Mar 10
First there was black-and-white TV. Then along came color TV. Then came HDTV. And now 3D HDTV. The movie Avatar (which I was thought it was Disney's Pocahantes and the move Titanic, except with better special effects) was the reason why this idea went from concept to reality so quickly.
How does it work? Well, you still have to wear those funny polarized glasses. So it works the same way as it does in the theater. The reason why new TV's are required is because the HDMI cable standard, which is the cable that send boths audio and video to the HDTV, had to be updated. You are going to also need to buy a new 3D Blu-Ray player. (However, the Playstation 3 may be able to support the new 3D movies. Emphasis on may right now.)
Information is hard to get about it right now. But expect to see 3D HDTV's on the shelf soon. And expect to pay double that of regular HDTV's.
Mar 9
Security researchers were able to trick 8,000 people into downloading a program that could contain malware onto their smart phone. The bait was a seemingly innocent weather application. This study was meant to bring to light how cybercriminals trick people into downloading their malware. The program itself was clean, but the creators had a version that was a trojan horse program. The fact is, the weakest part of any computer security is the end-user.
Once again, one of the best ways to fight viruses and malware is to never assume everyone on the internet is your friend. Just because it is free does not mean it is safe. A common way for malware to install is to trick the user into installing something else because that bypasses all security. In fact, the two most common ways to distrubute viruses and malware is through social engineering tricks (like this one) and by poisoning websites. Social engineering tricks are very common with email where the user is tricked into clicking on a link. But tricking people into downloading a program is also heavily used.
Links related to this study:
Mar 3
Good news today. The owners of one of the largest botnets were
arrested, effectively shutting it down. When cybercriminals want to do
their dirty work, they use a botnet. For those that don't know, a botnet
is a collection of computers that have a small program on it called a
bot (which is short for robot) whose sole purpose is to carry out
instructions of the owner of the botnet. This allows cybercriminals to
cover their tracks while at the same time increase the scope of their
attacks. The really nasty ones clean your computer of viruses and
malware and keep it clean so that you never know you are infected.
Botnets send spam, carry out internet attacks, steal financial details
by various methods, or a combination of those three. On March 2, the
three owners of this botnet were arrested in Spain.
This botnet was called Mariposa, which is butterfly in English. They
had an estimated 12.7 million PC's infected. This botnet was used to
steal credit card information and banking credientals. The three
unidentified botnet owners kept a low profile. But they made a few
careless mistakes that enabled police to track them down. The key that
led to their downfall was revenge. The botnet was partially blocked and
one of the cybercriminals used his personal internet connection to stage
a counter-attack.
Read more...
Mar 2
Suppose you were browsing the internet of your cell phone as you are walking down a street. As you pass a store, the ad you see on your phone is for that store you just passed. Such technology is already available, but on February 23, 2010 Google was awarded the patent for the idea. It is patent number 7668832.
The paranoid out there may wish to avoid such ads. You can. Many cell phones today have GPS built-in. You can turn the GPS off. Your general location can be determined using the location of the nearest cell phone tower. But the only thing that will be known is that you are somewhere in range of that tower. An exact location is impossible. A cell phone's location can be computer using triangulation, but is not something a cell phone can do. You need at least 3 towers for that, but a cell phone locks in to one tower. So if you turn off your phone's GPS antenna, you will not get ads targeted to where you are at right now, such as in the situation above.
Your general location can also be determined by the information that is required for the internet to work. This cannot be connected to the physical location of the internet connection without your ISP's permission. That is likely not to happen. Still, ads can at least know a general location. I've already seen ads that talked about deals in Raleigh (although Raleigh is 45 minutes away). With this patent, all such ads will now have to pay royalties to Google or stop determining your general location. There is really little you can do about that.
Mar 1
There is a virus circulating the internet that infects, not your computer, but your router. The advantage of infecting a router is that every computer connected through that router can be attacked. In one scenario, when you browse the internet, the virus in the router redirects that request to a site loaded with viruses and malware in an attempt to infect that computer. A virus in the router can also carry out remote attacks without a computer and thus someone becomes unknowingly becomes part of a botnet. A botnet is a collection of devices connected to the internet which is used to carry out the requests of the botnet owner. These requests are usually to make a coordinated attack on other computers or to send out massive amounts of spam. A botnet is created to make it harder to prosecute someone.
The current virus circulating is called the Chuck Norris virus. It is called this because the code of the virus has a comment in it that says "in the name of Chuck Norris", but in Italian. This virus attacks routers that are based on Linux, such as the Linksys WRT54GL. What it does is attempt to guess the password. This virus can also infect certain D-Link routers. Another router virus is called Psyb0t.
So how do you get rid of this virus? The fix is amazingly simple. Unplug your router and plug it back in. Problem solved. This Chuck Norris virus cannot modify the software used by the routers, so it has to reside in the router's memory. Unplugging the router clears the memory and thus clears the virus. However, expect future router viruses to be able to modify the router's software. In that case, a factory reset should clear the virus. In the worst case scenario, you will have to connect a computer directly to your cable, DSL, or satellite modem and download the latest firmware for the router. Then you will need to connect back to the router and install the firmware. In all situations, the fix is a lot quicker than on a computer.
To protect yourself from such attacks, always change your router's password and never use a simple password. Always secure your Wi-Fi connection with a password. Never assume you are safe. Test your password with Microsoft's strong password checker.
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