Nymi

How many times do you unlock your smartphone within the span of a minute? I can't count the number of times I've unlocked my phone, started a podcast, put it down, changed my mind, unlocked the phone, selected a new podcast, put the phone back down, heard a chime, unlocked the phone, responded, and put the phone down - finally - for long enough to focus on something else.

 For the sake of convenience, I desperately want to leave my phone unlocked, but doing so frankly isn't safe. We've covered an NFC ring on Kickstarter that alleviates this problem by unlocking your phone whenever it's pressed against it, and now we're sharing the Nymi, a bracelet that can detect who you are and unlock your phone by measuring your heartbeat.


A wearable computing device which is designed to replace the need to remember passwords. The Nymi bracelet is equipped with a sensor that reads the electrocardiogram (ECG) of the person wearing it and uses a person's own unique heartbeat signature to log on to computers and access other secure devices.

According to Nymi developers, the bracelet relies on three factors of authentication: the bracelet, a paired mobile device, and a verified ECG. The Nymi uses your unique electrocardiogram (ECG) to authenticate your identity through an embedded sensor and then uses Bluetooth to communicate your identity to all of your devices.

Nymi also features motion sensing and proximity detection, so users can simply perform a gesture for access – for example, a twist of the wrist can be used as the command to unlock your car door).

Nymi is developed by Bionym Inc., a developer of biometric recognition systems.

Nickispy

Nickispy is a family of Trojan horse viruses that targets smartphones powered by the Android operating system.  The most recent strain of Nickispy, Nickispy.C, masquerades as the Google+ (Google Plus) service in an attempt to dupe Android OS users into installing the malware.  Nickispy.C attempts to trick users into installing a third-party app called Google++ (notice the use of two "plus" signs rather than one), and it even uses the same icon as the real Google+ service. 

Users installing Google++ provide Nickispy with complete access to their smartphone's text messages and call logs, and the malware can even record phone calls as well as GPS position history.   Nickispy can additionally secretly answer calls on its own and send a user's private information to a remote site without the user's knowledge.

While many of Nickispy’s malicious capabilities affect all Android smartphones, the malware's ability to surreptitiously intercept calls only affects Android smartphones running version 2.2 or earlier.  Smartphones running version 2.3 ("Gingerbread") or later are protected from this as a result of the modify_phone_state permission being disabled.