former 5GB monthly limit that the company previously imposed on customers. AT&T made the announcement in a recent post on its support Website, explaining that it made this change because the company has been upgrading and enhancing its network across the country.
Networking giant Cisco is reaching out to small to midsize businesses looking to deploy WiFi networks with the launch of its Mobility Express Solution, designed to help SMB networks deliver enterprise-class wireless access to employees and customers. Without the need for a dedicated controller appliance, it can be deployed in under 10 minutes, managing up to 25 Access Points and supporting up to 500 clients in a single cluster.
Security firms continue to warn smartphone users of the dangers of mobile malware, adware and spyware. Ironically, almost 80 percent of infected devices on mobile networks are tethered Windows laptops, not phones or tablets, network-security firm Alcatel-Lucent said on Sept. 16. The company’s Motive Security Labs found that the proportion of mobile-network-connected devices showing signs of infection climbed slightly to 0.75 percent at the end of June, but the fraction of those devices that were smartphones, declined in the first half of 2015 by 0.15 percent.