Archive for: August 6, 2009
August 6, 2009
 Normally, if you were to type in "www.apppscout.com" into your Web browser, you might arrive at a standard "server not found" page. If you're a Comcast customer, however, that won't happen. As of Thursday, Comcast decided to extend a trial of its "Domain Helper" service nationwide to its customers. Basically, Domain Helper replaces the "server not found" page with a Comcast-branded page with suggested links and other advertising. According to some, it's free revenue for the service provider. Comcast, naturally, has taken a more benevolent view. "We hope that customers find this service helpful and look forward to any feedback you might have," Chris Griffiths, manager of DNS engineering for Comcast, explained. Users can opt out of the service by visiting this Comcast page. And, to the company's credit, Comcast moderators are actively participating in the comments section attached to the blog post. Still, however, comments like this one from "jym" seem to be par for the course. "Bad news!
I'd rather have a transparent internet experience than this hijack," 'jym" wrote. "This is dumbing down the internet to the lowest common denominator.
I've opted out but the service should be strictly opt-in. Another
strike for me to consider opting out of Comcast entirely - except you
have the monopoly in my area!"
    
 Twitter, Facebook, and LiveJournal all were hit by distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on Thursday, an apparently organized, concentrated effort on several social networking sites. So far, no reasons or methodologies for the attacks have surfaced. One researcher, however, has posted what he thinks might be a possible cause for the Twitter attacks: a new variant of the "Koobface" virus. "[T]oday's outage is happening at the same time a new version of the Koobface malware
was found in the wild," Paul Henry, a security researcher for Lumension Security, wrote in a blog post. "This malware is using both Twitter and Facebook
messages to send invitations that are designed to lure potential
victims to fake anti-virus web pages. The speculation is that the
onslaught of bogus messages that are directing users to malicious pages
may in fact be overwhelming Twitter."
The interesting point that Henry brings up is that Koobface uses both
Facebook and Twitter to spread its payload, two of the three sites that
were hit. PCMag.com's Security Watch blog has reported on Koobface using Twitter as well as a new variant that preys on Facebook users.
Both tease users with some sort of interesting video, then ask the user
to download a "codec" that actually contains the worm itself. Then the
process repeats itself.
Both McAfee and Symantec have said via statements that they continue to
investigate the attacks, and have not discovered any concrete reasons
or methodologies behind them. "McAfee is investigating the Twitter and Facebook attacks; our
researchers are plowing through data to find out more about the make up
of this particular attack," Joris Evers wrote ...
As of 9:59:54 AM Pacific time today, the versions of Windows 7 on the TechNet and MSDN download sites no longer carry the "RC" designation. This means that final code of Windows 7 is now available to a much larger audience--in the hundred thousands--than the partners and OEM PC makers that had access till now.Though there's still no formal announcement in TechNet's news area, which still touts RC, the final files appear in subscribers' download area. In addition to Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate editions, subscribers can even download the Home Basic and Starter editions, which won't be for sale to U.S. consumers.
On the official Windows Blog, Microsoft's Brandon LeBlanc wrote a post about the on-time arrival of Windows 7 RTM. He also mentions that volume license customers will be able to download the English version of the software tomorrow. Those customers will be able to purchase the OS in bulk starting September 1. Other languages will become available over the next couple of weeks, according to an earlier Windows blog post.
The operating system will go GA--"general availability" on October 22, 2009. In the meantime, read my full preview of Windows 7 RTM on PCMag.com.
 
Facebook is the latest social networking site to experience difficulties this morning, though the company stopped short of confirming a denial-of-service attack.
"Earlier this morning, we encountered issues within our network that resulted in a short period of degraded site experience for some visitors," Facebook said in a statement. "No user data was at risk and the matter is now resolved for the majority of users. We're monitoring the situation to ensure that users continue to have the fast and reliable experience they've come to expect from Facebook."
Earlier this morning, Facebook users experienced slow log-in time. Many who did manage to access their accounts experienced a "no network" pop-up message when trying to complete normal tasks such as posting status updates, accessing friends' pages, and sending messages.
Twitter and LiveJournal also experienced downtime this morning; both companies have acknowledged that the problems were due to denial-of-service attacks.
"As we recover, users will experience some longer load times and slowness," Twitter wrote in its most recent status update. 'This includes timeouts to API clients. We're working to get back to 100 percent as quickly as we can."
UPDATE: Facebook has updated its statement to confirm a DDoS attack. "Earlier this morning, Facebook encountered network issues related to an apparent distributed denial of service attack, that resulted in degraded service for some users."
 
