LibreOffice Update

from Asa Dotzler: Firefox and more I’m not going to apologize for complaining about the terrible, awful, horrible, no good, very bad experience I had when I decided to give LibreOffice a try. It was abysmal and improving that experience should be a top priority for that team if they care about expanding LibreOffice beyond the few Linux users who get it pre-installed. But, I do think I could have done more to propose fixes rather than just rant about the brokenness of the experience so I’ve done just that. ...

February 19, 2012 · 1 min · 209 words · Omid Farhang

Nessus 5.0 accelerates vulnerability scanning

The H-Online: Tenable has released version 5.0 of Nessus, its popular vulnerability scanner. The new version of the tool includes an updated installation wizard that is said to make installing and configuring the server and client easier and quicker than before. Scan policies can now be created substantially faster than with previous versions, and the developers have also improved the way users navigate through the results of a vulnerability audit. ...

February 17, 2012 · 1 min · 180 words · Omid Farhang

Malware to Mourn Whitney Houston

Symantec: The world is mourning the loss of another legendary pop singer also known as the queen of pop – Whitney Houston. Spammers are paying homage to the icon with a wicked malware. The malicious email shows a video of the last appearance of the star in a Los Angeles night club and also downloads an executable binary. This file is detected by Symantec Antivirus as WS.Reputation.1. ...

February 17, 2012 · 2 min · 284 words · Omid Farhang

New CAPTCHA method or just another likejacking scam?

Sorin Mustaca wrote at Avira TechBlog: In case you’ve seen this on Facebook, try to not click on it even if you understand French (it appears to be only in Franch) because it will take you on a road where you don’t want to be. But, we like to live dangerous, so we analyzed this for you. Continue Reading at Avira TechBlog: http://techblog.avira.com/2012/02/13/new-captcha-method-or-just-another-likejacking-scam/en/ ...

February 13, 2012 · 1 min · 63 words · Omid Farhang

Facebook Hoax: Facebook will end on March 15th 2012

SophosLabs: Have you seen the news? Maybe your friends have shared it with you. Apparently, Facebook is going to shut down on March 15th, 2012. Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly found running the site just too stressful. Here’s the link that many Facebook users have been sharing with each other. ...

February 13, 2012 · 2 min · 364 words · Omid Farhang

Is Waledac spam dirtying the Russian 2012 elections?

Symantec Connect: Recently there have been several reports about the re-emergence of a botnet variant (Kelihos), which Symantec detects as W32.Waledac.C. The Waledac family is a threat that has been monitored by Symantec for many years and was featured in numerous blogs as well as a white paper. In the past, Waledac gained its infamy as a spamming botnet that utilized compromised systems to send out spam. The purpose of these spamming campaigns had usually been for self-propagation of the threat through spam emails containing a link, often (but not always) pointing to a Waledac binary file hosted on a malicious website. The variant W32.Waledac.C is also sending out spam emails, but with a twist. ...

February 10, 2012 · 2 min · 346 words · Omid Farhang

Is Digital Pearl Harbor THE most tasteless term in IT security?

SophosLabs: Can hackers really cause as much bloodshed as 353 Imperial Japanese Navy fighters, bombers and torpedo planes launched from six aircraft carriers? Can hackers really kill 2,402 U.S. citizens, leave 1,282 wounded, lose 65 of their own attackers in the process, and plunge the United States into a World War? Heaven only knows. Maybe they can. The lack of security around Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems is scary. ...

February 10, 2012 · 3 min · 593 words · Omid Farhang

Malware automatically uploading stolen data to the File sharing sites

The Hacker News: Roland Dela Paz, a threat response engineer with Trend Micro have discovered a piece of malicious software that automatically uploads its stolen data cache to the SendSpace file-sharing service for retrieval. File-storage services offer several advantages for cybercriminals. SendSpace accepts files and then generates a link that can be shared with other people to download the content in the files. The malware has been configured to send files, copy the download link and send it to a command-and-control server along with the password needed to access the archive, Dela Paz wrote. ...

February 6, 2012 · 1 min · 191 words · Omid Farhang

Facebook IPO comes with a health warning

SophosLabs: Facebook’s IPO is the most hyped initial public offering in years, with much speculation about just how many billions of dollars the social networking phenomenon will be valued at. There’s no doubt that 27-year-old Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, is going to become a very rich man – and will be able to buy an even larger wardrobe of hoodies. ...

February 2, 2012 · 3 min · 545 words · Omid Farhang

Adobe closes Acrobat and Reader security holes

The H-Online: The first patches for the zero-day flaw in Adobe’s Acrobat and Reader applications, which the company confirmed was being exploited in the wild, have been released. The initial problem was caused by a memory corruption when processing Universal 3D (U3D) files, which could allow attackers to potentially take control of an affected system. The patches released also address a newly revealed critical flaw (CVE-2011-4369) which can cause memory corruption when processing Product Representation Compact (PRC) 3D files. ...

December 17, 2011 · 2 min · 253 words · Omid Farhang