Posts by happygeek

OK, enough of the new member baiting please.

The 'noob' tags have been now been removed, and I would ask everyone to bear in mind that they were all new members here once upon a time.

According to new figures, published today by Sophos, something strange has happened in the world of spam: China has dropped out of the list of the world's worst spam relaying countries for the first time ever.

The Sophos 'Dirty Dozen Spammers' list has become something of a staple diet for security researchers, covering the top twelve countries in terms of how much spam they each relay every quarter.

While there is no surprise in seeing the US remain firmly seated at the top of the guilty as hell pile, responsible for relaying an astonishing 13 percent of all global spam (or hundreds of millions of junk messages every single day, although you may not actually see any of it) the fact that China has dropped out of the Dirty Dozen has come as a huge shock for many list observers.

China has completely disappeared from the list, dropping down to 15th place on the global scale and being responsible for 'only' 1.9 percent of the world's spam according to Sophos.

That said, if you look at spam by continent rather than country, Asia continues to dominate with more than a third of the world's unsolicited junk email relayed by the region. Although the US remains the top offender by country, North America as a whole has reduced its spam throughput since last quarter, dropping from second to third place behind Europe.

"All eyes aren't so much on …

The word police will never rest :)

As the title says, I'd like to wish all our English members (of which I'm proud to say I am one) a very happy St George's Day.

Not all spammers are annoying, some are dead

There’s no place like 127.0.0.1

No l33t speak

C:\WINDOWS C:\WINDOWS\GO C:\PC\CRAWL

Java: write once, debug everywhere

If at first you don't succeed, call it Version 1.0

Will write code for food

Smash forehead on keyboard to continue

Programmers never die: They just GOSUB without RETURN

The latest research from security vendor Symantec would appear to suggest that cybercrime gangs are now applying drug smuggling techniques to their trade, and are actively using 'malware mules' in order to distribute threats within social friendship networks.

According to the latest Internet Security Threat Report, email accounts are now being sold for just 65p on the underground web black market, and these are then used to distribute spam or malware via people’s trusted network of contacts. The advertised prices of email accounts in 2009 ranged between 65p and £13 for each account. Most advertisements listed a flat rate, although some sellers also listed bulk purchase prices such as 30 for £95 or 65p each on bulk purchase. Some advertisements stated that Web space was included with the email account and were listed at higher prices. ISPs often include free Web space along with email accounts as a part of the service, which many people never use. Criminals who compromise these accounts can use the space to host phishing sites or malicious code without the knowledge of the account owner.

These compromised accounts can be used for sending out spam in addition to harvesting additional email addresses from contact lists, taking advantage of the fact that the recipients are likely to trust the validity of a message coming from a known contact.

The stolen personal email account details are advertised on the underground economy on black market forums that are used for the promotion and trade of …

File under oops. The website of The Telegraph newspaper has been defaced by hackers, apparently upset at a cult British television show and the newspaper itself for mocking their country. The 'Romania National Security' hacking group has claimed responsibility for the attack which hit a couple of third party services advertising sub-domains used by The Telegraph. The very roughly translated statement posted by the group states that is "sick and tired of seeing how some "garbage" like you try to mock our country" and bemoans how TV shows such as Top Gear refer disparagingly about "Romanian Gypsies". Top Gear presenter James May also has a motoring column in The Sunday Telegraph.

Tony Osborn, a security expert at Symantec, warns that having your website defaced is "akin to business grinding to a halt" and that exposing how unwelcome visitors can re-write content without permission "hinders the business and affects its reputation". Osborn continues "The Daily Telegraph isn't the first website to have been defaced (nor will it be the last), we've seen many high profile sites affected with this problem. Also, it is worth noting that not all of the site was affected by the alleged Romanian hackers. However, it does come down to the issue of ensuring web fronting systems are secure to mitigate against the risk of those with malicious intent trying to harm the business and its reputation. Simple measures include applying basic information risk management, prioritising web facing systems …

Over the weekend, software development and collaboration tools specialist Atlassian suffered a security breach to an internal system, potentially exposing customer passwords. The reason? It forgot about an old legacy database which had not been taken offline.

