Last week, I read a BBC News story (Met Police technology 'ineffective and outdated') about how the Metropolitan Police force in London, UK was being hampered in its fight against crime by out of date technologies. The news story discussed the London Assembly report (PDF) which highlighted the fact that most police officers had smart phones and tablets which they used in the personal lives, but at work they were reliant on legacy radio systems, and not only had to manually enter the same data into up to ten different systems.
Clearly there isn't going to be a simple solution to complex problem such as the Met's IT infrastructure, when much of the IT budget is spent on maintaining existing systems, reducing the amount available for investment in new infrastructure. However, as the report highlights, it's not hard to imagine how police officers would benefit from using secure mobile devices which would enable them to enter details of their investigations in real-time into handheld devices, providing them with immediate access to police resources and data, and reducing the amount of paper work and data re-entry.
Android
September 25, 2013
June 19, 2013
Operating System Hardening Techniques and Security Strategies
By AJ Shipley
In my last blog post, I focused on securing the device at a high level, and in this post, I’d like to dive a bit deeper into the technical aspects of device security; specifically, regarding defense against “run time,” or operational vulnerabilities, that a system is exposed to after it has booted up.
A defense in depth approach requires that we assume that the integrity of the system will be compromised at some point, so we must implement security capabilities that are designed to mitigate such a breach if and when it happens. One of the most devastating outcomes of a cyber security attack is for a malicious user to gain “root” access. The threats that target the largest percentage of vulnerabilities are designed with this specific goal in mind, and in fact, the tagline of the popular Metasploit Framework is “Point, Click, Root.”
If we operate under the assumption that a malicious actor will gain access to the system, we must ask ourselves what is the most effective way to quarantine those bad actors when it happens. Various forms of access control, whether discretionary, non-discretionary, or mandatory access control ensure that if a system becomes compromised, the attacker does not have access to the resources or critical technology contained in the system. Additionally, partitioning technologies such as a hypervisor or a separation kernel, ensure that a compromised operating system is not able to access other operating systems that may be running mission critical applications.
May 14, 2013
Wind River Expertise Recognized with GENIVI Award
By Franz Walkembach
The Automotive group at Wind River is quite an impressive team…Consider this: hundreds of engineers and decades of successfully completed projects have helped Wind River carefully foster the development in this industry. We not only created trusted connections with customers and partners, but we’ve also stayed ahead of key trends, riding a wave of open source innovation right as it started to build momentum. Fast forward to today…our ongoing efforts to advance the automotive industry has reached another great achievement – Wind River has received the Most Valuable Contributor Award from the GENIVI Alliance.
October 09, 2012
Test Management 5.0: Extending testing to Android, security and beyond
By Ido Sarig
Today we announced the latest version of Wind River Test Management, which takes software test optimization to the next level.
With this release, we have unified our testing solutions for VxWorks, Linux and Android under one umbrella. All the capabilities of Wind River Framework for Automated Software Testing (FAST), our solution for Android compatibility testing, have now been merged into Wind River Test Management. This includes all the ready-to-run test assets, more than 26,000 tests in all, which are now available as Wind River Test Management for Android, with support for the latest version of Android – Jelly Bean – already available!
Continue reading >>June 13, 2012
Open source in Medical Devices: Part of the Cure or Part of the Disease?
By Ido Sarig
The Economist recently published a very interesting article on the merits of open source in medical device development, which raises some questions and sparks an important discussion.
In general, it is more common to see open source adoption in non-regulated industries. However, we are seeing it more and more in regulated industries primarily because it encourages rapid innovation at far lower costs. That said, it is important to caution those in the regulated industries (aerospace & defense, medical, industrial automation, energy, automotive) towards embracing open source concepts without investing in lifecycle management tools to support the building of safe and effective devices. [Proprietary software on the other hand, is a better fit for companies that design devices in environments where changes are few and far in between. Proprietary software also enables better control of the ecosystem, the lower the stack you go.]
