Archive for: October 14, 2009
October 14, 2009
Microsoft released its largest-ever batch of security updates Tuesday, fixing 33 vulnerabilities in Windows, Internet Explorer, and other popular software. Eight of the updates are rated critical and five are rated important. All the critical vulnerabilities are labeled as remote code execution, which would require system restarts and impact a very broad range of Windows platforms and applications, according to Lumension security and forensic analyst Paul Henry. But, he noted, IT administrators should pay attention to two particular security bulletins, as their vulnerabilities are being exploited in the wild: MS09-050 and MS09-053. MS09-050 is a critical vulnerability that impacts both Vista and Windows 2008 platforms. While only rated as important, Henry said, MS09-053 should be considered a priority for organizations running public-facing FTP servers. He said organizations that use the Internet daily should also pay close attention to the high-priority critical client-side issues that could allow drive-by hacking exploits. “Because of the large number of issues covered in this month’s patch release, it is important that organizations carefully review the bulletin in its entirety and then carefully plan their patch-management priorities and process based on the impact on their given product utilization and the likelihood of exploitation,” Henry said. “Simply put, the administrative burden of flaw remediation today is clearly beyond that which can be handled without full flaw-remediation process automation.” Cleaning Up Old Messes Andrew Storms, director of security operations for nCircle, has a different take. As he sees it, the bug that is likely to have the biggest impact on Microsoft users will be MS09-051, the speech-codec bug that already has limited exploits in the wild. This is a typical file-parsing issue and similar vulnerabilities have allowed attackers to create drive-by attacks that infect unsuspecting video viewers. “MS09-056 isn’t a critical vulnerability and it doesn’t rate high on ...
By Andrew Liszewski This morning Flip announced a new version of their Mino camcorder with the MinoHD that features a slimmer aluminum body (or your own custom graphics) an upgrade to 8GB of storage and the ability to capture HD video at 1280×720. Other improvements include a larger 2-inch transflective TFT display (960×240 pixels) making it easier to see in bright daylight and software updates allowing you to do basic editing and trimming of clips right on the device. $229.99 available now from the Flip online store . [ Flip MinoHD ] VIA [ Wired Gadget Lab ]
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Flip Announces The MinoHD
Cisco has rolled out new technology it says can help employers be much more effective at stopping employees from surfing to porn sites or to other sites deemed non-productive. Meanwhile, a new study asserts that as many as 54 percent of U.S. companies ban workers from using social-networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace on company time. A survey of 1,400 CIOs by Robert Half Technology, an IT staffing firm, also found that 19 percent of companies allow social-networking use only for business purposes; 16 percent allow limited personal use. These developments suggest it could soon become much harder to access favorite Web haunts while using corporate networks. Cisco product manager Kevin Kennedy says that the Web content-filtering tools now used by companies have an Achilles’ heel. Only 20 percent of active Web links are accounted for on the blacklists used by such tools. And many workers, he says, have figured out how to use anonymous proxies — links that obfuscate the true Web address — to circumvent Web filtering. That’s how Iranian protesters accessed their Twitter accounts, despite a blackout imposed by authorities to quell protestors during the Iranian presidential elections last June. Cisco’s new tool is called Cisco IronPort Web Usage Controls. It analyzes each Web link an employee clicks to in real time, and can spot — and block — anonymous proxies that exist in what Cisco calls “the dark Web,” the 80 percent of URLs that aren’t accounted for by any blacklists. So if your anonymous proxies can no longer circumvent your company’s Web filters, you’ll know why.
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Cisco’s Web Site Filtering Tool Stops Surfers at Work
A passenger rights advocate accused Delta Air Lines Inc. in a federal lawsuit Tuesday of conspiring with a Virginia company to obtain hacked e-mails from her computer to help them derail her efforts to protect air travelers from lengthy tarmac delays and other inconveniences. The suit, filed by Kate Hanni of FlyersRights.org in U.S. District Court in Houston, seeks at least $11 million in damages and a jury trial. A spokesman for the world’s biggest airline operator, Trebor Banstetter, denied that Delta hacked Hanni’s e-mail account. He says Delta can’t comment further on the lawsuit. “Obviously, the idea that Delta would hack into someone’s e-mail is clearly without merit,” Banstetter said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. Hanni and her group have been a thorn in the side of the airline industry, pushing Congress to enact a passenger bill of rights at a time when airlines are suffering from big revenue declines thanks to weak demand for air travel. Among other things, Hanni supports a three-hour time limit on how long airlines can strand passengers on airport tarmacs. Legislation pending in the Senate would require that passengers be allowed to deplane after a three-hour wait. There are exceptions for instances when the pilot believes the plane will take off in the next half-hour or it might be unsafe to leave the plane. The lawsuit claims that while Hanni was sharing information with a graduate student working for Metron Aviation Inc. of Dulles, Va., her personal computer files and FlyersRights.org e-mail accounts were hacked. She said her service provider, America Online, confirmed the e-mail accounts were hacked. The lawsuit alleges that in late September, Metron executives confronted the graduate student with the stolen e-mails and claimed Delta was angry about Hanni getting information that would help pass the passenger bill ...
