I have always thought of Google as being a search engine for everyone, that's part of the appeal. So when the development team behind a web portal for 'mature users' contacted me about the launch of a new search engine specifically designed for the older user I was a little confused.
Maybe it's my age, after all I am fast approaching the '50 plus' demographic that the Mabels development folk are targeting with AskMabel or maybe it's just that I have seen it all before. Ever since Google burst onto the search scene, redefining and dominating it, start-ups have been trying to get a slice of the search action and convince us that niche searching is where it is at. AskMabel appears to be doing just that, what with it promising a "unique take on targeted search results" and being "designed with the 50+ surfer in mind" and all. What it offers, I am assured, is something that is "tailored to the search preferences of a mature audience" although I am struggling to think what they may be, or more to the point how they might differ from what Google does.
After all, if my 80 year old mother wants to find a web site detailing the antiques fairs in her location then Google will happily look for those for her, and return them in a format she can happily understand. As long as the hits returned are relevant, what more could my …
If you are a user of Adobe Flash, be sure to apply the latest security update if you want to avoid becoming part of an in-the-wild attack exploiting a vulnerability which currently seems to be exploiting users of Internet Explorer on the Windows platform only. Adobe has, however, issued an emergency security patch for Android, Linux and Mac users as well as those with Windows which kind of suggests it could be indicative of a wider problem with the software.
Adobe is recommending that any users of Flash Player v11.2.202.233 and earlier for Windows, Mac and Linux should update to v11.2.202.235 and Android 4.x users of v11.1.115.7 and earlier should update to 11.1.115.8, Android 3.x users of 11.1.111.8 should move to 11.1.111.9 while those users with the Google Chrome installed Flash Player need do nothing as the update will have been applied automatically.
The Adobe Security Bulletin (APSB12-09) is determined as being critical, with the object confusion vulnerability (CVE-2012-0779) being actively exploited in the wild as I write. The exploit will arrive in the form of an email with attachment, and infection can only occur if the user clicks on that attached file to execute it. Once again, it's a message to all those who have itchy link-clicking fingers not to blindly think everything you get sent in the mail is OK to look at.
Windows users who opted in to the recently introduced silent update feature will have been protected by the …
The Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) website remains offline after being hit by a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack for the second time in the space of a year. Last June it was the hacktivist group LulzSec which claimed responsibility; this time nobody has yet come forward to admit they did it and explain why. However, it seems likely that hacking collective Anonymous could be behind the strike in protest over the decision of the UK's High Court to order all Internet Service Providers to block access to The Pirate Bay.
The SOCA website has been unavailable since late on Wednesday night by the attack which apparently continues unabated. The decision to take the website offline was taken in order to "limit the impact" of the DDoS attack according to a SOCA spokesperson. It has to be said that as the whole point of a DDoS attack is to take down a website by making it impossible to access, the impact of thr attack would appear to be pretty complete. Of course, I understand that there are implications beyond the site in question, and other sites hosted with the same service provider could be impacted by an ongoing attack.
While most commentators and security experts were pointing the finger at 'groups unknown' initially, and suggesting that the recent takedown of some 36 websites selling stolen credit card data could be behind the attack, I'm not so sure this is the case. Cybercriminals …
Thought the days of having to use a particualr web browser client in order to use a specific site were over? Think again if this conversation between a user and eBay support is anything to go by.
As a journalist who has spent the largest part of the last 20 years online, not a great deal makes me sit up and my jaw drop with disbelief anymore. However, when a chap called Mike Hall copied me in on a support conversation he had with eBay, I have to admit I was rather in danger of spitting my coffee all over the keyboard.
The part of the support chat transcript that stood out and grabbed me by the manly bits simply stated: "I suggest that you kindly use Firefox 3.6 (not IE 9.0, Safari or Google Chrome as they aren't compatible)". Yes, you read that right, eBay told a user that three out of the four major web browser clients are not compatible with the eBay site. That, dear reader, is quite simply astonishing.
I might have had less trouble getting my head around this incredible web design FAIL were it 1999, or were the site in question produced and operated by the local corner shop on a budget of 10 dollars and a lot of finger crossing. However, this is 2012 and we are talking about one of the iconic brands of the Internet age, one of the biggest online commerce sites there is.
