1,440 Topics
 | It has been [officially confirmed](http://php.net/archive/2013.php#id2013-10-24-2) that the php.net website of the open-source PHP programming language has been hacked and infected with malware. The successful breach of the site came to light yesterday morning when the Google Safe Browsing service started flagging php.net as serving up malicious scripts. This was, at …  |
| | Today is another of those 'Hallmark' IT security days; in the case of Tuesday the 11th of February 2014 that means 'Safer Internet Day'. I'm not going to start yet another rant about the pointlessness of this, and why every day should be Safer Internet Day. If you want to …  |
| | News headlines screaming that yet another Microsoft Windows vulnerability has been discovered, is in the wild or has just been patched are two a penny. Such has it ever been. News headlines declaring that a 'major security problem' has been found with Linux are a different kettle of fish. So … |
| | So, Microsoft has finally announced that the SkyDrive cloud storage product line is to be renamed OneDrive. This isn't as a result of disappointing user take up leading to a re-branding exercise, it's much more daft than that. Six months ago a judge in a UK court ruled that Microsoft …  |
| | So this morning I get an email from Amazon which promises to inform me of some important information about my Amazon Prime membership. This is the subscription service which, in return for an annual charge of £49 here in the UK, provides free next day delivery on any item which … |
| | The average DaniWeb member if not already au fait with Pastebin.com is almost certainly aware of something like it. A pastebin has become, for many programmers, a default tool in the coding box and for very good reason: it makes sharing large quantities of code very easy indeed. Of course, … |
| | It was once the biggest Bitcoin exchange in the world, accounting for as much as 80% of the global trading market in the virtual currency, but Mt. Gox suddenly stopped trading yesterday and reports suggest that some $375m worth of Bitcoins, or 6% of all Bitcoins in circulation, have gone … |
| | The photo messaging application Snapchat, which allows users to post images, video and text on a time limited basis to a group of recipient users, has been hacked. The attraction of Snapchat, apart from not being Facebook and therefore somewhere teenagers can meet online without their parents having a clue … |
| | Back in 1992 a national newspaper interview referred to me as being the first virtual celebrity, which wasn't really true. Sure, I had managed to build something of a high profile in the emerging world of the Internet courtesy of my Wavey Davey persona and a disregard for the traditional … |
| | As a gamer myself, I thought that last year was a pretty good one. After all, not only did I get to play both GTA V and Call of Duty: Ghosts (indeed, I'm still playing it and working my may through the prestige levels) but if I had enough spare …  |
| | One of the oldest technology truisms must be that you only realise the importance of backing up your systems after disaster strikes. This is especially true if you have no backups to turn to. There are, thankfully, few excuses aside from sheer laziness not to backup your data these days; …  |
| | What's you favourite first line, or start, to a song? Mine varies according to my mood, but currently it has to be: **"Everybody here comes from somewhere that they would just as soon forget and disguise"** Supernatural, Superserious - R.E.M |
| | Nintendo is sitting firmly at the top of the games console tree right now, having just been 'bigged up' by the release of the US sales figures for October which show the Wii on 803,000 and the DS on 491,000. Both well ahead of nearest rival, the Xbox 360 on … |
| | Apparently it's Data Privacy Day tomorrow (January 28th) which, if you will allow me to quote the [Stay Safe Online](https://www.staysafeonline.org/data-privacy-day/about) website blurb, is an "international effort to empower and educate people to protect their privacy and control their digital footprint". Given the Edward Snowden NSA spying revelations that broke during … |
| | If you have never stopped to think about language in terms of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) then the results of a survey by digital marketing agency Greenlight might make you do just that. According to the global Search and Social Survey, some 76% of people do their online searching in … |
| | That's the surprising consensus reached at a meeting of 30 CSOs representing some of the UK's leading enterprises held in London during the past week. This despite a poll at the bi-annual [URL="http://www.csointerchange.org"]CSO Interchange[/URL] event revealing that those same CSOs view social networking as the most over-hyped threat. When it …  |
| | [ATTACH=RIGHT]22094[/ATTACH]Facebook Vice-President Chris Cox has [announced](https://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=10150251867797131) the latest in a seemingly never ending run of privacy updates for the worlds' biggest social network. The improvements can be summed up as tightening up the question most often asked by those users worried about their privacy, namely "who can see this?" Unless … |
