TechBlog

An interesting and unknown feature used by sysadmins around the world in some large corporate networks is the use of proxy-auto config (pac) files. This benign feature is accepted by all modern browsers and is described in detail here. It contains a function to redirect your connection to a specific proxy server. Unfortunately this simple and smart proxy technique are being largely used by brazilian malware writers to redirect infected users to malicious hosts serving phishing pages of financial institutions. A .pac script URL is configured in the browser, in the field “Use automatic configuration script”: ...

Steve Jobs has just taken the stage at Apple’s iPhone OS 4.0 press event. Before getting to the anticipated product announcements, Jobs took the opportunity to highlight the immediate success of the iPad, which launched on Saturday. As of today, Apple has sold 450,000 iPads — 150,000 more than total sales on the first day. That’s a phenomenal figure on the hardware sales side, but Jobs wasted no time celebrating some the iPad’s software accomplishments as well. ...

Windows Mobile was never just a consumer product; it was also a significant player in handheld terminals, in-vehicle systems, and ruggedized consoles for business and industry. But that whole branch of business-oriented Windows Mobile devices used to be overseen by Microsoft’s Mobile Communications Business group (MCB), the same group responsible for Windows Mobile-powered consumer devices, despite the fact that they were very different. Yesterday, David Wurster, senior product manager for Windows Embedded, announced that things will no longer be run that way. Now, all of the ruggedized and industry-specific device development will be the responsibility of the Windows Embedded Business group, regardless of their operating system (WinCE, WinMo.) ...

TSince 27 March a new game called 3D Antiterrorist has been cropping up on quite a few international freeware sites offering downloads for Windows Mobile smartphones. As well as the game itself, the 1.5 MB archive contains the file reg.exe which is actually a Trojan that calls premium rate international numbers and leaves smartphone owners significantly out of pocket. As of 8 April this malicious program has been detected by Kaspersky Lab as Trojan.WinCE.Terdial.a. Let’s take a closer look at what happens. ...

Apple is hosting an event at 1 p.m. EST to unveil the next-generation iPhone 4.0 OS. Take a look at some of the features Apple might just unveil today: Multitasking *Last year, it was all about copy and paste; this year, it’s all about multitasking. While native iPhone applications like iPod, Mail and Safari can take advantage of backgrounding or multitasking (i.e., you can listen to music using the iPod app while playing a game or surfing the web), third-party applications can’t do this. ...

Apparently, Facebook isn’t the only online sphere where ninjas are becoming a problem — The LinkedIn Blog reports that the job title “Ninja” has become more and more popular since 2002. According to LinkedIn, those who deem themselves “ninjas” tend to work with computers, social media, design, customer service, advertising and finance, and — as you can see from the chart below — their ranks have been steadily growing since the dawn of the century. ...

Today, Apple revised its iPhone Developer Program License Agreement to effectively ban the use of the Flash-to-iPhone converter. Throughout 2010, Steve Jobs and Apple made it very clear that they do not like Adobe. At all. They prominently left Flash off the iPad, instead promoting HTML5 at every opportunity. For some time now, though, Adobe’s had a tool to circumvent Apple’s ban on Flash for the iPhone and iPad: the Adobe Creative Suite 5 Flash-to-iPhone converter, which would have allowed developers to create apps in Flash and then port them over into iPhone. ...

Today, Apple unveiled a major update to the iPhone OS which is expected to reach iPhone 3G/3GS and 2nd/3rd gen iPod users sometime this summer, and iPad users in the fall. While the banner feature of this release is its multitasking capability, the announcement that Apple will open a web-based gaming network akin to Xbox Live and PlayStation Network has potential to be the biggest coup. Game Center lets users invite friends to play games, start multiplayer games through matchmaking, track achievements, and compare their high scores on a Web-based game network. This is a huge addition to the iPhone ecosystem which puts it on par with the two major home consoles, and actually catapults it past BOTH Nintendo’s Wii and its DS. ...

Yahoo Movies has posted the newest trailer for the upcoming film, Sex and the City 2. The sequel to the 2008 box office hit comes to theaters on May 28, 2010. While _Sex and the City 2_ has the obligatory Facebook Fan Page, the film’s website is still pretty barren — at least for now. In 2008, HBO and New Line put together a more interactive campaign, including a site that let you explore Carrie’s MacBook Pro, but we’ll have to wait and see if they do anything like that this time around. ...

The National Bureau of Economic Research has previously indicated that the United States has been in a recession since December 2007. What is interesting to note here is that Symantec first reported that spammers were showing an interest in the slowdown of the economy in October and November of 2007, so this begs the question, “Can the focus of spam email be used as an economic indicator or barometer?” Let’s take a brief look at the recession (thus far) by looking through Symantec’s spam folder (a.k.a. the Symantec Global Intelligence Network). ...