Posts filed under 'Online Life'
WikiPedia, the collaborative encyclopaedia has been attacked by spammers attempting to spread malware.
A page was created on the German version of WikiPedia linking to a fake fix for a new version of the Blaster worm, which affected over 50,000 Windows computers in the summer of 2003.
Fortunately action was taken by WikiPedia and its less nefarious editors to remove the page, but not before the spammers had sent out an email, claiming to be from WikiPedia, suggesting readers should go and download the fix.
“The good news is that the authorities at Wikipedia quickly identitifed and edited the article on their site,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. “Unfortunately, however, the previous version of the page was still present in the archive and was continuing to point to malicious code. The hackers were thus able to send out spam pointing people to the page on Wikipedia, and try and lead them into infection.”
That archived page has now also been killed, meaning that the incident is hopefully over. However, this has yet again illustrated the vulnerability of user-edited content on the web. WikiPedia content has in the past been rewritten by users attempting to massage the truth by covering up a dodgy past history, or trying to create one for a rival.
November 6th, 2006
In a move that will surprise few, Google has purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion in a stock-for-stock transaction. However, the statement announcing the acquisition made it clear that the video sharing website will continue to operate independently.
“The YouTube team has built an exciting and powerful media platform that complements Google’s mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” said Eric Schmidt, Chief Executive Officer of Google. “Our companies share similar values; we both always put our users first and are committed to innovating to improve their experience. Together, we are natural partners to offer a compelling media entertainment service to users, content owners and advertisers.”
The question naturally arises as to how Google will integrate YouTube into its search results and whether the company was purchased as a revenue generator in its own right, or as a conduit into its millions of users, its technology, or its video library. Crucially the statement makes mention of Google’s massive advertiser base, suggesting that it has plans to improve on the monetization of its new toy.
There will be no job losses from YouTube in the immediate future.
October 9th, 2006
In what must be one of the most tedious hoaxes of all time, Mischa Spiegelmock, who earlier this week demonstrated what he claimed was an exploit in the Mozilla Firefox web browser, has admitted that the hack does not exist. In fact, the claim made by his co-speaker, Andrew Wbeelsoi, to have 30 other undisclosed exploits was also a load of porky-pies.
“We mentioned that there was a previously known Firefox vulnerability that could result in a stack overflow ending up in remote code execution,” wrote Spiegelmock in a message published on the Mozilla website. “However, the code we presented did not in fact do this, and I personally have not gotten it to result in code execution, nor do I know of anyone who has.
“I do not have 30 undisclosed Firefox vulnerabilities, nor did I ever make this claim. I have no undisclosed Firefox vulnerabilities,” he added.
So that’s clear then. Someone has been wasting Mozilla’s time, which is probably fairly limited already with the imminent release of Firefox 2 RC2. What was the purpose behind these false claims?
Apparently “humour”, but it’s hard to believe how a bunch of security experts and hackers, who had spent the day watching demonstrations of real exploits in software, would find a fake demo particularly funny. So, perhaps, “fame” was a more likely explaination? Well, they’ve acheived that now, at least in the limited circles in which they operate, but as for converting that fame to something tangible like cash…that seems rather unlikely in the light of this admission.
October 4th, 2006
It seems that Microsoft is not relying on positive press alone to persuade users to download and install the new IE7 web browser when it is released. Instead the software giant will offer the browser as part of its Windows XP Autoupdate facility. However, somewhat surprisingly given past history, Microsoft will stop short of forcing users to upgrade, offering them the option to Install, Don’t Install or Ask me Later.
Microsoft promises that clicking the Don’t Install button will stop users from receiving any future prompts to upgrade to IE7. They will also provide a Blocker Toolkit for enterprise customers who may want to block automatic delivery of IE7; this blocker has no expiration date.
The planned release date falls in the fourth quarter of 2006, although an exact date has not yet been announced.
The new information about Microsoft’s plans for IE7 delivery was revealed in Tony Chor’s IEBlog on MSDN.
July 27th, 2006
If you have never put your dog into a boarding kennel before, or perhaps you are unhappy with your existing kennel, then you must wonder how to choose the best accommodation possible. For the first time UK dog owners can easily share information about boarding kennels in their area thanks to new website – www.rateakennel.co.uk.