As the Economist puts it, “exposing a design results in safe products.” Maybe…Designing a device or ecosystem with safety in mind, results in safer products, hence the need for “design for safety.” The FDA mandates a safe and effective design for any devices that gets approved in the US market -- this requires companies to have better control of their ecosystem. Done proactively, this is an efficient method for product development; however, done reactively, companies incur a lot of costs and overheads trying to make open source fit.
May 16, 2012
Securing Android for the Battle Space
By Tim Skutt
Armed conflict has radically changed. Remotely operated unmanned vehicles and cyber warfare highlight this change. Combatants can launch an attack anywhere from a few hundred meters away to half a world away with the same devastating results. One of the fascinating – and scary – parts of this change is that the trigger firing the weapon has become the Enter key on a keyboard or a finger press on a touchscreen.
Essentially, the geography of the battlefield now includes the mobile devices we carry – whether we carry them into the physical front lines being fought with kinetic weapons, or the virtual front lines that extend to our corporate or even home offices.
Global defense organizations recognize the value of commercial smart phone and tablet capability for deployment to soldiers in the battlefield, wherever that battlefield may be. The challenge of securing the commercial capability and mobile platform for warfighter use requires end-to-end system threat assessment and incorporating embedded device strategies to minimize cyber-attacks and maintain mission-critical communications.
April 11, 2012
Wind River and Android – 5 great years, with many more to come
By Dan Noal
It was 5 years ago this week that I got an email from our CEO who had just met with Andy Rubin and Rich Miner at the Googleplex. Google had invited us to talk privately and confidentially about what would become Android. Other companies were already on board, and they asked us to join the small group of companies collaborating with them as part of the nascent Open Handset Alliance. They talked big about disrupting the entire mobile phone ecosystem and solving the fragmentation problem with so many competing Linux based phone stacks emerging at that time. They painted a vision where open source Android would dominate the mobile phone space and migrate to adjacent markets. We knew that they had credibility from Danger, we knew that Google had tremendous momentum and power they could leverage. We discussed it internally, and without much debate we replied “where do we sign?” and started to roll up our sleeves.
April 04, 2012
Wind River Showcases Yocto and GENIVI in IVI
By Franz Walkembach
We're looking forward to an upcoming global GENIVI all hands meeting that brings together major OEMs like BMW, Peugeot, Citroen, Nissan or Renault as well as automotive Tier 1 companies like Continental Automotive, Denso, Delphi and Bosch. Later this month, these organizations will gather for several days near Paris to discuss the current state of affairs and latest developments from the GENIVI Alliance. Some of the key things we’ll be discussing at this industry event include issues like connectivity, security software in automobiles, Android and detailed findings from expert technology workgroups such as the BIT (baseline integration team) team or the automotive expert group.
As an exciting show of technology capabilities, Wind River will be demonstrating the first examples of a GENIVI and Yocto-based in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) platform.
March 26, 2012
Android Unleashed on Embedded – Will it Take Off or Just Be One of the Pack?
By Jessica Schieve
This week, the embedded community descends on Silicon Valley to see and hear the latest developments in the industry. The Embedded Systems Conference, now part of DESIGN West opens its doors to all things embedded. The event features seven different technology summits including one specifically designed for Android developers to address the rise of embedded Android, and Wind River will help lead the charge.
At the show, Wind River is the platinum sponsor of the Android Summit where it will be conducting a training session to further educate and grow awareness of Android’s use in embedded. In our showroom exhibit space, we’ll be demonstrating some of our key Android solutions including a soup to nuts Android implementation for automotive in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) systems. And, our annual executive luncheon at the show will also focus on embedded Android.
January 19, 2012
Android Security – making sense of all the choices
By Chris Buerger
Last week’s public release of the Security Enhanced (SE) Android project and associated source code is hailed by many as an important foundational step to add a new set of options to create secure Android devices. While the recent release of the code base by the National Security Agency (NSA) is familiar territory for Android experts such as Wind River who have been designing and implementing comprehensive security layers to a wide spectrum of Android devices for a few years now, the portrayal of this development in the media as an all-encompassing security solution grossly oversimplifies the complex subject matter that Android security represents.
Simply speaking, compiling and flashing the SE Android code base on to your Nexus S will not make it completely 'secure.'
