December 2010

Google announced on Friday that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Widevine, a Seattle-based company that has focused on DRM and security for streaming internet media for the last decade. “The Widevine team has worked to provide a better video delivery experience for businesses of all kinds: from the studios that create your favorite shows and movies, to the cable systems and channels that broadcast them online and on TV, to the hardware manufacturers that let you watch that content on a variety of devices,” said Mario Queiroz, Google Vice President of Product Management. ...

Screen Capture (by Google) is an effective and useful extension for Google Chrome, which allows users to quickly and easily capture quality screenshots of Web Pages. The extension has 3 screen capture modes: capture visible content of a tab, a region of a web page, or the whole scrolling webpage as a PNG image. It also offers some editing tools to edit the screenshot before saving it. The screen captures can also be copied to clipboard in a simple click. ...

Avira TechBlog: Facebook offers a “new profile” feature that many users adopt very fast. It is possible to mark the best friends and family and show them more prominently with their pictures. Also, it accumulates information like the uers’ work places, where they are living and so on. Even projects and co-workers can be shown now. This may be a useful addition for many users. But it should be used with care; in the end, this feature gives Facebook a deeper insight and more valuable data. Before marking family members, friends and colleagues more prominently in the own profile, users should ask for permission. ...

WikiLeaks is currently not available at WikiLeaks.org. It recently lost its DNS service provider, and the site itself has been battered by DDoS attacks for more than a week now – ever since it first started releasing secret embassy cables. However, when highly coveted information once spreads on the web, there’s no stopping it. Case in point: WikiLeaks currently has several hundred mirrors, and although some of these mirrors are incomplete, slow or perhaps even completely unavailable, it’s highly unlikely that any effort will be able to exterminate them all. ...

Though it is primarily known as a social networking site, Facebook is actually one of the top destinations for photo sharing, and a new user profile design change unveiled Monday ups the visibility of Facebook photos and encourages users to share personal information in a more visual way. Two years ago, Facebook came forward with some staggering figures about the photo sharing taking place on its sites, which amounted to between 2-3 Terabytes of photos being updated daily with a peak of 300,000 images per second. Facebook would serve about 15 billion photos, and the storage dedicated just to photography amounted to more than a petabyte. ...

Mashable: The AOL-Yahoo rumors are heating up once again. This time, they involve splitting up the AOL empire into two divisions before engaging in a merger of the two Internet companies. AOL has two main components: A content and display advertising business, and its longstanding dial-up business. In the past few years, AOL has focused on developing and expanding its advertising arm, its web portal and its media properties (e.g. Engadget and TechCrunch). ...

In continue from Days are still going on, but how?–Part5 First day after weekend I went to the hospital they told me, I’ve been there about 2:00 PM, guess what?! They said come back tomorrow, why? working time is 7:00 AM to 2:00 PM, we are off now, HUH???? Hospital has off time? you mean patients should go home and come back tomorrow to their beds?!😕 well, I went home and come back next day, I’ve been there about 10:00 AM, They said go to ‘Beliefs and Politics Office’, Ah, what’s this, I went to Floor 4 and to the office, they checked my ID cards and other documents I had (seems for security reason), and then stamp on my forearm,😞 I thought stamp is supposed to be used on paper and not on human body! ...

At first glance, two recent security stories, the Stuxnet attack on Iran’s nuclear industry and the WikiLeaks breach of US State Department communications, don’t seem to have much in common, but they do. They are united by a vector, a method of transmission and that vector is removable media. I am sure that the Iranians felt pretty secure with air-gapped systems, but like a spark from the burning house next door that finds its way into your shingles, the right USB found its way into the right PC and then suddenly all those uranium enrichment centrifuges running at 807-1210 hz started to act funny and fail in unexpected and reportedly fairly energetic ways (you can see some pics of failed centrifuges here http://web.mit.edu/charliew/www/centrifuge.html and here http://www.chem.purdue.edu/chemsafety/NewsAndStories/CentrifugeDamages.htm). ...

Google just released version 8 of its web browser Chrome. It fixes 13 security vulnerabilities of which 4 got rated “high”ly critical – the people reporting these all got rewarded with 1.000 US-$ and 500 US-$, respectively. Additionally to these security fixes, the update to Chrome 8.0.552.215 contains more than 800 bugfixes and stability improvements according to the Google developers. The new version officially includes and uses the built-in, stripped-down PDF reader which is additionally secured with a sandbox. This feature, tied together with Googles sandboxing of the browser processes in general and including and updating the Flash Player automatically makes Chrome one of the most secure, yet full-featured web browsers currently available. ...

According to The Telegraph, German prosecutors are accusing two local hackers of breaking into the computers of over 50 pop stars, including Lady Gaga, Kelly Clarkson, Justin Timberlake and Ke$ha. (Wouldn’t you have to be pretty brave to blackmail Lady Gaga? She can be, um, scary. ) Ralf Haferkamp, from the Duisburg prosecutor’s office, said in an interview with Deutsche Welle that the hackers, two boys of 17 and 23 from the West of Germany, infected the machines with malware in order to steal all sorts of files. ...

In continue from Days are still going on, but how?–Part4 I got letter from Military office to say when I must go, it had an additional paper saying how much I must pay to them by going to which bank, Thanks God we don’t pay for breathing at least! Last night before going I tried to sleep sooner than other night, so I went to bed 2:00AM, not 4:00AM like other nights!😮 , in the morning I tried to wake up early to be in there on time, I could (Almost! not really!) wake up soon, not on time, after breakfast and collecting everything that I thought is needed in there, I left the home, Suddenly I remember that I’ve not to bank yet, grrr, it’s 7:45 AM now and banks will open at 8:00, also I must be at 8:00AM in the office, so I went to the office and hope I find the bank near the office, in the street where Army office is, I found the bank, good thing!, I paid that much they asked in the paper and continue the way to the office, after giving my mobile to them and then body checking, I went in, woah! how many people are coming today?! ...

Avira TechBlog: We discovered a new ransomware threat which is downloaded by a Trojan of the Oficla family. This downloaded threat replaces the MBR (master boot record) of the hard disk with its own MBR which asks the user for a password and thus blocks the loading of the operating system. Upon starting the Oficla Trojan and successive execution of the downloaded payload the system will be rebooted and the user will be presented the ransom notice. ...

Righard Zwienenberg, Chief Research Officer at Norman posted this on Norman Security Blog, Thanks to Mr.Fagerlid for sharing: I have been a user of PayPal for many years, actually ever since PayPal opened its services for international users. PayPal, originally only for US citizens, is now used worldwide with local offices in many countries. From the Dutch affiliate, I just received the next message from PayPal (the actual message was in Dutch, see picture below): ...