According to Atlassian spokesperson Mike Cannon-Brookes the company had migrated its customer database into a new one, where all customer password were encrypted, during July 2008. "However, the old database table was not taken offline or deleted" Cannon-Brookes says "and it is this database table that we believe could have been exposed during the breach". He agrees that this was "a big error" for which the company is extremely sorry, admitting "the legacy customer database, with passwords stored in plain text, was a liability. Even though it wasn't active, it should have been deleted. There's no logical explanation for why it wasn't, other than as we moved off one project, and on to the next one, we dropped the ball and screwed up"

Amichai Shulman, CTO with data security experts Imperva, says that examples of forgotten databases being left unprotected are happening more frequently than most would like to admit. "In this case" Shulman says "the database contained sensitive information, but once it wasn’t used as a production system it was forgotten. Unmanaged systems put sensitive data residing on them at a high risk - unmanaged systems are the top targeted systems".

If you have an Atlassian account from before July 2008 then you are advised …

Well Dani certainly thinks it serves a useful purpose, and that is to encourage people to join DaniWeb rather than just browse through it as a guest. Arguments about the merits of membership as a metric or any value attached to it aside, the stats show that the popup does produce results in bringing new members in.

According to Facebook's chief security officer, Joe Sullivan, safety is the social networking site's top priority. Indeed, he says that his team are dedicated to "creating an environment where people can connect and share comfortably" and has revealed a redesigned Safety Centre which provides new safety resources for parents, educators, teens and members of the law enforcement community. However, there's one thing missing, a big red thing with the word PANIC stamped on it. That's right, despite high profile campaigning by various child safety groups across the UK, Facebook still has no big red panic button.

Sullivan insists that Facebook learns "from and with the most trusted safety organizations in the world" and has established a Safety Advisory Board "to advise us on best practices". Yet while these partnerships have resulted in Facebook providing a 'safety for parents' section, and others on 'responding to objectionable content' and 'addressing personal safety' it would seem none of the safety experts thought a panic button was a good idea in helping protect the most vulnerable of members from predatory users.

Which is perhaps a little odd when you consider that, according to the BBC, some 44 Police Chiefs in England along with the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) centre have been calling for "direct visible access" to just such a link to appear on every Facebook page. So why has the 'panic' campaign kicked off in the UK in the first place? Because a Facebook user …

The death of Guy Kewney early this morning is not only a huge loss to the world of IT journalism, but to the world itself. He deserves recognition as the first dedicated technology journalist, having started way back in the early 1970's, as well as devoted husband, father and a much missed friend.

Guy died, aged 63, following a relatively short battle with cancer.

He will perhaps be best remembered by those who have been in the technology game the longest, either working to develop the tech that we all take for granted today or simply using it. His interviews with the true pioneers of technology, including Bill gates, Steve Jobs and Alan Sugar (the AMSTRAD man) were insightful in those early days of computing, largely as he not only managed to ask the right questions but built up relationships with these industry figures born out of trust and respect. Indeed, from his monthly column in Personal Computer World magazine that started back in 1978 through to his later online work, Guys was a voice that was always authoritative yet never patronising, always probing yet ever polite. It is no wonder that he became one of the most influential IT journalists in the UK, that influence reaching across the waters into Europe and America for good measure.

The younger readers of this posting might remember Guy for a different reason, his YouTube hit video. Booked to appear on BBC News to talk about a dispute between The …

Mod queues always sound a good idea, unless you are one of the mods who actually have to police the things. Speaking from experience, I can say that they create much more work than they save. They also penalise decent members who are looking for a quick answer to an urgent problem but find that the question does not even get published for 24 or 48 hours because a mod has to work through the queue to reach it, along with dealing with other mod duties. So such a solution would, in my opinion, work against us in creating more work for mods and driving members to other forums.

wow, i could change my name and my picture and i would be like a completely new person that no one would know who i am!

I have a sneaky suspicion that, after a posting or two, everyone would know it was you ;-)

Which you can, of course, disable by becoming a donating member of the community :) If you find us helpful it is a good way of giving something back while at the same time getting rid of adverts.

Thanks, I usually only wear an armchair.

It's going to be a great Easter for Modern Warfare 2 gamers, and that's official. Robert Bowling, Creative Strategist at Modern Warfare 2 developers Infinity Ward, has posted confirmation on Twitter that for the weekend of April 2nd to 5th there will be double experience points on offer to players using the new maps.

Ah yes, the new Modern Warfare 2 maps. The Stimulus Pack, as it is known, is due for release on March 30th. The first downloadable content (DLC) for Modern Warfare 2 players is already causing something of a stir amongst XBox 360 owners. Not so much excitement at the thought of those 5 new maps (well, 3 new ones - Bailout, Storm and Salvage, and a couple of old COD4 - Crash and Overgrown, ones thrown in) to play on, but rather balking at the cost.

