The latest version of OpenOffice fixes several vulnerabilities that could cause a computer to become compromised by a remote attacker. OpenOffice.org has issued version 3.2, which adds a lengthy list of new features and improves the suite's overall performance while also fixing six vulnerabilities.
If you’ve ever wondered about the flow of your mouse around your computer screen, a free downloadable application, called “mouse pointer track,” can help you follow these esoteric movements and turn them into a fascinating blur between art and information.
The simple application was developed by Anatoly Zenkov, a Russian graphic designer and programmer, and has been downloaded tens of thousands of times since he first released it in late January this year. The software runs on any Macintosh or Windows computer and tracks every movement and click of your mouse.
Opera Software's beta of Opera 10.5 leapfrogged every rival to become the world's fastest browser, benchmark tests show. Released on Thursday and powered by a new JavaScript engine, Opera 10.5 beat all comers to easily take the top speed spot.
As expected, Adobe today released an emergency update that patched a pair of critical vulnerabilities in its popular PDF viewing and editing software. Adobe ranked both bugs as critical.
Last Thursday Adobe said it would issue a rush patch for Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat on Feb. 16; it made good on the promise today by addressing two flaws. One was identical to the cross-domain request vulnerability fixed last week in Flash Player, Adobe's ubiquitous media player, while the second was a vulnerability that attackers could exploit to install malware on a targeted machine.
Adobe says it is still on track to launch the latest version of its Flash Player for smart phones in the first half of the year.
Adobe Systems Inc. was planning to demonstrate Flash 10.1 at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona, Spain, this week.
Flash is used to play Web videos and games. Mobile systems that will work with the full Flash Player include the BlackBerry, Google's Android, Palm's WebOS, Windows Mobile and Symbian, used on Nokia's smart phones. The San Jose, Calif. company says Flash 10.1 will also work on many tablet-style computers.
Barely a month after Adobe issued a fix to mend a critical flaw in its Reader and Acrobat products, the company has been forced to rush out another owing to a serious bug in its Flash Player, which received a patch yesterday.
Adobe said in a security bulletin that the vulnerability, identified in Adobe Flash Player version 10.0.42.34 and earlier, could be used by attackers to trick a web browser into executing code remotely.
The enterprise has long favored Java and .Net, but PHP and other dynamic programming languages have left their infancies and are rapidly closing the gap on their more stodgy competitors.
That's the message I got from Bart Copeland, CEO of ActiveState, the "dynamic languages company," in a conversation this past week. I wanted to find out how the Vancouver-based "old school" open-source company is faring in building business solutions and developer tools around Perl, Python and Tcl.
Security vendor HBGary has released a free software tool that can remove "Aurora" malware, linked to corporate espionage at more than 30 companies.
Called the Aurora Inoculation Shot, this utility will remotely scan Windows machines over the network for signs of Aurora and can remove the malicious software as well. It uses the Windows Management Instrumentation services to carry out the inoculation.
Mozilla Corp. today acknowledged that it had falsely accused a developer of infecting a Firefox add-on with attack code.
The admission came a week after Mozilla announced that a pair of add-ons, Sothink Web Video Downloader 4.0 and Master Filer, had slipped through its security check-in. According to the company, both were infected with Trojan horses designed to hijack Windows PCs. Mozilla removed both extensions from its official add-on download site.
Every few months I make a pilgrimage to the Sysinternals website to look at its superb collection of tools. It’s now hosted inside the Microsoft Technet monster since its authors joined Microsoft as employees some while ago, but the value of their site is still as strong as ever and the tools are now guaranteed not to be ignored or left to rust.