Wind River has been enabling Android devices for close to five years now. Based on that experience and over a decade of pioneering mobile Linux-based devices, four key security-related points stand out.
December 13, 2011
Adding Android to the Embedded Mix
By Dan Noal
Wind River just hosted a webinar titled, “Adding Android to the Embedded Mix" and saw a great attendee turnout. There were a broad spectrum of companies represented, not just the traditional smartphone and tablet manufacturers. This is a clear indication of the interest to use in Android for devices in all market segments. In fact, one of the most frequently asked questions is, what other embedded markets have you seen or do you see having an Android play?
Wind River has been working with customers on Android for a wide range of applications and markets, and our efforts continue to expand. We’ve worked on many projects including enterprise IP phones from the likes of Avaya and in-vehicle infotainment systems from Clarion.
Increasingly, Android is finding its way into markets like point-of-sale, fit-to-purpose industrial style tablets, and other device categories where a strongly supported application framework and active application ecosystem are important elements of platform choice.
November 16, 2011
Secure Mobility Message Resonates at MILCOM 2011
By Chip Downing
MILCOM 2011 last week in Baltimore, MD was not only educational, but it was a watershed event. Last year, it was a “coming out” party for custom Android devices; this year however, was the year where many companies are now using COTS hardware and software to their fullest extent, along the entire supply chain, from core to edge and user devices. I believe this COTS adoption is driven by two powerful forces – the exploding capabilities of commercial tablet devices, and global military budget pressures.
The vastly increasing power and capability of commercially available mobile communications devices is simply amazing. Just a few years ago, almost everything in this military communications space was purpose built, and most commercial products were simply inadequate to address the rugged and complex system demands of military communications systems. As seen at MILCOM 2011, this has officially changed -- COTS end-to-end communications domains rule.
So if all of these MILCOM vendors are not making customized hardware and software, what are they doing? Wind River had over 500 people visit its booth at MILCOM this year, and most of the discussions I had with both suppliers and end users at the show were about increasing device security and leveraging high volume COTS components in demanding deployment scenarios.
August 31, 2011
Platform Wars
By Dan Noal
In recent weeks, we’ve seen two seismic shifts in the mobile and tablet markets. First, Google announced its intent to acquire Motorola Mobility and a few days later, HP announced that it would discontinue producing webOS-based phones and the TouchPad.
Google’s move to buy a hardware manufacturer has long been speculated in the media. Motorola Mobility had previously been reported as a possible target, so Google’s move isn’t entirely surprising. However, after nearly 3 years since the public launch of Android, the question is why now? Consider the comments of Android industry partners (e.g. Samsung, HTC, Verizon) mentioning the need to protect the Android ecosystem from IP lawsuits that threaten Android’s growth. Now add the fact that Motorola Mobility has grown a significant patent portfolio in the mobile space over the past decade.
Still, it is interesting to wonder about the long-term vision.
July 26, 2011
Android software quality: it's all in a single number
By Chris Buerger
Picture this: you are responsible for ensuring that the quality of the Android device you are about to ship will hold up in front of your customers. You are responsible that it will meet the often elusive 'commercial quality' goal. And it doesn't matter whether the Android software is being released as an initial software load on a new class of device or as a maintenance release for a device that is already in market. Also, ignore for a moment whether you sourced the Android software from your hardware Original Device Manufacturer (ODM) as part of a package deal or whether it represents significant investment into internal engineering budget.
The basic question to answer is simply: 'Is this software ready to be released?'. Or casting the net wider, will the software be good enough to stay below the return targets for the device? Will it be so good to act as a differentiator vs. your competitors and therefore help to meet your customer acquisition goals? And, if the software goes out to devices already in market, will it keep its users as engaged and satisfied with your brand as the prior device?
May 27, 2011
Google I/O and MeeGo Developer Conference – A Tale of Two Events
By Chris Buerger
First off, let me say that it is not fair to directly compare the two conferences to draw a conclusion about the comparative future of Android and MeeGo. Both software stacks are at a different place in their respective life cycles, and important maturity indicators such as overall ecosystem support (silicon providers, device manufacturers, application developer community etc…) as well as software quality/complexity are simply at a different stage for each technology.
