Review

During a 90-minute presentation on Wednesday at Apple headquarters, Steve Jobs unveiled Apple’s latest thinner MacBook Air 11-inch and 13-inch models, along with the new operating system. The redesigned Mac notebook combines features from the iPhone and iPad with those of a MacBook. The new MacBook Air features a multi-touch that offers you an iPad/iPhone-like experience. Instead of a hard drive, the new thinner, lighter and expensive Mac laptop uses flash storage. Jobs said that all notebooks will be like this someday and added that the Air is the future of the MacBook and all laptops. ...

The author of this article seems to think Linux in the desktop is dead, with so many missed opportunities, especially during the failure of Windows Vista, they will never break into the market now that Win 7 is so successful. In some ways I agree, but personally, I never thought Linux even had a chance with the average user on a home system. Being in IT, like most peeps in my field, I have become the “help desk” for family and friends; I really do not think the average user is ready for it. Add in the lack of applications and games that are available, it really did not stand a chance. I design and write software, the development costs these days are huge, and the money peeps want a good ROI to out weigh the risks, developing from scratch or even porting an existing app is just too risky. ...

Follow up from: Panda security launches Panda Antivirus The number of Mac OS vulnerabilities has quintupled in less than a year. In 2009, 34 vulnerabilities were detected for Mac OS. So far in 2010, this number has risen to 175 vulnerabilities. Furthermore, the platform can also be affected by 170,000 macro viruses for Windows and there are 5,000 classified strains of malware that specifically target Apple systems, according to Panda Security. ...

Clever: Inspector Richard Haycock told local newspapers that the possible use of the car lock jammers would help explain a recent spate of thefts from vehicles that have occurred without leaving any signs of forced entry. “We do get quite a lot of car crime in the borough where there’s no sign of a break-in and items have been taken from an owner’s car,” Inspector Haycock said. “It’s difficult to get in to a modern car without causing damage and we get a reasonable amount of people who do not report any. ...

I was reading an article on PCWorld’s website about the upcoming Google Chrome OS: So far so good. Except that I inadvertently clicked on one of their sponsored links: which ironically states “Here is all about spyware removal and even more.” After a few redirects, my browser is hijacked by one of those FakeAV scanners: Here is the HTTP traffic capture screenshot and log: ...

The information being transmitted is one of Facebook’s basic building blocks: the unique “Facebook ID” number assigned to every user on the site. Since a Facebook user ID is a public part of any Facebook profile, anyone can use an ID number to look up a person’s name, using a standard Web browser, even if that person has set all of his or her Facebook information to be private. For other users, the Facebook ID reveals information they have set to share with “everyone,” including age, residence, occupation and photos. ...

Variants of the infamous ZeuS cybercrime toolkit have begun using the tactics of the infamous Conficker worm in a bid to get ahead of security defences. The so-called Licat worm, which is “strongly linked” to ZeuS, represents a likely attempt to reinforce botnets following recent arrests of suspected bank fraud money mules, as well as hackers tied to ZeuS in the UK, US and Ukraine over the last month or so. ...

Some domain names make you cringe, some make you smile… Such was the case this morning, with redpoo.com a domain name whose registrar is the Center of Ukrainian Internet Names, and registered to: Igor Nikenin ul. B. Pertrovskaya, dom 12, kv 74 Rostov na Donu, 344000 RUSSIAN FEDERATION The servers’ IP, 121.156.57.184, is located in the Republic of Korea. Other than the poor joke, the site serves various exploits which you can view in this Wepawet report. ...

Hmmm. That’s not what the source code says We started out the day fat fingering the spelling of “youtube.com” and ended up at the typo squatting site behind the URL “youube.com.” youube.com redirects you to http://youtube.com-prizes.com – obviously a URL intended to make you think it’s really YouTube. Like so many of these “survey” scam web sites, the offer was available “today only: Thursday, October 7, 2010.” Obviously, this is to add a little bit of sales pressure to make a visitor go for the prize ASAP, or at least before midnight. ...

Stuxnet continues to be a hot topic. Here are answers to some of the questions we’ve received. Q: What is Stuxnet? A: It’s a Windows worm, spreading via USB sticks. Once inside an organization, it can also spread by copying itself to network shares if they have weak passwords. Q: Can it spread via other USB devices? A: Sure, it can spread anything that you can mount as a drive. Like a USB hard drive, mobile phone, picture frame and so on. ...