Parental controls and the safety of children online is a hot topic at the moment, and while last week saw a confusing time when no-one was sure whether parental controls would be opt-in or opt-out for new customers at four major providers, Orange quietly announced an offer to give customers free access to controls for 12 months.
Now that I've had my iPhone 4S for a couple of days, I'm amazed with what Siri can do. I've asked a number of questions -- real ones, not questions like "What is the meaning of life?" -- and have been totally impressed with how my interaction with the iPhone has changed. But there are more things I'd love to be able to do with Siri, which is the reason for this post.
It’s been far too long since our last official release, but I’m happy to present CyanogenMod-7.1! I apologize for the long delay, and I hope to speed up our release process in the future. We originally planned to release this last weekend at the Big Android BBQ but some issues with our automated build system held it back.
You’ll find many new features and support for building on 68 devices! Upgrading from any previous CM-7 release or nightly build should be smooth and no wipe should be required.
On Tuesday, Microsoft will release eight security bulletins, two rated critical and six rated important, to fix 23 vulnerabilities. These will fix holes in Internet Explorer, .NET Framework & Silverlight, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Forefront UAG, and Microsoft Host Integration Server.
The critical patches affects all supported versions of Windows: XP, Vista and Windows 7, Windows Server 2033, 2008 and R2 (not Server Core), and all supported versions of IE, including IE 9. There's a sprinkling of patches rated important affecting all versions of Windows, too.
Mozilla has published the first beta of version 8.0 of the open source Thunderbird news and email client. Compared to previous Thunderbird version updates, the development release offers very few changes, some of which focus on add-ons. According to the Releases wiki, it will arrive in a stable production-ready form on 8 November.
L33tdawg: Don't miss HackWEEKDAY, a 24-hour hackathon to work on security tools which runs alongside the 9th annual HITBSecConf next month - applicants are still welcome with USD1337 up for grabs for the 'best' coder!
Mozilla released Firefox 7 today, and the new version of makes web browsing faster than ever. The update is especially helpful for the hardcore web junkies among us who browse with scores of open tabs and browsing sessions that span multiple days.
Firefox 7 reduces memory usage by 20 to 50 percent, which translates to quicker response times and fewer crashes. These improvements constitute the first publicly available implementation of MemShrink, Mozilla’s project focusing on decreasing Firefox’s memory consumption to make browsing faster and more stable.
Security researchers from GData, have spotted a DIY (do it yourself) botnet kit, available for sale at selected underground communities.
The DIY kit goes for sale at €10, and allows easy creation of botnets. Some of its features include:
Facebook users worried about the risk of clicking on malicious links while using the social networking service are being offered a new app web that filters friend from foe.
Available as a live beta, ShareSafe from F-Secure uses "patent-pending" technology to scan links users plan to send to friends, or do the same in reverse when links arrive from other sources. Once installed, users simply navigate to the Sharesafe page where links can be pasted for security testing.
Adobe on Wednesday patched six vulnerabilities in Flash Player, including one it admitted is already being exploited by attackers. That vulnerability, identified as CVE-2011-2444, shares some traits with an earlier Flash flaw that was used to target Gmail accounts in June.
Adobe labeled CVE-2011-2444 as a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability, a class of bugs often used by identity thieves to steal usernames and passwords from vulnerable browsers. In this case, browsers were not directly targeted; rather, attackers exploited the ubiquitous Flash Player browser plug-in.