However, who is interested in fairness? There is a perception in the marketplace that Android and MeeGo are competitive technologies in a proliferation war that includes other heavyweights such as Apple, Microsoft, Samsung and HP. If industry analysts put all of these software stacks on a single Mobile OS market share chart, they’ve got to be competitive, right?
Not quite. One important reason Android got to where it is today is that its first mass-market device, the HTC G1, sold millions of units across the globe, thus delivering a very tangible proof point to rally a worldwide ecosystem to participate in the development of Android. MeeGo’s proliferation, partly because of the rather wide device scope the software stack is attempting to cover, is following a different path.
May 16, 2011
Embedded is cool (and getting even cooler)
By Paul Anderson
When people ask me what I do, I never know how to answer the question. Most people state their occupation. But, does that define what we do? I usually respond with something cheeky like “metabolize,” or “provide for those around me” or “go running or fly airplanes any chance I get.” But, usually people want to know what you do for a living. I usually get stumped when they ask that particular question.
I asked my youngest child what he thought I did for a living. He said “play with computers all day,” which is not entirely inaccurate. I asked my oldest, and he said “fly airplanes” (again, I do fly a lot of airplanes, but unfortunately I spend most of my time as a passenger rather than a pilot). My pets would say my entire existence is dedicated to providing them food and entertainment (obviously they have figured something out). My wife would say that I type on the computer, talk on the phone, go to meetings, and spend way too much time in airplanes and at hotels. Although accurate, it doesn’t get at the core of what I do.
When I try to explain to people what I do in any detail, after a minute or so I see their eyes glaze over. I have taken to just saying “I’m in the software business.” I can usually get away with that, but sometime people actually want to know more.
May 02, 2011
Wind River Turns 30: Looking Back and Moving Forward
By Tomas Evensen
2011 marks Wind River’s 30th anniversary. The big 3-0…it’s a major landmark moment in anyone’s book. This year, we’ll be taking time to honor this milestone with a retrospective of Wind River’s history and also a series of employee stories. In my many years with the company, Wind River always impressed on me the concept of being bigger than just a single product or technology. There is an underlying spirit within our teams that constantly reaches for more, for some greater innovation. While many customers know Wind River for the VxWorks real-time operating system, it was always part of the vision to provide more value. In the early days, this entailed providing a TCP/IP stack and GDB for debugging. Later, additional value came from strong IDE support through Tornado and Workbench. Lately, it has been by providing a choice of operating systems, real-time or open source/Linux.
A standout example that exemplified the vision of providing a more complete solution was when we embarked on creating a truly embedded hypervisor. In 2004, it had already become clear to us that virtualization would play an important role in embedded designs at some point in the future. In early 2005, Paul Borman who worked for me in the CTO Office created a very impressive prototype, called eCPU, that ran VxWorks and Linux on a single CPU and we learned a lot from that effort. When Johan Fornaeus came on board in 2006 through an acquisition (he was co-founder of Interpeak and before that, one of the co-designers of the Enea/OSE operating system), I had him leading a small nimble task force team to develop a hypervisor really suited for the embedded space. I felt we made a real breakthrough. This was not a repackaged operating system pretending to be something it was not designed for, but instead a truly unique approach to virtualization and separation. Over the next couple years, this small team created a scalable product with an extremely tight footprint, incredible performance, while at the same time being full featured for the common architectures such as Intel, Power, ARM and MIPS.
Back in those days, it was not clear to us when and how important multi-OS systems would be in the future, but today it is hard to imagine how to deal with these new complex systems without a hypervisor for embedded virtualization. Looking at my team’s achievement now, I still marvel at how the Wind River Hypervisor brings together multi-core and our various operating systems. Why choose between operating systems with different characteristics when you can mix them in one system? Throw in a networking stack optimized for multi-core and tools that can debug and find performance bottlenecks and you get a very capable foundation on which our customers can innovate.
By constantly looking to the future, Wind River continues to evolve and further build on its expertise. The ongoing push to innovate may have created interesting and complex challenges along the way. However, it has also resulted in celebrations and breakthroughs, and it’s undoubtedly a big reason why so many of us continue to stay on the ride.