Apparently to get the Stimulus Pack you will need to part with no less than 1200 Microsoft Points, and that works out to around £10 in real money. Of course, with the game itself retailing at £50 (although many, myself included, got it for half that price courtesy of launch deals at supermarket chains) and already being the most profitable and biggest grossing game of all time some players are arguing that the DLC maps should be free.

I'm not in that camp myself. Look, Infinity Ward and parent company Activision are in it to make money as well as great games. And …

Done.

As KirkPatrick has said, you can opt out of receiving thread notifications from your user control panel, and every issue of the DaniWeb Digest comes with a link to unsubscribe from further issues (or use the control panel to opt out of getting admin emails)

We cannot 'remove' you from the website as we do not delete member accounts.

You might be forgiven for thinking that Activision would be more than just a little pleased with game developers Infinity Ward which is responsible for the Call of Duty franchise, and which Activision acquired back in 2003. Forgiven, but wrong.

Modern Warfare 2 is more than a game, it's the most successful and profitable video game ever sold. Since hitting the shelves in November 2009, Modern Warfare 2 has sold more than 15 million copies and earned owners an amazing $3 billion is sales. yes, you read that right, $3 billion! It makes that $41,000 NES game look positively cheap.

In what has been an incredible week for the gaming business, Infinity Ward President Jason West and CEO Vince Zampella were apparently dismissed on Monday by Activision following an investigation into what the company referred to in a SEC filing as "breaches of contract and insubordination by two senior employees at Infinity Ward".

Yes, you heard that right, the men running the development company responsible for the most successful video game ever have been sacked.

It now looks like the duo might have gotten themselves a killstreak 25 and unlocked a tactical nuke on Activision's ass with the news that West and Zampella are filing a legal suit for both compensation and the return of their contractual rights to the Call of Duty Modern Warfare franchise. The suit includes claims for breach of contract, breach of the implied …

When I wrote about a NES and some old games being sold by a basement clearing mum, and fetching an incredible $13,105 on eBay, you know I kind of thought that was the end of it as far as recession-busting auctions of dusty game carts goes. But oh boy was I wrong. The reason that the games bundle featured in that original story sold for such a large amount was down to the inclusion of one ultra-rare NES title: Stadium Events.

As we mentioned at the time, the game is so rare that the box alone is valued at $10,000. It's officially one of the world's top 20 rarest video games, and expert collectors reckon there are only 10 complete and boxed copies that exist today. So imagine the surprise when, just weeks after that auction, another turns up on eBay. Not just any copy, oh no, but a totally mint and unopened one still in it's original shrink wrap and still carrying the original $29.99 price tag.

The seller reckons that there are only two 'factory sealed' examples of the game left, and this is the rarest of all being a recalled NTSC version rather than the PAL ones that appear from time to time. "This collector’s item will only increase in value over time. Probably one of the smartest investments for a collector. Bought at Richmond Gordmans in Overland Park, Kansas over two decades ago" the seller enthused.

There's no doubting …

At the start of the year, Barry Collins (news editor at PC Pro magazine) published an interesting piece on how he had recently revisited Second Life having three years earlier found it to be packed full of folk doing lots of things including having lots of virtual sex, only to find that the place was now virtually deserted. Except, that is, in those areas where people can have virtual sex of course, which were as busy as ever.

Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon took issue with this image of Second Life being some kind of dirty virtual world where sex is the driving force. While admitting that there is indeed an 'adults-only continent within the Second Life landscape where you have to be age-verified in order to participate and where sexual activity does take place, he was pretty damn keen to point out that sex is not the main focus of the Second Life population. Talking to PC Pro Kingdon insists that only "about 6 percent of the regions in Second Life are zoned adult" and claims that it is "very average in terms of the prevalence of adult content" as a whole.

When I was researching my book Being Virtual there was no doubt that Second Life was a huge landscape covering a virtual area bigger than that of New York. When you consider that New York has been the largest city in the US since 1790 and has, I am …

The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is not the most valuable of old video games consoles, and you can pick them up for less than $50 across America. Which is probably why the lady who goes by the name of lace_thongs35 was rather surprised to see hers sell for $13,105 on eBay. And no, that wasn't a mistake or a prank bid, but rather a case of genuine collectors making genuine bids and getting genuinely carried away.

