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IPS marketing

The Identity and Passport Service (IPS) is to embark on a marketing campaign to persuade businesses to check staff passports and national identity cards.

It announced today that it has contracted advertising agency Proximity, part of the BBDO network, to develop below the line promotional campaigns for ID cards, passports and the General Register Office (GRO) for the next three to four years.

The contract supplements an earlier contract with Abbot Mead Vickers BBDO for above the line work to promote passport applications for first-time applicants and renewals, the Passport Validation Service (PVS), the National Identity Service, including validation services based upon data held on the national register; and genealogical services from GRO.

The Central Office of Information (COI) was unable to say how much the contracts were worth.

The latest estimated cost of the IPS for the next 10 years is £4.95bn. This includes the issue of both passports and identity cards for UK citizens. About 70% of it will go to implement secure biometric passports.

Since 2005, accredited government departments and law enforcement agencies, such as UK Border Agency, Security Industry Authority (SIA), and the DVLA, have had direct web access to the passport database.

PVS is the first business to business identity service offered by IPS, and is part of the IPS mission to be the "trusted and preferred provider of identity services", the COI said.

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Apple will have to be quick to react to a software crack which makes it possible for unapproved software to be used on the new iPhone.

A teenager has moved away from normal hacker etiquette by making available an application that will enable users to download software onto iPhones even if it is not in the Apple App Store before Apple has a chance to create a fix.

He said he usually gives Apple a chance to work on the fix.

The jailbreaking tool has been made available to the public.

Hacker George Hotz said in his blog that he does not usually make these tools available to the public.

"Normally I don’t make tools for the general public, and rather wait for the dev team to do it. But guys, what’s up with waiting until 3.1? That isn’t how the game is played. We release, Apple fixes, we find new holes. It isn’t worth waiting because you might have the ‘last’ hole in the iPhone. What last hole this isn’t golf. I’ll find a new one next week."

In August 2007 Hotz demonstrated the first Hardware unlock of the iPhone using a technique that was developed by hackers. This allowed the iPhone to be used with any SIM card.

Apple is also working on a security patch for the iPhone to fix a vulnerability that could be exploited by cybercriminals.

The vulnerability in the way iPhones handle text messages was demonstrated by independent security adviser Charlie Miller at the SyScan security conference in Singapore. Miller demonstrated that he could use the vulnerability to temporarily disconnect an iPhone from the network, but did not give a detailed description of the attack method.

He has agreed with Apple to keep the details under wraps until the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas on 25-30 July.

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Apple is working on a security patch for the iPhone to fix a vulnerability that could be exploited by cybercriminals.

The vulnerability in the way iPhones handle text messages was demonstrated by independent security adviser Charlie Miller at the SyScan security conference in Singapore yesterday.

Miller demonstrated that he could use the vulnerability to temporarily disconnect an iPhone from the network, but did not give a detailed description of the attack method.

He has agreed with Apple to keep the details under wraps until the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas on 25-30 July.

Apple has until then to fix the vulnerability, which Miller warned could potentially be exploited to execute code on an iPhone remotely.

If successful, criminals could potentially run code to monitor the location of the phone using GPS, turn on the phone’s microphone to eavesdrop, and add the phone to a botnet, according to Miller.

Miller, who has still to determine if this kind of attack can be carried out, has said in media interviews that the vulnerability could be “really serious” and that Apple is investigating.

Apple did not respond to requests for information about the iPhone vulnerability.

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The first version of the next operating system for the Apple iPhone has been released to developers.

iPhone OS version 3.1 is available for software developers to download to enable them to build compatible applications.

Version 3.0 of the software was released on 17 June and has been taken up by three-quarters of iPhone users, according to iPhone software maker Tapots.

Tapbots monitors hits made on its server as iPhones access its software and identifies which OS the iPhone making the hit is using.

The latest iPhone was launched on 19 June.

Author: Karl Flinders

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