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Friday, November 30, 2007

Google asks for help finding malicious Web sites

Google is asking everyday Web surfers to help with its efforts to stamp out malicious Web sites. They have created an online form designed to make it easy for people to report sites they suspect of hosting malicious code. It's the latest step by Google to expand its database of the bad Web sites it knows about. The simple form has an entry box for the Web site's URL and a space to provide additional information.

Google displays a warning in its search results if it believes a Web site is malicious. But earlier this week researchers noted that some Google searches for relatively mundane topics were producing results loaded with malicious sites, apparently the result of a campaign by hackers.

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Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Digital library project has 1.5 million books online

A technology project launched almost 10 years ago by computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University finally appears to be bearing the fruits of their considerable labor.

The university team has been attempting to transfer the entire published works of mankind into an online digital format library, while also providing completely free access to the wealth of invaluable knowledge spread across its numerous languages.

According to an Associated Press report, the Million Book Project has this week surpassed its content figure with in excess of 1.5 million books now having been scanned into the Universal Digital Library.

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Friday, November 23, 2007

Spam emails with .SCR File Attachments being sent with trojans

Security researchers uncovered a spam campaign Nov. 19 targeting senior level executives that utilizes .scr file attachments to spread Trojans. Such file extensions are typically associated with Windows screensavers.

The campaign is one of two reported by MessageLabs. The first wave was aimed at banks and financial institutions and claimed to come from the United States Department of Justice; the second, reported some 3.5 hours later, did not use an .scr file and was aimed at a variety of organizations and posed as an email from the Better Business Bureau, said Paul Wood, an analyst with MessageLabs.

Early analysis suggests the attachment installs a backdoor remote access Trojan of some kind, potentially for stealing data. The originating servers appear to be compromised or under the control of the senders. Almost 60 percent are in the United States, and almost 40 percent are in Japan.

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Monday, November 19, 2007

Firefox Exploit can Hack Gmail

There is a new Firefox vulnerability allows malicious code into browsers, revealing users' Google accounts. The vulnerability allows hackers to access Google accounts, including Gmail, with cross site scripting attacks.

A client or server side exploit can be inserted into zip files via open document formats from Microsoft Office 2007 and OpenOffice. According to the Web site, affected platforms range from Web mail clients, collaboration and document sharing systems and other Web 2.0 applications from large software vendors including Google and Microsoft.

While Mozilla has not issued a solution to the problem, application firewalls and proxy servers can be used to block Windows Universal Resource Identifiers (URIs) that contain the JAR protocol.

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Friday, November 16, 2007

Malware spreading through GeoCities websites

Storm, the botnet building Trojan horse have been seeded with new spam templates that included links to sites on GeoCities, the free Web hosting service owned by Yahoo Inc.

The GeoCities sites are infected with malicious JavaScript code that redirects the user's browser to secondary URLs hosted in Turkey. The Turkish URLs try to persuade the user to download a bogus codec that's supposedly necessary to view images on the GeoCities sites.

The attacks last week that originated at hacked MySpace pages.

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Monday, November 12, 2007

NBC's answer to iTunes

NBC's new software called NBC Direct offers downloadable versions of NBC shows like The Office and 30 Rock. The release comes after NBC failed to renew its iTunes contract in August. The two sides reportedly could not agree on a pricing scheme for downloads of NBC shows, so the network walked away with its nearly 1,500 hours of programming.

Once downloaded, the program provides users with a list of downloadable content. Users can sign up for subscriptions to have certain shows immediately downloaded to their player as NBC posts them.

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Friday, November 09, 2007

Microsoft program puts new Windows on old PCs

Under a new program large companies that sell refurbished PCs can get a new copy of Windows put on the machines provided they pay Microsoft for the privilege. The initiative, which provides refurbishers with a special version of Windows XP, could help save more machines from heading to the landfill.

This means Microsoft will get paid for Windows twice on one computer because to properly resell a refurbished PC using its original copy of Windows, Microsoft requires that resellers have either the certificate of authenticity that came with the PC or its restore disks which usually get lost along the way.

Microsoft did a study in 2004 and found that 20 million computers a year were being sold through formal refurbishment operations. They estimate today that number has grown to 28 million, with growth in the refurbished market likely outpacing new PC sales growth.

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Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Yahoo social networking service

Yahoo is launching a social networking service designed to help college students get career help, an offering created by a young Yahoo unit charged with advancing product innovation.

The service is called Kickstart and its for college students to use to tap into a network of professionals willing to help them with internships, job prospects and career advice. Yahoo believes Kickstart will be valuable to young people who don't yet have extensive contact lists on professional social networks.

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Thursday, November 01, 2007

Mac porn surfers getting malware

The malware is called OSX.RSPlug.A and is a Trojan horse. OSX.RSPlug.A disguises itself as a video codec that you would supposedly install to ensure the movies will play on your Mac.

To get infected with the malware, you have to accept the invitation to download new version of codec, open up the .dmg file, click the installer.pkg file, and enter your administrator's password.

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