TechBlog

BetaNews: Mozilla has released Firefox 22.0 FINAL for Windows, Mac and Linux. The update includes some platform-specific improvements — Firefox following display scaling options in Windows, and providing download progress indicators in its dock application icon in OS X — plus a number of other tweaks and improvements. Other new features include the ability for users to now manage their social API plug-ins via the Add-ons menu (select Services in the left-hand menu to do so), while users can now adjust the playback rate of HTML5 audio and video files (right-click the playback screen and choose Play Speed to do so). ...

With the second security and maintenance release of WordPress 3.5, the developers of the popular open source blogging software have closed 12 bugs, seven of them security issues. In their announcement, the developers “strongly encourage” all users to update all their installations of the software to version 3.5.2 immediately. In addition to the fixed vulnerabilities, the new release also includes some proactive changes intended to harden the platform against attacks. ...

Google has already released a MyGlass Companion app for Android via the Play Store, and although a corresponding iOS version has yet to manifest itself in the App Store, the company has already noted that iPhone users will not be neglected when it comes to the early 2014 public launch of Google Glass. In the meantime, the PostOffice tweak will work just fine for those with a jail-broken iPhone, and although there’s not much to it aside from one or two settings, it does what it purports to do in pushing notifications through Glass. The free tweak is available via the BigBoss repository in Cydia, To configure the way your notifications are re-routed to Glass you navigate to your native Settings and configure the way your notifications are re-routed. Google Glass currently may only be in the hands of creative individuals, some competition winners and a handful of developers, but that has not prevented the tech world from getting itself excited about the internet giant’s technological headgear. Last month, one such creative individual, Adam Bell, had managed to route iOS notifications through to Google Glass using some kit he has thrown together, and now a tweak has emerged offering a simpler way for such a process to be achieved. ...

Symantec has updated its suite of Windows security products with the release of Norton Antivirus 2013 v20.4, Norton Internet Security 2013 v20.4 and Norton 360 2013 v20.4. Version 20.4 is primarily a bug-fix release, with some notable fixes, but also tweaks the user interface. One visible change for users who also have Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Free installed as additional protection is a fix that prevents Norton from blocking or flagging up MBAM as incompatible. ...

This post has been shared originally by Malwarebytes Blog: The word about the Zeus Trojan back on Facebook has spread as fast as the malware itself across many news sites. Awareness and education about online dangers is essential but headlines like “Malware That Drains Your Bank Account Thriving On Facebook” instill fear while at the same time blame Facebook — something that may not be entirely justified. Malicious links on social networking sites are nothing new (Twitter, Linkedin to name a few). They have been, and continue to be, abused by spammers to peddle fake AV or redirect to exploit sites distributing all sorts of nasties. ...

Google is shortening the amount of time it gives to makers of vulnerable software and web services if there is imminent danger. The Google security team say that if they encounter a zero-day issue that is already being actively used for cyber attacks, it will grant the affected manufacturer just seven days grace to fix the vulnerabilities or publish an advisory with mitigation strategies for users. After seven days, Google wants to publish details of the vulnerability in such a way that users of the vulnerable software can protect themselves from attacks. Previously, the company had given vendors sixty days before it went public with details of vulnerabilities. Google says, though, that it has found zero-day vulnerabilities being used to target a limited subset of people and this targeting makes the attack more serious than a widespread attack and more important to resolve quickly, especially where political activists are being compromised and the attacks can have “real safety implications” in some parts of the world. ...

NYTimes posted: On Wednesday, Google introduced a new in-box design for its e-mail service, Gmail. In a blog post announcing the new design, the company said it wanted to help people quickly sort through their messages to determine which ones were important and which ones could wait until later. The revamped Gmail automatically sorts incoming messages into categories, which appear as three tabs — primary, social and promotions — that users can toggle between in their in-box. The primary tab contains the e-mails that the service thinks are most important. Social contains message updates from various social networks, like LinkedIn, Tumblr and Yelp. Promotions contains newsletters, party invites and concert announcements. Users can also select to add additional tabs to help manage electronic bills, banking statements and messages from forum boards. ...

The Hacker News reported: For all the talk about China and the Syrian Electronic Army, it seems there’s another threat to U.S. cyber interests i.e. Iran. Series of potentially destructive computer attacks that have been targeting American oil, gas and electricity companies tracked back to Iran. Iranian hackers were able to gain access to control-system software that could allow them to manipulate oil or gas pipelines. Malware have been found in the power grid that could be used to deliver malicious software to damage plants. The targets have included several American oil, gas and electricity companies, which government officials have refused to identify. ...

Apple has released a security update for its QuickTime media framework for Windows. Version 7.7.4 of the software closes 12 critical security holes causing memory corruption and buffer overflows when processing a number of media formats. The vulnerabilities affect Windows 7, Vista and XP SP2 or later and could be exploited to cause arbitrary code execution and application crashes. The vulnerabilities affected the playback of MP3, H.263, H.264, TeXML, JPEG, QTIF, Sorenson Video and FPX files as well as the handling of dref, enof and mvhd atoms within the program. All of the problems were reported by researchers working with HP’s Zero Day Initiative, five of them by Tom Gallagher and Paul Bates from Microsoft. ...

Symantec has stopped selling the security-related products in its PC Tools portfolio, according to an announcement on the company’s web site. Customers using the affected programs – Spyware Doctor, Spyware Doctor with AntiVirus, and Internet Security – can continue to use them until their subscription runs out. Symantec says that the decision is related to consolidating its product range in order to offer customers fewer but higher quality products. To that end, the company suggests that customers looking to replace the discontinued products consider Norton Internet Security. ...