Software-Programming

Security researchers have discovered a vulnerability in a top DDoS attack tool that provides a handy means to neutralise onslaughts.

The Dirt Jumper Distributed-Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Toolkit is one of the most popular attack tools available. It was deployed in a digital siege against security news website KrebsonSecurity.com among many, many other victims in recent months. The weapon works by instructing an army of compromised computers to flood a website with traffic until legitimate visitors are unable to connect.

Oracle announced on Tuesday that it will start offering direct downloads and auto-updates to Java on OS X beginning with the release of Java Standard Edition 7 Update 6. Users can download the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) directly from Oracle's java.com website "soon," according to Oracle, and will receive auto-updates at the same time as Windows, Linux, and Solaris platforms.

Google has open sourced a tool called Leak Finder which is designed to help developers find memory leaks in JavaScript programs. The tool was written by two members of Google's Chrome team in Munich and takes the form of a Python script which takes advantage of Chrome's Remote Inspection Protocol to scan heap snapshots of applications.

Oracle has announced a further extension to Java 6's already extended end of life date. Originally planned for July 2012, Oracle had previously pushed back the end-of-life date for supplying updates to Java 6 to November 2012 to allow more time for the transition to Java 7. Now, that end of life has been postponed until February 2013. The announcement was made in a blog post by Henrik Stahl, Oracle's Senior Director of Product Management, who said the decision was made after "further consultation and consideration".

HP has released the source code of the webOS platform’s core application stack. The company also opened the code of Luna, the webOS System Manager. The code is available for download from the GitHub project hosting site. The latest code drop was announced this week in a blog entry. Alongside details about the latest code, HP also discussed the roadmap of the Open webOS project.

Google today released Chrome 21. On the security side, the new version fixes 15 vulnerabilities: one critical flaw, six high-severity flaws, five medium-severity flaws, and three low-severity flaws. You can update to the latest version using the software's built-in silent updater, or you can download the latest version of Chrome directly from google.com/chrome.

Windows 8's browser, Internet Explorer 10, leads a double life. You can run it in Metro, and it can also be run in the traditional Windows desktop view. Underneath, however, both use the same rendering engine. This engine has been considerably improved, in terms of both its speed and support for new web technologies such as HTML5 and CSS3. Maybe even more significantly, IE10 isn't just the browser for Windows 8, it actually becomes the underlying engine which powers Metro style applications that use HTML5 and JavaScript.

ITProPortal recently attended the launch of the mobile phone application for the blind, called Georgie. This is an overlay to the Google Android operating system. It has been designed to help the day-to-day life of the two million people in the UK that live with sight loss.

The app runs on Android 2.2 Foyo, 2.3 Gingerbread and 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. It enables the visually impaired to do things that many of us take for granted. These include easily finding out where you are, reading printed text, catching buses, using Twitter and even taking a picture.

Wanted: 12 programmers to live on a remote tropical island for two months to do nothing but write code. Applicants are being sought for the coding jamboree that will take place on an as yet un-named island.

Those applying will have to submit a proposal explaining what they will work on during the hackathon. They will also have to complete a psychological evaluation to show they can live in harmony with other coders for the duration of the event.

Alongside the release of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion earlier today, Apple has published version 6.0 of its Safari web browser for OS X 10.7 Lion, adding a number of new features and closing numerous security holes. According to the company, the major update addresses more than 120 vulnerabilities found in the previous 5.x branch. Among the holes closed are problems in the handling of feed:// URLs could have led to cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks or users' files being sent to a remote server.