Now I am a collector of vintage video games consoles, and video games, myself and know only too well how easy it is to become obsessed in a Pokemon 'gotta catch them all' kind of a way. My collection includes no less than three fully working, boxed and complete, Magnavox Odyssey consoles for example. First demonstrated back at the start of 1972 these were the world's first home video games consoles, and so have something of a special place in the hearts of collectors. Why have I got three? Good question, and answered by the simple phrase 'I am a collector' I guess. One is a very rare British import, complete with original sales and import documents showing it was for the UK market. Another had a the most perfect condition box I had ever seen, so I had to buy it. The third, and the reason I mention it here, came complete with a 'rifle' and shooting game plus a couple of other rather rare games for good …

If you look past the inevitable consumer lust for anything new and Apple shaped, does the iPad actually live up to the hype? I've already made my own feelings on why the iPad will be no game changer (at least not in version one form) quite clear, although the chances are high that I'll end up buying one as I'm pretty much the target market. Early adopting tech consumer with more money than sense. Business buyers, on the other hand, should not get caught up in the hype over the iPad because according to tablet PC manufacturer Motion Computing it is "seriously lacking in business features".

The company is the first to admit that the Windows-based tablet revolution has been a quiet one, with little consumer marketing, but such devices have become critical hardware within industries such as health care, construction and field service nonetheless. Nigel Owens, a Vice President at Motion Computing, says "There is a lot of customisation and support needed to sell effectively to hospitals. You need the right form factor, the right cases, the right docks and/or carts, the ability to disinfect the tablet and integrate it with electronic medical records. The iPad’s touchscreen is also too fragile for construction sites or the day-to-day abuse of hospital settings".

But wait, there is more: "Apple’s iPad uses the finger-based touch of the iPhone. While fine for viewing Web sites, watching movies and exploring music collections, it falls flat for more business-oriented …

Typical, first comment on the story is spam :)

Websense Security Labs has published its bi-annual State of Internet Security report and, as usual, it makes for pretty interesting if somewhat scary reading.

Covering the last six months of 2009, the report is based upon the findings of the ThreatSeeker Network which is used to discover, classify and monitor global Internet threats and trends courtesy of something called the Internet HoneyGrid. This comprises of honeyclients and honeypots, reputation systems and advanced grid computing systems, all of which combine to parse through one billion pieces of content every day while searching for security threats. Every single hour the Internet HoneyGrid scans some 40 million websites for malicious code as well as 10 million emails for unwanted content and malicious code.

So what did the HoneyGrid have to report about the Internet security threatscape for Q3/Q4 2009?

Here are the key findings:

• 13.7% of searches for trending news/buzz words (as defined by Yahoo Buzz & Google Trends) led to malware.
  
• The second half of 2009 revealed a 3.3% decline in the growth of malicious Web sites compared to the first half of the year. Websense Security Labs believes this is due to the increased focus on Web 2.0 properties with higher traffic and multiple pages.
  
• However, comparing the second half of 2009 with the same period in 2008, Websense Security labs saw an average of 225% growth in malicious Web sites.
  
• 71% of Web sites with malicious code are legitimate …

It doesn't take a search genius to go and find plenty of reports of how Internet Explorer is, how can I put this nicely, not exactly the safest bet if you are looking for the most secure browsing experience. Quite apart from anything else it has the biggest market share and so the bad guys will naturally focus their attention on trying to hit the product with the largest number of users. Just because Microsoft appears to not make this too hard for them to accomplish is by the by.

There really can be no denying, on common sense grounds, that using one of the alternative browsers with a smaller market share and better track record of both being hit by and quickly dealing with vulnerabilities is going to be a more secure option. Not 100% safe online, nowhere near it in fact, but safer than if you are using the browser client of choice for the bad guy attention. Indeed, depending upon the metrics used you might not opt for Firefox or Safari, but that still leaves Opera and Chrome looking like more secure bets.

