Find: Facebook, Twitter, Apple hack sprung from iPhone developer forum

Watering hole attack on the big guys uses a zero day java exploit. 

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Facebook, Twitter, Apple hack sprung from iPhone developer forum

iPhone Dev SDK, the web forum that was at the center of the hack of Facebook and other companies in January.

The website used to infect engineers at Facebook with espionage malware has been identified as an iPhone developer forum by people close to the investigation into the hacking incident.

That page, at the iPhone developer website iphonedevsdk.com, was used to expose visitors to a previously undocumented vulnerability in Oracle's Java browser plugin. The "zero-day" exploit allowed the attackers to install a collection of malware on the Java-enabled computers of those who visited the site. Ars readers shouldn't visit the site because it still may still be compromised.

iphonedevsdk.com is an example of a "watering hole" attack. These attacks compromise a site popular with a population of desired hacking victims, using security vulnerabilities to install code on the Web server hosting it, which injects attacks into the HTML sent to its visitors. In this case, the site, which hosts a Web forum for iPhone developers, netted the hackers access to the computers of software engineers and developers working on mobile application projects for a number of companies, including Facebook. The exploit was the source of the attack on Twitter that led to the theft of Twitter usernames and passwords, according to a source familiar with the attack, and was used to infect computers belonging to Apple engineers. The source requested anonymity because he was not authorized to provide the details to the press.

Find: Apple, Microsoft, Google, and others team up to support standards site Web Platform Docs

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Apple, Microsoft, Google, and others team up to support standards site Web Platform Docs

Web development has become increasingly complex in recent years, and now a new website has launched — with the backing of several major industry players — in an effort to become the definitive resource for developers looking to explore web standards. Web Platform Docs, which launched today in a self-described "alpha" form, wants to become "the place to come for answers to your trickiest (and simplest) development and design questions about the Open Web Platform." The project is backed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards body, as well as the likes of Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Mozilla, Nokia, and others.

The site currently consists of a wiki, forums, a chat channel, and a blog, but the ambitions run much...

Find: iPad's domination of tablet traffic grows, but does Amazon care?

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iPad's domination of tablet traffic grows, but does Amazon care?

During his keynote speech for the release of the iPhone 5, Apple CEO Tim Cook poked fun of competitors in the tablet space with a few pie charts. While the iPad's market share in the tablet space has reportedly slipped to about 65 percent, Cook noted that iPads still make up 91 percent of web traffic from tablets. "I don't know what these other tables are doing. They must be in warehouses or on store shelves, or maybe in someone's drawer."

Onswipe, a New York startup which helps publishers optimize their sites for touch enabled devices, has just released some new data, and it turns out Apple's lead could be even bigger than Cook boasted. The measurements are taken from 8.5 million unique visitors across the more than one hundred...

Find: Apple's custom ARM approach for A6 pays off in JavaScript performance

Ars Technica Apple's custom ARM approach for A6 pays off in JavaScript performance

Apple's iPhone 5 is the fastest smartphone ever tested using the WebKit team's SunSpider JavaScript benchmark, apparently due to the custom core design of the A6 processor. The benchmark performs over twice as fast on the A6 as it does on the A5 processor in the iPhone 4S, and even bests smartphones running Intel's x86-based Atom processors, according to AnandTech.

AnandTech published an extensive SunSpider benchmark comparison on Wednesday morning, including results from an iPhone 5 test unit and two dozen other smartphones. The iPhone 5 turned in an impressive 914.7ms time, easily besting the 2250.0ms of the iPhone 4S—almost 2.5 times as fast. It also beat the current top Android device, Samsung's Galaxy SIII, which ran the benchmark in 1442.9ms. (The iPhone 5 is 1.6 times faster.)

It's important to note that SunSpider isn't the best measure of raw performance across platforms. JavaScript engines vary from browser to browser on different platforms, and Apple almost certainly employs optimizations in iOS that would be difficult to replicate in Android or WP7 on every available handset. However, it's notable that the iPhone 5's A6 processor is executing JavaScript significantly faster than the only Atom-based smartphone currently available, the Lava XOLO X900, which turned in a 1279.4ms score.

Find: Jony Ive - focus, lead and disseminate

Focus: you can't do everything you're interested in. Edit yourself, say no and work on your thing. 

Disseminate: let others have what you make. Mass produce it. Like the eames motto create the best, for the most, for the least. 

Lead: don't follow focus groups. Take control, know needs, and seize opportunities to meet them. 

Apple's Jony Ive: 'really great design is hard'

In a recent interview with Wired UK, Apple industrial designer Jonathan Ive spoke about the challenges of crafting well-designed products for mass production. He said "our goal isn't to make money" but "what makes us excited is to make great products."

He goes on to explain that Apple doesn't do market research, saying "it will guarantee mediocrity and will only work out whether you are going to offend anyone." Ive said that when Steve Jobs returned to Apple during its moment of financial turmoil, it was "his resolve was to make better products," rather than traditional business austerity techniques, that brought about Apple's return to success. While Ive's description of Apple's philosophy on the genesis of new products seems quite...