No doubt you’ve run into online verification procedures for processing payments…After making a purchase, retailers redirect customers to a page with a Verified by Visa or MasterCard SecureCode form, into which they are required to enter characters from their password to verify their purchase…and the consequences when these sites are hacked. These passwords are a true pain and are difficult to remember. Consumers generally hate these systems. There are big changes coming, and whe...
ID’s on vacation…so here are the picks from the past week in skinning! There was a glitch – hope the urls accompany the thumbs.
Today the president (on the White House website http://www.whitehouse.gov/ ) called upon the FCC to guard the openness of the internet and prevent the creation of “fast and slow lanes”. The full video and the full text of the speech are at the link above after clicking on “learn more”. Essentially the president is suggesting a reclassification of the internet as a utility. Essentially He’s advocating: “The rules I am asking for are simple, c...
Long suspected as much. Not only do you pay more, you get slower speeds, as well. The New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute, compared Internet service in the US: Kansas City, Missouri (pop. 467,000), San Francisco and Bristol, Virginia (pop. 17,835) -- with large European and Asian metropolises, including London, Seoul, Paris, Tokyo, and Copenhagen. You can view the report here: http://www.newamerica.org/downloads/OTI_The_Cost_of_Connectivity_2014.pdf While t...
This device works through a Windows phone. It uses location and a network of info beacons in cities to determine location and routes to use in getting from one place to another. The device was developed with the charity "Guide Dogs" and it's available in Britain only at this point. Another interesting feature is that instead of using earbuds, it uses bone conduction through the jaw to relay information, thus not compromising the users ears to hear what's going o...
This Tuesday’s release will have (at this point) 16 updates, 5 ‘critical’ (to prevent remote code execution) and 9 ‘important’. It’s a big one as far as 2014 is concerned, and will have a reboot. “Microsoft will patch all supported versions of its IE browser, from the almost-retired IE6 on Windows Server 2003 to the newest IE11. The fix for IE on Windows' client editions -- Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8/8.1 -- was ra...
A team of Israeli scientists (Prof. Danny Porath, along with Prof. Alexander Kotlyar) have engineered a huge development. This is 4 stranded DNA along which an electric charge can be passed. This was published in Nature Nanotechnology this week. This will pave the way for molecular computers which will be smaller, more sophisticated and cheaper. The four-stranded DNA can conduct up to more than 100 picoamperes of electricity up to more than 100 nanometers, 10 times further than ...
This launcher is a suite with 150 outstanding (and portable) utilities. It has recovery tools, password recovery tools, disk health tools, tools to diagnose unstable/crashing systems. There’s more: NirLauncher can be used from USB flash drive without need of any installation. NirLauncher and all the utilities in the package are completely freeware, without any Spyware/Adware/Malware. This package doesn't contain any 3-party software, toolbars, Web browser plugins, o...
Windows Task Manager is the native Windows app which comes with the OS and which gives very limited information about usage and processes running. It doesn’t list dependencies, which isn’t good. There are better alternatives and all (as far as I know) are free. I took a look at Process Explorer and System Explorer. Mark Russinovich wrote Process Explorer. The older among us also know he did SysInternals, which is the definitive tool collection for analyzing MS OSs.
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OK…this is a bit technical, so brace yourselves. Anyway, recently, a SSL 3.0 vulnerability was discovered. This vulnerability allows the injection of malicious code into your computer and web hosting servers and allow remote code execution. So what’s SSL? It means Secure Sockets Layer (and there are 3). It has been superceded by TLS (Transport Layer Security). The Poodle ( Padding Oracle On Downgraded Legacy Encryption ) attack allows a web criminal to intercept data that ...
Just saw this on ZDNet. Websense® ThreatSeeker® Intelligence Cloud has detected that the official website of Popular Science has been compromised and is serving malicious code (iFrame). The code is of the redirect type and will send the user to other websites which will drop malicious files (RIG Exploit Kit) on the victim’s computer. RIG is an executable. If the user doesn’t have any of the checked AVs installed, then the exploit kit proceeds to evaluate the installe...
Thanks should go to Brad Sams at Neowin for this (and to Hankers). This should be a “definitely do today”. That’s because once you’re hacked, it’s pointless. This “Security Code” will allow you to recover your account if someone hacks it and changes the password. “How to”: 1. Login. https://account.live.com/p 2. Under “Recovery Code” click “Set up”. If you’ve done this in the past, your page will say, “Replace”…in which case, click “Replace”. 3....
De-Vasive (abbreviated DV here) was invented for Android users and does something good: It let’s you know when apps start using certain camera features. When an app starts the phone's camera. When the microphone is activated. When Bluetooth or WiFi are activated. Detect which apps track your location. That’s a pretty good thing. The free app won’t let you block the app activating a process or warning, but it will let you know it’s been...
If (as happened to Uvah) your laptop or your PC has been stolen or even misplaced (in someone else’s apartment), while it’s not as easy as on an Apple OS device, it’s still possible. All these methods depend on the thief’s greed. If he/she decides to check (or deface) your facebook, gmail or Dropbox accounts, there’s a good chance you can trace your property’s IP address. That doesn’t mean you can find its physical address easily, but the Police can. You or they can obtain ...
Certainly, a good antiviral will help protect your computer (as will common sense), but some 15,000 new viruses are occurring everyday so antivirals are in a little to be envied “catch up” position. But, while no new versions of common sense are available, sometimes it just isn’t your fault if you catch a ‘drive by’. There are additional levels of protection such as virtualization of browsing and to allow running apps in a protected environment…like Sandboxie which also exists i...