Well, I say no denying but that, of course, does not apply to politicians who can deny pretty much anything. Including, it would seem, any hint of Internet Explorer insecurity. In a parliamentary question asked in the House of Lords by Lord Avebury on the 26th January 2010, Her Majesty's Government were asked about any discussions …

Those of us who can remember when Internet access meant slow dial-up modems connecting via pay per minute service providers will also be all too familiar with the concept of the porn dialler. For the youngsters out there, these took advantage of the fact that most punters had no idea what number the modem was actually calling. Indeed, as long as it made some screeching noises that resulted in an Internet connection they didn't really care much either, it was just assumed that the magic box was doing what it is was built for. But the bad guys exploited the lack of technical know how and protective consumer legislation alike by redirecting connections via expensive long distance premium rate numbers, with the victim only discovering the scam when they got stung by a huge telephone bill. The redirection was most often instigated by the installation of a Trojan, and in turn the most common vector for getting people to download and install these was the emerging online sex site business. If you want to view our uncensored gallery of explicit images then download the free viewer application, and at the same time quietly install a Trojan to redirect calls away from your chosen ISP, the scam went. Unsurprisingly, these became known by the generic term of porn diallers.

And now, according to CA Security Advisor research engineer Dinesh Venkatesan it looks like the porn dialler is back.

Hang on though, who uses dial-up modems these days? …

In an interview with The Observer newspaper, Dr Ian Brown from the Oxford Internet Institute who is writing a report on anonymous datasets for the European Commission warns that "criminals could identify individuals through mobile phone data and use the information to track people's movements and find out when they are away from home". His concerns have been peaked, it would seem, by the problem of statistical de-anonymisation.

Statistical what? Well, there have been great advances (although that's not perhaps the right word) in the last couple of years when it comes to the re-identification of individuals whose anonymity is supposedly guaranteed through the use of anonymous datasets. The concept is a simple enough one, take a load of data and strip out the personally identifying information and you are left with great source material for statistical research without the privacy of the individuals whose data appears within it being compromised.

Except it would seem that it is now quite possible to do just that, compromising the privacy of those individuals by piecing together the information like a jigsaw using some frankly rather frightening de-anonymisation algorithms.

It's true to say that the notion of anonymous datasets would appear to have been well and truly smashed to pieces. The statistical de-anonymisation process used by one US-based research team, for example, enabled them to take a publicly available and supposedly anonymous list of the movie ratings of some half a million Netflix subscribers and match movie preferences …

OK, so Apple has done it again. Whipped the technology and consumer media up into a feeding frenzy that is. But has it delivered with the truly magical and revolutionary product that was promised? Er, no dude, not by a long shot and here (in no particular order) are 15 reasons why the iPad is not a game-changer.

1. According to Steve Jobs the netbook concept has been a fail and the iPad does everything better. Apart, that is, from doing more than one thing at once. Users obviously won't want to have a Twitter app running on that large screen while they surf the web or check their email.
   
2. Still no Adobe Flash support, which makes the iPad about as much use as a chocolate teapot when it comes to web browsing.
   
3. Despite the notion of an Apple iBookstore, the iPad is not a Kindle Killer for one very good reason: no e-ink. Yes, there's no doubting that Apple will position itself up towards the top of the eBook tree, but will consumers be happy to pay more for an iPad than a Kindle only to get a less pleasing reading experience?
   
4. The name is all wrong. It's too close to iPod, and it sounds too much like a sanitary protection product. Ask any woman what they think of the name iPad and they will either go bright red or start laughing. The name iPad is just wrong, period.
   
…

When Twitter gets it right, it beats all the major news gathering organisations to the punch with the really big news. I heard about the Haiti earthquake first on Twitter, and it took a fair while for the traditional news networks to catch up. But what happens when Twitter gets it wrong?

Well you get silly rumours such as the death of Johnny Depp becoming the hottest trending topic, as has happened overnight. The trouble being, because Twitter is getting a reputation for breaking big stories so quickly, people are starting to believe whatever is trending. So when right at the top of the trending list is 'RIP Johnny Depp' and this links to thousands of tweets saying things like "OMG NOOOO, JOHNNY DEPP DIED???" and "Johnny Depp is really dead" which in turn link to a news story reporting the car crash which killed him, well, the thing takes on a momentum that is hard to slow down.

But the person who tweeted "Johnny Depp cannot be dead. No. Just no. I won't believe it until I see it properly" was right. You should treat Twitter as the Chinese Whispers of news, lots of reports that could be breaking a major news story but not the actual source of the story itself.

My wife is a woman so perhaps it should come as no great surprise that she fancies the pants off of Mr Depp and ordered me check it out when …

For a while it looked like the Google threat to pull out of China was just a load of hot air, and pretty late hot air at that considering it had taken years for the search giant to realise that state censorship is a bad thing. But that has all changed now that Google landed a well aimed kick right to the Chinese commercial nads by 'delaying' the launch of a couple of new Android OS powered mobile devices.

