Apple

Apple Hits New Record North Of $600 Billion In Market Capitalization

by

– Apple Hits New Record North Of $600 Billion In Market Cap (ZeroHedge, Aug 17, 2012):

Update: in the 20 or so minutes since uploading this article, AAPL added another OpenTable in market cap. It has in the course of a day added the same market cap as Linked In and just shy of Sony.

Moments ago Apple, long since the largest company in the world by market cap, just crossed $600 billion in capitalization, needless to say a record high, after adding the equivalent of 2.4 RIMMs in market cap in a few short hours. As of this moment, the company that makes a phone, a tablet, various computers (all of which now have an upgrade lifecycle inside of 1 year and ever shorter), has a product “ecosystem”, retail stores and may be launching a cable box, is larger than the entire semiconductor sector, larger than the entire retail index, and at this rate of parabolic blow off top growth, will be larger than both combined in about 5-6 months. We can only hope that the company will soon use its $110+ billion cash hoard to launch a captive bank to finance the purchase of its products because unless consumers’ disposable incomes are growing at the same rate (with penetration already quite high), and assuming of course it is still cool to have an AAPL product in a few years (just as it was the peak of coolness to have a Palm Tungsten a decade ago… or a RIM phone 5 years ago), the company that is now owned by about 250 hedge funds will certainly have growing pains in the future.

Blue is Retail sector; Red is Semiconductor

Apple Founder Wozniak to Buy Facebook Regardless of Price

by

– Apple Founder Wozniak to Buy Facebook Regardless of Price (Bloomberg, May 14, 2012):

Apple Inc. (AAPL) co-founder Steve Wozniak said he will buy shares in Facebook Inc. (FB) when the social networking company sells stock to the public in what may be a record initial public offering for an Internet business.

Wozniak, who built the first Apple computer with Steve Jobs and co-founded the company with him in 1976, said he would buy Facebook’s stock regardless of its valuation.

Facebook plans to raise as much as $11.8 billion in an IPO scheduled for May 17 in what would be the biggest in history for an Internet company. The company is offering 337.4 million shares to the public at $28 to $35, giving it a market value at the top of the range of $96 billion.

“I would invest in Facebook,” Wozniak said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Sydney yesterday. “I don’t care what the opening price is.”

Read moreApple Founder Wozniak to Buy Facebook Regardless of Price

Apple Suffers Biggest Two-Week Drop In 39 Months

by

– Apple Suffers Biggest Two-Week Drop In 39 Months (ZeroHedge, April 24, 2012):

Presented with little comment except to give some context for the current weakness in what was the world’s largest market cap stock a few days ago. In the last 11 days, Apple has dropped over 12.5% – the largest such drop since January 2009 – as today sees the stock’s fall continue to yesterday’s lows down over 2.7%. With just a few hours to the event-horizon, options traders are active and stock volume run-rates are high as selling pressure dominates.

Chinese Students Told To Man Production Lines At Foxconn If They Want To Graduate

by

– Apple’s Chinese iPhone plants employ forced interns, claim campaigners (Guardian, April 1, 2012):

Students told to man production lines at Foxconn if they want to graduate, says Hong Kong-based nonprofit

Apple’s factories in China are employing tens of thousands of students, some of them on forced internships, according to campaigners lobbying for better labour conditions at Foxconn plants, which assemble iPhones. Some students could be as young as 16.

The Foxconn chairman, Terry Gou, head of China’s largest private-sector employer – with 1.2 million workers – promised on Sunday to reduce hours and improve pay after an independent audit found multiple labour law violations at his factories.

But campaigners have accused Apple, Foxconn and the Fair Labor Association (FLA), a charitable organisation that carried out the audit published on Friday, of ignoring the issue of forced internships, where students are told they will not graduate unless they spend months working on production lines during holidays.

Read moreChinese Students Told To Man Production Lines At Foxconn If They Want To Graduate

Apple Pulls A JP Morgan, Announces $10 Billion Share Repurchase Program, $2.65 Quarterly Dividend, Plans To Spend $45 Billion Over 3 Year

by

– Apple Announces $10 Billion Share Repurchase Program, $2.65 Quarterly Dividend, Plans To Spend $45 Billion Over 3 Year (ZeroHedge, Mar 19, 2012):

And so Steve Jobs legacy is now gone as Apple goes Jamie Dimon. At least Apple was not part of the stress test. And as announced yesterday, we for one, can’t wait to find out if it was JPM that advised Apple, to pull a JPM. Finally, we hope that AAPL’s cash creation rate remains the same, as $45 billion in 3 years may put quite a large dent on the company’s onshore cash, which according to reports is one-third of total.

