TechBlog

The H-Security: The online privacy and security service Tor was blocked by the Iranian government late evening (local time) 13 September. This was done by adding a filter rule to the Iranian border routers which identified Tor traffic and blocked it. The blocking was quickly discovered by Tor and the project released a fix a few hours later. The fix consists of a new version of the Tor software, Tor 0.2.3.4-alpha, and once this is installed on relays and bridges, the company expects normal service to be resumed for users in Iran. ...

The H-Security: The BitTorrent company has confirmed that its uTorrent servers were hacked on Tuesday 13 September and, for almost two hours, anyone downloading the uTorrent client software from the servers received a scareware fake anti-virus package instead. The malware package has been identified as belonging to the “Security Shield” family of scareware; once installed, it falsely informs a user that malware has been detected on their machine and requests payment in order to clean the system. ...

The H-Security: Adobe has released new versions of Reader and Acrobat to close several critical security holes. Versions 10.x, 9.x and 8.x of both products for Windows, Linux and Mac are affected. Adobe recommends that Reader X and Acrobat X users update to version 10.1.1 as this version offers added protection under Windows through its sandbox. However, the vendor has also made Adobe Reader 9.4.6 and 8.3.1, as well as Adobe Acrobat 9.4.6 and 8.3.1, available to download. Adobe Reader 9.4.6 for UNIX is due to be released on 7 November. ...

The H-Security: Microsoft has released two updates for Windows and three for Office to close various security holes. All five updates have only been rated “important” by the company. A hole in WINS enables local attackers to escalate their privileges on a system. Another patch prevents a new variant of binary planting, or DLL hijacking, attacks that can cause Windows to load DLLs from shared network volumes without the user’s permission. This allows attackers to execute code on a computer via specially crafted DLLs. Microsoft has been struggling to contain the insecure DLL loading problem with numerous patches released since mid 2010. ...

SophosLabs: Following the widely-publicised disgrace of Dutch digital certificate issuer DigiNotar, a person calling himself ComodoHacker claimed that he’d breached four other Certificate Authorities (CAs), too. Only one of these CAs was named: GlobalSign, the world’s fifth-biggest issuer of digital certificates. In my opinion, GlobalSign would have been justified in ignoring this claim altogether. It comes across as a stream of made-up, self-serving puffery, including bluster like this: You see? I’m so smart, sharp, dangerous, powerful, etc. huh? ...

Business Insider: A new poll in France says 7 out of 10 people think Microsoft did more to change the world than Apple. We think we would have similar results in other countries, if only because a lot more people (still!) use Microsoft products than Apple products, at least for personal computing which is (still!) the most important part of computing. It’s hard to see a mention of Steve Jobs without the worlds “change the world” or “changing an industry.” And let’s give him his due. Let’s give him his due as one of the greatest entrepreneurs in history, as an amazing entrepreneur and visionary who left many “dents” in the universe. And he did change many industries, like music, film, and yes, personal computing. ...

SophosLabs: Pop singer Pink has posted an angry message to hackers, who she claims stole photographs from her Facebook page. But was Pink’s Facebook page really hacked, or was she just one of the many people who have been careless with their privacy settings? The Grammy award-winning singer, famous for hit records such as “Get the party started” and “God is a DJ”, posted on Twitter about the incident, but didn’t clarify the nature of the photos the hackers might have accessed. ...

TheHackerNews.com: The hacker warns the Internet community that he has access to 4 other high-profile CAs, among them being GlobalSign, a certification authority from the U.S. He threatens that he will use his power over the companies to issue false certificates, which will later become the weapon of his revenge against countries who deserve it.In his own words, he said “I won’t talk so many detail for now, just I wanted to let the world know that ANYTHING you do will have consequences, ANYTHING your country did in past, you have to pay for it…”. Complete Message here. ...

rockpapershotgun.com: Are you a German teenager? Then do we have some good news for you! After a short seventeen year-long wait, you are now legally allowed to buy a copy of Doom. And, indeed, Doom can now be stocked in normal shops, not just ones ominously deemed ‘adults-only’ – which was basically putting the game right up there with porn. As of yesterday, Germany’s Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons (Bundesprufstelle) has removed Doom – and Doom II – from its list of ‘controlled’ games, following an appeal by id’s owners Bethesda. Their reasoning? Because the Bundesprufstelle thinks Doom is ‘now only of artistic and scientific interest and will not appeal to youngsters’, according to the BBC. ...

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: ...