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'SMSZombie' Trojan infects 500,000 Chinese Android users

posted onAugust 22, 2012
by l33tdawg

Reports have emerged from China of an ingenious new backdoor Android malware attack that has infected hundreds of thousands of subscribers and can prove difficult to de-install without technical support.

Dubbed Trojan!SMSZombie.A - 'SMSZombie' for short - by one of the companies reporting on it, the malware is said to have spread through the largest Chinese Android marketplace, GFan, piggybacking itself as a back door on the back of porn-themed wallpaper apps.

Apple v. Samsung lawyers wage final battles over complex, 22-page jury form

posted onAugust 21, 2012
by l33tdawg

It was mostly a civil day, by the standards of this trial—but that might just be because both sides are so tired, and because the jury isn't around to watch. Apple and Samsung attorneys fired off their final concerns about the jury instructions and the jury verdict form to US District Judge Lucy Koh today, less than 24 hours before the case heads to a jury.

Google penalizes piracy via search engine ranking

posted onAugust 13, 2012
by l33tdawg

In an effort to direct web traffic toward sites with legitimate content, Google launched a new policy this week that will punish copyright infringers with less-than-desired search rankings.

The policy dictates that websites with a high number of valid copyright-removal notices will be pushed down on Google's search results, Amit Singhal, Google's senior vice president of engineering, said in a blog post on the policy Friday.

Version 22 of Chrome delivers more secure Flash support in Windows

posted onAugust 10, 2012
by l33tdawg

Google has released version 22 of their popular Chrome web browser and while it doesn’t come with a huge list of changes, there are a couple of features to get excited about if you are concerned with security. Google has infused Chrome with the fully hardware-accelerated Pepper Flash plug-in for Windows users, resulting in what has been described as unrivalled protection against malicious Flash apps found lurking on the Internet.

Firefox continues to gain as Internet Explorer, Chrome slide

posted onAugust 2, 2012
by l33tdawg

Firefox is still fighting back. After dipping below 20 percent share in May, it looked like the browser was sure to relinquish its silver medal position to Chrome. June saw a surprise turnaround and that's continued into July.

Internet Explorer stays in gold with a 53.90 percent share of the desktop market, down 0.10 point from June. Firefox is up 0.14 points to 20.2 percent. Chrome picks up the bronze with an 18.9 percent share, down 0.18 points from a month ago. Safari is up 0.17 points to 4.90 percent, and Opera essentially unchanged, down 0.01 points to 1.59 percent.

Google Chrome 21 is out

posted onAugust 1, 2012
by l33tdawg

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.

Researchers find way to "bounce" malware into Google app store

posted onJuly 26, 2012
by l33tdawg

Two researchers demonstrated how they were able to push a malicious information-stealing app onto Google Play, even while Google's Bouncer custom malware scanner is watching.

They circumvented Bouncer, an automated scanner, with a JavaScript trick that transformed a benign Android app into a malicious one on Google Play, Nicholas Percoco, head of Trustwave Spider Labs, told attendees at Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday.

Google to YouTube Users: Don't Be Evil

posted onJuly 25, 2012
by l33tdawg

Google is trying to clean up the Web, one comment at a time. Earlier this week it introduced a new feature designed to drain the online cesspool better known as YouTube comments.

YouTube has long been the repository of anonymous, illiterate, hateful, and just plain brain-dead comments since its inception. Now Google is trying to gently urge people to post videos and comments using their real names -- more specifically, their Google+ identities -- in the quaint notion that if people are held accountable by name, they might possibly act a little less like jerks. Maybe.

Jon Oberheide says latest Android will be "pretty hard" to exploit

posted onJuly 17, 2012
by l33tdawg

In an analysis published Monday, security researcher Jon Oberheide said Android version 4.1, aka Jelly Bean, is the first version of the Google-developed OS to properly implement a protection known as address space layout randomization. ASLR, as it's more often referred to, randomizes the memory locations for the library, stack, heap, and most other OS data structures. As a result, hackers who exploit memory corruption bugs that inevitably crop up in complex pieces of code are unable to know in advance where their malicious payloads will be loaded.