News

Windows/Mac/Linux: Chrome has hit version 8 in its Dev builds, adding more solid graphics acceleration to the web using your video hardware, along with a few new Labs features that herald the coming of Chrome OS. If you’re using the Dev channel, open up a tab and type in about:labs. You’ll notice features there to turn off outdated plug-ins, enable “Remoting” support for Chrome, turn on the very useful Google Instant in the Chrome Omnibar, and enable a few other useful features, including GPU acceleration of the HTML5 Canvas feature. ...

The Redmond company today announced that it plans to release 16 security bulletins on coming Tuesday, Microsoft’s official monthly Patchday in October. Never before Microsoft released so many security bulletins on a Patchday. Four of these security bulletins are rated critical by the company. Thus they allow attackers to inject malicious code into computers without user interaction. Ten get the rating important, and another two are rated moderate. Affected are all supported Windows operating systems from Windows XP to Windows 7 as well as Windows Server 2003 and 2008 – not only the 32-bit flavours, but also the 64-bit versions. Also, all Microsoft Office Versions starting from Office XP are vulnerable, including Office for Mac. ...

How does one say in French: “We’re gonna make an example out of you, boy” The Toronto Sun is reporting that convicted spammer Adam Guerbuez of Montreal has been ordered to pay $1 billion to Facebook by Quebec Superior Court. The court was upholding a U.S. Federal court fine that resulted from a wave of four million spam ads sent to Facebook users in 2008. Guerbuez did not contest the Sept. 28 Quebec Superior Court ruling. ...

The Stuxnet Trojan is very well covered in the media as more and more details about its sophisticated code become public. It abuses four previously unknown security vulnerabilities in Windows to enter the system and is specialized on attacking Siemens processing systems. An interesting information which didn’t get much attention yet comes from heise Security: The nuclear plant in Busheer isn’t really the target of the worm as rumours say, as the attacked systems aren’t approved for usage in nuclear plants. ...

Google has finally decided to allow users to turn off the controversial ‘conversation view’ threading functionality in Gmail. Conversation view has been a characteristic of Gmail ever since it launched, but Google software engineer Dong Chen admitted in a blog post yesterday that it is the webmail service’s “most hotly debated feature “. “Threading enthusiasts say they spend less mental energy drawing connections between related messages, and that their inboxes are much less cluttered,” he wrote. ...

Nokia would like the world to know that its upcoming smartphone, the N8, is finished. The first batch of devices has left the factories in Finland and China, and these N8s will soon end in the hands of customers all over the world. Many Nokia fans have wondered will there be further delays for the N8, and this is probably the best answer to that question. Recently, Nokia informed some of the customers who have pre-ordered the device they will be receiving it “during October,” as Nokia decided to “hold the shipments for a few weeks to do some final amends.” However, Nokia immediately clarified that the N8 is not being delayed, and now it proved it with the pictures of N8s leaving the factory. ...

Microsoft announced that it has collaborated with WordPress and now onwards it will be the default blogging platform for Windows Live users. This means Microsoft is killing it’s own blogging platform and suggesting users to go for better platform called ‘WordPress’. In TechCrunch Disrupt conference, Windows Live Director ‘Dharmesh Mehta’ announced that all existing Windows Live Spaces users will be migrated over to an account at WordPress.com. So now onwards users who sign up for a Windows Live account get free Hotmail , the Xbox Live site , a free blog from WordPress.com and other services. ...

The New York Times is reporting a rising number of law suits against some major players because of their use of persistent web tracking: — Fox Entertainment Group — NBC Universal — Specific Media — Quantcast The Times said the suits are claiming that the companies used Flash cookies to collect data on browsing activities in spite of the fact that users had privacy settings on to block them. Those Local Shared Objects (LSOs) are persistent cookies that are stored in several ways and in some cases will restore themselves when deleted. One is available, with a detailed description here. ...

Twitterers are still clogging the micro-blogging service with little messages about the cross-site-scripting problem earlier today. Twitter has announced that the problem has been fixed. A cross-site scripting vulnerability using “onmouseover” was being widely exploited to spread worms and redirect viewers to malicious sites. Story here from The Register.

The Anti-Botnet Initiative has now been started. The initiative is a cooperation of eco and The German Federal Bureau for Information Security (BSI) and has created a telephone hotline for persons which may have their computers infected and seem to be a part of a botnet. In order to be able to detect this, the major ISPs in Germany are also cooperating (1und1, Telekom, Kabel BW, NetCologne, QSC and Versatel). The ISPs monitor suspicious activity on all IP addresses in their pool. As suspicious activity is considered, for example, the sending of huge amounts of data on certain ports like 25 for SMTP (used to send spam emails), incoming HTTP connections (used to serve HTTP connections) and so on. Once the ISP detects this, the customer gets an email notification with information about the suspicious activity and various other information (like the telephone number of the hotline). The user is also instructed to have a look on the www.botfrei.de website. ...