By Andrew Liszewski Sharp has just launched their EL-T100W calculator which they refer to as the ‘Brain Trainer’ since it includes “fun” drills and quizzes that are designed to measure your brain age just like the games available for the Nintendo DS do. As a calculator the EL-T100W is pretty basic though, with a simple 10-digit LCD display and a basic numeric keypad, but that’s probably why it has a price tag of just over $21. And while it’s not specified in the press release, I have to wonder if the calculator can be used to cheat on those brain measuring math quizzes… [ PR - Test your brain age with the Sharp ‘Brain Trainer’ ] VIA [ Electricpig ]
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Sharp EL-T100W ‘Brain Trainer’ Calculator
MTV viewers who tuned into the season openers of The Hills and The City on Sept. 29 got an unexpected glimpse of another series making its debut that night. Before The Hills got under way and just after The City ended an hour later — during what would ordinarily be a commercial break — Viacom’s MTV snuck in the first episode of Valemont, a teen murder mystery set on the campus of a prestigious university of the same name, sponsored by Verizon Wireless. What’s unique about Valemont is that it’s destined not for TV, but the Web. Producers will air a small number of episodes on TV but continue the series online. In the past, most Web series have remained confined to the Web, often to support TV programming. But in a turnabout for scripted online series, Valemont is getting prime-time billing on a popular TV show before attempting to gain traction online. “We want to use on-air to promote the Web,” not the other way around, says Valemont creator Brent Friedman, who’s also the brains behind such other Web series as Afterworld and Gemini Division. Valemont, with its high-profile premiere and heavy promotion, may give a boost to a budding, scripted, Web-series industry that, in spite of notable early successes, has yet to find a sustainable way to make money. It also underscores how companies can use the gamut of media — including the Web, TV, and online social tools — to pitch brands and products to highly targeted audiences. “This really graduates the format to a new level,” says John Shea, executive vice-president for integrated marketing for MTV Networks Music and another Viacom channel, Logo. TV Towers Over Most Web Successes The Los Angeles-based Web-series industry had some early hits, including Lonelygirl15, Sorority Forever, Prom Queen, and Friedman’s ...
While we’ve covered the tech of morbidity before, what we have in the U.S. is nothing compared with the Japanese. Since burials in Tokyo can be so expensive (topping out at more than $100,000), some people have invented a more conservative yet radical solution, according to the …
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Just in time for Halloween: High-tech graveyards
PC maker Acer is adding another pair of laptops to its Windows 7 laptop lineup. The two entries are a 15.6-inch touchscreen system, called the Aspire 5738PG; and a 11.6-inch addition to the Timeline series, called the Aspire Timeline AS1810TZ. The touchscreen Aspire 5738PG has a multi-touch display …
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Acer adds a couple of new Windows 7 laptops
By Andrew Liszewski How often have you come across a gadget that was only available as an import item and thought to yourself, “hey! I could really use that, but the website selling it looks a bit sketchy and how do I even know it will work as well as they claim it does, if at all?” Such was the case with the Compact Wireless Keyboard with Touchpad we brought you a few weeks ago. A friend of mine thought the same thing when he first saw it, but since it was the exact thing he needed for his HTPC he decided $40 wasn’t that big of a loss if the thing was a total piece of crap, but it turns out it isn’t. I had a chance to play with it this past weekend, and for the most part it works rather well. It’s a bit larger than even a classic Blackberry, but it’s quite thin (as you can see below) and it’s remarkably light. The keypad has a good tactile feel to it, though the keys could be a bit easier to press, and the touchpad is as responsive as one you’d find on a laptop. There’s also an orange backlight that makes all of the keys and their labels clearly visible even with no lights on, though the secret to turning it off, without power cycling the touchpad, remains a mystery. On the bottom edge there’s a mini USB port which is used for charging its internal battery, as well as an on/off slider for preserving battery life when it’s not in use. And across the top there’s a series of blue LEDs used to indicate various functions from battery life to connection status. Now I won’t say this is the perfect solution for everyone’s HTPC ...
By Andrew Liszewski You can spend hours carving a horrific face in your pumpkin in a vain attempt to scare the neighborhood kids, but no matter what you come up with, I guarantee you won’t get results like Todd Harrison did last year. Inspired by a Make post from last Hallowe’en, Todd’s jack o’lantern looks innocent enough, until you push its small red nose. At first the eyes will start to glow, giving the button pusher a false sense of security, but a second later a set of 105 decibel car horns will blare, scaring the candy corn out of any trick-or-treaters who happened to be anywhere near his front porch. Todd’s posted a couple videos of the pumpkin ‘in action’ on his website , as well as a materials list and a brief rundown on how it all went together, in case you were hoping to create your own by the 31st. [ ToddFun.com - Super scary honking pumpkin ] VIA [ Make ]
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The Scariest Jack O’Lantern You’ll Ever See (Or Hear)
With 20 hours of video being uploaded to YouTube every minute, how does your video stand out in the crowd? In an effort to weed out those willing to pay for placement, Google announced Wednesday that it is extending its Promoted Videos program to AdWords.
Promoted Videos were launched in November 2008 as an automated tool to help content owners decide where they wanted their YouTube videos to appear. It allowed them to participate in daily online auctions for prime placement and set daily spending budgets when it came to per-click payments.
In the past year, Promoted Videos has expanded to search, the YouTube homepage, video watch pages, and across Google AdSense network - a move that Google says has increased clicks via Promoted Videos by 500 percent since January.
"Now that it's easier than ever to drive views of your video, we also wanted to make it easier to run these campaigns in the first place," Jonathan Goldman, a YouTube software engineer, wrote in a blog post. "Starting today you can buy Promoted Videos directly in AdWords."
AdWords is YouTube's search advertising engine. Adding Promoted Videos to AdWords essentially creates a one-stop shop for marketers on YouTube, Google said.
"Any AdWords advertiser with video content -- from a small business looking to promote a product, to a movie studio premiering a new trailer -- can use Promoted Videos to make sure their videos find a larger audience," Goldman wrote. "This integration will provide a single destination for your overall Google ad buy, and will give YouTube advertisers access to campaign tools in AdWords."
Google has also extended Promoted Videos to Canada, the U.K., France, Italy, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands.
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