| | I have been turning my USB thumb drives into fully encrypted data containers for years now, but readily admit that the prospect of rolling up your sleeves and getting down and dirty with encryption software is not as exciting to everyone as it is to me. However, with removable USB … |
| | The Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is becoming the crowbar of the online criminal. In the past we have got rather used to DDoS attacks being one of the favoured approaches of hacktivists, with perhaps the Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC) and later the High Orbit Ion Cannon (HOIC) …  |
| | When it comes to web browsers, my general rule of thumb is that the latest version is usually the most secure and this is certainly the case with Internet Explorer. However, when I started using Internet Explorer 11 on my new Windows 8.1 Pro laptop I soon discovered that latest … |
| | According to Dell SecureWorks Counter Threat Unit (CTU) security researcher [Keith Jarvis](http://www.secureworks.com/cyber-threat-intelligence/threats/cryptolocker-ransomware/), the CryptoLocker ransomware that has been written about so much of late has infected as many as 250,000 computers during the first 100 days of distribution (staring on the 5th of September, 2013). What's more, Jarvis estimates, based … |
| | There are lots of reasons why I could say bah humbug today, but the primary one right now is aimed squarely at the spammers who seem to think that there will be nobody at DaniWeb to deal with their crap. Wrong. Happy xmas spamming losers, another day of your life …  |
| | Happy Xmas, or whatever you celebrate, to each and every DaniWeb member. Have a good one. Personally I'm trying to pretend it all doesn't exist, and that's why I am at work at the DaniWeb helm at 8am on Xmas morning - but apparently I'm just a bit weird... :) |
| | US retail giant Target [has confirmed](http://pressroom.target.com/news/target-confirms-unauthorized-access-to-payment-card-data-in-u-s-stores) that hackers gained access to payment card data that could mean 40 million credit and debit card accounts are at risk. An official statement says that the retailer is "aware of unauthorized access to payment card data that may have impacted certain guests making …  |
| | Any other collectors of vintage video game consoles on DaniWeb? Or am I really the only person sad enough to have more than 1000 of the things in my house? My collection has even been loaned to a museum for a special history of video gaming exhibition before now. [attach]15691[/attach]To …  |
| | A [Channel 4 News investigation](http://www.channel4.com/news/phone-mobile-data-24-hours-apps-security-secret) in the UK has revealed that in a 24 hour period just one smartphone made 350,000 requests to 315 different servers and made 30,000 requests to 76 servers when otherwise sitting totally idle for 45 minutes. Oh, and then there was the location data being … |
| | The odd thing about these particular headphones is the marketing, in my opinion. The very bright colours, mine were what I can only describe as dayglo yellow, are not offset by any calmer touches; the same colour is applied to the wires, cups, buttons, jacks, headband, everything. It's a deliberate … |
| | According to a [report](http://www.fireeye.com/resources/pdfs/fireeye-operation-ke3chang.pdf) from researchers at US security outfit FireEye, a number of computers belonging to diplomats attending the G20 summit in Russia three months ago, including at least five European foreign ministries, were successfully targeted by Chinese hackers. FireEye researchers had monitored a server, one of 23, used … |
| | If my iPhone 5s fingerprint data is walled off from the rest of A7 chip and the rest of iOS 7 in a 'Secure Enclave' and is never accessed by iOS or other apps, as Apple claims, then how come it all vanished when my iPhone crashed and I had …  |
| | Microsoft knows it has to do something in order to claw back some kind of market position, not now but five years into the future. The culture of computing is changing amongst the young and hip consumer, and it's moving away from the Microsoft Windows-centric vision of the past. While …  |
| | Black Friday has historically been a very American phenomenon, marking the start of the seasonal Xmas shopping rush and happening the Friday after Thanksgiving. In the past it has led to scenes of semi-rioting and chaos in some stores as the Walmartarati fight over bargain electrical goods. The UK got … |
| | The iPad is, as those annoyingly creative TV adverts show us, used for all sorts of things by all sorts of people. However, according to a press release that hit the DaniWeb news desk today, you might be forgiven for thinking that shopping isn't one of them. As usual though, … |
| | According to [BitcoinWatch](http://bitcoinwatch.com/) the current market capitalization of the virtual currency stands at an incredible $10.4 billion. A single Bitcoin is now worth more than $800. In the ongoing aftermath of [the Silk Road takedown](http://www.daniweb.com/hardware-and-software/networking/news/466982/silk-road-2-goes-live-did-the-fbi-arrest-the-wrong-dread-pirate-roberts) many people wrongly assume Bitcoin is some kind of criminal currency, used to trade in … |