February 13, 2011
Come and see us at Mobile World Congress!
By Chris Buerger
Grab a pen and write down this number: Hall 2, booth 2C04 – this is where you’ll find the Wind River booth at Mobile World Congress (MWC).
Mobile innovation comes alive at demonstrations. At this year’s MWC event, we are showcasing the latest and greatest mobile Android and MeeGo innovations from Wind River. Along with the newest features within our Wind River Platform for Android such as DLNA Media Server and multi-windowing capabilities, we are also showing off the latest version of our Wind River Framework for Automated Software Testing (FAST) for Android that includes significant real world enhancements developed jointly with our customers. As Android is becoming more complex, an automated test tool to help you validate the performance and reliability of your Android stack can save both time and money. Come and see out what we have to offer to make your Android project a success.
MeeGo also continues to be a significant part of our efforts. At MWC, we are not only showing off brand new FAST for MeeGo technology; we are also proud to be the first software vendor to showcase a new MeeGo tablet user experience co-developed with Intel. It’s a definite must-see if you’re interested in creating a differentiated tablet device!
Check out our latest news and see additional details regarding Wind River’s presence at MWC.
February 11, 2011
Making the Case for MeeGo 2.0
By Chris Buerger
As an owner of the original Maemo-based N770, today is a sad day. Earlier, Nokia announced it would make Windows Phone 7 Nokia’s primary mobile platform, not MeeGo. This puts the brakes on what many considered a bold corporate initiative to bring Linux to a new class of Nokia mobile devices. Well before the iPad, well before the undoubtedly innovative yet largely undifferentiated avalanche of Android based devices, there was a dream, a vision to create unique Linux software for a new class of Nokia devices.
There are plenty of opinions that this announcement marks the end of MeeGo. Personally, I do not subscribe to that view. MeeGo, and the open source projects that are part of it, has a place in open source mobile Linux, and in many cases will continue to evolve and thrive.
December 29, 2010
Virtualization on Handsets or not?
By Mark Hermeling
Here is an interesting article, continuing a discussion thats has been going on for a long time on mobile virtualization. It argues the case that a single mobile phone can run multiple operating systems using virtualization. A bit of googling will show that this is indeed already the case. However, there is a big caveat typically that you do not see exposed.
Mobile phones have two big constraints: processing power and battery power. Typically one operating systems is the 'phone operating system' and the other OS is more general purpose. With 'phone OS' I mean that the OS has to handle a lot of the time critical tasks, sometimes even to the level of passing data off to/from the signal processing side for communication with the antenna and the wireless network.
The signal processing side is very time sensitive and hence it is important that the time constraints are met and data is delivered/picked up on the right time. This makes it that typically the virtualization layer will have to be aware of this and it makes the solution not a general virtualization solution, but a highly device customized solution.
December 20, 2010
Low-cost Android phones: Feature phones an endangered species?
By Chris Buerger
There is no doubt that there will always be a set of consumers that only want their mobile phone to be, well, a phone. Voice calling is likely to remain the ‘killer app’ for the majority of consumers for a long time to come, and there will remain a sizeable section of the mobile phone market that will cater to this demand.
However, the market change to smartphones is undeniable, even in the last bastions of feature phone-centered markets such as Japan and South Korea, Android-based smartphones are rapidly winning market share at the high end of the device spectrum. Now, a second wave of the Android smartphone revolution is happening in many countries, and I am excited to say that Wind River mobile software solutions for Android are right in the thick of things, helping to drive this new wave of devices.
September 29, 2010
Android Froyo – Making it the Best It Can Be
By Chris Buerger
By many measurements, Android’s Froyo is an impressive release of a very impressive mobile operating system. Android is the poster child example for combining stability, performance and innovation in a mobile operating system that has been rapidly realized in an open source context. Its success is clearly reflected in therecent statistics and predictions regarding Android adoption (e.g. daily activations, share of shipping mobile SKUs) from research organizations such as Gartner and Informa.
So, Froyo is pretty good, but the Android team here at Wind River is working to make it the best it can be for your commercial project.
