2010

Kaspersky Lab now admits that people attempting to buy Kaspersky’s security products on Oct. 17 were redirected by hackers to a scareware site with links to fake antivirus software called Security Tool. Hackers have caused serious embarrassment for a major security technology company. Kaspersky Lab’s Website was hacked over the weekend, sending customers looking for security software to an external download page pushing counterfeit software. When users tried to download software from Kaspersky on Oct. 17, they were redirected to a malware site that tricked users into downloading fake antivirus software called Security Tool. Once executed, Security Tool displays pop-ups reporting a number of vulnerabilities and threats “found” to scare users into buying what it says is a full version in order to fix these problems. ...

HAVOC CAUSING hacker activist group Operation Payback has extended its reach and strangled the life out of the UK Intellectual Property Office’s website. Yesterday they apparently took down the MPAA’s website in the US, and today, though already busy, they have widened their focus and laid a smackdown on the UK IPO, knocking its website offline. According to a blog post on the Panda security blog Anonymous is 4Chan, and yesterday a forum on that website published its list of targets and its timeline for attacks. ...

Two regional websites for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) were hacked on Tuesday by unknown perpetrators claiming to be Turkish following controversial comments by her conservatives on immigration. Police and domestic intelligence agencies are now investigating in both the city-state of Hamburg and the northern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania after CDU officials said their party sites were paralysed overnight when hackers replaced their homepages with a black background featuring a Turkish crest and critical comments. ...

Google Chrome 7.0.517.41 has been released to the stable and beta channels for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Updates from the previous stable release include: Hundreds of bug fixes An updated HTML5 parser File API Directory upload via input tag More information on these and other changes in Chrome 7 can be found on the Google Chrome blog. Download Chrome today! [Standalone / Offline setup here]

Intel has announced plans to invest between $6 billion and $8 billion on its next-generation 22nm manufacturing process across several existing US factories in Arizona (Fab 12 and Fab 32) and Oregon (D1C and D1D), along with construction of a new development fabrication plant in Oregon (D1X, to open in 2013). The projects will support 6,000 to 8,000 construction jobs and result in 800 to 1,000 new permanent tech jobs. ...

Thunderbird 3.1.5 and Thunderbird 3.0.9 updates are now available for Windows, Mac, and Linux for free download from www.GetThunderbird.com. These releases make several improvements to Thunderbird’s performance, stability, and security. There are also several fixes to improve the user interface and add-ons experience. Thunderbird 3.1.5: http://getthunderbird.com/ Thunderbird 3.0.9: http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/all-older.html We strongly recommend that all Thunderbird users upgrade to these releases. If you already have Thunderbird 3.1 or 3.0, you will receive an automated update notification within 24 to 48 hours. You can also manually fetch this update by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu. ...

A university professor in Sweden has “hope for humanity” after the thief who stole his laptop backed up all his data and mailed it to him on a USB stick. Having your laptop stolen sucks, but what really hurts is the loss of everything on it. Whether it’s family vacation photos or the sum total of your life’s work, that’s stuff that you just can’t get back unless you’re seriously conscientious about making backups. And come on, who does that? So when a Swedish professor discovered that somebody had swiped his laptop, he was understandably crushed. ...

Peter Kafka at All Things Digital thinks that Steve Jobs might want to buy Facebook. His reasoning is that Jobs, when asked what Apple plans to do with its now $51 billion in cash, said, “We firmly believe that one or more unique strategic opportunities will present itself to us, and we’ll be in a position to take advantage of it.” Kafka believes that one such “unique strategic” opportunity is called Facebook. ...

If the internet is feeling a little more crowded these days, there’s good reason. According to a report out Tuesday, there will be 2 billion Web dwellers by the end of this year. The number of internet users worldwide has doubled in the past five years according to the report, from the International Telecommunication Union. Much of the big number can be attributed to internet growth in developing countries. The report said 162 million of the 226 million new Internet users in 2010 will live in those countries, where Web access is still growing. ...

Microsoft has ramped up its battle with Google in wooing business customers with its next generation cloud-based product. While the software giant dominates the office space with a 94% market share it has been facing increased competition from Google. At a San Francisco event, Microsoft unveiled Office 365. The product brings together Microsoft Office, SharePoint Online, Exchange Online and Lync Online. This means instead of paying for packaged software and installing it on a PC or corporate server, Microsoft will host and deliver the software from its own giant data centers. ...

Personal information scanned into certain digital photocopier hard drives can be easily tapped, according to a CBC News investigation probing the second-life of older machines that are re-sold or leased. CBC purchased a used Canon Image Runner Color 3200 from a UPS franchise on Kijiji, an online classifieds website. The copier’s two hard drives were removed and plugged into a laptop, which revealed the units had not been wiped clean before being sold and shipped. ...

Today Doritos Late Night presented the first 360 degree musicvideo on youtube. It’s the musicvideo of Professor Green with his latest hit: “Coming to get me”. Go and check it out!!!!

Apple’s CEO says that Android is fragmented and that the open vs. closed dilemma is not important as long as Apple’s proprietary mobile operating system manages to provide a better user experience. “Many Android OEMs install proprietary user-interfaces to differentiate themselves from the commodity Android experience. The user is left to figure it all out. Compare this with iPhone where ever handset works the same. (…) We think the open vs closed is just a smokescreen to try and hide the real issue, which is: What’s best for the customer? Fragmented vs. integrated. We think Android is very very fragmented and becoming more fragmented by the day.” ...

Maybe your main problem with tattoos is probably the fact that you’ve never been able to play Pong on them. But those problems seem to be over now that an international team of researchers, led by John Rogers at the University of Illinois, has developed a new flexible array of LEDs that can be implanted under the skin. The researchers managed to make the LED matrix implantable by encasing the electronics in a thin layer of silicon rubber that makes the whole thing functional even when exposed to biofluids. Mc10, a new company founded by Rogers, hopes to commercialize the new technology over the next few years. ...

In late January, the Number Resource Organization (NRO) warned that IPv4 addresses were drying up, with less than 10% unallocated — a figure that has shrunk rapidly over the last nine months. The organization now reports that two more blocks of IPv4 addresses have been assigned, putting the number of vacant addresses below 5%. “This is a major milestone in the life of the Internet, and means that allocation of the last blocks of IPv4 to the RIRs is imminent,” said NRO chairman Axel Pawlik. He continued by urging all Internet stakeholders to take action now by adopting IPv6, the “next generation” of the Internet Protocol, which offers infinitely more address space. IPv4 (32-bit) gives up to 4.3 billion addresses, whereas IPv6 (128-bit) provides 340 undecillion addresses (340 billion billion billion billion — that’s 36 zeros). ...