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Archive for the ‘Industry News’ Category

New Exploit For IE Security Hole Published Via Twitter

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

An Israeli security researcher recently published his new discovery, the exploit code for a security hole in Internet Explorer web browser, via his Twitter page. The researcher discovered the exploit after receiving clues from a McAfee blog post.

This new exploit affects IE 6 and IE 7  web browsers. The exploit has been targeted already in attacks and potentially could enable an attacker  in taking control of a users system.

Microsoft’s next scheduled patch is in four weeks.

Resources: Targeted Internet Explorer Zero-Day Attack Announced (CVE-2010-0806), McAfee

Internet Explorer 9 Got Game?

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

The relevancy of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has been fading. For a long time, IE has been anything but innovative in the eyes of the web development world. Recent releases of Opera, Firefox, Chrome and Safari have been a shining example of the future of the internet.

The coming developer’s conference MIX 2010, Microsoft will be giving a preview of IE9–the next evolution of Internet Explorer. It is expected that the next version of Microsoft’s web browser will support HTML5 elements, vector graphics and emerging CSS standards. This could be critical for Microsoft to stay competitive in the browser game.

EU forces Microsoft to offer users a choice of web browser

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

There has been a resolution to the Internet Explorer antitrust case against Microsoft. Microsoft will now offer a choice to Windows users for their web browser. This “Choice Screen” will give Windows users more options than just internet explorer, which will open up competition in the web browser market for Europe.

The “Choice Screen” will offer 12 of the most widely used Web browsers that run under Windows. The choice screen initially shows the five most widely used browsers, in random order: IE, Firefox, Google’s Chrome, Apple’s Safari, and Opera. There is also a horizontal scroll bar that will reveal other options as well–which are essentially up-start browsers that are getting a huge opportunity handed to them as a result of this anti-trust resolution.

Here is the “Choice Screen” as seen in Windows explorer panel:

Google Acquires Picnik

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

Google acquired Picnik, a cloud-based photo editing tool. Picnik allowed users to edit photos without having to purchase a heavy photo editing software and was great for inexperienced or infrequent users. Google stated that they have no immediate plans of modifying the tool. The tool may prove to be a very valuable resource for Google’s new OS called Chrome.

Spam now accounts for 90% of email traffic due to February surge

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

February was a bad month for email. Due to a surge in the month of February, spam now accounts for 90% of email traffic according to Symantec. Two botnets, named Grum and Rustock, helped this spam surge by pushing up spam levels 5.5 percent. The Grum botnet came back from a period of plateau to increase activity by 51%. The rise of both botnet systems were linked to activity related to Canadian pharmaceutical spam.

Country specific:
Spam levels reached 93.4% of all e-email in Italy last month
Denmark was at 92.8%
Russia at 91.8%
US was 90.2%

Opera Beta Version 10.50 Now Available For Mac

Saturday, February 27th, 2010

The Opera Beta version 10.50 for Mac has been released to the public. This comes on the tail of a recent release for Windows, and shows a more aggressive move into the Mac OS by Opera.

Some of the new features include: minimalist design interface, fastest JavaScript engine currently on the market (claimed Opera and published by CNET), new search field, new Opera widgets, better standards compliance including HTML 5 and CSS 3, a “smart” address field, better graphics rendering, and private browsing.

Updates to Opera for version 10.50:

  • Cocoa support
  • Unified tool bar
  • Growl notifications
  • Multi-touch gestures
  • Happy Easter! Well almost, but multi-touch users should look out for the egg
  • 10.4 (Tiger) support returns
  • Widgets fixed and panel enabled
  • Fixed Bug DSK-282851 (Slow typing)
  • Fixed Bug DSK-276782 (Hangs on NYT and Reuters and other sites): Page Freezing Bug

UK Government Extends Copyright Crackdown To All Open Wifi

Saturday, February 27th, 2010

The UK Government will not exempt libraries, businesses such as cafes or bookstores, museums, or even universities from it’s copyright enforcement policy. Open wifi networks will be a thing of the past now that the UK Government will hold the owners of open networks responsible for violations in copyright laws committed from within it’s network.

The efforts related to the Digital Economy Bill imposes strict enforcement policies for copyright protections. This new policy will make it impossible for small businesses and the like to offer Wi-Fi access. A scenario described by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) in a document Online Infringement of copyright: Libraries, Universities and Wi-fi providers, Feb. 10, 2010, regarding the new policy for open wifi access would essentially “outlaw open Wi-Fi for small businesses.”

Source:
http://www.openrightsgroup.org/assets/files/pdfs/bis/B2_-_Libraries,_Universities,_and_Wifi_Providers-Factsheet.doc

Pentagon Allows Social Media Within Non-Classified Network

Saturday, February 27th, 2010

Until recently, the Pentagon has stayed away from social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Pentagon will be moving forward with the use of social networking tools as a communication bridge between the public and the non-classified activities of the agency–as announced in a press release from Feb. 26th 2010 containing the headline “DOD Releases Policy for Responsible and Effective Use of Internet-Based Capabilities”. It will also allow the social networking tools to be used within it’s Non-Classified Internet Protocol Router Network (NIPRNET)–saying that it found a proper balance between the necessary security criteria and the use of social tools.

The Pentagon recognized that the decision between social networking and security is not a yes/no decision. Although the military has been using social networking for quite some time, it has never been a unified approach across all it’s branches.

Twitter Suffers From Another Phishing Attack Feb 2010

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

Twitter users have experienced another phishing attack during the week of Feb. 22nd 2010 according to security firm Sophos. This attack featured a headline “This you????” following a false Twitter login page. Should a user login to the false Twitter page, then the attackers would have the login credentials to access that users account and expand their phishing attack base. The distribution radius was exceptionally wide due to third party services such as GroupTweet, which allows mass Tweets.

Mobile Web: Smart Phone Sales Up 24% From Last Year

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

The mobile phone industry is booming. Smart phone sales to end users grew 41% from Q4 of 2008 to Q4 of 2009. As a year to year comparison from 2008 to 2009, smart phone sales grew 24% to 172.4 million units.

The iPhone share almost doubled. The iPhone still trails behind Nokia’s Symbian-powered smartphones (#1).

Garner: source data
Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System in 2009 (Thousands of Units)

Company 2009 Units 2009
Market
Share (%)
2008 Units 2008
Market
Share (%)
Symbian 80,878.6 46.9 72,933.5 52.4
Research In Motion 34,346.6 19.9 23,149.0 16.6
iPhone OS 24,889.8 14.4 11,417.5 8.2
Microsoft Windows Mobile 15,027.6 8.7 16,498.1 11.8
Linux 8,126.5 4.7 10,622.4 7.6
Android 6,798.4 3.9 640.5 0.5
WebOS 1,193.2 0.7 NA NA
Other OSs 1,112.4 0.6 4,026.9 2.9
Total 172,373.1 100.0 139,287.9 100.0

Source: Gartner (February 2010)