Yet …
"There are bombs littered all over the city and your job is to stop them from exploding" that's the premise of Bomb Disposal Unit 54, a new game that I have been playing on my iPad before it's official release in the App Store on 6th May. When I read the name of the game, and saw the opening comic-style intro screens, I was kind of expecting to be defusing bombs somehow. I'm not sure how, but maybe some kind of touchscreen wire-cutting exercise was going to be the order of the day. Perhaps I would have to undo the outer casing of a bomb without too much of a shaky finger lest it exploded? Nope, actually all I had to do was remember the sequence that some colours flashed in and play a game or six of 'pairs'. At first I was, perhaps understandably, a bit disappointed.
But then I started playing the game, or rather games, and that's when I forgot about the slightly misleading title and just started to enjoy having a mini version of Simon (for you oldies out there) to play. Plus the pairs game, which is always fun especially when you are being timed against the clock. Ditto the number sequencing game and the one which tests your reflex speed by getting you to hit a button within a second of it changing colour.
Each mini game is accessed by choosing to defuse a …
An incredible 69% of IT Administrators are so stressed at work that they have seriously considered changing career as a result, according to a new survey from GFI Software. The 'IT Admin Stress Survey' also revealed that 34% of IT Administrators will work overtime equivalent to an additional 12 weeks each year, and that's without any additional pay for their troubles.
Asking 201 UK-based IT Administrators working at businesses of between 10 and 500 employees, the survey found that 66% of those questioned considered their jobs just as stressful, or more stressful, when compared to others in their immediate social circle. The amount of stress would seem to vary according to the size of the company concerned, with 56% claiming to be stressed where between 10 and 49 staff are employed but 84% where that figure is between 50 and 99.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the main causes of stress for the IT Admin were considered to be management issues (36%), user issues (21%) and having to meet tight deadlines (15%). What was more surprising was the sheer scale of overtime being put in by IT Admins, with many routinely working beyond the 48 hour working week as laid down in law by the EU Working Time Directive and 34% admitting that they worked for 10 hours or more in overtime during the average week. These long working patterns mean that 42% had missed social functions, 36% missed spending time with their children, 29% suffered from health-related …
New research shows that hackers are becoming increasingly lazy in their search for online exploits, with 98% of Remote File Inclusion and 88% of SQL injection attacks now being fully automated.
It comes as no surprise whatsoever to DaniWeb administrators and moderators that your average cybercriminal is looking for the easiest way to earn a dishonest buck. After all, we have recently completely re-coded the DaniWeb forum from the ground up partly in order to deal with the increasing number of spambot attacks that were being launched against us across much of last year. Spammers have long since used software to automate both the spam-posting process but during the past few years we have seen them increasingly turning to software solutions that automate the forum registration process as well, including breaking the various CAPTCHA-based security systems that forum operators put in place to stop just such occurrences.
The Hacker Intelligence 'Automation of Attacks' report published today by security specialists Imperva suggests that this highly automated approach to law-breaking is rife within the hacking community. The report is a detailed analysis of data collected between January and March 2012, and reveals that as much as 98% percent of Remote File Inclusion (RFI) and 88% of SQL injection attacks are automated, including by two software tools: Havij and sqlmap.
With making money the driving force behind most web application attacks, why would hackers want to waste time actually studying vulnerabilities and learning how to exploit …
That dramatic statement pretty much sums up the feelings of many people taking part in a recent survey. They suggest that online banking and online shopping are akin to playing Russian Roulette and it is only a matter of time before their security, credit cards and bank balances are breached. And women are more worried about this financial doomsday scenario than men.
The figures from the survey which analysed attitudes towards online shopping and banking, were revealed today by mobile security outfit Entersekt and the research was undertaken by OnePoll. It suggests that 410 out of the 1000 people questioned were absolutely convinced that their online accounts will be breached at some point, this despite admitting that they not only rely upon online banking and shopping but in fact love doing both so much that they won't give them up despite the perceived risks.
In the 'real world' of offline transactions, customers will not generally let their credit cards out of their sight according to the research. Only 13% admitted to doing that in the last six months in either a shop or restaurant payment scenario. Switch to the online world, however, and only 69% make sure the transaction is secure before hitting the 'complete transaction' button, not doing so is equivalent to handing the card over and letting the waiter walk away with it.
The battle of the sexes showed something of a contrast between the attitudes of men and women to transactional …
Although you may not realise it, dear coder, you apparently have the best job in America. At least that's what the newly published 2012 Jobs Rated Report reckons. The CareerCast research shows that for the second year running the best job in the US is a software engineer. Not surprisingly the demand for programmers is expected to rise by as much as 30% over the next eight years according to the report authors, a rate of increase much steeper than the average for any other occupation.