Full PR:

Apple Announces Plans to Initiate Dividend and Share Repurchase Program

Read moreApple Pulls A JP Morgan, Announces $10 Billion Share Repurchase Program, $2.65 Quarterly Dividend, Plans To Spend $45 Billion Over 3 Year

It’s Official: Apple Is Now Bigger Than The Entire US Retail Sector!

by

– It’s Official – Apple Is Now Bigger Than The Entire US Retail Sector (ZeroHedge, Mar 14, 2012):

A company whose value is dependent on the continued success of two key products, now has a larger market capitalization (at $542 billion), than the entire US retail sector (as defined by the S&P 500). Little to add here.

Justice Department May Sue Apple, Publishers On E-Books For Colluding To Raise Prices

by

– Justice Department May Sue Apple, Publishers On E-Books (Reuters, Mar 8, 2012):

The Justice Department has warned Apple and five major publishers that it plans to sue them, accusing them of colluding to raise the prices of electronic books, a person familiar with the probe said on Thursday.

Several parties have held talks to settle the potential antitrust case, said the person, who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

The five publishers facing possible Justice Department action are Simon & Schuster Inc, a unit of CBS Corp; Lagardere SCA’s Hachette Book Group; Pearson Plc’s Penguin Group (USA); Macmillan, a unit of Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH; and HarperCollins Publishers Inc, a unit of News Corp.

U.S. and European officials have been investigating whether e-book publishers and Apple fixed prices in the growing electronic book industry, blocking rivals and hurting consumers.

Read moreJustice Department May Sue Apple, Publishers On E-Books For Colluding To Raise Prices

iPass Away – Do My Digital Downloads Die With Me?

by

– iPass away – do my digital downloads die with me? (Which Conversation, Feb. 20, 2012):

If you’ve built up a proud collection of books, records and DVDs, you’d expect to be able to pass them on to your next of kin. But what happens to all of the downloads you’ve paid for during your life?

The digital afterlife is an uncertain business, it seems. We challenged both Apple and Amazon on whether digital downloads could be passed on after death, and neither could give us a definitive answer.

As more and more purchases are made in a digital, rather than physical form, we think it’s time for the main digital retailers to clear up our rights to pass on property we’ve paid for.

Purchasing a product, or renting a licence?

As it stands, the rights of iTunes and Amazon customers look pretty shaky when it comes to passing on downloads. If you buy a music track from a digital store, you’re essentially buying a licence to play that track – a licence granted to you only, which isn’t transferable upon death.

Legally you’re essentially just renting tracks – you don’t actually own them, as Matthew Strain of law firm Strain-Keville pointed out to us in the latest issue of Which? Computing:

‘We do not “own” what we purchase on iTunes, we only have the right to use it. The right to the “product” is therefore limited and passing it on to someone else is not likely to be accepted by Apple.’

Read moreiPass Away – Do My Digital Downloads Die With Me?

‘I felt a great disturbance in the Bourse, as if 216 hedge funds suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened’

by

🙂

– “A Great Disturbance In The Bourse” (ZeroHedge, Feb. 24, 2012):

“I felt a great disturbance in the Bourse, as if 216 hedge funds suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.”

What happened? Cook is speaking at the Apple shareholder meeting, and the topic of a dividend of the company’s $100 billion in cash has come up.

  • COOK IN ‘ACTIVE DISCUSSIONS’ ABOUT WHAT TO DO WITH APPLE CASH
  • COOK SAYS APPLE’S CASH IS ‘MORE THAN WE NEED TO RUN A COMPANY’

Of course, if there is a dividend, the magic is over. In the meantime, a drop in the stock is still inconceivable.

Next up: iBook?