“I always agonised about where to send my dogs,” admits site owner Jay Neill. “A preliminary visit can help settle some of the concerns, but what I really wanted to hear were testimonials from other dog owners who had used that kennel.”
“RateaKennel.co.uk is unlike other dog kennel directories on the web in that it allows owners to rate and review kennels that they have used, passing that information on to other concerned dog lovers.”
Dog owners can rate a kennel using four key criteria – cleanliness, friendliness, value and dog stimulation. They can also write a short review, giving other owners the opportunity to learn why they love a kennel, or why they would never use it again.
“I wish that a website like RateaKennel.co.uk had been around several years ago,” says Jay. “It might have prevented an unpleasant experience for my older dog if I had been forewarned about one of the kennels I’ve tried.”
Posters on popular discussion forum www.UnderstandingAnimals.com seem to love the idea. “What a fantastic idea, I’m shocked it’s not been done before as it’s such a good thing to do,” said one poster from Brighton.
Overseas members are just as enthusiastic, albeit frustrated. “What a fantastic idea! Wish you could do this for Australia!” said a poster from down under. “That is a cool idea and it would be great if we could do New Zealand as well,” wrote another.
July 26th, 2006
If the UK is any indication, the mobile industry is still flailing around at the bottom of the all-media league table when it comes to live sports coverage.
The content teams from all five UK mobile operators were dramatically out-performed last night by the old-fashioned Internet, delivering news of Peter Crouch’s late header as many as five minutes later than the free alert sent to mobile users by FIFA and Yahoo. The UK operators were put to the test by Argogroup, the specialist in mobile user experience testing, before, during and after England’s World Cup match against Trinidad & Tobago. The results were less than thrilling for mobile industry watchers. Of the five operators, 3 remained the best all-round performer when in 3G coverage, Orange performed consistently if unspectacularly while T-Mobile performed well on SMS alerts - even adding commentary to the raw score line alert - but with delays on picture and video alerts, some of which would not download at all or were delivered in the wrong order.
Argogroup Test Highlights
* Lacking Pace - News of Crouch’s goal reached users of FIFA’s free alert service in just over two minutes compared with the four-operator average of 3.95 minutes. The fifth operator failed the test entirely as users could not sign up for the alerts due to portal errors.
* Relegation Zone - The worst-performing operator took a full 7.3 minutes to deliver the Crouch goal alert - and charged 12p for the service.
* Failed to equalize - Users awaiting news of Steven Gerrard’s second goal fared no better. FIFA/Yahoo delivered the SMS alert in 73 seconds, while the operators, on average, took 4.1 minutes. The worst performer made the sluggish Ronaldo look like Thierry Henry, taking over eight minutes to deliver the alert.
* 3G long shot goes wide - One operator’s 3G portal performance disappointed fans who happened to be out of 3G coverage as its portal reverted to a sports-free zone.
* Red card - The worst-performing operator was on average three times slower than the pack, sending the team line-ups to sports fans 44 minutes after kick-off. Its SMS goal alert was seven times slower than FIFA’s, arriving long after other operators had delivered an edited video clip of the goal. The good news - at least there was no ‘Mr Men’ promotion showing during the match this time! The test was the second to be run by Argogroup, with results that mirrored those for England’s first game against Paraguay last Saturday.
“Clearly, our industry has a long way to go if we want to be seen as a serious provider of sports coverage,” said James Pearce, Argogroup CTO, “Operators have proven (with the FIFA alerts) that they can deliver 160 characters in a timely manner. What they failed to show is that they can add value by delivering their own content faster than, say, the average newspaper.”
Argogroup will continue to monitor the performance of the mobile operators as the World Cup progresses.
“This is hugely important to everyone in the industry,” says David Frodsham, Argogroup CEO, “Our collective future rests on our ability to be credible content players. We believe that active testing can help operators get it right - but first we must all admit we’re getting it wrong.”
Argogroup plans to continue testing throughout the World Cup.
June 16th, 2006
Google has rolled out its online calendar tool which is available free to all users with a Google account.
The calendar can be accessed at www.google.com/calendar, although at the time of writing the service was suffering a lot of interruptions, presumably because of the interest generated by the launch.