The report took into account various factors such as income, stress, physical demands and career outlook in order to compile the listings. Report publisher Tony Lee explains that the top-rated jobs all have "few physical demands, minimal stress, a good working environment and a strong hiring outlook".
Unlike those which make the America's worst jobs list which are often physically demanding and low paid, as is the case of lumberjacks and dairy farmers. Which doesn't explain why newspaper reporter and broadcaster also appear in that worst list, says a man who has done both these things and not found them to be particularly physically stressful or badly paid.
“Many jobs in the media are characterized by high stress, short deadlines, long hours and a poor hiring outlook” Tony Lee explained, adding that "despite these poor working conditions, competition is steep for what jobs remain after massive consolidation and layoffs in the media industry.”
Ironically, I would imagine …
The United Nations Global Pulse, along with analytics software specialist SAS, has revealed how social media streams can be used as predictors of national unemployment line spikes.
By analysing more than half a million blogs, forums and news sites, the researchers were able to determine how social media chatter more specifically the 'conversation sentiment' expressed by it, could warn of pending unemployment increases as well as help to inform government policymakers of the likely impact of those increases.
The data analysed came from more than two years worth of social media streams in both the USA and Ireland, and was checked for any references to unemployment and how people hit by it were coping. By using a process of mood scores and conversation volume comparison to the official unemployment statistics in both countries, SAS and the UN Global Pulse researchers were able to determine that increased chatter about 'cutting back' and 'public transportation usage' as well as 'downgrading the car' were positive indicators in predicting an unemployment spike.
Following such a spike, the research showed that social media conversations about holiday cancellations and mortgage foreclosures or eviction surged. OK, maybe that is predictable without doing the social media analysis, but it does nonetheless flag the economic effects of employment downturns as reflected within the social media sphere and could be useful for policymakers looking to mitigate the negative effects of increased unemployment according to the UN Global Pulse team at any rate.
UN …
The latest VIPRE report, detailing the ten most prevalent malware threat detections spotted by GFI Labs and the ThreatNet Detection System, reveals that Google, LinkedIn, Skype and Mass Effect 3 were amongst the big brands being exploited by cybercriminals in order to leverage trust whilst distributing malware-laden emails. As a consequence, GFI software is urging users to question absolutely any and every unsolicited message regardless of the subject matter or purported origin.
The research labs team has documented a high number of spam and malware distribution campaigns during the month of March which have successfully infiltrated users' systems disguised as communications from well-known companies or pretending to be promotions for their services and products.
Christopher Boyd, the senior threat researcher at GFI Software, warns that Internet users are "bombarded with countless emails every day" and these campaigns are exploiting the "reflex-like tendency to click on links and open emails that look like they’re coming from a company we know and trust."
Take Google, for example, which was linked to such malware campaigns by being used as the hook for a couple of nasty scams that Google systems had detected malware on their computer and then, you guessed it, did the old rogue-antivirus thing and directed them to a site where the payload product could be downloaded. There were even emails being sent that claimed to come from Google Pharmacy, which doesn't exist, and offering services as a pharmaceutical interface for the search engine. …
The Flashback Trojan has infected at least 600,000 Apple computers running Mac OS X according to the Russian AV company Dr Web which researched the spread of the malware which was originally discovered at the end of last year and for which Apple issued a security patch just this week.
You can determine if your Mac is one of the machines infected by the Flashback Trojan, which disguises itself as an Adobe Flash Player installer, by running the AppleScripts provided by Mashable in response to the Dr Web discovery and available for download here
Alternatively, you can run the following commands in the Mac OS X Terminal yourself, and get a sense of relief if all of them give the response "The domain/default pair of (...) does not exist" as that means there is no Flashback infection present on your computer.
defaults read ~/.MacOSX/environment DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES; defaults read /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Info LSEnvironment; defaults read /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/Info LSEnvironment
If your machine is infected, then F-Secure has published step-by-step instructions for removal which can be found here
Dr Web reveals that most of the infected Macs, some 56%, are located in the United States and around 20% are in Canada. The UK accounts for roughly 13% of infections, and Australia 6%.
Meanwhile, F-Secure warns that upon execution the latest variations of the malware will "prompt the unsuspecting user for the administrator password. Whether or not the user inputs the administrator password, the …