  • APPLE CEO COOK SAYS FACEBOOK `FRIEND,’ NOT FOE
  • APPLE CEO SAYS APPLE, FACEBOOK `COULD DO MORE TOGETHER’

Or maybe facebook merely helps Apple create an app that helps it run Twitter?

title inspired by Chris Adams

Second iPhone Explodes In Less Than A Week

by

– iPhone Explodes: Brazil Incident Is Apple’s Second In Less Than A Week (Huffington Post, Dec. 1, 2011):

For the second time in less than a week, an Apple iPhone 4 has reportedly exploded, this time in Brazil, according to Mashable.

The phone, which was plugged in for an overnight charge, suddenly began sparking and emitting smoke while it was just inches from its owner’s face.

The owner, Brazilian Ayla Paulo Mota told the Portuguese language blog TechTudo that he was not hurt during the incident, despite his close proximity to the phone.

Editors at The Huffington Post U.K. translated Mota’s comments into English:

“At dawn, I woke up seconds before witnessing the burning of my iPhone when I saw a lot of sparks and black smoke out of the cell. My room was full with an unbearable smell of smoke! At that moment, I turned off the power switch in the room to remove the phone from the outlet.”Last week, a similar incident occurred aboard a regional Australian airliner shortly before landing in Sydney. Officials from the airline company Regional Express described the incident as a “mobile phone self combustion” in which an iPhone began to glow red and emit a “significant amount of dense smoke.”

Read moreSecond iPhone Explodes In Less Than A Week

Apple iTunes FLAW Allowed Government Spying For 3 Years

by

– Apple iTunes flaw ‘allowed government spying for 3 years’ (Telegraph, Nov. 24, 2011):

An unpatched security flaw in Apple’s iTunes software allowed intelligence agencies and police to hack into users’ computers for more than three years, it’s claimed.

A British company called Gamma International marketed hacking software to governments that exploited the vulnerability via a bogus update to iTunes, Apple’s media player, which is installed on more than 250 million machines worldwide.

The hacking software, FinFisher, is used to spy on intelligence targets’ computers. It is known to be used by British agencies and earlier this year records were discovered in abandoned offices of that showed it had been offered to Egypt’s feared secret police.

Apple was informed about the relevant flaw in iTunes in 2008, according to Brian Krebs, a security writer, but did not patch the software until earlier this month, a delay of more than three years.

“A prominent security researcher warned Apple about this dangerous vulnerability in mid-2008, yet the company waited more than 1,200 days to fix the flaw,” he said in a blog post.

Read moreApple iTunes FLAW Allowed Government Spying For 3 Years

Employees Of Silicon Valley Giants Like Google, Apple, Yahoo And Hewlett-Packard Send Their Children To A Waldorf School

by


While schools nationwide have rushed to supply their classrooms with computers, the Waldorf School of the Peninsula in Los Altos, Calif., has a no-screen policy. Yet it has become a popular choice for children of employees who work at Silicon Valley giants like Google, Apple and Yahoo.

Photo gallery

– A Silicon Valley School That Doesn’t Compute (New York Times, Oct. 22, 2011):

LOS ALTOS, Calif. — The chief technology officer of eBay sends his children to a nine-classroom school here. So do employees of Silicon Valley giants like Google, Apple, Yahoo and Hewlett-Packard.

But the school’s chief teaching tools are anything but high-tech: pens and paper, knitting needles and, occasionally, mud. Not a computer to be found. No screens at all. They are not allowed in the classroom, and the school even frowns on their use at home.

Schools nationwide have rushed to supply their classrooms with computers, and many policy makers say it is foolish to do otherwise. But the contrarian point of view can be found at the epicenter of the tech economy, where some parents and educators have a message: computers and schools don’t mix.

This is the Waldorf School of the Peninsula, one of around 160 Waldorf schools in the country that subscribe to a teaching philosophy focused on physical activity and learning through creative, hands-on tasks. Those who endorse this approach say computers inhibit creative thinking, movement, human interaction and attention spans.

The Waldorf method is nearly a century old, but its foothold here among the digerati puts into sharp relief an intensifying debate about the role of computers in education.

“I fundamentally reject the notion you need technology aids in grammar school,” said Alan Eagle, 50, whose daughter, Andie, is one of the 196 children at the Waldorf elementary school; his son William, 13, is at the nearby middle school. “The idea that an app on an iPad can better teach my kids to read or do arithmetic, that’s ridiculous.”