I bet you are thinking “That’s a pretty bold claim,” so let’s review some proof-points:
September 21, 2010
The Myth of the Killer Mobile Reference UX
By Chris Buerger
The "killer" preloaded mobile UX...is the concept on life support?
I just came back from IDF, and while the event was strong on mobile market assertions but somewhat lightweight on public proof points, it did give me a chance to spend some time with the German-designed WePad running an embedded Linux kernel incorporating a number of MeeGo 1.0 release elements and a completely custom UI.
Experimenting with the WePad (and getting it to crash twice within five minutes) got me thinking about the evolution of user interfaces in mobile devices, both Tablets and Smartphones. From a high-level perspective, there are really three approaches in the market.
August 31, 2010
“Good” Android
By Chris Buerger
Following a recent trip to China, I acquired an Android tablet running Release 1.6 (Donut). Total retail price: $90. Unlike an iPad, it is both 'Designed and Made in China.' Running on an ARM platform and containing an 802.11 interface, SD card slot and a touch screen, it is actually a reasonably speedy experience. However, that is where the positive news ends.
July 13, 2010
Creating Success For Your Android Device (a.k.a lessons learned from the iPhone 4)
By Chris Buerger
The avalanche of customer issues following the launch of Apple’s latest iPhone device illustrates a lesson that is not only eternally true for any consumer electronics device, but especially impactful for a highly subsidized mobile phone. The lesson is simple – test your device and software thoroughly or pay a high price. A high price in RMA costs, brand value, customer switching costs, emergency engineering expense as well as a surge in costs for customer relationship management.
Today, we at Wind River are taking the wraps off a brand-new solution called Wind River FAST (Framework for Automated Software Test) for Android to determine the functional readiness, stability, performance and compliance of devices running the Android stack.
June 11, 2010
The ‘Big Reveal’ Release Approach in Mobile Linux – How Android and MeeGo Differ
By Chris Buerger
A couple of weeks ago, I read through a somewhat heated email thread about the ‘Big Reveal’ mentality that Intel and Nokia were claimed to apply to the pending MeeGo 1.0 release. By coincidence, the timing overlapped with the excitement Google was stirring up for its 2.2 (Froyo) release of Android. Both events made me wonder about the value of a ‘big reveal’ approach in mobile open source stacks, and whether there might not be developments that occur within rapidly maturing software stacks that are native and systemic to the open source model, and that at the same time change the potential impact of ‘Big Reveal’ releases of either Android or MeeGo.
May 09, 2010
Android Market Integration - Do You Still Care?
By Chris Buerger
In the mobile phone world, content management systems to allow users to download a variety of monetizable content and (largely J2ME based) applications have been around for more than a decade. Of course, the popularity of the iPhone and its associated AppStore have put a special spotlight on the importance of having a well-stocked offering to personalize a mobile device with, well, anything looking like a software application that you could possibly imagine you ever needed to have access to on a device that primarily lives in your pocket or purse.
One of the main developments during the last couple of years is that the aspect of ensuring API compliance and adequate performance of the mobile application with the underlying OS/virtual machine/execution environment, which previously was largely hidden because it was operator managed, has become a hotly discussed area. This is creating much friction between application developers, handset manufacturers, system integrators, operators and the OS gate keeper to the market place. In the case of the iPhone and Android, this responsibility is now largely assumed by Apple and Google respectively.
December 07, 2009
How Industry Software Expertise is Helping to Solve the Android Fragmentation Dilemma
By Jason Whitmire
It is no secret: While Google continues to push for wide adoption of smartphones driven by its open source Android
platform, most industry pundits know that manufacturers typically need
upwards of a full year of development and productization effort (and
often Google’s help)
to develop an Android phone. Not surprisingly, it takes much longer for
an OEM to reach a level where they can irrigate the operator ecosystem
with differentiated phones based on Android (this of course applies to
most new mobile device software stacks).
At the same time, we are all aware that there are multiple parallel efforts to enhance Android that have led many observers to believe that fragmentation is inevitable. Ultimately, it is said, this will become the bane to developers who will struggle to reach an economy of scale on a moving target where multiple variants of the Android OS co-exist.
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