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Download.Com Caught Adding Malware to Nmap & Other Software
Southern writes "CNET's Download.Com is one of the most popular (currently ranked #174 worldwide by Alexa) and longest-running (been around since 1996) major sites on the Internet. As a download repository, their key value ad was that they screened software to avoid malware, spyware, ad-ware, viruses and other harmful content that certain shady software contains. Even many security experts recommended them as a safe place to download software online. Download.Com is run by CNET, which is part of the 17-billion dollar CBS media empire. Many people assumed that a major site like this wouldn't resort to unethical monetization schemes like adding spyware and other malware to their downloads.
Unfortunately, those people were wrong."
Posted by Raven on Wednesday, December 07, 2011 @ 17:01:21 EST (401 reads) (Read More... | 1748 bytes more | Score: 0)
Spammers and Medications
papamike writes "Have you ever wondered why most spammers advertise medications and send you to sites that look legit? The reason is because they are selling illegal, dangerous, and copycat products. The worst part of the scam is that they also get your credit card number, home address, email address, and possibly your phone number too. Identity theft is a big player in this counterfeit drug scam. The crooks usually get away with three things:
1. Spamming your email or website or both.
2. Profiting from your purchase of potentially life threatening medications that they have made themselves.
3. Stealing your identity.
And I'm not just talking about China, it happens in all countries including the USA. It's important to stop these spammers."
Posted by Raven on Wednesday, December 07, 2011 @ 16:58:01 EST (130 reads) ( | Score: 0)
Crypto writes "There have been several reports of sites being injected with a php-string. Typically code is inserted into several tables. From the information gathered so far it looks targeted at ASP, IIS and MSSQL backends, but that is just speculation at this time.
When discovered yesterday about 80 sites showed in Google, this morning about 200, by lunch 1000 and a few minutes ago 4000+."
Posted by Raven on Sunday, December 04, 2011 @ 10:24:11 EST (422 reads) (Read More... | 676 bytes more | Score: 0)
PHP Programming
Southern writes "PHP is a scripting language designed to fill the gap between SSI (Server Side Includes) and Perl, intended largely for the web environment. PHP has gained quite a following in recent times, and it is one of the forerunners in the Open Source software movement. Its popularity derives from its C-like syntax, and its simplicity. PHP is currently divided into two major versions: PHP 4 and PHP 5, although PHP 4 is deprecated and is no longer developed or supplied with critical bug fixes. PHP 6 is currently under development.
If you've ever been to a website that needs you to login, you've probably encountered a server-side scripting language. Due to its market saturation, this means you've probably come across PHP. PHP was designed by Rasmus Lerdorf to display his resume online and to collect data from his visitors.
Basically, PHP allows a static webpage to become dynamic. "PHP" is an acronym that stands for "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor". The word "Preprocessor" means that PHP makes changes before the HTML page is created. This enables developers to create powerful applications which can publish a blog, remotely control hardware, or run a powerful website such as Wikipedia or Wikibooks. Of course, to accomplish something such as this, you need a database application such as MySQL.
Posted by Raven on Monday, November 21, 2011 @ 00:32:15 EST (185 reads) ( | Score: 0)
28 Coolest Firefox About:Config Tricks
Southern writes "You may have installed countless add-on in Firefox to enhance your using experience, but if you want to get the most out of Firefox, you really have to hack your way into the about:config.
The about:config page contains most (if not, all) of Firefox configuration options. It is so far the most effective, and the most powerful way to tweak and enhance your Firefox performance. Here are 28 of the popular tweaks.
Posted by Raven on Monday, November 21, 2011 @ 00:30:04 EST (422 reads) ( | Score: 0)
10+ Best Firefox Security and Privacy Addons
Southern writes "Security and privacy are some of the major concerns these days while choosing a web browser to use. So much so that all the major players in the “browser wars” are providing or developing a private browsing mode.
Firefox with the myraid of add-ons that it has to offer is never far from action. Here are some of the top Firefox security and privacy addons that you should install for safer browsing.
Posted by Raven on Monday, November 21, 2011 @ 00:28:15 EST (377 reads) ( | Score: 0)
How to Launch Firefox Instantly?
Southern writes "Does your Firefox take too much time to load? By loading we mean that it takes a lot of time to open when you click the Firefox button. Now the question arises; how to launch Firefox instantly?
Bradblogging.com has shared a very useful tip that enables you to launch Firefox completely with in 3-5 seconds, instead of 15-20 seconds in our case.
Simple hover to this page, where you will find a .exe file.
Download that file.
Install it on your computer.
Enjoy!
Basically, it is a Firefox Preloader that is designed to load parts of Mozilla Firefox into memory before it is used to improve the its start up time.
Note: Do note that it will work more efficiently on systems with a bigger RAM.
Posted by Raven on Thursday, November 10, 2011 @ 01:33:05 EST (244 reads) ( | Score: 0)
Outsmarted: Captcha security not much of a gotcha
Southern writes "A team of Stanford University researchers has bad news to report about Captchas, those often unreadable, always annoying distorted letters that you're required to type in at many a Web site to prove that you're really a human.
Many Captchas don't work well at all. More precisely, the researchers invented a standard way to decode those irksome letters and numbers found in Captchas on many major Web sites, including Visa's Authorize.net, Blizzard, eBay, and Wikipedia.
This chart shows how successful Decaptcha was in decoding each Web site's anti-bot mechanism. The column marked "precision" shows the success rate.
This chart shows how successful Decaptcha was in decoding each Web site's anti-bot mechanism. The column labeled "precision" shows the success rate.
Their decoding technique borrows concepts from the field of machine vision, which has developed techniques to control robots by removing noise from images and detecting shapes. The Stanford tool, called Decaptcha, uses these algorithms to clean up the image so it can be split into more readily recognized letters and numbers.
"Most Captchas are designed without proper testing and no usability testing," Elie Bursztein, 31, a postdoctoral researcher at the Stanford Security Laboratory, told CNET yesterday. "We hope our work will push people to be more rigorous in their approach in Captcha design." Captcha stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.
Posted by Raven on Thursday, November 10, 2011 @ 01:31:03 EST (170 reads) ( | Score: 0)
Firefox Tweak Guide
Southern writes "Author: Koroush Ghazi
Last Modified: September 2011
Introduction
Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox for short, is just a free Internet browser. It's not a cure for cancer. It doesn't wash your car or make you a frothy coffee. Why all the fuss and hype over Firefox? In a nutshell, the reason is simple: Firefox is a true open source competitor to Microsoft's Internet Explorer; a dynamic and evolving browser which is constantly gaining new features that make browsing the Internet easier, safer and more enjoyable. Most importantly, Firefox is the most customizable browser available today.