Mr. Eagle knows a bit about technology. He holds a computer science degree from Dartmouth and works in executive communications at Google, where he has written speeches for the chairman, Eric E. Schmidt. He uses an iPad and a smartphone. But he says his daughter, a fifth grader, “doesn’t know how to use Google,” and his son is just learning. (Starting in eighth grade, the school endorses the limited use of gadgets.)

Read moreEmployees Of Silicon Valley Giants Like Google, Apple, Yahoo And Hewlett-Packard Send Their Children To A Waldorf School

Steve Jobs Dead At 56, His Life Ended Prematurely By Chemotherapy And Radiotherapy For Cancer

by

– Steve Jobs dead at 56, his life ended prematurely by chemotherapy and radiotherapy for cancer (Natural News, Oct. 06, 2011):

It is extremely saddening to see the cost in human lives that modern society pays for its false belief in conventional medicine and the cancer industry in particular. Visionary Steve Jobs died today, just months after being treated for cancer with chemotherapy at the Stanford Cancer Center in Palo Alto, California. In recent months, he appeared in public photos as a frail shadow of his former self. The thin legs, sunken cheek bones and loss of body weight are all classic signs of total body toxicity observed in chemotherapy and radiotherapy patients.

Steve Jobs reportedly underwent both. His chemotherapy treatments at the Standard Cancer Center are now well known (http://www.marksmarketanalysis.com/…), and his secret radiotherapy treatments in Switzerland have now been made public by former Apple executive Jerry York.

Jerry York confided in Fortune Magazine about Steve Jobs’ secret flight to Switzerland to receive radiotherapy treatment for his cancer (http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/01…). Fortune Magazine kept this secret until Jerry York died in March of 2010 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_…)), after which Fortune Magazine decided its confidentiality agreement with York no longer applied, and it published details about Jobs’ secret visits to Switzerland (http://gawker.com/5737092/steve-job…).

Fortune Magazine also repeats another fact about Steve Jobs that rarely appears in the press: Namely, that Steve Jobs underwent a secret liver transplant which raised eyebrows among many who wondered why a member of the wealthy business elite could receive a liver transplant essentially on demand while everybody else had to wait on a long transplant list (http://articles.cnn.com/2009-06-24/…).

In January of this year, Roc4Life.com reported:

“Jobs’ medical leave is due to cancer, but no one knows whether it stems from his 2004 battle with pancreatic cancer or complications from a secret liver transplant in 2009. According to recently deceased off-the-record source from Apple’s Jerry York, Jobs took an unpublicized flight to Switzerland in 2009 to undergo unusual treatment at the University of Basel. Switzerland’s University of Basel known for their radiotherapy treatments for neuroendocrine cancer and it’s unavailability in the U.S. Experts say Jobs’ pancreatic cancer has a history of reappearing and spreading to vital organs at a slow-growing pace, which probably explains the medical leave.”

In other words, there is no question that Steve Jobs underwent multiple conventional cancer treatments, including surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

Read moreSteve Jobs Dead At 56, His Life Ended Prematurely By Chemotherapy And Radiotherapy For Cancer

Bizarre: Lost iPhone 5 Prototype Update: Police Waiting In Car While Apple Investigators Search Man’s Home

by

– Lost iPhone 5 Update: Police ‘Assisted’ Apple Investigators in Search of SF Man’s Home (San Francisco News, Sep. 2 2011):

The bizarre saga involving a lost prototype of the iPhone 5 has taken another interesting turn. Contradicting past statements that no records exist of police involvement in the search for the lost prototype, San Francisco Police Department spokesman Lt. Troy Dangerfield now tells SF Weekly that “three or four” SFPD officers accompanied two Apple security officials in an unusual search of a Bernal Heights man’s home.

Dangerfield says that, after conferring with Apple and the captain of the Ingleside police station, he has learned that plainclothes SFPD officers went with private Apple detectives to the home of Sergio Calderón, a 22-year-old resident of Bernal Heights. According to Dangerfield, the officers “did not go inside the house,” but stood outside while the Apple employees scoured Calderón’s home, car, and computer files for any trace of the lost iPhone 5. The phone was not found, and Calderón denies that he ever possessed it.

In an interview with SF Weekly last night, Calderón told us that six badge-wearing visitors came to his home in July to inquire about the phone. Calderón said none of them acknowledged being employed by Apple, and one of them offered him $300, and a promise that the owner of the phone would not press charges, if he would return the device.

