Surprise…. The AP is reporting that the music industry is suing limewire. There are several companies involved and they’re seeking compensatory and punitive damages. They argue that limewire encourages and has used the infringement of copyright to “build their business”.
Category: General Web/Tech
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Targetting the OS is old hat….
The Register sums up the Black Hat briefings pretty well. The Operating System level has received a lot of scrutiny in recent years for security flaws and as a result there has been a good deal of improvement there and so now, researchers are heading to the low hanging fruit of the REST of the software stack, be it the drivers, or browsers, or office software. Another area of software were those class of programs that run checking for updates for OTHER software. It’s time to realize that most ANY piece of software could compromise system security and updates need to be expected for most any part of the “software stack”.
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Workfriendly links?
I saw this by way of SunbeltBLog yesterday…. workfriendly.net…. you basically enter a web address and choose which “microsoft office theme” you want to use and the page is presented as if it was just a text document (backgrounds/images seem to be stripped) in Word. (Complete with toolbars…) Links still work. Some people have a lot of time on their hands….
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Security Tip a day for August
SANS has an answer to last months browser vulnerability a day blog… for August they’ll present a security tip a day. So, if you haven’t visited the handlers diary, this may be a good time to “tune in”. The first one has to do with strong passwords (I think they decided they may as well get that out of the way up front….)
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Bleeding Snort caution
For those of you that aren’t aware…. Bleeding Snort is a collection of “bleeding edge” snort signatures. Snort is an intrusion detection framework. This note is by way of SARC that the bleedingsnort.org domain is now no longer under their control. bleedingsnort.com is and continues to be their official domain. Unfortunately it appears as though the .org address may now be used as a host for malware. (It’s at least currently serving up ads to leech off the mistaken traffic.) SOOOO…. bottom line – bleedingsnort.com is the official site for the Bleeding Edge Snort project. More details here.
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Fun with Voice Recognition
Lately, I’ve tried to make use of my phone’s voice command system for calls. I’ve had a couple long drives and used a headset and tried to do something that works better without the headset…. “Name Dial”…. “please say the number” (sigh…) “1234567” “did you say 3225467?” “NO” “did you say 3225468?” “NO!” 5 miles later….. for the 5th time…. “Name dial”…. “please say the name” (finally…) It reminded me quite well of using what was a demonstration program from Microsoft that would type as you dictate. Ah, fabulous, science fiction meets reality. I tested and, it was, PAINFUL to use. “Now is the time…. no delete word no…. don’t type that.. no you stupid. NO stop. delete… not oh….” Well, it’s reassuring to see that Microsoft has problems with using Voice Dictation too. The video is hosted at Google videos and is a “demonstration” of voice recognition technology.
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Google news – infinite storage????
Well after a bit of a roundup of some of the security news items the last week, it’s time to sum up the Google front…. Googling Google tells us that Infinite storage is on the horizon…. they cite a translator that has done work for google. He has been asked to translate “The result?… from today we are starting our infinite storage plan” Now, they surmise that this could be related to the “platypus” project which has been known as gdrive which appears to be an online file synchronization/backup solution. It could be and would certainly be interesting. However, it could be a gmail upgrade for that matter.
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The Spam fight turns to blogs….
I’ve detailed some of the struggles I had for a bit with FLOODS of comment spam. Details of the issue and a fix which has been rock solid for WordPress can be found in the following posts (reverse chronological order): Update on comment spam storms, trackback spam countermeasures such as akismet and trackback validation, another trackback storm, botnets spreading trackback spam?, Initial trackback storm. To sum up though, I’ve found 2 plugins to make for a rock solid combination here in wordpress. Akismet (which caught 99% or so of trackback spam) and The trackback validator plugin which caught everything else. (99% sounds good, but when you’re getting thousands of attempts a day?)
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VMWare server 1.0 final release
I’ve been keeping an install of Vmware virtual Server through their beta and Release Candidate phase and have seen several places that they’ve released the 1.0 version today. This release is free (as in no charge.) Although support is available….
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Google Maps upgrade
I’ve seen a couple places referring to some improvements in the way google maps handles zooming and so I decided to take a look in Firefox. The zoom handling of Google maps is the one thing that I’ve wished for an improvement in for some time. After noticing MSN’s virtual earth had the capability of scroll wheel zooming, I really wanted it in Google Maps.