Although there is, as of yet, no official response from China over this latest move it has previously stated that Google should not be above the law and that any company wishing to do business in China has to respect and obey the laws of the land. I doubt that pulling the release of a couple of cellphones in a country awash with cellphones is really going to make China change its mind on this one.

Motorola and Samsung, the companies whose smartphones were ready to go on the country's second biggest mobile network, China Unicom, to the tune of some 30,000 handsets in all, might take a different view given the size of the market. Of course, given that there are some 700 million mobile phone users and growing, this kind of leaves Google between a rock and a hard place.

Does it really want to turn around and flounce out of an important, vital even, market …

I would like to think that anyone watching, reading or listening to news reports of the unfolding tragedy that is post-earthquake Haiti could not fail to be moved first to tears and then prompted to want to do something. Most people have responded by asking themselves 'what can I do to help?' and have found the answer to be to donate money to the likes of the Red Cross or similar which is organising a disaster emergency fund to help the poor folk of Haiti.

Some, though, have responded by asking 'how can I exploit the situation to satisfy my own greed?' and found the answer to be in generating poisoned search engine results and malware-laden spam. It almost beggars belief that anyone could sink so low, but the sad fact is that there is scum out there who will do anything for money and that includes attempting to profit off the misery of others.

Symantec is warning that there has been a "huge upturn" in 419 advance fee schemes, spam emails soliciting donations and poisoned search engine results designed to exploit the generosity of the masses.

The security company urges computer users to follow best practice to ensure donations and support reach the intended victims and not some scumbag scammers. Advice includes:

Avoid clicking on suspicious links in email or IM messages as these may be links to spoofed Web sites. Symantec security experts suggest typing Web addresses, such as those from a charitable organisation, …

So it seems that an Internet Explorer zero day vulnerability allowed the back door to be opened that resulted in the hack attack on Google and many others that has received such publicity this week.

According to McAfee it has identified an Internet Explorer vulnerability as being one of the attack vectors but the security vendor also warns that targeted attacks such as this often use "a cocktail of zero-day vulnerabilities combined with sophisticated social engineering scenarios" so it is possible, likely even, that other as yet unidentified attack vectors were also involved. However, McAfee dismisses some early reports which claimed that an Adobe Reader PDF vulnerability was a factor, stating that there is simply no evidence to suggest this to be the case.

Worryingly though, McAfee does insist that while "this attack is especially deadly on older systems that are running XP and Internet Explorer 6" and this was the focus of these recent attacks, Internet Explorer does remain "vulnerable on all of Microsoft’s most recent operating system releases, including Windows 7". McAfee says that new versions of Windows simply make exploiting the vulnerability harder, not impossible.

It becomes even more worrying when you appreciate that the code used in the Google attack to exploit the as yet unpatched vulnerability has now been published on the web for anyone to grab and make use of. Unlike some other news publications, DaniWeb will not be making things easier yet by linking …

Google has signalled, in the strongest possible manner, that it will be pulling out of China unless something is done to address censorship of searches. It has also accused China of launching a "highly sophisticated and targeted attack" on the Google corporate infrastructure, along with another twenty large companies from a range of business sectors in the US.

Such attacks are nothing new, just last year the Pentagon was allegedly subject to a successful hacking attack with details of the F35 Lightning II, also known as the Joint Strike Fighter and the most expensive jet fighter ever, the target.

However, this time the worrying implication is that human beings were the target. Google says it has evidence to suggest that "a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists".

David Drummond, Chief Legal Officer at Google, say that the company has discovered that the accounts of dozens of users based in China, Europe and the US, who are advocates of human rights in China "appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users' computers".

It is unusual for companies to go public with this kind of information, often for fear of damaging the brand or scaring users into thinking that security is not up to scratch, and that's without even mentioning …

Some might argue that it has been a bad year for encryption. After all, just as the last decade was ending came reports that the algorithm that is used to encrypt GSM mobile phone calls (as used by some 4 billion people around the world) had been cracked wide open. Now this has been followed by the announcement that 768-bit RSA encryption has been cracked. I'm inclined to think that this is a good thing, and am happy to explain why starting with GSM encryption.

