iPad 2, Android Virus and Cyber Attacks

Steve Jobs has come back from sick leave so he can release the second generation of iPads to the world. Apple has billed the iPad 2 as slimmer, lighter and faster than its predecessor. The iPad 2 goes on sale in the UK on the 25th March, fourteen days after the US.The new iPad features Apple's new dual core A5 processor which is claimed to be twice as fast as the original iPad. Along with the new hardware the iPad has included several new applications including video and music editors, iMovie and Garage Band. But some critics claim Apple is still behind Android when it comes to interfacing issues. One of the biggest issues is that notifications on the iPad force you to dismiss the notification before you can continue working. In essence this forces the user to do one thing at a time, which is slightly backwards.
While I have mentioned Android, it has been found that over apps available on the Android Marketplace contain a virus. Analysis suggests that the booby-trapped apps may have been downloaded up to 200,000 times. The malicious apps were copies of existing applications, such as games, that had been repackaged to include the virus code. But rest safe now because all the apps found to have the virus have been removed from the marketplace. The virus is known as DroidDream and sends sensitive data, such as a phone's unique ID number, to a remote server. It also checks to see if a phone has already been infected and, if not, uses known exploits to bypass security controls and give its creator access to the handset. This bestows the ability to install any code on a phone or steal any information from it.
In other news, South Korea has been hit by a series of cyber attacks which have targeted some of the country's leading websites. Government ministries, the National Assembly, the military headquarters, US Forces in Korea and major banks were among those hit.The web page of the Financial Services Commission, the country's financial regulator, was overloaded and an online stock trading system was shut down for a few minutes but both soon recovered.