It has a feature list roughly in line with what you would expect from a desktop-based calendar, including drag and drop and the ability to view your diary as a day, week, a month or, bizarrely, the next four days. It’s a thoroughly impressive piece of coding and it’s easy to forget that you aren’t using a software calendar.
Being Google, the calendar is tightly integrated with their other services including Gmail. In fact you can create entries directly from dates mentioned in Gmail emails.
The calendar can be exported to Microsoft Outlook if you decide to return to the dark side and you can import your messages in from other major calendar tools if you just want to give it a try. If you like you can create separate diaries, allowing you to keep work and home apart, but this seems like a slightly redundant feature to TechSmec.com. If you need to be reminded of things going on in your life you can elect to be notified of events via email, or if you are in the USA, via SMS.
This is not an obvious progression for Google, but it is certainly one which should shake up the market. Microsoft and Yahoo will be watching with interest.
April 13th, 2006
Databarracks today announced the release of BuddyBackup a completely
free online backup service. BuddyBackup is free software, which allows
computer users to backup data to friends’, family or colleagues’
computers securely across the internet. BuddyBackup allows computer
users to backup files, photos, music or virtually any computer data to
be securely and remotely backed up with no charge at all.
As with normal paid services, BuddyBackup can keep multiple copies of
important data securely and remotely on any Windows XP based machine.
Data is encrypted and compressed before being sent over the internet and
can only be viewed by the user whose data it is. BuddyBackup even keeps
multiple versions of data allowing users to retrieve an older version of
a file.
“We see this as a revolution in the online backup industry; by using the
power of grid storage or basically utilising the amount of free space on
computer hard drives, we can offer a service which is completely free”
Peter Groucutt, Databarracks Managing Director commented earlier today.
The software is available to anyone to download and should be
particularly popular with home users and students who have important
data to backup, but to whom a commercial online backup solution is
unaffordable.
“We are bracing ourselves for uptake in pretty large numbers; the
service should be incredibly popular. We have added a forum to the
BuddyBackup site so that even people who do not know anyone to whom they
could backup can meet other Buddies from around the world and share
space.”
BuddyBackup is a free online backup utility from Databarracks, one of
the worlds’ leading online backup companies. Databarracks is based in
Waterloo in London, and serves customers small and large from New
Zealand to New York and throughout the UK.
Databarracks has online backup solutions to suit all budgets and
requirements from home users, using our Boomerang Backup Service, home
and small office users through DBVault and large corporate customers
through our Arxcis and bespoke backup solutions.
Databarracks also runs the SmartBackup service for PC World, the U.K.’s
largest PC retailer.
To find out more information about BuddyBackup go to:
www.buddybackup.com
April 10th, 2006
Microsoft has deemed the recently exploited ‘createTextRange’ flaw in Internet Explorer as critical, but calls use of flaw ‘limited’. As a result the company has announced that they won’t be releasing a patch until the scheduled April 11 day for Windows updates.
The company who discovered the exploit, eEye Digital Security, thinks that the flaw is too important to be allowed to be left unpatched for two weeks, so they’ve taken matters into their own hands and released a fix. eEye’s patch, which is available free of charge, will automatically remove itself when Microsoft’s official patch is delivered. “That’s a long time to leave several million Windows users without any sort of protection,” said Marc Maiffret, eEye’s chief hacking officer (sounds like a joke job title, but we kid you not!).
The exploit is used by hackers who trick users into visiting websites containing malicious code. Microsoft said that the exploit is disabled by turning off Active Scripting.
March 28th, 2006
Google has banned the German BMW website from its search index after allegedly discovering that the site was using techniques to artificially improve its positions in the Google search results.
The search engine has always been quite tough on smaller websites using ’spamming’ technique to improve their rankings, but this is the first known time that a big corporation has fallen foul of the Google police.
The technique used by BMW was to include hidden text on a page designed to be seen by search engine spiders that contained phrases that are popular searches, but not strictly relevant to BMW website users such as ‘Used Cars’. Human visitors to the website would not see the ‘doorway’ page and would get the real BMW.de content.
For the record, BMW is denying that it has done anything wrong and predicts that it will be reinstated shortly.
February 7th, 2006
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