September 2011

Google Chrome Blog: It’s that time of the year again for the Chrome team, when we pause on our anniversary to reflect on the amazing life and times of the web. It’s hard to believe that it’s already been three years since we launched our open source web browser, Chrome. In that time, the web community has continued to inspire us, bringing the power of the web into all kinds of apps and experiences, with all modern browsers making great strides in speed, simplicity and security. To pay homage to the goodness of the web, we’ve put together an interactive infographic, built in HTML5, which details the evolution of major web technologies and browsers: ...

TechSpot: Wikileaks found itself the victim of a cyberattack on Tuesday, shortly after the release of thousands of US State Department communications. News broke of the attack on their Twitter page, which offered another link to the communications, and a message stating “WikiLeaks.org is presently under attack.” It is likely that they were hit with a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, the most commonly used method by hackers to cause disruption to websites. It works by flooding the servers with traffic, overloading them, and subsequently causing the servers to crash, or become otherwise unreachable. ...

SophosLabs: Even if it hasn’t been officially announced yet, and certainly isn’t available to the general public (unless an Apple employee loses a test model in a bar), there are plenty of scammers out there trying to trick you into believing you can get a free iPhone 5. Here’s just a sample of the pages on Facebook claiming to be an iPhone 5 giveaway. Typically they are trying to trick you into clicking on links, driving traffic to online surveys which earns them revenue. ...

TechSpot: Facebook plans to launch a music service on September 22, which happens to coincide with the company’s F8 conference. The news comes via CNBC’s twitter feed which reported the headline earlier today. A quick blurb on CNBC’s website also mentions the pending music service launch, suggesting that Facebook won’t actually host the music, but will partner with a provider to offer the service. There isn’t much more to go on at the moment, but this isn’t the first time we’ve heard such rumors. Last month, Facebook announced a video calling feature powered by Skype. Software developer Jeff Ross panned through the program’s code and found references to an app called Facebook Vibes which connects with a music download dialog. Ross posted the following statement on his blog. ...

rockpapershotgun.com: This just came in from Valve: “The PC version of the product will be powered with Steamworks for both the digital and tangible versions of the game and, as with all Steamworks titles, offline play will also be supported along with Auto-Updating, Achievements, and more. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 will also support dedicated servers on day 1.” Better, I suppose. The game is out November 8th.

Web of Trust (WOT), the world’s leading website reputation rating service, and Mail.ru Group, Russia’s largest Internet company, have partnered together to improve online protection for 300 million people using Russia’s leading free e-mail service, Mail.ru. All links contained in emails received by Mail.ru users are checked through WOT’s reputation database to warn users from following untrustworthy links that could lead to scams, identity theft, malware and other online threats. ...

SophosLabs: Imagine the scene. You buy a second-hand laptop using it to, among other things, have secret sexy video chats with your significant other. Unbeknownst to you, naked photos of you are being taken by a company hired to track down the stolen laptop. Ouch. This is what has happened to Ohio-based Susan Clements-Jeffrey and her boyfriend. Absolute Software is in the business of helping people recover their computers. Fair enough. But is taking nude snaps of the person using the stolen laptop a step too far? ...

SophosLabs: Julianne Hough is famous in the United States not just for being an actress and country music singer, and dating “American Idol” host Ryan Seacrest, but also for having won ABC’s “Dancing with the stars” TV show twice. So, hardly the kind of woman who you would think would need to resort to a cheap publicity stunt to raise her profile. But no doubt there are skeptics who are right now wondering if the news that her mobile phone was “hacked” and one hundred of her private photographs published on the net is nothing more than a way of gaining attention. ...