The visitors also allegedly threatened him and his family, asking questions about their immigration status. “One of the officers is like, ‘Is everyone in this house an American citizen?’ They said we were all going to get into trouble,” Calderón said.

One of the officers left a phone number with him, which SF Weekly traced to Anthony Colon, an investigator employed at Apple, who declined to comment when we reached him.

Reached this afternoon, Calderón confirmed that only two of the six people who came to his home actually entered the house. He said those two did not specifically state they were police officers.

However, he said he was under the impression that they were all police, since they were part of the group outside that identified themselves as SFPD officials. The two who entered the house did not disclose that they were private security officers, according to Calderón.

“When they came to my house, they said they were SFPD,” Calderón said. “I thought they were SFPD. That’s why I let them in.” He said he would not have permitted the search if he had been aware the two people conducting it were not actually police officers.

Read moreBizarre: Lost iPhone 5 Prototype Update: Police Waiting In Car While Apple Investigators Search Man’s Home

Apple Now Has More Cash Than The US Government

by

– Apple Now Has More Cash Than The U.S. Government (Business Insider, July 28, 2011):

Here’s something to keep in mind as you follow this evening’s congressional debate over the debt ceiling.

According to the latest daily statement from the U.S. Treasury, the government had an operating cash balance of $73.8 billion at the end of the day yesterday.

Apple’s last earnings report (PDF here) showed that the company had $76.2 billion in cash and marketable securities at the end of June.

In other words, the world’s largest tech company has more cash than the world’s largest sovereign government.

Read moreApple Now Has More Cash Than The US Government

Neuroscientists: Apple Causes ‘Religious’ Reaction In Brains Of Fans

by

Related info:

– Chinese Teenager Sells His Kidney To Buy iPad2 And iPhone

In a recently screened BBC documentary, UK neuroscientists suggested that the brains of Apple devotees are stimulated by Apple imagery in the same way that the brains of religious people are stimulated by religious imagery.

People have often talked about “the cult of Apple”, and if a recent BBC TV documentary is to be believed, there could be something in it.

The program, Secrets of the Superbrands, looks at why technology megabrands such as Apple, Facebook and Twitter have become so popular and such a big part of many people’s lives.

Read moreNeuroscientists: Apple Causes ‘Religious’ Reaction In Brains Of Fans

iPhones And Android ‘Tracking’ Phones Building Vast Databases For Google And Apple – How to See the Secret Tracking Data in Your iPhone

by

– iPhones and Android ‘tracking’ phones building vast databases for Google and Apple (Guardian):

Apple and Google are using smartphones running their software to build gigantic databases for location-based services, according to new research following the Guardian’s revelations that iPhones and devices running Android collect location data about owners’ movements.
…
Samy Kamkar, a hacker and researcher, has shown that Android phones, which run on software written by Google, collect the location data every few seconds and store it in a local file, but also transmit it to Google several times an hour.

– How to See the Secret Tracking Data in Your iPhone (PC Mag):

Coverage of the iPhone tracking “feature” has ranged from concern to outrage. “I don’t know about you, but the fact that this feature exists on an iPhone is a deal-killer,” wrote PCMag Columnist John Dvorak, shortly after news broke. PCMag Executive Editor Dan Costa drew a softer line, writing, “Apple may not be actively tracking you, but it did turn your phone into a tracking device without telling you.”

– Apple, Google Collect User Data (Wall Street Journal):

Apple Inc.’s iPhones and Google Inc.’s Android smartphones regularly transmit their locations back to Apple and Google, respectively, according to data and documents analyzed by The Wall Street Journal—intensifying concerns over privacy and the widening trade in personal data.

Google and Apple are gathering location information as part of their race to build massive databases capable of pinpointing people’s locations via their cellphones. These databases could help them tap the $2.9 billion market for location-based services—expected to rise to $8.3 billion in 2014, according to research firm Gartner Inc.

In the case of Google, according to new research by security analyst Samy Kamkar, an HTC Android phone collected its location every few seconds and transmitted the data to Google at least several times an hour. It also transmitted the name, location and signal strength of any nearby Wi-Fi networks, as well as a unique phone identifier.

