TechBlog

The H-Security: On Tuesday, a user who is known as “lawabidingcitizen” posted an unusual request to the Full Disclosure mailing list, a forum that is mainly used by the security community: “Please do not take down the Sality botnet.” The contributor says that he found a way of dramatically reducing the number of infected computers after analysing the botnet. He adds that the required actions are unlawful, however, but proceeds to describe the method in considerable detail and makes special tools for the task available. ...

SophosLabs: Adobe released Flash Player version 11.2.202.228 for Windows, OS X and Linux today. In my view this is a milestone release as it finally introduces an automatic, silent updating mechanism to help users stay current with the latest releases from here forward. Google Chrome users may consider themselves spoiled, as they have been enjoying the worry-free joy of automatic updating of both their browser and integrated plugins like Flash Player for quite some time. ...

Google has released version 18 of Chrome, the company’s own extended version of the open source Chromium web browser. The new Stable channel release, labeled 18.0.1025.142, fixes several security vulnerabilities, and improves graphics and drawing performance on systems with capable hardware. This is done by adding support for GPU-accelerated rendering of 2D Canvas content on Windows and Mac OS X systems. According to the developers, the GPU acceleration should improve the overall performance of graphics-intensive web applications, making canvas-based animations and games “run faster and feel smoother”. For older systems that can’t make use of of the GPU, Chrome can now display 3D content using the SwiftShader software rasterizer, which Google licensed from TransGaming, Inc. However, the developers note that “a software-backed WebGL implementation is never going to perform as well as one running on a real GPU, but now more users will have access to basic 3D content on the web”. ...

The H-Security: Business appears to be booming for those who trade in unpatched (zero-day) security holes: according to a report by Forbes magazine, a US company that works for the US government recently paid $250,000 for a vulnerability in Apple’s iOS operating system. The report says that the deal was arranged by a hacker who goes by the name of “the Grugq” and who has brokered agreements between those who discover vulnerabilities and government agencies over the last year. If negotiations are successful, the hacker retains a 15 per cent commission; he’s reportedly on track to earn about a million US dollars this year with his brokerage business. ...

Mashable: The day when Android users will first lay hands on the red hot photo-sharing app Instagram just got even closer. Late Saturday, a sign-up page appeared on Instagram’s website, inviting all those of the Android persuasion to sign up to be notified when the app is first available for that OS. The company still isn’t saying when the long-awaited Android Instagram app will actually become available. But now, at least those eager to try out the free app can take some sort of action that brings them closer to Instagram. ...

The Register: Pro-China hackers have started spoofing security firm AlienVault’s email address in spam messages in an attempt to infect pro-Tibetan recipients with malware. The move follows days after the security tools firm warned that AlienVault about spear phishing attacks against a number of Tibetan organizations. The spear-phishing messages relate to the Kalachakra Initiation, a Tibetan religious festival that took place in early January. The closely targeted messages – sent to organizations such as the Central Tibet Administration and International Campaign for Tibet – carry an infectious Office file attachment with a malware payload, a digitally signed variant of Gh0st RAT (remote access Trojan). ...

The H-Online: An inconspicuous “s” added to various ​lines of code in its latest nightly builds means that future versions of Firefox will send all search queries to Google in encrypted form. This means that instead of HTTP, the open source browser will use the HTTPS protocol, which encrypts traffic between the web site and browser using SSL. The nightly builds will feed through, over the next few months, until the feature is, most probably, in Firefox 14. ...

The H-Security: Until just a few days ago, web sites belonging to the world’s largest online payment service contained a security vulnerability in a key component that could have been exploited by fraudsters to steal information from customers. PayPal fixed the vulnerability shortly after being notified of its presence by The H’s associates at heise Security. The eBay subsidiary was, however, unable to give any information on how such a serious security problem could have remained undetected. ...

The H-Security: Google has released version 17.0.963.83 of its Chrome web browser, a maintenance update that fixes issues with Flash games and closes several security holes. The Stable channel update addresses a total of nine vulnerabilities, six of which are rated as “high severity“. These include an integer issue in libpng (the official PNG reference library), a memory corruption problem in WebGL canvas handling and a cross-origin violation related to “magic iframe”, as well as use-after-free errors in first-letter handling, CSS cross-fade handling and block splitting. One medium-risk invalid read in the V8 JavaScript engine and two low-risk problems related to WebUI privileges and unpacked extension installation have also been fixed. ...

SophosLabs: Jenna-Louise Coleman has been unveiled as the new “Doctor Who” companion, joining the BBC TV time traveller in his TARDIS later this year. “Doctor Who” is one of Britain’s biggest television shows, and is popular elsewhere around the world, so it was no surprise to find 25-year-old actress Jenna Louise-Coleman’s name was a trending topic on Twitter today. Unfortunately, there are frequently mischief-makers, scammers and cybercriminals waiting to exploit a popular search term or hashtag. ...