Apple hosted its September event and announced that Apple Intelligence will be integrated into Siri and future iOS operating systems. The artificial intelligence features will launch as part of an iOS beta for US customers in the fall, providing new features like email summaries, a new visual search that can recognize and extract text directly into a calendar event, and the ability to turn hastily written notes into eloquent emails. Apple Intelligence will debut on the iPhone 16 series, which also features the new A18-series chips designed with faster GPUs to meet AI’s processing requirements.
Why it matters: Apple first announced Apple Intelligence at the World Wide Developer Conference in June, but the “It’s Glowtime” event spotlighted how smart integration of artificial intelligence can improve user experience. CEO Tim Cook said that the iPhone 16 “has been designed for Apple Intelligence from the ground up,” so there’s no getting away from it in the latest smart device models. It remains to be seen how users feel about having their technology doing the thinking for them.
iPhones Everywhere: Apple Unveils iPhone 16, New Apple Watch, and Updated AirPods
Any Apple fan knows that September is when the company releases the next generation of iPhones. The new iPhone 16 series has a display that ranges in brightness from 1 nit to 2,000 nits. A new button makes taking photos and adjusting the camera settings easier. The iPhone Pro and Pro Max editions come with larger screens (6.3″ and 6.9,” respectively), include the even faster A18 Pro chip, are made with Grade 5 Titanium, and have a 5x telephoto camera. The Apple Watch Series 10 is the thinnest ever, has an OLED display and weighs 20 percent less than the Series 9. On the headphone front, Apple claims the AirPods 4 are more comfortable than their predecessors. The charging case is now compatible with USB-C. A second version of the AirPods 4 adds active noise cancellation for an additional $50. The second generation of AirPods Pro include a clinically-validated hearing test and hearing aid features that can adjust to the user’s needs based on the test results.
Why it matters: Nearly 60 percent of smartphone users in the US have an iPhone, even though globally, Android has a 71% market share, according to Exploding Topics. New devices always pique customer interest, especially when introducing novel or unexpected features. The 16 models will feature Apple’s A18 chip series, a 3 nm system-on-chip (SoC) processor with multiple processing cores, which is 30% faster than the iPhone 16 and uses less power than the A16 chip.
RAMBO Side-Channel Attack Targets Air-Gapped Networks
The easiest way to ensure that your data isn’t exfiltrated off your network is to keep it off of a network. Systems set up this way are “air-gapped” because they’re isolated from outside networks and physically segregated from the Internet. But a new side-channel attack, Radiation of Air-gapped Memory Bus for Offense (RAMBO) can manipulate a device’s RAM to generate electromagnetic signals that emit 1s and 0s via radio signal. These signals can then be intercepted via an antenna and converted back into binary. The transfer rate is only 0.125 KB/s, so collecting a full megabyte of data would take more than two hours. Still, a password can be stolen in less than two seconds, and keylogging can be done in real-time.
Why it matters: Security products typically look at the computer’s actual data processing and were not designed to measure a device’s electromagnetic pulses as it performs regular operations. Fortunately, the bad actor first needs to get the malware onto the air-gapped device, which requires physical access. Unfortunately, insider threats are still threats, so the researchers suggest enhanced physical security, frequency jammers, or even enclosing the air-gapped system in a Faraday cage.
