Apple credits security researcher Balic with reporting Developer Center vulnerability

Apple has updated its Apple Web Server notifications page to credit security researcher Ibrahim Balic, amongst others, for reporting security issues with the company’s servers. Balic is the researcher who claimed that he was possibly the “intruder” thanks to whom Apple’s Developer Center underwent a month-long derailment.

The post was discovered by 9to5Mac and credits several others for reporting potential security issues in Apple’s web servers. This means Balic was not the intruder who forced Apple to shut its website for a while.

Credits where they're due

Balic, a White Hat, had claimed that he was possibly the reason behind the outage since he managed to demonstrate how the flaw allowed him to gather full names and Apple IDs of developers from the website. Apple had coincidentally announced that it had deliberately shut down its Developer Center to fix the flaw around the same time. The Cupertino-based company admitted that it had been attacked by an intruder in July and while sensitive personal information was encrypted and safe, it was possible that some names, mailing addresses and email addresses of a few developers could have been compromised.

The company launched a system status page to inform developers of the progress of restoring services after the hack and the Developer Center went completely online earlier in August. While this pretty much proves that it could not have been him behind the attack, Balic has claimed that other bugs pointed out by him are still waiting to be listed on the Web Service page. Now if only Khalil, the Palestinian researcher who broke into Mark Zuckerberg’s account to report a bug to Facebook, could get this recognition too.

(Cover image credit: Reuters)

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No magic, no Apple: Cupertino’s identity crisis in the fading afterglow of Jobs

I guess I don’t see it. It definitely needs to do something exciting if it’s going to regain momentum and stay ahead of everyone else, but Apple products are still top of the line.

Apple products have always run on lower specs than competitors and what innovations is the iPhone missing? NFC? Sure, but that’s only beginning to be useful to anyone in any way. The only thing that’s obvious is the screen size, but that’s a continual deliberate choice by Apple; maybe because it fears that making too large a screen will alienate users (having a smaller phone certainly isn’t harming sales). Hopefully with a second iPhone model coming, it will branch out and have a 4.3 or 4.7-inch phone and a smaller one.

I judge by the products I see and if I’m recommending a tablet, I still recommend an iPad (if you can spend the money). For phones, the iPhone is still a great option. I agree that the Mac Air will need touch, but it’s a very compelling option next to Windows 8 devices. Apple’s choosing to cater to hardcore users instead of try to make its Macs into touchable tablets. It can’t hold out forever, though.

Samsung is not the new Apple. How does it innovate? Samsung’s idea of innovation is to pile on so many new apps and features that no one even knows how to use them all, or that they even exist. Most of Samsung’s innovations are difficult to use. I like it’s ideas with the Galaxy Cam and it integrated a stylus well in its Notes, but a lot of its innovations are confusing. There are at least five different versions of the Galaxy S4, and on AT&T, it is selling two different versions of the phone at the same price.

Nokia making a Lumia PureView? There’s an S4 for that. Sony has a water-resistant phone? There’s now an S4 for that. HTC making a smaller version of its phone? There’s an S4 for that.

Samsung doesn’t come up with innovative ideas so much as make sure that it’s devices have every single idea anyone else has thought of in them. And the ideas it does come up with are often designed to lock people into a Samsung ecosystem, or confuse them into buying apps from Samsung instead of the Google Play Store.

The Galaxy S4 and other Samsung products are fantastic, but Samsung has not shown, in almost any way, that it’s capable of larger innovation like Apple did with key devices or Google is doing now with Glass, self-driving cars, and several other fronts.

As far as profits, if I were a stock broker I’d care more. Apple is making plenty of profit and has more cash than any other company I know of.

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