The GSM Association responsible for developing the algorithm in the first place responded by stating that the work of the scientists behind the code cracking would be highly illegal in the UK and other countries. Well duh! Seriously though, there is an argument to suggest that it's better for the good guys to crack the code than the bad guys. After all, at least it is now known to be vulnerable and that should, as the guys who did the donkey work suggest, create pressure to produce a better encryption algorithm. Some argue that if they had not published the results of their work (which was apparently done after taking legal advice) then things might have been a little safer until such a time that this happens. Of course, the counter argument being that without the publication of such work the motivation to make changes is reduced considerably.

In many ways I think that this has probably done us a favour, …

Well, it is that time of year again and the holiday season is upon us. Which means I get to wish everyone the very best and say a very big thank you for being part of our community here at DaniWeb.

2009 has had some ups and downs (no mentioning the voting system or I will start bah humbugging) but overall I think it's been a pretty good year. With your continued support and feedback let's make 2010 an even better one.

If you are expecting a nice shiny iPhone or BlackBerry as a gift this Xmas, your joy may be short lived if network crashes this week are anything to go by.

Earlier this week Twitter users in the UK were reporting data network access as being down for close on two days, with attempts to access apps requiring a data connection being met with an error message simply saying "Could not activate cellular data network."

O2 put the problem down to a fault with the allocation of IP addresses and said sorry to those customer impacted by the issue. However, if you were one of those customers unable to use your iPhone for data access between Saturday and Monday, I doubt that will be much comfort. This is not the first time that the O2 iPhone data network has gone ass over tit, and as before there has been no mention of compensation for users denied access to the service they are paying through the nose for.

BlackBerry users are also feeling the network heat, with US users reporting on Twitter that email access had vanished this week. Research in Motion confirmed yesterday that it was working to rectify the issue, but it has not as yet confirmed what that issue actually is from a technical perspective.

There has been much speculation that problems with mobile data networks are simply down to the sheer number of users. After all, networks were designed primarily to …

File under FAIL: social network widget maker RockYou has fallen victim to a SQL injection flaw and as a result some 32.6 million users are being urged to change their passwords as a matter of urgency.

Security specialists Imperva discovered the problem at social networking development site Rockyou.com and issued a warning to users of its applications earlier this week. "Rockyou.com is not just any software site. Since its creation in 2006, it's become the hub for many social networking sites such as Bebo, Facebook and Myspace, to mention but a few" said Amichai Shulman, Imperva CTO.

Shulman claimed that the "vast majority" of user names and passwords were, by default, the same as the users webmail accounts, adding "the users are young and security is not top of mind, but nonetheless companies need to keep them protected and ensure their details are safe... it is the responsibility of application owners to protect the information trusted to them by users".

TechCrunch reports that the hacker exploit took advantage of a "trivial SQL injection vulnerability" which "has been well documented for over a decade" and is "extremely basic in execution, yet catastrophic in impact". Worse yet, it points out that RockYou only requires 5 character passwords, and that these were stored in plain text. If this were not bad enough, users of RockYou widgets were prompted to "enter their third-party site credentials directly into the RockYou site when sharing data or an …

At least it proves that Dani does still listen to what members of the community say...

I think it is a difficult balancing act, and one that a lot of people end up having to face: your business (substitute site, community, project whatever) hits a certain size and you have to make the decision of how to take that growth forward. Keeping a site like DaniWeb running day to day does not come cheap, yet Dani does not charge for membership. The only way that this place can survive is for it to be treated in a business-like manner.

That said, I think it's a little unfair to suggest that Dani has become some kind of dictatorial tyrant. Sure, there are decisions she takes that the community are not involved in (just like Facebook does not consult with their members when making decisions about user interface changes for example) but she does still monitor feedback in forums such as this one and elsewhere, she does still listen to what the old-timers are saying, she does still have her finger on the pulse of DaniWeb in my opinion and perhaps most importantly an awful lot of the decisions she takes are taken bearing this feedback in mind.

Compared to many other sites I frequent which claim to be community oriented there is still much more of a feeling that member input counts for something here.