LiveJournal is the latest social networking site to confirm a denial-of-service attack, company officials confirmed Thursday. LiveJournal was hit with the DDoS attack at approximately 6 AM Pacific time, a spokesman said in an e-mail. The company cannot 100 percent confirm that it is the same attack that plagued Twitter this morning, but "it would be a huge coincidence if they aren't tied to one another," he said.
Things are now back to normal on LiveJournal.com, the spokesman said.
Earlier today, Twitter also confirmed that it was battling a denial-of-service attack. The micro-blogging site was officially down for about two hours, and Twitter executives say the site is now back online, but connectivity is still spotty.
Facebook users also experienced some issues today.
 
The Bing blog today announced that Jonathan Mann, known on YouTube as "The Rock Cookie Bottom," has won its jingle contest. The song's instrumental starts out pretty slickly, but once the singing started, I had to wonder if Mann was having a joke at the expense of Microsoft's hopeful new search engine. A rare hit from Microsoft of late, Bing has actually received overwhelmingly positive reviews from the tech press.
In the video, Mann does a macarena-like arm dance, with white
silhouettes mimicking him in the background. The thrust of the lyric is
that Bing can help you dance. The line "if you're looking for fixes to
all of lifes messes" echoes Microsoft's TV commercials, which hold out
the search engine as the answer to the economic and other of today's
struggles with complexity.
Though an overlay on the YouTube video asks users to "Please rate 5
stars," it's only mustered 3, with over 500 votes at the time of
writing. Mann's song, which lasts a mere minute and 13 seconds, is
admittedly catchy. The artist is on a quest to write a song a day, and
if the rest are like this one, I have no doubts that he'll succeed.
 
 Ringtone sales dropped significantly in 2008 as cell phone owners learned how to add ringtones to handsets without having to purchase them from carriers, according to a new SNL Kagan report. The market declined 24 percent overall in 2008 compared with 2007--from $714 million to $541 million. That led to the first overall annual decline for mobile music in general, according to the report, even as ringtones' share of it dropped from 80 percent in 2005 to just 63 percent in 2008. Simply put, it's cheaper and easier to sideload music onto cell phones. Editing tools for creating ringtones from MP3 files abound, and even come preloaded on some of today's devices. The report said that record labels will likely (finally!) begin pricing ringtones lower, since it never made all that much sense in the face of 89 cent DRM free music tracks from Amazon MP3.
 
Twitter on Thursday confirmed that it is battling an attack.
"We are defending against a denial-of-service attack, and will update status again shortly," Twitter wrote on its status update blog.
The Twitter faithful awoke this morning to the unpleasant news that the micro-blogging site was not loading. Twitter confirmed about an hour ago that the site was down, and has since reported that the problems are the result of a malicious attack.
"On this otherwise happy Thursday morning, Twitter is the target of a denial of service attack," Twitter co-founder Biz Stone wrote in a blog post. "Attacks such as this are malicious efforts orchestrated to disrupt and make unavailable services such as online banks, credit card payment gateways, and in this case, Twitter for intended customers or users. We are defending against this attack now and will continue to update our status blog as we continue to defend and later investigate."
Twitter is apparently not the only site experiencing problems this morning. Facebook users have also reported problems -- users can sign in, but many are receiving "no network" errors when trying to do random tasks on the site, such as update status updates or click on friends' profiles.
"We're looking into it and will give you an update as soon as possible," a Facebook spokeswoman said in an e-mail.
There were also reports that LiveJournal.com was down, but the site appears to be now be live. [Editor's Note: LiveJournal now confirming its own DDoS attack].
UPDATE: Twitter writes that "the site is back up" but it is still timing out and producing page load errors in our office. Stay tuned for updates.
UPDATE 2: The latest from Twitter -- "As we recover, users will experience some longer load times and slowness. This includes timeouts ...
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