| | Kryten is a Series 4000 mechanoid, the neurotic robotic servant appearing in cult British sitcom Red Dwarf. So what's he got to do with your computer, apart from the somewhat stereotypical link between geeks and science fiction? Well, the Kryten character was played (in all but the first appearance) by … |
| | Discount coupons are OK, but consumers consider drive-by location marketing an invasion of privacy. That's the warning message that research across four countries (US, UK, Mexico and India) by ISACA would appear to be flagging loud and clear to retailers wanting to maximise the marketing potential of customers with smartphones. … |
| | Tumblr, the hugely popular blogging service which was bought by Yahoo! last month, has advised mobile users to change their passwords, and change them immediately. In a posting to the Tumblr staff blog, a spokesperson states "We have just released a very important security update for our iPhone and iPad …  |
| | Which? magazine [has revealed](http://blogs.which.co.uk/technology/phones-3/apple-iphone-5s-fastest-phone-samsung-galaxy-s4-lg-g2/) the new Apple iPhone 5s to be the fastest smartphone of all in the latest round of processor benchmarking tests, despite it having less cores that rival handsets. Not only was the 5s almost twice as fast as the iPhone 5 in testing, but also around … |
| | Aggressive adware, of the kind that creates shortcuts on your screen or changes your search engine configuration, has arrived on Android devices and then some. According to security vendor Bitdefender, as much as 90% of free Android apps contain adware with up to 75% coming with the 'aggressive' variety.  |
| | I'm one of those people who has both an iPad and an iPhone (in fact until very recently I had two iPhones) so I was interested to see the results of a survey that PriceGrabber published this week and which suggest that the majority of US consumers would consider buying … |
| | Most observers will agree that Google+ has failed to set the social networking world alight, and is far from being a thorn in the side of Facebook. However, now that Mark Zuckerberg has confirmed he's serious about search, could Facebook possibly compete in the Google hood?  The Facebook …  |
| | The popular [MacRumors Forums](http://www.macrumors.com/) site has confirmed that it was successfully hacked on Monday this week. The vBulletin powered forums fell victim to what it describes as a similar breach that hit the Ubuntu forums earlier in the year. "Our case is quite similar" says MacRumors founder Arnold Kim who … |
| | In my [DaniWeb report](http://www.daniweb.com/hardware-and-software/tablets-and-mobile-devices/news/462936/apple-iphone-5s-the-worlds-first-64-bit-smartphone) on the launch of the new iPhone 5s from Apple, I stated that you could "forget the fingerprint scanner built into the new circular home button" but I knew all along that was never going to be the case. In context, I was focusing upon what … |
| | The AR.Drone is what is known as a quadricopter device, and the Parrot drones are probably responsible for kick-starting the whole consumer drone industry. Unpacking the box you immediately notice how light it is, and how little you get by way of stuff to assemble or plug-in. Beyond the couple … |
| | Apple has, of late at least, oft been accused of following rather than leading when it comes to smartphone innovation. Perhaps the launch of the iPhone 5s with the somewhat controversial fingerprint scanner has changed that, just a little bit. HTC, the powerhouse in the Android smartphone hardware market, has … |
| | According to the network security team at Oxford University Computing Services ([OxCERT](http://blogs.oucs.ox.ac.uk/oxcert/)) with the title of 'Google Blocks' the world famous seat of learning has decided to put a block, albeit a temporary one, on the use of Google Docs. Robin Stevens from the network security team at Oxford says …  |
| | Did the FBI get the wrong man, or at least the wrong Dread Pirate Roberts (DPR), when it shut down the Silk Road darknet marketplace? Claims are being made that this is precisely what happened, and that Ross Ulbricht who was arrested took over as acting DPR from the real … |
| | A survey of more than 700 tablet owners in US, UK and Australia has revealed some interesting insights into how people use their devices. The $195 Gartner 'Consumers Buy Media Tablets Based on Lower Prices and Better Quality, not Brand' report (gotta love that snappy title, huh?) unsurprisingly shows that … |
| | Last week, the NoSQL database host MongoHQ suffered a breach which exposed customer files, email addresses and password data to the attackers. The ripples from that breach are still being felt, as users of the Sunrise calendar app on the iPhone found out this morning. Luckily that password data was …  |
| | In the newly published Imperva 'Hacker Intelligence Initiative Report' the in-the-wild modification and exploitation of PHP SuperGlobal variables has been investigated. This particular external variable modification weakness has been described as being where a PHP application does "not properly protect against the modification of variables from external sources, such as …  |
The End.