I'm not saying everything is perfect, nor am I saying that every decision Dani makes will be popular or even prove to right, but on balance she still has …

I've been a freelance journalist for 20 years now, and can honestly say that the iPhone has changed the way I work more than anything since wireless Internet access came along all those years ago. But what are the essential iPhone apps that a jobbing journalist, or blogger for that matter, cannot live without? I've not included the built-in apps that come with my iPhone 3GS such as mail, calendar, camera/video and the voice memo recorder, but rather have concentrated on my top 10 third party apps:

1. Twittelator Pro

Twitter is not just for stalking celebrities, it's also where the news breaks first these days. Which means a journalist out on the road needs a decent client to access it wherever they may be. For me, that decent client has to be Twittelator Pro as it is simply the most powerful Twitter client bar none. From the great reading interface, to the ease by which you can follow and create lists, the search and trending functionality it is perfect. Writing posts is quick and easy, with a neat ability to automatically shrink URLS so you can post links to your online news stories with ease. Yep, Twittelator Pro helps you read and write the news, and it acts as a great SEO and syndication tool for good measure. Indeed, it is the single app I use more than any other during a working day and that includes mail and calendar apps! If further proof were …

A new search engine officially launches today, the same day as the World Climate Summit in Copenhagen commences. According to Ecosia you can help battle climate change by switching away from Google and here's how.

Not only will the new guy on the search block give 80% of the advertising revenue it earns to a World Wildlife Fund environmental protection project to help save the Amazon rain forest (and therefore reduce global warming and save polar bears in case you were wondering) but it also reckons each search will use much less electricity than Google

Ecosia will also be running on 'green' electricity and apparently will save up to 2 square metres of rain forest when compared to sites like Google which, according to Ecosia at least, produces that same amount of carbon dioxide when making one search as a light bulb does when switched on for an hour.

Search engines claiming to be green are nothing new, who could forget the Black Google for example? But whereas that simply changed the background colour from white to black and claimed to consume a whole heap less electricity as a result (a claim that was poo-pooed by many) Ecosia is doing something tangible by actually donating money to the climate fight.

The Berlin-based search start up is confident it will be the greenest search engine on the planet, with founder Christian Kroll arguing that thanks to advertising "search engines earn billions every year" …

I refer you to the DaniWeb acceptable use policy:

"DaniWeb takes Internet privacy very seriously. However, please note that this is a public site where all threads, posts, news stories, code snippets, tutorials, etc. with the exception of those in the Staff forums, are available to everyone (guests and members alike)."

You could apply that same logic to pretty mjuch every forum on the web: most forums have a certain level of spam becuase preventing every spamming idiot means that ordinary members would be hugely inconvenienced. It does not mean that all forums are bad or broken becuase spammers insist on abusing them.

Just because some dullard abuses a system that does not mean that the the system itself is bad, nor does it mean that the dullard is some kind of hero - it just means that someone has abused the system and as soon as we find out who it is (and Dani is now on the case, tracking them down) they can look forward to being banned from DaniWeb.

I am closing this thread as a fire fighting precaution

Rupert Murdoch is not a stupid man, his business empire is evidence of that. For anyone to become a media mogul requires smarts, but those smarts seem to be deserting Murdoch as he continues to play the fool and deny that old monetisation methods do not work for the new online model that has so totally embraced news media.

Gord Hotchkiss over at Searchnewz says "Rupert Murdoch's rantings are so out of touch that they're bordering on lunacy, or, at a minimum, stupidity. He's mad that his old revenue model isn't working anymore" and I couldn't agree more.

When Mike Butcher at TechCrunch broke the news that Microsoft might be trying to fund a move to persuade newspapers to move from Google to Bing, a few of us blinked not so much with surprise but more a feeling of inevitability. It took a while for the rest of the world to catch up after the Financial Times published a story (behind a paywall and 9 days later, ironically enough) stating that Microsoft had discussions involving News Corp "being paid to de-index its news websites from Google". It's also something Ron Miller, right here on DaniWeb, beat the old media to the punch with if you broaden the net a little and excuse the pun.

This all comes off the back of a Sky News interview with Rupert Murdoch during which he pointed out that readers who see …

Clicking on 'clear' is exactly what I do, simplest solution and saves my brain exploding :)

The down votes simply mean people do not agree with either your opinion on the matter, or perhaps more likely the way you have expressed. They certainly do not mean you do not have a right to reply, nor should they be seen as discouragement to reply.

Like any conversation there will be times when people agree with you and times when they don't, simple as that surely?

That's another area where I think these folk have gone wrong, marketing it as a 50+ thing as if you turn 50 and start falling apart. My mum is in her late 70s now, but even she manages to use the computers in the library without any fuss.

As for netbooks, I guess it's a personal thing. I spend all day writing most days, and if I am away from the office I do that on a 10" netbook and find the keyboard perfectly acceptable. I can type fast enough and my fingers don't hurt any more than usual.

Sure, not as good as my desktop keyboards (I go through them at a rate of at least one a year) but no different to most 15" screen laptops that I've tried.