Google declined to comment on the findings.

Read moreiPhones And Android ‘Tracking’ Phones Building Vast Databases For Google And Apple – How to See the Secret Tracking Data in Your iPhone

How Your Smartphone is Keeping Track of You: Apps Secretly Monitor Users

by

Don’t miss:

– Big Brother iPhone Patriot App Turns Users Into Government Spies


Drawback? Most programmes for smartphones, such as this iPhone, send data back to companies that sold them

Dozens of popular iPhone apps are secretly monitoring users and sending information back to companies – who then use it to target them with adverts.

More than half of the programmes and games for smartphones sent data back to the private companies once they had been downloaded, a study found.

The apps include the wildly popular Angry Birds game and music identifying software Shazam, which comes pre-installed on every iPhone.

Armed with this information firms including Google track the individuals’ movements and sell personalised adverts for which they can make more money than regular ones.

The study found that of 101 apps tested, 56 transmitted the phone’s individual number to a private company in some way, known as the Unique Device Identifier or UDID.

Some 47 sent the phone’s location and five sent age, gender and other personal information.

More data was sent back about a user’s location on the Apple’s iPhone than Google’s Android smartphone, the research discovered, even though both companies have promised not to let such practices take place.

The research was carried out in the U.S. but it would apply to users downloading apps from anywhere in the world.

Read moreHow Your Smartphone is Keeping Track of You: Apps Secretly Monitor Users

How your Apple iPhone spies on you

by

Criminals using the Apple iPhone may be unwittingly providing police with a wealth of information that could be used against them, according to new research.

apple-iphone
Apple’s new iPhone Photo: APPLE

As the communications device grows in popularity, technology experts and US law enforcement agencies are devoting increasing efforts to understanding their potential for forensics investigators.

While police have tracked criminals by locating their position via conventional mobile phone towers, iPhones offer far more information, say experts.

“There are a lot of security issues in the design of the iPhone that lend themselves to retaining more personal information than any other device,” said Jonathan Zdziarski, a former computer hacker who now teaches US law enforcers how to retrieve data from mobile phones.

“These devices organise people’s lives and, if you’re doing something criminal, something about it is going to go through that phone.” Apple has sold more than 50 million iPhones since the product was launched in 2007.

Mr Zdziarski told The Daily Telegraph he suspected that security had been neglected on the iPhone as it had been intended as a consumer product rather than a business one like rivals such as the Blackberry.

An example was the iPhone’s keyboard logging cache, which was designed to correct spelling but meant that an expert could retrieve anything typed on the keyboard over the past three to 12 months, he said.

In addition, every time an iPhone’s internal mapping system is closed down, the device snaps a screenshot of the phone’s last position and stores it.

Read moreHow your Apple iPhone spies on you

Meltup (Documentary): The Beginning Of A US Currency Crisis And Hyperinflation.

by


Added: 13. Mai 2010

NSA Helping Microsoft to Improve Windows 7 Security

by

microsoft-windows-7
A little help on security from the NSA. (Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images)

The National Security Agency has been working with Microsoft Corp. to help improve security measures for its new Windows 7 operating system, a senior NSA official said on Tuesday.

The confirmation of the NSA’s role, which began during the development of the software, is a sign of the agency’s deepening involvement with the private sector when it comes to building defenses against cyberattacks.

“Working in partnership with Microsoft and (the Department of Defense), NSA leveraged our unique expertise and operational knowledge of system threats and vulnerabilities to enhance Microsoft’s operating system security guide without constraining the user’s ability to perform their everyday tasks,” Richard Schaeffer, the NSA’s Information Assurance Director, told the Senate Judiciary Committee in a statement prepared for a hearing held this morning in Washington. “All this was done in coordination with the product release, not months or years later in the product cycle.”

The partnership between the NSA and Microsoft is not new.

In 2007, NSA officials acknowledged working with Microsoft during the development of Windows Vista to help boost its defenses against computer viruses, worms and other attacks. In fact, the cooperation dates back to at least 2005, when the NSA and other government agencies worked with Microsoft on its Windows XP system and other programs.

The NSA, which is best known for its electronic eavesdropping operations, is charged with protecting the nation’s national security computing infrastructure from online assaults.

Read moreNSA Helping Microsoft to Improve Windows 7 Security